In the U.S., I don't believe you can deduct time or services as a charitable donation. It must be objects or cash. This is what I've heard, at least regarding graphic-art/advertising, that pro-bono work is undeductable, except out-of-pocket expenses. I imagine it's true in all other industries as well.
Re:Don't forget history...
on
In Google We Trust
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
As I recall, the advantage Yahoo had over other search engines was... well... it was a web search engine. Back in Yahoo's beginning days, there really wasn't much else out there (nothing of any quality, at least).
Then, everyone thought "portal" was the big new thing, and all of a sudden every search site on the Internet was a little tiny "search" box crammed in a corner with news, sports, entertainment, ads, ads, ads, ads, chat, weather and 15 or 20 services they would try to sign you up for. Enter "Google", which took Yahoo's old model of "small and simple" (remembering those old web tutorials that cited Yahoo as the model of a fast-loading site) and brought it back again to a web populous(sp?) tired of information overload.
Put enough lag into the process, though, and it becomes easy to poison. This works on site signups, since the spammer gets a quick confirm/deny message, and can deny the precious pornography until the viewer stops clowning and gives the right response.
If you introduce even a five or ten minute lag into the "Your Message Has Been Delivered" on the C/R system, the spammers would have to keep the porn viewers waiting or else accept any old trash they put in as legit. I suppose you could run a "login today, porn tomorrow" service, but it would still be a pain to the spammers.
For extra points, make the "delivery confirmation" in graphic text on a noisy background.
Why not just dump SMTP, and phase it out slowly via the carrot-on-a-stick of "New, spam-free(er) email!". (Hey, it worked for IPv6... well... is going to work... right?)
Take time to design and work out the replacement, and make it a protocol that's designed for accountability, security, adaptability, and a number of other things ending in "bility" that would be a great thing to have in email. SMTP withers, until it's only a dim acronym that accounts for the blind rambling of old zombies talking to one another. Stop adding layers and patches to an essentially flawed system.
And, on that note, if you're not in the mainstream, you're probably not going to get spammed. It doesn't make economic sense to think that someone with ANY sort of decent anti-spam technique would be remotely interested in buying a product or falling for a scam. It's just not worth the cycles.
I recall a honeypot-based study that showed that nobody even cared about reconstructing logically-mangled addresses (this at that dot mil), since the brain time and proc time aren't worth diverting from the steady flow of idiots who ARE wide open to the world.
I do this on USENET. I have a spamtrap address set up, with an instruction to put "Hey!" in the subject line. Anything with "Hey!" gets bumped up, anything without gets trashed.
I just used to call CompuServe and get boxes upon boxes of their installation sets (6 disks per set, if you asked for Mac). Just quickformat and go! I don't think I bought a single floppy from about 1994-1999.
Then they get sued by Apple Records (again) and act dumb about it (or try to claim they're just shuffling bits around... that just happen to be music in their only usable form).
BTW: How did the latest Apple Corps/Apple Computer lawsuit end up? Is it still in progress?
Autodesk's CDilla-based programs all require you to run in Power User or above. Just imagine the run when you have classrooms of idiots with the ability to install software. Yay!
A television program's non-commercial run lasts at least 3-5 minutes (BS stat), but if I want some sort of ephemeral piece of information, I can query up a search and get the encapsulated tidbit of information in only a few seconds, depending on my scan-and-read skill.
If/as the Internet takes over TV, I imagine there'll be even less attention span, as people become accustomed to the even faster gratification of web info-picking.
Without a union supporting otherwise interchangable and easily-screwable workers, the company would have nothing to make amends *about*, since their dismally low wages would be "market wages" as usual.
No union:
Company lowers wages, but employees can't quit (can't afford to move, find a new job, etc.). Employers can keep cutting wages and benefits to a "barely living" wage. With lower labor costs, the company can cut retail price, maintain rising profits, and gain from both ends. To compete, other companies must follow suit. Overall market wages go down. Nobody's wages are below "market", but "market" sucks.
With union:
Company tries to lower wages. Union responds, stops work. Company is forced to negotiate, and keep wages high. Even non-union workers benifit, since the market retail and market wages are higher, and there is competition on a decent-wage playing field.
This works, of course, until someone finds a supply of non-union labor and finds it's easier to import, but... well... that's free trade.
-- companies that fail to release content within a certain time forfeit all rights to it. --
What if I'm an artist who doesn't *want* to release my content to the entire world. Perhaps it's some memento of an event or a small, personal release for only a select few. Should my rights to protect my creation be stripped by the fact that I want to protect my rights?
The catch-22 being that "the people" hardly own (or even have a voice on) any of the broadcast media, and if they're not looking for it, most people will never rise above the mediocraty to become active.
The sad fact is that a group that did nothing more than going around sawing down radio towers or even just disrupting transmissions would probably be labeled "terrorist".
How does that apply to the "Everything you get in the mail without asking for it is yours" idea, though. If I'm a record-store owner, and I get a bunch of "no-sale" promo CDs that I didn't ask for, aren't they just covered under normal copyright law? I mean, they can print anything they want on there... it doesn't make it legal.
Slashdot Mirror
In the U.S., I don't believe you can deduct time or services as a charitable donation. It must be objects or cash. This is what I've heard, at least regarding graphic-art/advertising, that pro-bono work is undeductable, except out-of-pocket expenses. I imagine it's true in all other industries as well.
sounds like... well... It sounds like the very idea behind trademark law in the first place. It keeps someone from selling shoddy crap with your name.
Mo...zi...dash...uhm... Mo-dash-za? Dashzilla?
As I recall, the advantage Yahoo had over other search engines was... well... it was a web search engine. Back in Yahoo's beginning days, there really wasn't much else out there (nothing of any quality, at least).
Then, everyone thought "portal" was the big new thing, and all of a sudden every search site on the Internet was a little tiny "search" box crammed in a corner with news, sports, entertainment, ads, ads, ads, ads, chat, weather and 15 or 20 services they would try to sign you up for. Enter "Google", which took Yahoo's old model of "small and simple" (remembering those old web tutorials that cited Yahoo as the model of a fast-loading site) and brought it back again to a web populous(sp?) tired of information overload.
Put enough lag into the process, though, and it becomes easy to poison. This works on site signups, since the spammer gets a quick confirm/deny message, and can deny the precious pornography until the viewer stops clowning and gives the right response.
If you introduce even a five or ten minute lag into the "Your Message Has Been Delivered" on the C/R system, the spammers would have to keep the porn viewers waiting or else accept any old trash they put in as legit. I suppose you could run a "login today, porn tomorrow" service, but it would still be a pain to the spammers.
For extra points, make the "delivery confirmation" in graphic text on a noisy background.
Why not just dump SMTP, and phase it out slowly via the carrot-on-a-stick of "New, spam-free(er) email!". (Hey, it worked for IPv6... well... is going to work... right?)
Take time to design and work out the replacement, and make it a protocol that's designed for accountability, security, adaptability, and a number of other things ending in "bility" that would be a great thing to have in email. SMTP withers, until it's only a dim acronym that accounts for the blind rambling of old zombies talking to one another. Stop adding layers and patches to an essentially flawed system.
And, on that note, if you're not in the mainstream, you're probably not going to get spammed. It doesn't make economic sense to think that someone with ANY sort of decent anti-spam technique would be remotely interested in buying a product or falling for a scam. It's just not worth the cycles.
I recall a honeypot-based study that showed that nobody even cared about reconstructing logically-mangled addresses (this at that dot mil), since the brain time and proc time aren't worth diverting from the steady flow of idiots who ARE wide open to the world.
I do this on USENET. I have a spamtrap address set up, with an instruction to put "Hey!" in the subject line. Anything with "Hey!" gets bumped up, anything without gets trashed.
I just used to call CompuServe and get boxes upon boxes of their installation sets (6 disks per set, if you asked for Mac). Just quickformat and go! I don't think I bought a single floppy from about 1994-1999.
pPC?
Then they get sued by Apple Records (again) and act dumb about it (or try to claim they're just shuffling bits around... that just happen to be music in their only usable form).
BTW: How did the latest Apple Corps/Apple Computer lawsuit end up? Is it still in progress?
"imagine the run" = "imagine the fun"
No complaints, either. This place with an "Edit" button would be ten times worse as without.
Autodesk's CDilla-based programs all require you to run in Power User or above. Just imagine the run when you have classrooms of idiots with the ability to install software. Yay!
They'd have to watch out for antitrust roadblocks, though.
From http://www.egovos.org/about...
The Center of Open Source & Government works with governments around the world on Open Source policy and strategy.
I beg to differ.
A television program's non-commercial run lasts at least 3-5 minutes (BS stat), but if I want some sort of ephemeral piece of information, I can query up a search and get the encapsulated tidbit of information in only a few seconds, depending on my scan-and-read skill.
If/as the Internet takes over TV, I imagine there'll be even less attention span, as people become accustomed to the even faster gratification of web info-picking.
Without a union supporting otherwise interchangable and easily-screwable workers, the company would have nothing to make amends *about*, since their dismally low wages would be "market wages" as usual.
No union:
Company lowers wages, but employees can't quit (can't afford to move, find a new job, etc.). Employers can keep cutting wages and benefits to a "barely living" wage. With lower labor costs, the company can cut retail price, maintain rising profits, and gain from both ends. To compete, other companies must follow suit. Overall market wages go down. Nobody's wages are below "market", but "market" sucks.
With union:
Company tries to lower wages. Union responds, stops work. Company is forced to negotiate, and keep wages high. Even non-union workers benifit, since the market retail and market wages are higher, and there is competition on a decent-wage playing field.
This works, of course, until someone finds a supply of non-union labor and finds it's easier to import, but... well... that's free trade.
-- companies that fail to release content within a certain time forfeit all rights to it. --
What if I'm an artist who doesn't *want* to release my content to the entire world. Perhaps it's some memento of an event or a small, personal release for only a select few. Should my rights to protect my creation be stripped by the fact that I want to protect my rights?
I'm a fan of switching to "Quick Mask" mode and using the paint tools. Instant soft- or hard-edging, easy paradigm, nice rubylithic visual cues.
Right... that's true. What about the right to resell, give, lend, etc. though.
The catch-22 being that "the people" hardly own (or even have a voice on) any of the broadcast media, and if they're not looking for it, most people will never rise above the mediocraty to become active.
The sad fact is that a group that did nothing more than going around sawing down radio towers or even just disrupting transmissions would probably be labeled "terrorist".
And most people would buy it.
How does that apply to the "Everything you get in the mail without asking for it is yours" idea, though. If I'm a record-store owner, and I get a bunch of "no-sale" promo CDs that I didn't ask for, aren't they just covered under normal copyright law? I mean, they can print anything they want on there... it doesn't make it legal.
(regarding the USA)
But they aren't universally supported by taxes. AFAIK, the idea is: "Everyone paid for it, everyone can use it."
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you can't seriously say that non-taxpayers and/or foreigners deserve access to the code developed with US taxpayer dollars.
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Sure I can. The work's been done and paid for, and since it's free, the only commercial value it has is in derivative works and repackaging.
Basically, who cares.