that tom hanks/ leonardo decaprio movie about frank abagnale serves up the most useful point about guys like these:
1. convict them and put them in prison
2. take them out and convert their sentence into useful work for the federal government. if they f**k up, back in the hole they go So he saw an issue in the voting system. He could have sold the election to the highest bidder, but instead, he demonstrated the flaw to everyone. His reward? We stick him in prison and use him for slave labor.
And of course, there's also the fact that, if his argument were true, it would be meaningless. When's the last time a case decision were decided based on the "facts" provided in a book title?
Book titles are based on marketing, not facts.
This reminds me of how that any device that uses a headphone port is now being marketed as an iPOD accessory. Does that mean that Apple can sue any company that produces a device with a headphone port?
I really hate this trend. A corporation loses a case and the punishment is that consumers get to spend more money with them. I agree 100%. The customer is entitled to say "these people misrepresented themselves and I'm not doing business with them any more", but, unfortunately, our legal system has decided that BOGO coupons are legal tender in this country now.
WTF. They should be forced to refund everyone who bought one of these players an amount equivalent to the proportion of storage space the "lost". I'd say they need to take it a step further. Since the correlation between storage capacity and product cost does not seem to be correlated (I.E. the price per gig skyrockets on new technology), the only fair way to do it is to either have the company send the customer a nearly identical unit with a satisfactory amount of disk space, or to give them a refund. (At least, it is fair if you assume that the company is being required to make ammends for a mistake or illegal action.)
Another way of thinking about it is that the product wasn't quite what they advertised, so rather than having to give the customer what creative _DID_ advertise, creative is telling the customer that, for 50% extra, they can get what they originally paid for.
I really wish I had some mod points right now. This article sounds like such wishy-washy, unrealistic crap. I can't wait to read his next article: "Hey y'all we should do something about the homeless", or "Kids, stop humping. That's how babies are made"
WTF is fundamentally missing that it can't be a "desktop"?? Are we talking administration? Apps? Screen savers? Spinning cursor add-ons? iTunes? Virus scanners? Boxed software?
I would say the total package. To use your puzzle analogy, each piece is there. Linux needs someone to hand-hold the customer, a single well-done user manual, noob-friendly tech-support...
One stop shopping is also helpful. If ubuntu won't print, the user wants to know why ubuntu won't print. Making the user learn that this is a CUPS issue that must be researched from a how-to on the CUPS project page seems like a bit of a run-around. The same example could be used for gnome or several other packages.
Ubuntu comes very close to what is needed. It just sets everything up, without asking the user too much. This may seem like the exact opposite of what Linux was designed for, and it is. Linux was designed for transparency, and the end user wants a well-integrated black box that "just works".
Yes. The problem was that NSLs were not legal. Had the school handed over the papers anyway, then he could have claimed that the NSL papers helped in this situation. Since the school did not hand over the papers, then they were able to claim that due process impeded their investigation.
And if they had thought about it, they could, just as logically have pointed out that the sun rose the next day, and claimed that it happened because the NSL papers made Jesus happy.
blocks of people in your country who have a separate culture and separate rules that they want to live by And what culture/rules do the people labelled as African Americans live by? Well, have you ever heard Colon Powell or Barak Obama being criticized for "not being black enough"? I don't know if it is constructive to criticize black people who adopt the speech patterns, mannerisms, and dress patterns used in corporate America. After all, doing so seems to be reinforcing negative stereotypes (that they can't be successful at anything technical, sophisticated, or academic in nature), but there really is a black community, and it can be seen in voting patterns, music and clothing trends, linguistic trends and plenty of other ways. I'm not saying that 100% of African-Americans conform to this, or that 0% of whites do, but the trend is there.
Classifying people in such a way doesn't make sense. The only thing you can generalise about African Americans is that their skin is black. You can also generalize that they are more likely to live in poverty and to have problems that come with poverty. They may be more likely to face irrational discrimination, or alienation, which may affect their outlook, career choices, financial options, and even life expectancy.
I don't believe that every issue that affects black culture is caused by racism, but the issues do exist, and it makes more sense to look for an explanation to the correlation than to ignore it entirely.
Then, there is the fact that African-Americans are more likely to be affected by some diseases and less likely to be affected by others. So, for medical purposes it is useful for doctors to notice if a patient happens to be black.
Grouping them into a sub-culture based on their ethnicity is really stupid, and a testament to the persisting prejudice that runs through the US. This is a perfect example of modern, widely practised, racism. Well, that's just name-calling. The whole point of the debate is to determine if we truly are a society where everyone is created equal, or if we have a class of second-class citizens. I would say that allowing the disparity to happen is more racist than actually taking notice and trying to stop it.
Um...P.Z. Meyers, Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer), Dr. Steven Novella (NeuroLogica)...Those three exceptions just came to mind.
I can't evaluate an astronomer's productivity, but a look at PubMed certainly suggests that "useless in their fields" is a pretty good description of the other two. (As far as research goes, anyway, although Novella's location would imply that he's at least a good physician.) What makes you think otherwise?
What makes you think the number of papers published is a good indicator of "usefulness"? If someone decides that they would rather teach, work in the field, actively promote science to the public, or write a daily blog, then does that make them useless? If you want to make that claim, you really should find something they have gotten wrong.
The headline should state that one specific computer game relieves stress. I'm not arguing that WOW turns people into serial killers, but this study is only looking at immediate effects, only looking at one specific game, and using a pretty subjective means of determining stress level.
I can't help but wonder how the study would be different if they were instead looking at first person shooters, and using a more reliable method of measuring stress...
Doctors, Lawyers, CEO's and other professions make over $100k Congratulations, we've finally identified that professions with high barriers to entry (intelligence, schooling, well placed parents, etc.) make higher salaries. Blogging requires, um, a keyboard and an ability to type. Oh, sure, there are probably PhDs out there blogging. Okay, okay, I'm kidding - I sincerely doubt it - unless they were useless in their fields to begin with. Um...P.Z. Meyers, Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer), Dr. Steven Novella (NeuroLogica)...Those three exceptions just came to mind.
Sorry, I have no idea how my earlier post got formatted like that. Here's how it should have appeared.
The record companies only deal in music which'll make them money. There are many more unsigned bands/acts which sell their own music at shows or play for free. If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them.
I didn't get that from the article. The article seems to imply that the labels act as gatekeepers (which would make no sense if the gatekeeper just let everyone in), and that they provide the infrastructure, and take the risks. That's why they do not just sign everybody. There are only so many studios in which to record. There are only so many billboards to buy, and only so much space in which to store CDs.
The article does seem to over emphasize the do-it-yourself aspects of the music industry, however. There is still plenty of room for people who can run the studios, produce and promote a product, and who simply know what to do next. The methods may be changing, but the well-produced pop groups of the future are still going to need someone who understands the technical and business aspects of making music.
And they will also need someone who can provide the money to make this happen. That may mean that the RIAA could transition to a specialty lending institution, since they are more qualified to determine the marketability of a music act, than traditional banks. Of course that's just my $0.02
<quote>The record companies only deal in music which'll make them money. There are many more unsigned bands/acts which sell their own music at shows or play for free. If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them. </quote>
<p>I didn't get that from the article. The article seems to imply that the labels act as gatekeepers (which would make no sense if the gatekeeper just let everyone in), and that they provide the infrastructure, and take the risks. That's why they do not just sign everybody. There are only so many studios in which to record. There are only so many billboards to buy, and only so much space in which to store CDs.</p>
<p>The article does seem to over emphasize the do-it-yourself aspects of the music industry, however. There is still plenty of room for people who can run the studios, produce and promote a product, and who simply know what to do next. The methods may be changing, but the well-produced pop groups of the future are still going to need someone who understands the technical and business aspects of making music. </p>
<p>And they will also need someone who can provide the money to make this happen. That may mean that the RIAA could transition to a specialty lending institution, since they are more qualified to determine the marketability of a music act, than traditional banks. Of course that's just my $0.02</p>
in their set-top boxes in the EU/UK but they wont reveal the source code (try google'ing it or looking at their site you wont find it),
probably because you could decrypt the encryption on the Satellite stream,
shame that some companies (like murdochs) see Linux as free meal ticket and refuse to contribute anything back
still a GPL violation has never bothered billion dollar companies before, "i got mine screw you" seems to be the mantra of businesss/society thesedays
IANAL, and I don't know about GPL version 3, but my understanding about GPL is that you can release a product that contains both open and closed software, and you only have to GPL the software that directly contains GPL code. (As opposed to that which was produced by GPL development tools, or that which runs on a GPL operating system)
Correct my if I'm wrong, but hasn't Red Hat been doing this for years?
I wonder if this will decrease the amount of spam sites that clutter up so many Google search results...
Considering how much it would cost to set something like that up, and how much profit it would take to make something like that worthwhile, three dollars isn't going to break them.
The pace of change is slowing down. Look at four 50 year periods in history.
1808 In 1808, life was pretty much like it had been for the previous thousand years. Land travel was on foot or by horse; most people never went fifty miles from their birthplace in their entire life. Heating was from burning wood; lighting from candles. Everything was made by hand. But things were just starting to pick up steam, literally. The first locomotive was in 1804. The very first passenger train ran in 1807. Iron was rare, and steel rarer still.
1858 Railroads connected the major cities in Europe, England, and the US east of the Mississippi. Gas lighting had appeared in cities. Some ships were steam powered. Western Union had telegraphs up and running. Factories were coal burning and steam powered. Textiles were being manufactured by power looms and were much cheaper. Iron was plentiful; steel was still rare. The first oil well was a year in the future.
1908 Major cities had electricity. Telephones were available. All commercial shipping was steam powered. The first cars were running, and the first aircraft had flown. Big hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls were running. Steel was widely available and cheap. The first skyscrapers had been built. An active oil industry was producing.
1958 Radio, TV, electronics, computers, and atomic power were all working. Transistor radios were available. Oil and natural gas were supplanting coal. Huge farm surpluses were a normal event in the US. The first satellites were in orbit. Large jet transports were flying. Good highway system pervasive. Vaccines for polio, tetanus, diphtheria, yellow fever. Antibiotics widely available. The problems of transportation, power, manufacturing, and agriculture had all been overcome, more than overcome, for the first time in history.
2008 Improvements over 1958, but few breakthroughs. No major new power sources. Energy costs up during this period, for the first time in 200 years. No major new form of transportation. No major improvement in space launch technology. Some progress in biotech but no major life extension. Much progress in electronics and computers.
Progress is flatlining.
I think you may simply be comparing the high-profile advances that were taking place at an arbitrary point in the past to todays advances in the same field. By doing that, you are discounting the notion that advances go in trends. Sure, transportation had advanced considerably, 150 years ago, but how does that compare to the cracking of the human genome?
The areas you have mentioned were in their infancy at the time (as indicated by your first bullet mentioning that they had been stagnant until the 1850s), and since, we have "picked the low-hanging fruit". Now, those fields are mature and progress will naturally become less dramatic than they were at their inception.
He describes a world where the entire infrastructure has essentially been rebuilt in 40 years. I can't see how that would have seemed plausible even back then. That said, portions of it are impressively accurate.
Considering how road work is done today, we have rebuilt every part of our infrastructure several times over.
"When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies "buy," and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance."
"One click", I have you now!
Did the article also mention computers providing us all with rich virtual relatives in Nigeria? Apparently, that's where they go to die.
Slashdot Mirror
And of course, there's also the fact that, if his argument were true, it would be meaningless. When's the last time a case decision were decided based on the "facts" provided in a book title?
Book titles are based on marketing, not facts.
This reminds me of how that any device that uses a headphone port is now being marketed as an iPOD accessory. Does that mean that Apple can sue any company that produces a device with a headphone port?
Another way of thinking about it is that the product wasn't quite what they advertised, so rather than having to give the customer what creative _DID_ advertise, creative is telling the customer that, for 50% extra, they can get what they originally paid for.
I really wish I had some mod points right now. This article sounds like such wishy-washy, unrealistic crap. I can't wait to read his next article: "Hey y'all we should do something about the homeless", or "Kids, stop humping. That's how babies are made"
Do you mean for stealing the name, or for being boring and unworthy of attention?
I would say the total package. To use your puzzle analogy, each piece is there. Linux needs someone to hand-hold the customer, a single well-done user manual, noob-friendly tech-support...
One stop shopping is also helpful. If ubuntu won't print, the user wants to know why ubuntu won't print. Making the user learn that this is a CUPS issue that must be researched from a how-to on the CUPS project page seems like a bit of a run-around. The same example could be used for gnome or several other packages.
Ubuntu comes very close to what is needed. It just sets everything up, without asking the user too much. This may seem like the exact opposite of what Linux was designed for, and it is. Linux was designed for transparency, and the end user wants a well-integrated black box that "just works".
I thought Microsoft did that with Vista...
Yes. The problem was that NSLs were not legal. Had the school handed over the papers anyway, then he could have claimed that the NSL papers helped in this situation. Since the school did not hand over the papers, then they were able to claim that due process impeded their investigation.
And if they had thought about it, they could, just as logically have pointed out that the sun rose the next day, and claimed that it happened because the NSL papers made Jesus happy.
I don't believe that every issue that affects black culture is caused by racism, but the issues do exist, and it makes more sense to look for an explanation to the correlation than to ignore it entirely.
Then, there is the fact that African-Americans are more likely to be affected by some diseases and less likely to be affected by others. So, for medical purposes it is useful for doctors to notice if a patient happens to be black. Grouping them into a sub-culture based on their ethnicity is really stupid, and a testament to the persisting prejudice that runs through the US. This is a perfect example of modern, widely practised, racism. Well, that's just name-calling. The whole point of the debate is to determine if we truly are a society where everyone is created equal, or if we have a class of second-class citizens. I would say that allowing the disparity to happen is more racist than actually taking notice and trying to stop it.
I can't evaluate an astronomer's productivity, but a look at PubMed certainly suggests that "useless in their fields" is a pretty good description of the other two. (As far as research goes, anyway, although Novella's location would imply that he's at least a good physician.) What makes you think otherwise?
What makes you think the number of papers published is a good indicator of "usefulness"? If someone decides that they would rather teach, work in the field, actively promote science to the public, or write a daily blog, then does that make them useless? If you want to make that claim, you really should find something they have gotten wrong.
The headline should state that one specific computer game relieves stress. I'm not arguing that WOW turns people into serial killers, but this study is only looking at immediate effects, only looking at one specific game, and using a pretty subjective means of determining stress level.
I can't help but wonder how the study would be different if they were instead looking at first person shooters, and using a more reliable method of measuring stress...
That's what happens when researchers drink too much coffee
1. Make the military above the law
2. Make everything a branch of the military
3. ?????
4. Oh crap...
Yeah, but it's a "young earth". In another 6000 years, it's going to buy a trans-am and start flirting with 6000 year-old planets.
Sorry, I have no idea how my earlier post got formatted like that. Here's how it should have appeared.
The record companies only deal in music which'll make them money. There are many more unsigned bands/acts which sell their own music at shows or play for free. If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them.I didn't get that from the article. The article seems to imply that the labels act as gatekeepers (which would make no sense if the gatekeeper just let everyone in), and that they provide the infrastructure, and take the risks. That's why they do not just sign everybody. There are only so many studios in which to record. There are only so many billboards to buy, and only so much space in which to store CDs.
The article does seem to over emphasize the do-it-yourself aspects of the music industry, however. There is still plenty of room for people who can run the studios, produce and promote a product, and who simply know what to do next. The methods may be changing, but the well-produced pop groups of the future are still going to need someone who understands the technical and business aspects of making music.
And they will also need someone who can provide the money to make this happen. That may mean that the RIAA could transition to a specialty lending institution, since they are more qualified to determine the marketability of a music act, than traditional banks. Of course that's just my $0.02
<quote>The record companies only deal in music which'll make them money. There are many more unsigned bands/acts which sell their own music at shows or play for free. If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them. </quote>
<p>I didn't get that from the article. The article seems to imply that the labels act as gatekeepers (which would make no sense if the gatekeeper just let everyone in), and that they provide the infrastructure, and take the risks. That's why they do not just sign everybody. There are only so many studios in which to record. There are only so many billboards to buy, and only so much space in which to store CDs.</p>
<p>The article does seem to over emphasize the do-it-yourself aspects of the music industry, however. There is still plenty of room for people who can run the studios, produce and promote a product, and who simply know what to do next. The methods may be changing, but the well-produced pop groups of the future are still going to need someone who understands the technical and business aspects of making music. </p>
<p>And they will also need someone who can provide the money to make this happen. That may mean that the RIAA could transition to a specialty lending institution, since they are more qualified to determine the marketability of a music act, than traditional banks. Of course that's just my $0.02</p>
IANAL, and I don't know about GPL version 3, but my understanding about GPL is that you can release a product that contains both open and closed software, and you only have to GPL the software that directly contains GPL code. (As opposed to that which was produced by GPL development tools, or that which runs on a GPL operating system)
Correct my if I'm wrong, but hasn't Red Hat been doing this for years?
Considering how much it would cost to set something like that up, and how much profit it would take to make something like that worthwhile, three dollars isn't going to break them.
Left, right, right, down, down, left, up, right, up, up, left, down, down, right, up, down, left, right, up, left, down, down, right, up, left.
Just a guess ;)
Or Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start
I can't seem to figure out why it was being reported at all.
Any time the words "nuclear" and "mistake" appear in the same headline, it's news.
The pace of change is slowing down.
Look at four 50 year periods in history.
But things were just starting to pick up steam, literally. The first locomotive was in 1804.
The very first passenger train ran in 1807. Iron was rare, and steel rarer still.
An active oil industry was producing.
Energy costs up during this period, for the first time in 200 years. No major new form of transportation. No major improvement in space launch technology. Some progress in biotech but no major life extension. Much progress in electronics and computers.
Progress is flatlining.
I think you may simply be comparing the high-profile advances that were taking place at an arbitrary point in the past to todays advances in the same field. By doing that, you are discounting the notion that advances go in trends. Sure, transportation had advanced considerably, 150 years ago, but how does that compare to the cracking of the human genome?
The areas you have mentioned were in their infancy at the time (as indicated by your first bullet mentioning that they had been stagnant until the 1850s), and since, we have "picked the low-hanging fruit". Now, those fields are mature and progress will naturally become less dramatic than they were at their inception.
Considering how road work is done today, we have rebuilt every part of our infrastructure several times over.
"One click", I have you now!
Did the article also mention computers providing us all with rich virtual relatives in Nigeria? Apparently, that's where they go to die.