What most people decry is the RIAA suing people without any evidence of worngdoing. They are acting like a protection racket.
They have the rights to protect the copyrighted works for which the hold the copyright.
What is not admisable is for them to try to shutdown P2P networks that have perfectly legitimate uses, or to intimidate pople as "examples" only because they can't afford to defend themselves in a coyurt.
If the RIAA was suing egregious copyright violators I think nobody would be complaining about them.
There are rights that are yours to use, no matter if you harm yourself in the process.
If obscurity is the punishment for using your rights let the market decide (thus copyright holders would flock to opt in to the Google scheme. Oh wait, they are forced to opt in, damn, bad luck for the little guy I guess). Google should not be the final arbiter about this. Theyr are not their books, it should not be up to them to make profit of of copies of them, even if that would bring untold riches to the copyright holders.
But many people, me included, do not see where the word "fair" comes into place when a company, arrogantly, uses the work of other people to pedal their own enterprises (do not tell me they are doing this as an act of charity, and even in that case, thsy still would need copyright holders' permission as far as I am concerned).
It is so evidently unfair that I don't understand why so many/.ers keep defending the indefensible.
... the value of advertisment and name recognition.
Google has a commercial interest on its name being sinonymous with searching, and evene if they never ever charged for this ervice in any shape or form, it certainly would add to their brand reputation.
They are not a non for profit organization of any kind. If they are doing all this from the good of their hearts then they need to start a non for profit organization where Google gets mentioned in an obscure page with many thanks. And the scheme should be opt-in, they have got no right to impose it into copyright holders.
.... in this case, copyrights, are so blantantly violated, you are being screwed over, no matter if you stand to make a profit.
It is like if somebody kidnaps you, forces you to go into prostitution and then gives you a cut of the earnings. Most likely you will not even care to look at how much money you have "made" because your rights (freedom, personaly safety, etc) have been trampled.
Google are literally pillaging the rights of other people taking the incredible stand of requesting people opting out of their forced scheme!
How much more arrogant can you get?
This is of Microsoftsquean egotistical proportions, maybe all the people that Google has poached from MS are beginning to have an influence in how this company attempts to make "bussiness"....
How does this needs to be explained to the/. crowd in order to make it clear?
I don't know, but I will try.
It does not matter how unworkable is for Google to implement an opt-in scheme. The law is not to be obeyed only when it is "workable" to do so.
If you are copying somebody else's work and you are profiteering from it (because Google is going to make money out of it) it stands to reason that Google has to ask permission to do so. Since the system will be the panacea for all publishers and authors (according to Google and its unconditional apologists) then people will camp for days outside the Google campus in order to opt-in to this scheme.
As in regards to the obscure title not included in the daabase: tough! They have not received the right to copy it, they just should keep their diry hands out of it. Why is this so difficult to understand?
I see several very well argued points about the phony-scheme that "Intellectual Property" is.
If there is a magazine that decision makers read, that is The Economist, if the magazine receives a load of arguments against the current system it will get noticed.
If your method to make widgets is really novel, it will not be easy to copy, and thus you will be able to milk it for all what is worth.
If you are stating the obvious from a technological point of view, you don't deserve to become rich and any competitor that could quickly copy your "invention" should be able to do so.
No need for patents, truly great inventions would give a real technological advantage to the inventors, any small incremental improvement would give you a very small incremental advantage which would be olbiterated soon.
But Sony Walkwman started atrend: portable music players.
MP3 players are a trend: music can now be distributed electronically only, no physical media is strictily necessary. iPods are the most obvious manifestation of that, but they will not remain the only device doing electronic distribution of music in such big scale.
So you have a mess in your hands (wahtever the reason) and you have to fix it.
If you trust only your common sense, allow me to say, you are an idiot.
I know of a case when the company began to do some of the things you mentions: signed cards for work well done, small presents, free drinks.
EMployees began to complain that this was all in order to avoid salary raises.
Salary rises came, and everybody was complaining about how little it was, or how tthey were more diserving than others for it.
Common sense fixed nothing. What helped was to form a commitee, ask opinions of what would be nice recognitions to receive, and to set clear policies about promotions and salary raises.
Having a committee helped enourmously to improve the situation.
In place of getting help from as many people as possible, delegating responsibility to solve a problem, the CIO should go around himself interviewing people. Give me a fucking brake.
I honestly wonder some times how some guys come with such impractical and bizarre ideas like this with a straight face and can go to sleep without feeling any shame.
I will try to rescue a point form the diatribe in the parent post, for something to be implemented it has to become part of the tasks reviewed regularly when appraisal time comes. If middle managers have been tasked with defining clear carrier paths for employees and they have not done it then their cooki point should be decreased. Another part of the feedback is to ask employees if they see and understand the carrer paths available in the firm.
THese tasks (or any other discovered as possible solutions to a problem) should become documented responsibilites at the different levels of the organization.
I know you guys don't like this kind of language, and many of you hate this stab in your fucking artistic pretensions, but the only way to address problems is to put people to work in the solution, document it, implement it, and review that the solution is working regularly, in a manner that can be enforced (read bonuses, promotions).
... how would you address a problem without appointing some resources (yes, a commitee, people do not work for free you know, even if it is to improve their working conditions...) to analyze and propose solutions?
Some/.ers believe that solutions will come from heaven given by the holly spirit or something like that.
No, you have to address a problem, the holly spirit and any other magical forces will not solve your organizational problems. You have to assign people to solve it and that group of people has to have a name in order to quickly identify all the infdividuals involved, either team, commitee, task force, or the friends of Sherlock, that is immaterial.
As usual, the big good old slashdotters' ayatollic approach to nuclear energy (yeah it is kewl!) rears it ugly head again.
They dismiss reasonably fears about how to dispose safely of waste forgetting how many industries in the past have not cared about poisoning people. Somehow, the good old little/.er believes that magically people in the nuclear industry will be better and more moral being. Yeah, sure.
They forget about terrorism, on spite of the worldwide paranoia about the issue. Sooner or later terrorists will use radioactive material in order to inflict fear. THey will not too many people, if any, but as soon as a geiger reader detects a bit of radioactive activity after a bomb blast we will be in for the scaremongering ride of our life.
They, as good gadget lovers, like big phallic infrastrucutre. PLants producing who know how many Mega, not Giga, not Tera Watts of energy. The more in on e single point of failure, the better.
And more unexplainbaly, they dismiss the value of distributed technology. Why new housing does not have roofs and walls fully covered with solar panels? Why new housing does not have small wind turbines? Why new housing does not use all the knowledge we about about heating or colling by mains of natural airflow? Why are things like the immoral SUVs allowed to even exist?
Why, I will tell you why, because the industries behind the energy are too powerful and have the politicians by the proverbial small ones.
And the general public on rich countries are addicted to an apparently unlimited supply of mind numbing energy.
The reckoning time will come, on spite of the skeptics, the planet is clearly not infinite and sooner or later we will finish the oil, the cleann air or both.
.... has very few effective tools in order to effectively modify people's behaviour.
Taxes is one of those tools, and yes, it is a punitive method, but if you are an elected representative you have earned the right to apply punitive tactics to orient the behaviour of the populace.
If your tactics are bad or harmful, the plebs can kick you out of office.
I just don't understand how some companies can be so oblivious to the PR implications of a move like this.
The new Wembley stadium is late by several years, grossly over budget and most likely to annoy people in the UK since it is a monument to centralization in London (finals of any major football tournaments are traditionally played there, meaning that out of London fans have to travel to London, with all the inconvenience this carries).
Wembley has become sinonimous with incompetence (up there with the Millenium Dome) in the popular imagination.
The fact that MS has decided to associate themselves with Wembley Stadium is telling and tremendously ironic.
For goodness sake, get off the Internet square box.
I would be willing to send CDs or DVDs (I think I could afford to send 30 or 40, $3 including posting) with all the software these people would ever need.
One copy per physical location would be more than enough to get them started.
They need no friggin Internet to get started, all the software they could possibley need in the short and medium term is already there.
Let me add that you being there teaching IT and not have carried 10 or 20 CDs with Linux distros is most irresponsible to say the least.
Slashdot Mirror
Sombeody that knows filmakers have learnt something after 100+ years of cinema: it is the plot, stupid.
Action!
... from copying material proteted by copyright. Without asking the copyright holders.
I just don't understand how some people can't see the "small" conflict of interests araising from this.
What most people decry is the RIAA suing people without any evidence of worngdoing. They are acting like a protection racket.
They have the rights to protect the copyrighted works for which the hold the copyright.
What is not admisable is for them to try to shutdown P2P networks that have perfectly legitimate uses, or to intimidate pople as "examples" only because they can't afford to defend themselves in a coyurt.
If the RIAA was suing egregious copyright violators I think nobody would be complaining about them.
There are rights that are yours to use, no matter if you harm yourself in the process.
If obscurity is the punishment for using your rights let the market decide (thus copyright holders would flock to opt in to the Google scheme. Oh wait, they are forced to opt in, damn, bad luck for the little guy I guess). Google should not be the final arbiter about this. Theyr are not their books, it should not be up to them to make profit of of copies of them, even if that would bring untold riches to the copyright holders.
But many people, me included, do not see where the word "fair" comes into place when a company, arrogantly, uses the work of other people to pedal their own enterprises (do not tell me they are doing this as an act of charity, and even in that case, thsy still would need copyright holders' permission as far as I am concerned).
/.ers keep defending the indefensible.
It is so evidently unfair that I don't understand why so many
... the value of advertisment and name recognition.
Google has a commercial interest on its name being sinonymous with searching, and evene if they never ever charged for this ervice in any shape or form, it certainly would add to their brand reputation.
They are not a non for profit organization of any kind. If they are doing all this from the good of their hearts then they need to start a non for profit organization where Google gets mentioned in an obscure page with many thanks. And the scheme should be opt-in, they have got no right to impose it into copyright holders.
.... in this case, copyrights, are so blantantly violated, you are being screwed over, no matter if you stand to make a profit.
It is like if somebody kidnaps you, forces you to go into prostitution and then gives you a cut of the earnings. Most likely you will not even care to look at how much money you have "made" because your rights (freedom, personaly safety, etc) have been trampled.
Google are literally pillaging the rights of other people taking the incredible stand of requesting people opting out of their forced scheme!
How much more arrogant can you get?
This is of Microsoftsquean egotistical proportions, maybe all the people that Google has poached from MS are beginning to have an influence in how this company attempts to make "bussiness"....
How does this needs to be explained to the /. crowd in order to make it clear?
I don't know, but I will try.
It does not matter how unworkable is for Google to implement an opt-in scheme. The law is not to be obeyed only when it is "workable" to do so.
If you are copying somebody else's work and you are profiteering from it (because Google is going to make money out of it) it stands to reason that Google has to ask permission to do so. Since the system will be the panacea for all publishers and authors (according to Google and its unconditional apologists) then people will camp for days outside the Google campus in order to opt-in to this scheme.
As in regards to the obscure title not included in the daabase: tough! They have not received the right to copy it, they just should keep their diry hands out of it. Why is this so difficult to understand?
I see several very well argued points about the phony-scheme that "Intellectual Property" is.
If there is a magazine that decision makers read, that is The Economist, if the magazine receives a load of arguments against the current system it will get noticed.
Articles are never signed. I guess that is their way to say "focus on the message, not the meesanger", which largerly works.
If your method to make widgets is really novel, it will not be easy to copy, and thus you will be able to milk it for all what is worth.
If you are stating the obvious from a technological point of view, you don't deserve to become rich and any competitor that could quickly copy your "invention" should be able to do so.
No need for patents, truly great inventions would give a real technological advantage to the inventors, any small incremental improvement would give you a very small incremental advantage which would be olbiterated soon.
They want to be artists (yeah, we know coding is art, sure), they want that their hobbies are validated as great intellectual pursuits.
What they can't accept that coding is just a profession to earn an honest living and RPGs are just an enjoyable passtime?
I can't think of any other group of people that is constantly trying to agrandize whatever they do.
10% of a market competing against a monopolist (convicted for abusing that monopoly) with the resources that MS has is mighty respectable.
.... PDAs are for teenagers?
As were Sony Walkmans for example.
But Sony Walkwman started atrend: portable music players.
MP3 players are a trend: music can now be distributed electronically only, no physical media is strictily necessary. iPods are the most obvious manifestation of that, but they will not remain the only device doing electronic distribution of music in such big scale.
So you have a mess in your hands (wahtever the reason) and you have to fix it.
/.ers read Dilbert like if it was the Bible.
If you trust only your common sense, allow me to say, you are an idiot.
I know of a case when the company began to do some of the things you mentions: signed cards for work well done, small presents, free drinks.
EMployees began to complain that this was all in order to avoid salary raises.
Salary rises came, and everybody was complaining about how little it was, or how tthey were more diserving than others for it.
Common sense fixed nothing. What helped was to form a commitee, ask opinions of what would be nice recognitions to receive, and to set clear policies about promotions and salary raises.
Having a committee helped enourmously to improve the situation.
Many
Organizations don't change.
People don't change.
They are all set in stone, so once you have figure them all out, you need to do nothing, because problems will never arise again. Ever.
I want either a ticket to the planet where you live or the phone number of your doctor or drug dealer.
In place of getting help from as many people as possible, delegating responsibility to solve a problem, the CIO should go around himself interviewing people. Give me a fucking brake.
I honestly wonder some times how some guys come with such impractical and bizarre ideas like this with a straight face and can go to sleep without feeling any shame.
I will try to rescue a point form the diatribe in the parent post, for something to be implemented it has to become part of the tasks reviewed regularly when appraisal time comes. If middle managers have been tasked with defining clear carrier paths for employees and they have not done it then their cooki point should be decreased. Another part of the feedback is to ask employees if they see and understand the carrer paths available in the firm.
THese tasks (or any other discovered as possible solutions to a problem) should become documented responsibilites at the different levels of the organization.
I know you guys don't like this kind of language, and many of you hate this stab in your fucking artistic pretensions, but the only way to address problems is to put people to work in the solution, document it, implement it, and review that the solution is working regularly, in a manner that can be enforced (read bonuses, promotions).
... how would you address a problem without appointing some resources (yes, a commitee, people do not work for free you know, even if it is to improve their working conditions...) to analyze and propose solutions?
/.ers believe that solutions will come from heaven given by the holly spirit or something like that.
Some
No, you have to address a problem, the holly spirit and any other magical forces will not solve your organizational problems. You have to assign people to solve it and that group of people has to have a name in order to quickly identify all the infdividuals involved, either team, commitee, task force, or the friends of Sherlock, that is immaterial.
As usual, the big good old slashdotters' ayatollic approach to nuclear energy (yeah it is kewl!) rears it ugly head again.
/.er believes that magically people in the nuclear industry will be better and more moral being. Yeah, sure.
They dismiss reasonably fears about how to dispose safely of waste forgetting how many industries in the past have not cared about poisoning people. Somehow, the good old little
They forget about terrorism, on spite of the worldwide paranoia about the issue. Sooner or later terrorists will use radioactive material in order to inflict fear. THey will not too many people, if any, but as soon as a geiger reader detects a bit of radioactive activity after a bomb blast we will be in for the scaremongering ride of our life.
They, as good gadget lovers, like big phallic infrastrucutre. PLants producing who know how many Mega, not Giga, not Tera Watts of energy. The more in on e single point of failure, the better.
And more unexplainbaly, they dismiss the value of distributed technology. Why new housing does not have roofs and walls fully covered with solar panels? Why new housing does not have small wind turbines? Why new housing does not use all the knowledge we about about heating or colling by mains of natural airflow? Why are things like the immoral SUVs allowed to even exist?
Why, I will tell you why, because the industries behind the energy are too powerful and have the politicians by the proverbial small ones.
And the general public on rich countries are addicted to an apparently unlimited supply of mind numbing energy.
The reckoning time will come, on spite of the skeptics, the planet is clearly not infinite and sooner or later we will finish the oil, the cleann air or both.
.... has very few effective tools in order to effectively modify people's behaviour.
Taxes is one of those tools, and yes, it is a punitive method, but if you are an elected representative you have earned the right to apply punitive tactics to orient the behaviour of the populace.
If your tactics are bad or harmful, the plebs can kick you out of office.
But in a democracy I need to convince them first.
I would not have any qualms about plainly explaining that it would become a criminal offense to be an energy dilapidator.
Sooner or later it will not be a matter of choice anyway.
I just don't understand how some companies can be so oblivious to the PR implications of a move like this.
The new Wembley stadium is late by several years, grossly over budget and most likely to annoy people in the UK since it is a monument to centralization in London (finals of any major football tournaments are traditionally played there, meaning that out of London fans have to travel to London, with all the inconvenience this carries).
Wembley has become sinonimous with incompetence (up there with the Millenium Dome) in the popular imagination.
The fact that MS has decided to associate themselves with Wembley Stadium is telling and tremendously ironic.
For goodness sake, get off the Internet square box.
I would be willing to send CDs or DVDs (I think I could afford to send 30 or 40, $3 including posting) with all the software these people would ever need.
One copy per physical location would be more than enough to get them started.
They need no friggin Internet to get started, all the software they could possibley need in the short and medium term is already there.
Let me add that you being there teaching IT and not have carried 10 or 20 CDs with Linux distros is most irresponsible to say the least.
No I will not.
The intellectual laziness of the above comment is so abysmal that deserves no further consideration.