"Sick" days? That's, like, you're sick, you do no work, you're unproductive, but you still get paid?
Nice gig.
It's always a kick to see how cube-dwellers squeal when one of their work "rights" is threatened; the same cube-dwellers who want to preach to artists, writers and musicians about how they should be earning their keep in "the digital age" and when/when not to expect payment for what kind of work.
This doesn't have much to do with being a cube-dweller, it has to do with being a salaried employee.
Hourly employees are paid for the hours they work. Don't show up to work, don't get paid. Work 50+ hours in a week, get paid for 50+ hours that week.
Salaried employees get paid a fixed wage largely unrelated to the number of hours they work in a given week. This is because it is assume that there are occasions that they'll work significantly more than 50 hours in a week. Sick leave, personal leave, vacation time, etc. are all ways of compensating salaried employees for that extra time they put in but don't get paid for.
I used to work at Electronics Boutique. During the holidays we'd put in some very long hours. 10+ hour days became the norm. You'd see some very nice paychecks for a while there. But if I got sick and couldn't make it in to work I didn't get paid anything at all.
I now work in IT at a hospital. I'm a salaried employee. I get sick leave and vacation time. Last week I put in 11 hours on Monday, 15 hours on Thursday, and then another 2 hours at 4:00 AM on Sunday - in addition to the normal 8-hour days in-between. I wound up with 52 hours last week. I'll get paid the same as if I worked 40.
If the state of music is trending in that direction, I'm not certain that says a good thing for the influence of digital distribution. I enjoyed Code Monkey once or twice when I heard it, but if your idea of a good time is listening to a slightly geekier version of Weird Al Yankovic 24x7, then we'll have to part ways there.
While I do enjoy Jonathan Coulton's music... I was not suggesting that he was the most awesomest artist ever and that everybody should play music just like him.
I was using him as an example of how digital distribution had allowed a niche artist to become successful.
The exact style and content of his music is largely irrelevant.
But it's basically free
No. It's not free. Nothing is "basically free". It may be *drastically* lower-cost to duplicate but, in the case of music, you have a host of very real and sizable production costs: studio space, mastering, audio engineer time & services, instrument purchase & maintenance, artists' cost-of-living (often spread across 3-6 people), web site support & maintenance, server space, electricity, physical hardware, bandwidth costs... all of this figures into the production of that MP3 file, and it's the result of spending all that money. The "duplication" costs even for a physical CD are fairly low when you compare them to the costs of all the rest. Electronic distribution drives the price down (and should), but declaring that it's basically "free" completely disregards the months of effort and spending that went into producing that MP3 or CD.
If you go very DIY, and spend $10,000 putting together an album (a month or two of rent, food, studio time, instruments, etc.), with the goal of earning $20k off it - enough to recoup your costs & maybe pay for a few more months while you tour and record something new, you have to look at the size of your market - can you sell 2000 copies of your CD at $10/CD? Can you sell 20,000 copies of your song at $1 per song?
When peoples' time, talent, and creative energy is involved, there is no such thing as "basically free" and "infinite supply". You're seriously misrepresenting (or fundamentally misunderstanding) the economics of producing a record if you truly believe that.
I never claimed that it was "basically free" to produce original material.
I claimed that it was "basically free" to produce additional copies of that material.
It would be if everyone were downloading from a central server.
Bliz's reliance on peer-to-peer patching should mean that the more people who are trying to patch simultaneously, the faster it is.
Assuming you've only got one client behind a given public IP address, and that you've got your firewall configured to forward the ports correctly, and your ISP doesn't mess up your traffic... Yes, the BT-based downloader actually does scale well.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case for a lot of people.
My wife and I both play WoW. We're both behind the same firewall and are NATing out to the rest of the world. This wreaks havoc with BT downloads. I can only forward the appropriate ports to one machine at a time. The other machine gets stuck with a slow download because it can't utilize the peer-to-peer goodness.
1. It is now much harder for musicians to land recording contracts. Because music industry will only record big sellers as the other types would spread via file sharing.
The music industry was already signing big sellers long before anything like BitTorrent or Napster existed. The recording industry isn't interested in new and interesting and unique and talented individuals. They're interested in making money. They want artists with the widest appeal. They've never wanted niche artists.
Additionally, the notion that musicians should be profiting from pre-recorded offerings is a fairly new one. Traditionally musicians have made their money off of live performances. Which is still very possible.
Plus, digital distribution enables niche musicians to get the word out much easier. Somebody who never would have gotten a record deal can throw some MP3s on a website somewhere and drum up some interest. They may not make a lot of money off album sales, but they could drum up enough interest to sell a show or two.
Jonathan Coulton is a fantastic example of how digital distribution has enabled niche musicians to succeed.
2. Not respecting the license is a bad thing pirating software is just as bad as taking GNU software bundling it and not giving access to the source.
I will agree that you basically either get to respect copyright law or not... And if you aren't going to respect copyright law then the whole GPL thing kind of falls apart. That is true.
But the key difference is one of power dynamics.
The GPL tries to ensure that the person using the software has the freedom to modify and compile the code. It is an attempt to empower the individual.
The kind of copyright law that the RIAA is throwing around tries to ensure that the person listening to the music has no freedom at all.
3. Distorts supply and demand and free market economy as it creates a high supply lowering the cost of the software. Meaning us professionals don't get paid alot.
Digital distribution messes with supply and demand - not piracy.
Digital distribution means I can make billions of copies of something with basically no effort. Need another copy of Doom? Or Office 2007? Or AutoCAD? Just make a copy. Takes up some bandwidth... Maybe some space on a disk... Maybe you spend a dollar or two on a blank disc... But it's basically free. It isn't like trying to make another chair or desk or car - things that take real resources.
The fact that you can make copies for free means that it doesn't cost any more to make 1,000 copies of Office than it does to make 1 copy of office. That's what's messing with your supply and demand. Not piracy.
Even without piracy, you've basically got infinite supply.
Didn't have to fight for every spawn as my young Gilnean this morning...:) The Worgen start zone is phased into at least 4 different instances that I've seen so far, and as a result, there's plenty of spawns for everybody. (at least as far as I've seen.)
Nice.
I won't be able to play until this evening... And my server is fairly populous... So I'm concerned that the phasing won't matter much.
The deathknight starter area was phased, but it was still painfully crowded for several days after launch.
That's more easily achieved by truly keeping your work and personal life separate, and not using your personal phone for work matters. (And conversely, if you are issued with a work phone, don't use it for personal things).
I do not personally find it easier to carry two physical phones around.
The point is - for example - on my iPhone I *can* keep separate calendars - which are synchronized from completey different sources - Gmail (for my personal calendar, and my Wife's calendar) - and Exchange for my Work Calendar.
I also have two Email accounts as such.
The best part here - is I can optionally display these calendar entries together on one calendar - or turn off calendars for simpler views. So if I want to put an entry on one of my calendars - I have a view that shows me potential conflicts on *all* my calendars. If I want to check my email - I have one place to look that shows me *all* my email.
When I leave my company - my Gmail notes, mail and calendar is all there and ready to be paired up with my new device - or if I keep the device - I just need to disconnect from my corporate exchange server.
This is vastly superior than having multiple different virtualized environments that are completely separate - requiring me to look through each one any time I want to do something.
And then your employer uses that handy "remote wipe" feature and wipes out your entire phone - both the business and personal information.
If you did a digital pre-purchase you'd have most (all?) of the new content preloaded. There might be a quick patch to unlock everything, but that's about it.
Folks who are installing from a retail CD are going to have more content to download. Even though they've got a disc, there've been tweaks on the server.
And if everyone is trying to download that content it's going to be a painfully slow process.
Nothing will ever be worse than the first day of the release of WoW classic. There weren't queues yet, so people would mob a server, crash it, then mob the next open server, crash it, etc.
It took them 6 months to deploy enough server capacity.
Yup. I was there for the initial launch. Logged in right at 3:00 EST and rolled up my first character.
It was bad enough that they were actually crediting players free gametime, since the servers were down so much.
Isn't this a little overkill? I mean the only thing that sounded good about it was the whole "two numbers" thing - but you can do that without virtualizaing complete operating systems.
Two numbers is good...
But if you virtualize an entire second phone you can have entirely separate calendars, phone books, apps, all of it. You can keep your personal life genuinely separate from your work environment.
And when you get a new job, and leave your employer, they can wipe out the virtual environment without deleting everything in your personal environment.
There is no way to win the game. The only point is to get the best gear and achievements and then sit as 'King of the Hill' until someone else comes along and knocks you off, or you get bored and quit.
You're doing it wrong.
The point isn't to win (though some people seem to think that). The point is to have fun.
It's a diversion. It's escapism. No different from reading a book or watching TV or going to the movies or whatever else people do with their spare time. Sure, some diversions like board games and most video games have a clear winner... But plenty of diversions like reading books and watching movies have no winner. It's just a way to kill some time.
My wife and I both play WoW. We play with a guild we've been members of for about 10 years now. They're people we know. They're fun to hang out with. Half the fun of the game isn't actually mashing buttons and killing critters - it's the social aspect.
According to the level 80 shaman that lives in my basement, Blizzard has basically slashdotted themselves - there are *so* many people trying to play that their servers are basically non-responsive. Players on the WOW forums are suggesting that people open 16 games simultaneously (in windowed mode), and then start to play whichever one responds first - which, of course, makes the entire scenario 16x worse.
This launch may very well be worse than past ones... But I've seen something similar at the launch of each previous expansion.
You've got a ton of people who haven't been playing WoW who suddenly run out and re-subscribe just to see the new stuff. You've got a ton of people all trying to log in and download the most recent patch at the same time. All hitting the authentication servers at the same time. All hitting the web servers and the forums to complain when it doesn't work. You've got piles of people rolling up new characters and all running through the same few geographic areas.
It brings the servers to their knees.
You're lucky if you can actually get in and look around on launch day. To hell with actually playing or accomplishing anything.
I'll try to log in this evening... I'll roll up a new worgen and buy the Azeroth flight skill for my 80's... And then I'm going to switch back over to one of my non-Cataclysm alts and just ignore the expansion for a few days.
If you give it about a week things will settle down. Folks who subscribed again just to see the new stuff will get bored and wander off again... The powergamers will have raced through the first few areas of 80+ content... Folks will have leveled their new characters out of the newb zones... And you can actually enjoy yourself without having to fight for every spawn.
So you're bound to your brain. You cannot live forever unless your particular, specific, physical brain stays in tact. If I copy your brain to another cloned brain, yank yours out, and replace it with the clone, everyone else will interact with you as if you were you, no difference; but YOU would vanish into the blackness, you'd stop living, you'd die.
First of all, I'm not convinced I want to live forever. Immortality sounds cool... But I suspect it would get dull after a while.
Second, I suspect that your little conundrum here could be solved by a slow migration to the clone/artificial/constructed brain. Rather than yanking it out suddenly you just replace bit by bit. You'd remain conscious the entire time. You'd never "die".
But...
A large part of the whole afterlife/immortality/soul debate essentially revolves around fear. Folks are terrified by the idea that they're going to cease to exist. That they'll never be able to kiss their wife again, or have a banana split, or enjoy a walk on the beach, or whatever. Folks don't want it to end.
I'm thinking that even if your organic brain did genuinely die in the process, and you did genuinely lose consciousness and die in the process, this kind of assisted immortality would still be immensely popular. Sure, one of you would die... But then there'd be another you, a replacement you. Complete with all your memories, hopes, dreams, fears, whatever. And that second you would get to keep kissing wives and eating banana splits and walking on beaches. So there would be less fear about things ending.
That seems like a dangerous loophole since almost any information would fall under that. It seems like we are saying the data isn't protected, it is the records themselves.
If I go to your store and buy something from you, you're going to keep track of that transaction. You'll note down that you sold some item for some amount of money. This is your data, not mine. You use it to keep track of your inventory and balance your books and whatever else.
If you get subpoenaed for all your records pertaining to a certain date, my privacy isn't being violated. Even if I bought something on that date. They're your records, not mine. You may have recorded some data about me... But that's still your data. Not mine.
This is the same thing, only larger.
These aren't your records, they belong to the banks and credit card companies and whoever else. They keep these records to make sure that everybody gets paid/charged the right amount.
You buy something at a store with a credit card - that credit card company needs to keep track of it. Not for your sake, but for theirs. They need to know that $X was paid to this store, in your name, and you now need to pay back $Y on your next bill. This information is necessary for the credit card company to stay in business. If they don't track it, they don't know where their money is going, or who owes them money.
It is data about your actions... But it isn't your data. It belongs to the credit card company. They're the ones generating it and maintaining it for their own purposes. And when you use their credit card you agree to let them generate and use this data, because the credit card wouldn't function without it.
Are you suggesting that we call the bomb squad for anything and everything that looks even vaguely suspicious?
I think the fact that the plastic toy was cemented to the base of a pillar supporting a footbridge was what made it suspicious.
FTA: "It was cemented in. That's odd," Murray said. Murray said that suspicious objects do not automatically warrant a call to the bomb squad if patrol officers are able to determine that there is no threat. He said that the robot was strange enough to warrant precautionary measures. In the end, it proved harmless.
Yes, I read that.
And my question still stands.
Are you suggesting that we call the bomb squad for anything and everything that looks even vaguely suspicious?
Some kid gets bored and superglues his sister's lunchbox to a wall, are we going to call the bomb squad?
Some artist gets creative and sticks some kind of magnetic LCD to something, are we going to call the bomb squad?
Some guy forgets his luggage on the side of the road as he rushes to make a flight on time, are we going to call the bomb squad?
There's all sorts of odd and suspicious stuff around us. Generally speaking, it isn't a bomb. It could be... But it isn't, usually. Are we just going to err on the side of caution and call the bomb squad every time something looks slightly out of place?
The problem with trivializing the bomb squad's action is the next suspicious object may not be a innocent little toy.
This was probably a prank, but it could also be a test to see what security measures are in place (probing).
Sure, it could have been a bomb...
And that car parked on the side of the street could be a bomb. And that McDonald's bag could be a bomb. And that half-eaten apple could be a bomb. And that guy on a big with a backpack could be carrying a bomb. Just about anything could be a bomb.
Are you suggesting that we call the bomb squad for anything and everything that looks even vaguely suspicious?
It allows corporations to develop proprietary applications and install them on users' handsets without the need to first place the application on Marketplace, as is currently required by Microsoft.
Any chance the jailbreak comes with the option to disable this functionality?
Why?
Isn't the whole point of jailbreaking a phone like this so that you can run your own code on it? So that you're not tied to the marketplace?
Why would you go to the trouble of jailbreaking a phone if you didn't want to run code on it that was not marketplace-approved?
If you don't want that feature, don't jailbreak your phone.
Really? Desperation? Is that what it is? And is that why we don't see more BK ads in McD's? Or Macy's promos at Marshall's? **rolls eyes**
How is that even vaguely analogous?
Any given McDonalds restaurant is owned by McDonalds. Well, or a franchisee. You wouldn't really expect them to advertise the competition. Although... The last time I was at a McDonalds they had a television in the corner playing broadcast TV, and I'm sure there'll be the occasional Burger King commercial on there.
An iPhone is, supposedly, your property - not Apple's.
But we aren't even really talking about advertising... It's a magazine. Are we now going to see Linux magazines banned because they talk about non-Apple computing? Are we going to see "Learn to use Flash" ebooks banned because the iPhone doesn't support Flash? Are we going to see some kind of CAT5 wiring diagram app banned because the iPhone doesn't have a wired network port? Will you be barred from loading up Sysinternals because it is a Windows-centric website?
But what makes you think you'd get anything other than a carefully sanitized political answer?
I mean... It isn't like you're the first one to come up with this question. I've see in, and variations on it, asked countless times. And the answer has always been some vague form of "no".
Now, I'm not certain that "no" is a lie... It may very well be that he had other motivations. But the vague and political nature of the non-answer always leaves me feeling like there's more to the story.
I'd love to get a straight answer out of him. Hell, I'd love to get a straight answer out of just about any politician. But I don't think this Facebook interview thing is going to suddenly grant my wishes.
Thousands for software for backups? Stop scamming small businesses, amanda or bacula are free and a very good fit for such places.
Ummm... What I actually said was:
They'd rather just trust that things were going to keep working than spend a couple thousand on software and a tape drive.
Emphasis added for the comprehension-impaired.
I never handled the pricing or billing, I just fixed stuff... So I really have no idea how much we may have gouged our customers...
But we'd generally sell them some flavor of Symantec Backup Exec, or maybe Acronis True Image - both of which retail for a few hundred dollars. Throw in an LTO tape drive of some sort for another few hundred dollars. Maybe a SCSI/SAS/whatever controller for the server itself, another hundred or two. Then a pile of tapes... It's very easy to spend a couple thousand dollars on a backup solution.
Uh, dude, if they had a backup, they wouldn't be coming to the computer shop for data recovery. But good on you for treating people like shit and assuming they know as much as you do about computers. Administering a backup system is a non-trivial task for novices. I'm sure people enjoyed hearing it was their own damn fault though. The little human touches are what makes being a computer technician all worthwhile.
Perhaps I wasn't clear...
Basically any time we got a call for data recovery, from a home user or a business, the first question is "do you have a backup".
It actually does make sense. Why waste hours trying to recover data from a hosed HDD only to find out that there's a tape in the closet nobody mentioned? It has happened.
For business customers that we may never have worked with before, this is a very reasonable question. They may have a tape drive ticking away doing backups, but no idea how to actually restore things.
For home users it is less likely that they have a backup, but it still happens. We did have a few customers who'd used some automated backup system but just had no idea how to recover anything from it.
But thanks for demonstrating the proper way to apply those little human touches.
It constantly amazes me how hard it is to convince people to backup their data.
At my previous job I did outsourced IT support for local businesses. We'd have a hell of a time selling them any kind of a backup solution. They'd rather just trust that things were going to keep working than spend a couple thousand on software and a tape drive. Or they'd never, ever change the tapes. Or they'd keep using the same tapes for years. Or they'd store the tape right on top of the server, so that any disaster that physically destroy the server would take the tapes as well.
We'd also get visits from folks who had issues with their home computers. They'd have genuinely irreplaceable photos of some family member who was now dead... And the only place those photos had ever been stored was some SD card... And that card had gone through the wash, or been stepped on, or got zapped with static, or whatever... And now they wanted us to recover the data.
And in both cases the folks were absolutely irate when they lost something important and we were unable to recover it. The first question was always do you have a backup? And we'd get these self-righteous blank stares... And they'd want to know why the hell they should be doing a backup - that's what the computer was for!
If it's important, make a backup. Test the backup. Store the backup in a safe location.
The more important something is, the more important it is to back it up.
And if you don't have a backup, it's your own damn fault when the data goes away.
He might have done a bit more research on the new job
What kind of research would he have done? They told him he'd be doing X, and had no intention of giving him that job. They just slapped him in position Y as a placeholder for a few months. They were lying to him. The position didn't exist. If you can't trust the folks you're interviewing with, who else are you supposed to talk to?
perhaps worked for a few months BEFORE uprooting his entire family (which is most likely what I would have done in a similar situation).
May not have been possible.
I don't think I could personally afford to pay the mortgage on my house plus the rent on an apartment or a hotel room for 6-12 months (plus associated utilities, and transportation, and whatever else).
Then you've got the hardship of being away from your family for 6-12 months. Not just a couple hours away either. He moved from Dallas to MN. That's a good chunk of turf. If he wanted to see his family he'd be driving for a couple days or flying. Not cheap. Not easy to do.
While I do agree that this really sucks I'm not sure it's worth almost 2 Million dollars.
I think that 6 or maybe even 12 months severance should suffice in this situation. The guy actually got paid for 9 months to do his job so it sounds to me like there was a job, it just didn't last as long as the guy had hoped it would.
The guy was hired to do job X. That position theoretically expands upon his knowledge and will lead to nice resume-filler and maybe some promotions or something. Instead he was stuffed in position Y, which was a place-holder job. It did nothing for his resume. Now he's got to explain the months of crap-work on his resume.
Further, he moved 1,000+ miles. Uprooted his entire family. Moving costs... Finding a new place to live... Selling the old place... Packing everything up... Leaving all your friends behind... Not an easy thing to do.
Finally, he had a good job down in Dallas.
And keep in mind he was lured away with a lie. It was fraud. He wasn't hired to do job X and then job X went away... He was hired to do job X when nobody had any actual intention to have him do job X because it didn't exist. The company lied to him.
Part of the compensation is to pick up all those additional expenses and hardships...
Part of the compensation is to punish the company for fraudulent behavior.
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"Sick" days? That's, like, you're sick, you do no work, you're unproductive, but you still get paid?
Nice gig.
It's always a kick to see how cube-dwellers squeal when one of their work "rights" is threatened; the same cube-dwellers who want to preach to artists, writers and musicians about how they should be earning their keep in "the digital age" and when/when not to expect payment for what kind of work.
This doesn't have much to do with being a cube-dweller, it has to do with being a salaried employee.
Hourly employees are paid for the hours they work. Don't show up to work, don't get paid. Work 50+ hours in a week, get paid for 50+ hours that week.
Salaried employees get paid a fixed wage largely unrelated to the number of hours they work in a given week. This is because it is assume that there are occasions that they'll work significantly more than 50 hours in a week. Sick leave, personal leave, vacation time, etc. are all ways of compensating salaried employees for that extra time they put in but don't get paid for.
I used to work at Electronics Boutique. During the holidays we'd put in some very long hours. 10+ hour days became the norm. You'd see some very nice paychecks for a while there. But if I got sick and couldn't make it in to work I didn't get paid anything at all.
I now work in IT at a hospital. I'm a salaried employee. I get sick leave and vacation time. Last week I put in 11 hours on Monday, 15 hours on Thursday, and then another 2 hours at 4:00 AM on Sunday - in addition to the normal 8-hour days in-between. I wound up with 52 hours last week. I'll get paid the same as if I worked 40.
If the state of music is trending in that direction, I'm not certain that says a good thing for the influence of digital distribution. I enjoyed Code Monkey once or twice when I heard it, but if your idea of a good time is listening to a slightly geekier version of Weird Al Yankovic 24x7, then we'll have to part ways there.
While I do enjoy Jonathan Coulton's music... I was not suggesting that he was the most awesomest artist ever and that everybody should play music just like him.
I was using him as an example of how digital distribution had allowed a niche artist to become successful.
The exact style and content of his music is largely irrelevant.
No. It's not free. Nothing is "basically free". It may be *drastically* lower-cost to duplicate but, in the case of music, you have a host of very real and sizable production costs: studio space, mastering, audio engineer time & services, instrument purchase & maintenance, artists' cost-of-living (often spread across 3-6 people), web site support & maintenance, server space, electricity, physical hardware, bandwidth costs... all of this figures into the production of that MP3 file, and it's the result of spending all that money. The "duplication" costs even for a physical CD are fairly low when you compare them to the costs of all the rest. Electronic distribution drives the price down (and should), but declaring that it's basically "free" completely disregards the months of effort and spending that went into producing that MP3 or CD.
If you go very DIY, and spend $10,000 putting together an album (a month or two of rent, food, studio time, instruments, etc.), with the goal of earning $20k off it - enough to recoup your costs & maybe pay for a few more months while you tour and record something new, you have to look at the size of your market - can you sell 2000 copies of your CD at $10/CD? Can you sell 20,000 copies of your song at $1 per song?
When peoples' time, talent, and creative energy is involved, there is no such thing as "basically free" and "infinite supply". You're seriously misrepresenting (or fundamentally misunderstanding) the economics of producing a record if you truly believe that.
I never claimed that it was "basically free" to produce original material.
I claimed that it was "basically free" to produce additional copies of that material.
It would be if everyone were downloading from a central server.
Bliz's reliance on peer-to-peer patching should mean that the more people who are trying to patch simultaneously, the faster it is.
Assuming you've only got one client behind a given public IP address, and that you've got your firewall configured to forward the ports correctly, and your ISP doesn't mess up your traffic... Yes, the BT-based downloader actually does scale well.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case for a lot of people.
My wife and I both play WoW. We're both behind the same firewall and are NATing out to the rest of the world. This wreaks havoc with BT downloads. I can only forward the appropriate ports to one machine at a time. The other machine gets stuck with a slow download because it can't utilize the peer-to-peer goodness.
That sounds absolutely awesome.
1. It is now much harder for musicians to land recording contracts. Because music industry will only record big sellers as the other types would spread via file sharing.
The music industry was already signing big sellers long before anything like BitTorrent or Napster existed. The recording industry isn't interested in new and interesting and unique and talented individuals. They're interested in making money. They want artists with the widest appeal. They've never wanted niche artists.
Additionally, the notion that musicians should be profiting from pre-recorded offerings is a fairly new one. Traditionally musicians have made their money off of live performances. Which is still very possible.
Plus, digital distribution enables niche musicians to get the word out much easier. Somebody who never would have gotten a record deal can throw some MP3s on a website somewhere and drum up some interest. They may not make a lot of money off album sales, but they could drum up enough interest to sell a show or two.
Jonathan Coulton is a fantastic example of how digital distribution has enabled niche musicians to succeed.
2. Not respecting the license is a bad thing pirating software is just as bad as taking GNU software bundling it and not giving access to the source.
I will agree that you basically either get to respect copyright law or not... And if you aren't going to respect copyright law then the whole GPL thing kind of falls apart. That is true.
But the key difference is one of power dynamics.
The GPL tries to ensure that the person using the software has the freedom to modify and compile the code. It is an attempt to empower the individual.
The kind of copyright law that the RIAA is throwing around tries to ensure that the person listening to the music has no freedom at all.
3. Distorts supply and demand and free market economy as it creates a high supply lowering the cost of the software. Meaning us professionals don't get paid alot.
Digital distribution messes with supply and demand - not piracy.
Digital distribution means I can make billions of copies of something with basically no effort. Need another copy of Doom? Or Office 2007? Or AutoCAD? Just make a copy. Takes up some bandwidth... Maybe some space on a disk... Maybe you spend a dollar or two on a blank disc... But it's basically free. It isn't like trying to make another chair or desk or car - things that take real resources.
The fact that you can make copies for free means that it doesn't cost any more to make 1,000 copies of Office than it does to make 1 copy of office. That's what's messing with your supply and demand. Not piracy.
Even without piracy, you've basically got infinite supply.
Didn't have to fight for every spawn as my young Gilnean this morning... :) The Worgen start zone is phased into at least 4 different instances that I've seen so far, and as a result, there's plenty of spawns for everybody. (at least as far as I've seen.)
Nice.
I won't be able to play until this evening... And my server is fairly populous... So I'm concerned that the phasing won't matter much.
The deathknight starter area was phased, but it was still painfully crowded for several days after launch.
That's more easily achieved by truly keeping your work and personal life separate, and not using your personal phone for work matters. (And conversely, if you are issued with a work phone, don't use it for personal things).
I do not personally find it easier to carry two physical phones around.
The point is - for example - on my iPhone I *can* keep separate calendars - which are synchronized from completey different sources - Gmail (for my personal calendar, and my Wife's calendar) - and Exchange for my Work Calendar.
I also have two Email accounts as such.
The best part here - is I can optionally display these calendar entries together on one calendar - or turn off calendars for simpler views. So if I want to put an entry on one of my calendars - I have a view that shows me potential conflicts on *all* my calendars. If I want to check my email - I have one place to look that shows me *all* my email.
When I leave my company - my Gmail notes, mail and calendar is all there and ready to be paired up with my new device - or if I keep the device - I just need to disconnect from my corporate exchange server.
This is vastly superior than having multiple different virtualized environments that are completely separate - requiring me to look through each one any time I want to do something.
And then your employer uses that handy "remote wipe" feature and wipes out your entire phone - both the business and personal information.
If you did a digital pre-purchase you'd have most (all?) of the new content preloaded. There might be a quick patch to unlock everything, but that's about it.
Folks who are installing from a retail CD are going to have more content to download. Even though they've got a disc, there've been tweaks on the server.
And if everyone is trying to download that content it's going to be a painfully slow process.
Nothing will ever be worse than the first day of the release of WoW classic. There weren't queues yet, so people would mob a server, crash it, then mob the next open server, crash it, etc.
It took them 6 months to deploy enough server capacity.
Yup. I was there for the initial launch. Logged in right at 3:00 EST and rolled up my first character.
It was bad enough that they were actually crediting players free gametime, since the servers were down so much.
Isn't this a little overkill? I mean the only thing that sounded good about it was the whole "two numbers" thing - but you can do that without virtualizaing complete operating systems.
Two numbers is good...
But if you virtualize an entire second phone you can have entirely separate calendars, phone books, apps, all of it. You can keep your personal life genuinely separate from your work environment.
And when you get a new job, and leave your employer, they can wipe out the virtual environment without deleting everything in your personal environment.
Sounds like a great idea to me.
There is no way to win the game. The only point is to get the best gear and achievements and then sit as 'King of the Hill' until someone else comes along and knocks you off, or you get bored and quit.
You're doing it wrong.
The point isn't to win (though some people seem to think that). The point is to have fun.
It's a diversion. It's escapism. No different from reading a book or watching TV or going to the movies or whatever else people do with their spare time. Sure, some diversions like board games and most video games have a clear winner... But plenty of diversions like reading books and watching movies have no winner. It's just a way to kill some time.
My wife and I both play WoW. We play with a guild we've been members of for about 10 years now. They're people we know. They're fun to hang out with. Half the fun of the game isn't actually mashing buttons and killing critters - it's the social aspect.
According to the level 80 shaman that lives in my basement, Blizzard has basically slashdotted themselves - there are *so* many people trying to play that their servers are basically non-responsive. Players on the WOW forums are suggesting that people open 16 games simultaneously (in windowed mode), and then start to play whichever one responds first - which, of course, makes the entire scenario 16x worse.
This launch may very well be worse than past ones... But I've seen something similar at the launch of each previous expansion.
You've got a ton of people who haven't been playing WoW who suddenly run out and re-subscribe just to see the new stuff. You've got a ton of people all trying to log in and download the most recent patch at the same time. All hitting the authentication servers at the same time. All hitting the web servers and the forums to complain when it doesn't work. You've got piles of people rolling up new characters and all running through the same few geographic areas.
It brings the servers to their knees.
You're lucky if you can actually get in and look around on launch day. To hell with actually playing or accomplishing anything.
I'll try to log in this evening... I'll roll up a new worgen and buy the Azeroth flight skill for my 80's... And then I'm going to switch back over to one of my non-Cataclysm alts and just ignore the expansion for a few days.
If you give it about a week things will settle down. Folks who subscribed again just to see the new stuff will get bored and wander off again... The powergamers will have raced through the first few areas of 80+ content... Folks will have leveled their new characters out of the newb zones... And you can actually enjoy yourself without having to fight for every spawn.
So you're bound to your brain. You cannot live forever unless your particular, specific, physical brain stays in tact. If I copy your brain to another cloned brain, yank yours out, and replace it with the clone, everyone else will interact with you as if you were you, no difference; but YOU would vanish into the blackness, you'd stop living, you'd die.
First of all, I'm not convinced I want to live forever. Immortality sounds cool... But I suspect it would get dull after a while.
Second, I suspect that your little conundrum here could be solved by a slow migration to the clone/artificial/constructed brain. Rather than yanking it out suddenly you just replace bit by bit. You'd remain conscious the entire time. You'd never "die".
But...
A large part of the whole afterlife/immortality/soul debate essentially revolves around fear. Folks are terrified by the idea that they're going to cease to exist. That they'll never be able to kiss their wife again, or have a banana split, or enjoy a walk on the beach, or whatever. Folks don't want it to end.
I'm thinking that even if your organic brain did genuinely die in the process, and you did genuinely lose consciousness and die in the process, this kind of assisted immortality would still be immensely popular. Sure, one of you would die... But then there'd be another you, a replacement you. Complete with all your memories, hopes, dreams, fears, whatever. And that second you would get to keep kissing wives and eating banana splits and walking on beaches. So there would be less fear about things ending.
Yup.
Nothing new here.
You don't want a record of your spending habits? Use cash.
It isn't that complicated.
That seems like a dangerous loophole since almost any information would fall under that. It seems like we are saying the data isn't protected, it is the records themselves.
If I go to your store and buy something from you, you're going to keep track of that transaction. You'll note down that you sold some item for some amount of money. This is your data, not mine. You use it to keep track of your inventory and balance your books and whatever else.
If you get subpoenaed for all your records pertaining to a certain date, my privacy isn't being violated. Even if I bought something on that date. They're your records, not mine. You may have recorded some data about me... But that's still your data. Not mine.
This is the same thing, only larger.
These aren't your records, they belong to the banks and credit card companies and whoever else. They keep these records to make sure that everybody gets paid/charged the right amount.
You buy something at a store with a credit card - that credit card company needs to keep track of it. Not for your sake, but for theirs. They need to know that $X was paid to this store, in your name, and you now need to pay back $Y on your next bill. This information is necessary for the credit card company to stay in business. If they don't track it, they don't know where their money is going, or who owes them money.
It is data about your actions... But it isn't your data. It belongs to the credit card company. They're the ones generating it and maintaining it for their own purposes. And when you use their credit card you agree to let them generate and use this data, because the credit card wouldn't function without it.
I think the fact that the plastic toy was cemented to the base of a pillar supporting a footbridge was what made it suspicious.
FTA: "It was cemented in. That's odd," Murray said. Murray said that suspicious objects do not automatically warrant a call to the bomb squad if patrol officers are able to determine that there is no threat. He said that the robot was strange enough to warrant precautionary measures. In the end, it proved harmless.
Yes, I read that.
And my question still stands.
Are you suggesting that we call the bomb squad for anything and everything that looks even vaguely suspicious?
Some kid gets bored and superglues his sister's lunchbox to a wall, are we going to call the bomb squad?
Some artist gets creative and sticks some kind of magnetic LCD to something, are we going to call the bomb squad?
Some guy forgets his luggage on the side of the road as he rushes to make a flight on time, are we going to call the bomb squad?
There's all sorts of odd and suspicious stuff around us. Generally speaking, it isn't a bomb. It could be... But it isn't, usually. Are we just going to err on the side of caution and call the bomb squad every time something looks slightly out of place?
The problem with trivializing the bomb squad's action is the next suspicious object may not be a innocent little toy.
This was probably a prank, but it could also be a test to see what security measures are in place (probing).
Sure, it could have been a bomb...
And that car parked on the side of the street could be a bomb. And that McDonald's bag could be a bomb. And that half-eaten apple could be a bomb. And that guy on a big with a backpack could be carrying a bomb. Just about anything could be a bomb.
Are you suggesting that we call the bomb squad for anything and everything that looks even vaguely suspicious?
It allows corporations to develop proprietary applications and install them on users' handsets without the need to first place the application on Marketplace, as is currently required by Microsoft.
Any chance the jailbreak comes with the option to disable this functionality?
Why?
Isn't the whole point of jailbreaking a phone like this so that you can run your own code on it? So that you're not tied to the marketplace?
Why would you go to the trouble of jailbreaking a phone if you didn't want to run code on it that was not marketplace-approved?
If you don't want that feature, don't jailbreak your phone.
Really? Desperation? Is that what it is? And is that why we don't see more BK ads in McD's? Or Macy's promos at Marshall's? **rolls eyes**
How is that even vaguely analogous?
Any given McDonalds restaurant is owned by McDonalds. Well, or a franchisee. You wouldn't really expect them to advertise the competition. Although... The last time I was at a McDonalds they had a television in the corner playing broadcast TV, and I'm sure there'll be the occasional Burger King commercial on there.
An iPhone is, supposedly, your property - not Apple's.
But we aren't even really talking about advertising... It's a magazine. Are we now going to see Linux magazines banned because they talk about non-Apple computing? Are we going to see "Learn to use Flash" ebooks banned because the iPhone doesn't support Flash? Are we going to see some kind of CAT5 wiring diagram app banned because the iPhone doesn't have a wired network port? Will you be barred from loading up Sysinternals because it is a Windows-centric website?
Good question...
But what makes you think you'd get anything other than a carefully sanitized political answer?
I mean... It isn't like you're the first one to come up with this question. I've see in, and variations on it, asked countless times. And the answer has always been some vague form of "no".
Now, I'm not certain that "no" is a lie... It may very well be that he had other motivations. But the vague and political nature of the non-answer always leaves me feeling like there's more to the story.
I'd love to get a straight answer out of him. Hell, I'd love to get a straight answer out of just about any politician. But I don't think this Facebook interview thing is going to suddenly grant my wishes.
Thousands for software for backups?
Stop scamming small businesses, amanda or bacula are free and a very good fit for such places.
Ummm... What I actually said was:
They'd rather just trust that things were going to keep working than spend a couple thousand on software and a tape drive.
Emphasis added for the comprehension-impaired.
I never handled the pricing or billing, I just fixed stuff... So I really have no idea how much we may have gouged our customers...
But we'd generally sell them some flavor of Symantec Backup Exec, or maybe Acronis True Image - both of which retail for a few hundred dollars. Throw in an LTO tape drive of some sort for another few hundred dollars. Maybe a SCSI/SAS/whatever controller for the server itself, another hundred or two. Then a pile of tapes... It's very easy to spend a couple thousand dollars on a backup solution.
Uh, dude, if they had a backup, they wouldn't be coming to the computer shop for data recovery. But good on you for treating people like shit and assuming they know as much as you do about computers. Administering a backup system is a non-trivial task for novices. I'm sure people enjoyed hearing it was their own damn fault though. The little human touches are what makes being a computer technician all worthwhile.
Perhaps I wasn't clear...
Basically any time we got a call for data recovery, from a home user or a business, the first question is "do you have a backup".
It actually does make sense. Why waste hours trying to recover data from a hosed HDD only to find out that there's a tape in the closet nobody mentioned? It has happened.
For business customers that we may never have worked with before, this is a very reasonable question. They may have a tape drive ticking away doing backups, but no idea how to actually restore things.
For home users it is less likely that they have a backup, but it still happens. We did have a few customers who'd used some automated backup system but just had no idea how to recover anything from it.
But thanks for demonstrating the proper way to apply those little human touches.
It constantly amazes me how hard it is to convince people to backup their data.
At my previous job I did outsourced IT support for local businesses. We'd have a hell of a time selling them any kind of a backup solution. They'd rather just trust that things were going to keep working than spend a couple thousand on software and a tape drive. Or they'd never, ever change the tapes. Or they'd keep using the same tapes for years. Or they'd store the tape right on top of the server, so that any disaster that physically destroy the server would take the tapes as well.
We'd also get visits from folks who had issues with their home computers. They'd have genuinely irreplaceable photos of some family member who was now dead... And the only place those photos had ever been stored was some SD card... And that card had gone through the wash, or been stepped on, or got zapped with static, or whatever... And now they wanted us to recover the data.
And in both cases the folks were absolutely irate when they lost something important and we were unable to recover it. The first question was always do you have a backup? And we'd get these self-righteous blank stares... And they'd want to know why the hell they should be doing a backup - that's what the computer was for!
If it's important, make a backup. Test the backup. Store the backup in a safe location.
The more important something is, the more important it is to back it up.
And if you don't have a backup, it's your own damn fault when the data goes away.
He might have done a bit more research on the new job
What kind of research would he have done? They told him he'd be doing X, and had no intention of giving him that job. They just slapped him in position Y as a placeholder for a few months. They were lying to him. The position didn't exist. If you can't trust the folks you're interviewing with, who else are you supposed to talk to?
perhaps worked for a few months BEFORE uprooting his entire family (which is most likely what I would have done in a similar situation).
May not have been possible.
I don't think I could personally afford to pay the mortgage on my house plus the rent on an apartment or a hotel room for 6-12 months (plus associated utilities, and transportation, and whatever else).
Then you've got the hardship of being away from your family for 6-12 months. Not just a couple hours away either. He moved from Dallas to MN. That's a good chunk of turf. If he wanted to see his family he'd be driving for a couple days or flying. Not cheap. Not easy to do.
While I do agree that this really sucks I'm not sure it's worth almost 2 Million dollars.
I think that 6 or maybe even 12 months severance should suffice in this situation. The guy actually got paid for 9 months to do his job so it sounds to me like there was a job, it just didn't last as long as the guy had hoped it would.
The guy was hired to do job X. That position theoretically expands upon his knowledge and will lead to nice resume-filler and maybe some promotions or something. Instead he was stuffed in position Y, which was a place-holder job. It did nothing for his resume. Now he's got to explain the months of crap-work on his resume.
Further, he moved 1,000+ miles. Uprooted his entire family. Moving costs... Finding a new place to live... Selling the old place... Packing everything up... Leaving all your friends behind... Not an easy thing to do.
Finally, he had a good job down in Dallas.
And keep in mind he was lured away with a lie. It was fraud. He wasn't hired to do job X and then job X went away... He was hired to do job X when nobody had any actual intention to have him do job X because it didn't exist. The company lied to him.
Part of the compensation is to pick up all those additional expenses and hardships...
Part of the compensation is to punish the company for fraudulent behavior.