This app isn't going to help much. People have posted that they were going to kill themselves, over 1000 people replied egging them on. What else could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately we'll find out.
Squirrels are naturally curious. So are squids, cats, dogs, mice, and crows. But you don't have to look further than your post to see why women leave the field, or avoid it in the first place. Macho bs is still machmacho bs no matter how you disguise it. The industry has become home to quick-buck artists, liars, and scammers who think that their latest lowering of ethical standards is justified by the chance of selling out. I.T. now stands for "it's toxic!"
It's a first step. Were you one of those ones who complained "Big deal, so they launched someone into orbit. Call me when they get to the moon."
The procedure was done last month. We don't know what will happen over the next year. Obviously they're going to take subjects who are pretty much blind to begin with, because why possibly sacrifice partial vision for no vision.
As research evolves, we learn what works and doesn't (slashdot BETA, anyone?). But the fact that she IS fine is a big thing - it shows that the tissue is not dying, is not being rejected.
You might want to read this, particularly the part starting at "Transplantation aimed at photoreceptor cell replacement".
If your eyes were OK for the first 50 years, and then you went blind due to retinal disease, what do you care if the replacement "only" lasts another 50 years?
Scientists have long been aware of Müller cells (which exist in great abundance in the eye) and have generally assumed that they were responsible for keeping retinal tissue protected and clear of debris. In recent years, however, researchers have reported that these cells sometimes exhibit progenitor cell behavior and re-enter the cell cycle (dividing and differentiating into other type of cells). Progenitor cells are similar to stem cells but are more mature and are more limited in the number of cells types they can become.
... and we might be able to get somewhere.
As for the re-mapping, don't sell the optic nerve and brain short. People can go for years without even noticing the cumulative damage to their eyes.
I hate to have to quote your own post to you, but:
I don't know anyone who has done time. At least not more than a day or two in a city jail.
So you DO know someone who has done time.
I took issue with that claim. Specifically and semantically, as you were misapplying "doing time" as a synecdoche for all jail-based incarceration. Your claim here is invalid.
Too bad your argument won't work with law enforcement the next time you try to cross a border.
Border Agent:: "Have you ever been arrested or convicted of a criminal offence?"
You: "No."
Border Agent: "Well, it says here that you were arrested and held overnight in connection with blah blah blah. Lying to us is a federal offence. Is there anything else you're not telling us?"
Also, falsely arresting someone gives rise to civil recourse, even if it was "only a day or two."
It's binary - either someone was detained or they weren't. It's like being pregnant. Trying to argue otherwise is like trying to say "well, it might have been rape, but it wasn't rape rape."
I usually talk about how I think things should be, rather than how they are. Your posts gave me the impression you were defending the status quo.
Far from it. I''ve done my share of tilting at windmills, and will continue to do so, but I've learned that people are sheeple. 99% will follow the herd because that's what they do, even when they admit it's not in their best interests. "Too much trouble," "Don't want to get involved in the fight because nothing will change anyway," "I'm afraid" - sloth, apathy, and fear.
So those of us who stand up for rights end up painting sometimes a large target on ourselves - and we then learn that if we try to keep our own lives secret, someone, somewhere, will use it against us. It's ironic that to fight for other people's rights to their own lives in any credible fashion you often have to sacrifice your own, but it is what it is. It's one of the reasons why, after a property developer publicly outed my past gender, I made them take out ads in the news section of the two biggest papers apologizing to me by name - to show others like me that (to misquote a phrase) we have nothing to be ashamed of except being ashamed itself. And of course to give them a taste of their own tactics.
Sure, I had a right to have my past kept private - but once the damage was publicly done, I decided that I had to either let them win (and worry about the hundreds of people who suddenly knew, and how fast it would spread, and "what about the next time") or embrace it. There are some things that are more important than privacy. Not living in fear of being outed is one of them, and I would recommend it to those who are up to the challenge. We CAN move the needle towards the good through individual acts.
People have a right to their private life. However, Facebook users have entered into a (what I consider) sub-optimal agreement wrt users' private info. By nature, any "anti-social media network" (my term for them) will let people know who your friends are. So, even if we had a completely open and distributed social network not controlled by a single source, it's the nature of the beast.
Also, unless you're living off the grid and not filing taxes, driving a car, or anything else, the government has LOTS of information on you. So what? What are they going to do with it - blackmail you into paying twice the tax you really owe? Become a secret assassin? Now, if you've done something crooked, they can certainly use that as leverage to get you to become an informant - but you know the old saying, don't do the crime unless you can do the time.
So what are facebooks' partners going to do? Try to sell you something? If you don't want it, just don't buy it. If it turns out you want it at the terms they're offering, where's the problem? It's part of the deal - an exchange of use of facebook in return for viewing ads. That others are sheeple is their constitutional right, and neither you nor I have the right to forbid them from entering into such exchanges.
Now what we CAN do is lobby for more effective privacy laws, fuller disclosure (instead of hiding everything in boilerplate fine print), and the right to have their date destroyed when they discontinue using the service. This doesn't make me, as you claim, an anti-privacy fool. Just a hard-nosed realist.
My claim was that most people know someone who has been in jail. Even if it's being held over the weekend to appear before a judge Monday morning to make bail, they've still been in jail.
And with over a million people in jail, and this population being rotated on a regular basis as people are released on probation or having done their time, and new offenders entering the system, it becomes very hard to say for sure that you don't know anyone who hasn't been in jail. People tend to hide their criminal records from neighbors, friends, even their spouses.
To say that you don't know anyone with a criminal record is the same as to say you don't know anyone who is a transsexual - you can't always tell just by looking, you know:-)
So what if they have your name and phone number and address. We used to have this thing called a "telephone book" that had all that. We have equivalents on the net. Your "private" info is already out there - and your name and address are not legally considered private info.
Seriously? The EFF and BoingBoing are not the epitome of cool to 99% of the population, who probably never even heard of them.
Many of the 99% you mention would insist that people who use social networks at all, for any reason, are uncool. You're using a converse of the argument from popularity; the argument from unpopularity
No, I'm arguing that almost nobody cares about the EFF and BoingBoing because they never even heard about them. You can't be unpopular if nobody knows you exist. Unpopularity would be a step up - "The only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity."
You can never be sure, especially if you're a newcomer to the field, that someone hasn't plowed that field before.
So what should a newcomer to a creative field do to avoid being blindsided and bankrupted by incumbent owners of exclusive rights? If there are no good steps that a newcomer can take, then this impossibility has a chilling effect on people even trying to become a newcomer to a creative field.
Get to know the field. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
Also, don't worry about it. If your book or film or artwork is truly original, it should stand on its' own.
The field of software is about the only real minefield - if you're stupid enough to strip files of copyright and then claim ownership of the complete work, you deserve a kick in the head. We all learned in school that plagiarism is wrong.
How many times have you heard someone who isn't in tech come up to you and say "I've got this great idea..." and they haven't even bothered to do the most cursory search, which would have revealed that it's not original at all?
What kind of search?
Oh for the good old days of justf***inggoogleforit.
Obviously you can't do this [an alternate-point-of-view adaptation of a culturally significant work]
This is a form of creativity of which society currently disapproves through its elected representatives. How does it benefit society for society to disapprove of this?
The work lacked creativity - other adaptations had been licensed that followed the guidelines and were a success. One example was that the infringing work killed off Scarlett OHara, something that the copyright holder expressly forbids. It's their universe, their characters and location and plot - they have a right to say what happens to them, same as you would for anything you created that was sufficiently novel and creative.
you pays your money (or in this case, sweat equity) and you takes your chances.
Why the subject-verb disagreement? Are you quoting (or paraphrasing) a work of which I am not aware? Even so, I don't understand how to ensure that I avoid attorney's fees, statutory damages, and other ways of losing even more than the sweat equity that I had invested.
Just google for the phrase. It's a colloquialism that has been around for a LONG time.
Anyone can sue anyone for any reason. There are no guarantees in life.
Harrison admits to having thought "Why didn't I realise?" when others started pointing out the similarity between the two songs
So what should Harrison have done instead to ensure that he realized his having accidentally made such a blatant ripoff before publishing it and thereby opening himself to infringement lawsuits?
Not published it. It was a ripoff, and even he realized it when it was pointed out. Or he could have made a deal with the copyright holders and still published it.
if the EFF and the BoingBoing guys endorsed a new social networking system as the future of Internet freedom, people would join because it would seem uncool not to.
Seriously? The EFF and BoingBoing are not the epitome of cool to 99% of the population, who probably never even heard of them.
Not everybody uses the internet just to watch YouTube and NetFlix. A so-called "good deal" where we are works out at around 28c/gigabyte. Put a 62c/gigabyte tax on top of that and you'll see people just stop using a internet altogether. As noted elsewhere, this will lead to people *not* applying security updates and all sorts of other behaviours because they've suddenly just become too expensive.
If you had bothered to do any digging, you'd realize that the story is misleading. The proposed tax is to be applied to ISPs, with a limit on how much each ISP pays, and individual users, with a limit on how much the individual user pays. Any usage over that is tax-free, so how is that going to stop people from doing security updates or anything else?
The tax proposal has a per-month limit on how much usage will be taxed. Someone who exceeds the cap won't pay any additional tax. Most of the hand-waving "sky-is-falling-in" reaction is a stupid knee-jerk reaction based on false assumptions (after all, who bothers to read the actual articles and do a little digging on-line when they can go OMG!!!)?
Different people use things for different purposes. Understand this, get over it, and you'll grow up quite a lot.
This from an anonymous poster who didn't do any digging, just childishly followed the crowd.
Considering that the government hasn't enacted this tax, and is saying that it would be capped at a nominal amount per user, I don't see what all the fuss is about how it will stop people from using the Internet. The figures in the story are, like usual, *cough* exaggerations *cough*.
Now, wasn't there a story in the last couple of days about a game that requires a 22 gig download? Not sure it'll tell you on the box that you need to spend another $14 just to play it. If they did, fewer people would buy it, wouldn't they?
Or maybe they can ship move dvds in the box (at 0.30 a piece, 22 gigs is $1.50 extra in manufacturing costs), and relieves people of having to download anything, the hassles of congested servers, having to re-download when they have to re-install, etc. That's worth a couple of bucks retail.
Netflix and their ilk
People can regulate their use to save money (they already do if they have crappy bandwidth caps), and there are plenty of alternatives to the Internet for entertainment.
online news sites (recall that other posted who pointed out about online news being the only way to hear non-governmentally-approved news?)
Doesn't need streaming video. A picture is worth 1,000 words, and 1,000 words are also worth 1,000 words. And people who want to watch streaming news videos can cut down on their cat videos.
OS updates (how many gigs of patches does a fresh install of Windows 7 require?)
Before the internet, OS patches were distributed by floppy. Quality control was a lot better, because the cost of patches was borne by the manufacturer. Look no further than the Internet for the whole "ship it and patch it" mentality. Microsoft is cutting half their testing positions.
I wonder what being in a botnet will cost people.
Hopefully enough that they won't keep on clicking on emails promising them $21 million dollars and a bigger penis.
VOIP won't be free
It isn't free now. You still need an ISP.
the aforementioned educational resources (Coursera, anyone?)
Coursera. Puh-lease. When the students don't get to grade their own papers, the completion rate falls to 2%. Typical rates are 5% - 7% (and that's when students get to grade their own papers).
Facebook's autoplay feature is going to start to cost people some real money before long. Imagine going to work and accidentally leaving Facebook logged in.
So they'll demand that it be disabled by default, or quit facebook. A win either way. And if you're stupid enough to stay logged in when you leave, you better not have any co-workers with a nasty sense of humour.
SVN checkouts and commits
Part of the cost of doing business, or if you're doing it as a volunteer, part of the cost of scratching your itch.
iTunes.
You already pay a "media tax" for the devices used to do music downloads.
Hell, ads will start to cost people.
So more people will be more aggressive about blocking those ads that suck bandwidth, which means a return to less intrusive ads. How is that a bad thing?
The federal excise tax alone is $0.184 per gallon source. You forgot state taxes. Also, there are plenty of countries with much higher gas prices. It was $6 a (US) gallon a while back, and is now back down to about $5.50. People adapt - they buy more fuel-efficient cars (good for auto sales), plan their trips better and drive a bit less, take public transit, and carpool (all good for the environment AND the wallet).
And before everyone whines "they don't have public transit here" - of course not, not with artificially low gas prices. Double them, and you'll certainly create the demand.
... and people who feel that there is sufficient value in it will pay the tax and watch, and skip watching something else. It's called putting your money where your mouth is. We're not talking about a ban here, like in China. This is a broke government looking to milk a cash cow.
Do I know someone who as done time? Of course. Who doesn't?
I don't know anyone who has done time. At least not more than a day or two in a city jail.
So you DO know someone who has done time. And how can you be certain that some of the people you know don't have a hidden past? It's not like most people are going to advertise it.
65 million Americans with criminal records
NEW YORK, March 23, 2011 - More than one in four U.S. adults -- roughly 65 million people --have an arrest or conviction that shows up in a routine criminal background check, and a new report from the National Employment Law Project finds that these Americans are facing unprecedented barriers to employment. With the rapidly expanding use of background checks, employers are routinely, and often illegally, excluding all job applicants who have criminal records from consideration, no matter how minor or dated their offenses.
The new report highlights the widespread and illegal use of blanket no-hire policies by providing numerous examples of online job ads posted on Craigslist, including some by major corporations, that effectively bar significant portions of the U.S. population from work opportunities. Because of their blunt impact and extreme overreach, these blanket no-hire policies have become the subject of increasing litigation, attracting heightened scrutiny from the courts and concerned policymakers. At the same time, 92 percent of employers conduct criminal background checks, according to a 2010 Society for Human Resources Management survey.
"The fast-growing use of criminal background checks casts an extraordinarily wide net, potentially ensnaring millions of Americans who have an arrest or other record that shows up in a routine check," said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. "These background checks are supposed to promote safety in the workplace, but many employers have gone way overboard, refusing to even consider highly qualified applicants just because of an old arrest or conviction. They're not even bothering to ask what the arrest or conviction was for, how far in the past it was, whether it's in any way related to the job, or what the person has done with his or her life since," said Owens.
The NELP report, entitled "65 Million ‘Need Not Apply': The Case for Reforming Criminal Background Checks for Employment," surveys online job ads posted on Craigslist in five major cities—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta. The survey found numerous examples in which extreme requirements precluded consideration of anyone with a criminal record, in clear violation of federal civil rights law. Major companies, such as Domino's Pizza, the Omni Hotel, and Adecco USA, were just some of the employers that listed entry-level jobs on Craigslist—ranging from warehouse workers to delivery drivers to sales clerks—that unambiguously shut the door on applicants with criminal records:
And with more than a million people in jail at any one time...
And that doesn't count the 1 in 10 that pass through juvie.
It's already more than half. Netflix and youtube alone make up half, and there are other sources of streaming video. Web pages with embedded video, video ads, porn, your local TV broadcaster, whatever... Also, the percentage of streaming video is growing - it's projected to be 84% of all traffic by 2017 (link posted elsewhere in thread).
You question doesn't answer why there shouldn't be a tax. Personally I think it's stupid, but I don't expect governments to act rationally. On the bright side, less video streaming might mean people getting off their behinds and engaging in physical activities - including rallies against Viktor Orban if they feel like it.
And less video streaming doesn't mean NO video streaming. Video streaming is one of those services that is elastic - demand is influenced by price.
Let me rephrase the question: How can someone starting out in the business determine what is original?
You can never be sure, especially if you're a newcomer to the field, that someone hasn't plowed that field before. How many times have you heard someone who isn't in tech come up to you and say "I've got this great idea..." and they haven't even bothered to do the most cursory search, which would have revealed that it's not original at all?
And then there's the whole question of timing. Sometimes, an idea's time has come, and multiple people will express it at the same time, then complain that someone else "stole their idea."
In other words, we're in an imperfect world, and you pays your money (or in this case, sweat equity) and you takes your chances. And the more experience you have, (hopefully) the less likely you'll end up pursuing an unoriginal idea.
Now, onto Harrison... (rant time:-)
George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was as blatant a ripoff as I have ever heard. I recognized it as a ripoff of "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons the first time I heard it (with 5 sisters, you can be sure that the radio was tuned to top 40 a lot). Considering that the Chiffons hit came out in '63 and got LOTS of air time over the next few years because it was such a hit, and that Harrison started writing My Sweet Lord in 69. He even admitted to the obvious similarities
Harrison admits to having thought "Why didn't I realise?" when others started pointing out the similarity between the two songs
In a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, John Lennon expressed his doubts about the notion of "subconscious" plagiarism: "He must have known, you know. He's smarter than that... He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off."
There is no question that Harrison was guilty of plagiarism - just "was it intentional or subconscious."
And the song sucks. The Chffons was a bouncy happy tune, Harrison's more like something you'd play at a funeral. But that's just my opinion, and obviously I'm in the minority:-)
The issue I was highlighting is that more than half the bandwidth consumed is by video, and is definitely not essential. Neither netflix nor youtube, which contribute to more than half of ALL internet bandwidth usage, are essential. Cut off streaming video and your bandwidth requirements drop significantly. It's the same as with ad blockers - not downloading those video and graphic and flash and popup/popunder ads cuts down on bandwidth usage. It's not all bad.
Slashdot Mirror
This app isn't going to help much. People have posted that they were going to kill themselves, over 1000 people replied egging them on. What else could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately we'll find out.
Squirrels are naturally curious. So are squids, cats, dogs, mice, and crows. But you don't have to look further than your post to see why women leave the field, or avoid it in the first place. Macho bs is still machmacho bs no matter how you disguise it. The industry has become home to quick-buck artists, liars, and scammers who think that their latest lowering of ethical standards is justified by the chance of selling out. I.T. now stands for "it's toxic!"
You do the cast to a character pointer in your original malloc statement.
As for your complaint that the article doesn't say whether she can see now or not, this was a huge step forward. Look at what was involved:
The surgery was only a month ago. Let's observe the patient over the next year to see what else develops.
It's a first step. Were you one of those ones who complained "Big deal, so they launched someone into orbit. Call me when they get to the moon."
The procedure was done last month. We don't know what will happen over the next year. Obviously they're going to take subjects who are pretty much blind to begin with, because why possibly sacrifice partial vision for no vision.
As research evolves, we learn what works and doesn't (slashdot BETA, anyone?). But the fact that she IS fine is a big thing - it shows that the tissue is not dying, is not being rejected.
You might want to read this, particularly the part starting at "Transplantation aimed at photoreceptor cell replacement".
If your eyes were OK for the first 50 years, and then you went blind due to retinal disease, what do you care if the replacement "only" lasts another 50 years?
Combine that with this:
Scientists have long been aware of Müller cells (which exist in great abundance in the eye) and have generally assumed that they were responsible for keeping retinal tissue protected and clear of debris. In recent years, however, researchers have reported that these cells sometimes exhibit progenitor cell behavior and re-enter the cell cycle (dividing and differentiating into other type of cells). Progenitor cells are similar to stem cells but are more mature and are more limited in the number of cells types they can become.
... and we might be able to get somewhere.
As for the re-mapping, don't sell the optic nerve and brain short. People can go for years without even noticing the cumulative damage to their eyes.
I hate to have to quote your own post to you, but:
I don't know anyone who has done time. At least not more than a day or two in a city jail.
So you DO know someone who has done time.
I took issue with that claim. Specifically and semantically, as you were misapplying "doing time" as a synecdoche for all jail-based incarceration. Your claim here is invalid.
Too bad your argument won't work with law enforcement the next time you try to cross a border.
Border Agent:: "Have you ever been arrested or convicted of a criminal offence?"
You: "No."
Border Agent: "Well, it says here that you were arrested and held overnight in connection with blah blah blah. Lying to us is a federal offence. Is there anything else you're not telling us?"
Also, falsely arresting someone gives rise to civil recourse, even if it was "only a day or two."
It's binary - either someone was detained or they weren't. It's like being pregnant. Trying to argue otherwise is like trying to say "well, it might have been rape, but it wasn't rape rape."
I usually talk about how I think things should be, rather than how they are. Your posts gave me the impression you were defending the status quo.
Far from it. I''ve done my share of tilting at windmills, and will continue to do so, but I've learned that people are sheeple. 99% will follow the herd because that's what they do, even when they admit it's not in their best interests. "Too much trouble," "Don't want to get involved in the fight because nothing will change anyway," "I'm afraid" - sloth, apathy, and fear.
So those of us who stand up for rights end up painting sometimes a large target on ourselves - and we then learn that if we try to keep our own lives secret, someone, somewhere, will use it against us. It's ironic that to fight for other people's rights to their own lives in any credible fashion you often have to sacrifice your own, but it is what it is. It's one of the reasons why, after a property developer publicly outed my past gender, I made them take out ads in the news section of the two biggest papers apologizing to me by name - to show others like me that (to misquote a phrase) we have nothing to be ashamed of except being ashamed itself. And of course to give them a taste of their own tactics.
Sure, I had a right to have my past kept private - but once the damage was publicly done, I decided that I had to either let them win (and worry about the hundreds of people who suddenly knew, and how fast it would spread, and "what about the next time") or embrace it. There are some things that are more important than privacy. Not living in fear of being outed is one of them, and I would recommend it to those who are up to the challenge. We CAN move the needle towards the good through individual acts.
It's why my sig says what it does :-)
In other words, Microsoft is making more profit off Android than they are off their own phones.
People have a right to their private life. However, Facebook users have entered into a (what I consider) sub-optimal agreement wrt users' private info. By nature, any "anti-social media network" (my term for them) will let people know who your friends are. So, even if we had a completely open and distributed social network not controlled by a single source, it's the nature of the beast.
Also, unless you're living off the grid and not filing taxes, driving a car, or anything else, the government has LOTS of information on you. So what? What are they going to do with it - blackmail you into paying twice the tax you really owe? Become a secret assassin? Now, if you've done something crooked, they can certainly use that as leverage to get you to become an informant - but you know the old saying, don't do the crime unless you can do the time.
So what are facebooks' partners going to do? Try to sell you something? If you don't want it, just don't buy it. If it turns out you want it at the terms they're offering, where's the problem? It's part of the deal - an exchange of use of facebook in return for viewing ads. That others are sheeple is their constitutional right, and neither you nor I have the right to forbid them from entering into such exchanges.
Now what we CAN do is lobby for more effective privacy laws, fuller disclosure (instead of hiding everything in boilerplate fine print), and the right to have their date destroyed when they discontinue using the service. This doesn't make me, as you claim, an anti-privacy fool. Just a hard-nosed realist.
My claim was that most people know someone who has been in jail. Even if it's being held over the weekend to appear before a judge Monday morning to make bail, they've still been in jail.
And with over a million people in jail, and this population being rotated on a regular basis as people are released on probation or having done their time, and new offenders entering the system, it becomes very hard to say for sure that you don't know anyone who hasn't been in jail. People tend to hide their criminal records from neighbors, friends, even their spouses.
To say that you don't know anyone with a criminal record is the same as to say you don't know anyone who is a transsexual - you can't always tell just by looking, you know :-)
So what if they have your name and phone number and address. We used to have this thing called a "telephone book" that had all that. We have equivalents on the net. Your "private" info is already out there - and your name and address are not legally considered private info.
Seriously? The EFF and BoingBoing are not the epitome of cool to 99% of the population, who probably never even heard of them.
Many of the 99% you mention would insist that people who use social networks at all, for any reason, are uncool. You're using a converse of the argument from popularity; the argument from unpopularity
No, I'm arguing that almost nobody cares about the EFF and BoingBoing because they never even heard about them. You can't be unpopular if nobody knows you exist. Unpopularity would be a step up - "The only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity."
You can never be sure, especially if you're a newcomer to the field, that someone hasn't plowed that field before.
So what should a newcomer to a creative field do to avoid being blindsided and bankrupted by incumbent owners of exclusive rights? If there are no good steps that a newcomer can take, then this impossibility has a chilling effect on people even trying to become a newcomer to a creative field.
Get to know the field. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
Also, don't worry about it. If your book or film or artwork is truly original, it should stand on its' own.
The field of software is about the only real minefield - if you're stupid enough to strip files of copyright and then claim ownership of the complete work, you deserve a kick in the head. We all learned in school that plagiarism is wrong.
How many times have you heard someone who isn't in tech come up to you and say "I've got this great idea ..." and they haven't even bothered to do the most cursory search, which would have revealed that it's not original at all?
What kind of search?
Oh for the good old days of justf***inggoogleforit.
Obviously you can't do this [an alternate-point-of-view adaptation of a culturally significant work]
This is a form of creativity of which society currently disapproves through its elected representatives. How does it benefit society for society to disapprove of this?
The work lacked creativity - other adaptations had been licensed that followed the guidelines and were a success. One example was that the infringing work killed off Scarlett OHara, something that the copyright holder expressly forbids. It's their universe, their characters and location and plot - they have a right to say what happens to them, same as you would for anything you created that was sufficiently novel and creative.
you pays your money (or in this case, sweat equity) and you takes your chances.
Why the subject-verb disagreement? Are you quoting (or paraphrasing) a work of which I am not aware? Even so, I don't understand how to ensure that I avoid attorney's fees, statutory damages, and other ways of losing even more than the sweat equity that I had invested.
Just google for the phrase. It's a colloquialism that has been around for a LONG time.
Anyone can sue anyone for any reason. There are no guarantees in life.
Harrison admits to having thought "Why didn't I realise?" when others started pointing out the similarity between the two songs
So what should Harrison have done instead to ensure that he realized his having accidentally made such a blatant ripoff before publishing it and thereby opening himself to infringement lawsuits?
Not published it. It was a ripoff, and even he realized it when it was pointed out. Or he could have made a deal with the copyright holders and still published it.
Come on, even APK can do better than that :-)
if the EFF and the BoingBoing guys endorsed a new social networking system as the future of Internet freedom, people would join because it would seem uncool not to.
Seriously? The EFF and BoingBoing are not the epitome of cool to 99% of the population, who probably never even heard of them.
The problem isn't the hardware - it's getting legit "Apple-blessed" Apple ROMs for distribution.
Not everybody uses the internet just to watch YouTube and NetFlix. A so-called "good deal" where we are works out at around 28c/gigabyte. Put a 62c/gigabyte tax on top of that and you'll see people just stop using a internet altogether. As noted elsewhere, this will lead to people *not* applying security updates and all sorts of other behaviours because they've suddenly just become too expensive.
If you had bothered to do any digging, you'd realize that the story is misleading. The proposed tax is to be applied to ISPs, with a limit on how much each ISP pays, and individual users, with a limit on how much the individual user pays. Any usage over that is tax-free, so how is that going to stop people from doing security updates or anything else?
Different people use things for different purposes. Understand this, get over it, and you'll grow up quite a lot.
This from an anonymous poster who didn't do any digging, just childishly followed the crowd.
Considering that the government hasn't enacted this tax, and is saying that it would be capped at a nominal amount per user, I don't see what all the fuss is about how it will stop people from using the Internet. The figures in the story are, like usual, *cough* exaggerations *cough*.
Now, wasn't there a story in the last couple of days about a game that requires a 22 gig download? Not sure it'll tell you on the box that you need to spend another $14 just to play it. If they did, fewer people would buy it, wouldn't they?
Or maybe they can ship move dvds in the box (at 0.30 a piece, 22 gigs is $1.50 extra in manufacturing costs), and relieves people of having to download anything, the hassles of congested servers, having to re-download when they have to re-install, etc. That's worth a couple of bucks retail.
Netflix and their ilk
People can regulate their use to save money (they already do if they have crappy bandwidth caps), and there are plenty of alternatives to the Internet for entertainment.
online news sites (recall that other posted who pointed out about online news being the only way to hear non-governmentally-approved news?)
Doesn't need streaming video. A picture is worth 1,000 words, and 1,000 words are also worth 1,000 words. And people who want to watch streaming news videos can cut down on their cat videos.
OS updates (how many gigs of patches does a fresh install of Windows 7 require?)
Before the internet, OS patches were distributed by floppy. Quality control was a lot better, because the cost of patches was borne by the manufacturer. Look no further than the Internet for the whole "ship it and patch it" mentality. Microsoft is cutting half their testing positions.
I wonder what being in a botnet will cost people.
Hopefully enough that they won't keep on clicking on emails promising them $21 million dollars and a bigger penis.
VOIP won't be free
It isn't free now. You still need an ISP.
the aforementioned educational resources (Coursera, anyone?)
Coursera. Puh-lease. When the students don't get to grade their own papers, the completion rate falls to 2%. Typical rates are 5% - 7% (and that's when students get to grade their own papers).
Facebook's autoplay feature is going to start to cost people some real money before long. Imagine going to work and accidentally leaving Facebook logged in.
So they'll demand that it be disabled by default, or quit facebook. A win either way. And if you're stupid enough to stay logged in when you leave, you better not have any co-workers with a nasty sense of humour.
SVN checkouts and commits
Part of the cost of doing business, or if you're doing it as a volunteer, part of the cost of scratching your itch.
iTunes.
You already pay a "media tax" for the devices used to do music downloads.
Hell, ads will start to cost people.
So more people will be more aggressive about blocking those ads that suck bandwidth, which means a return to less intrusive ads. How is that a bad thing?
The federal excise tax alone is $0.184 per gallon source. You forgot state taxes. Also, there are plenty of countries with much higher gas prices. It was $6 a (US) gallon a while back, and is now back down to about $5.50. People adapt - they buy more fuel-efficient cars (good for auto sales), plan their trips better and drive a bit less, take public transit, and carpool (all good for the environment AND the wallet).
And before everyone whines "they don't have public transit here" - of course not, not with artificially low gas prices. Double them, and you'll certainly create the demand.
... and people who feel that there is sufficient value in it will pay the tax and watch, and skip watching something else. It's called putting your money where your mouth is. We're not talking about a ban here, like in China. This is a broke government looking to milk a cash cow.
Do I know someone who as done time? Of course. Who doesn't?
I don't know anyone who has done time. At least not more than a day or two in a city jail.
So you DO know someone who has done time. And how can you be certain that some of the people you know don't have a hidden past? It's not like most people are going to advertise it. 65 million Americans with criminal records
NEW YORK, March 23, 2011 - More than one in four U.S. adults -- roughly 65 million people --have an arrest or conviction that shows up in a routine criminal background check, and a new report from the National Employment Law Project finds that these Americans are facing unprecedented barriers to employment. With the rapidly expanding use of background checks, employers are routinely, and often illegally, excluding all job applicants who have criminal records from consideration, no matter how minor or dated their offenses.
The new report highlights the widespread and illegal use of blanket no-hire policies by providing numerous examples of online job ads posted on Craigslist, including some by major corporations, that effectively bar significant portions of the U.S. population from work opportunities. Because of their blunt impact and extreme overreach, these blanket no-hire policies have become the subject of increasing litigation, attracting heightened scrutiny from the courts and concerned policymakers. At the same time, 92 percent of employers conduct criminal background checks, according to a 2010 Society for Human Resources Management survey.
"The fast-growing use of criminal background checks casts an extraordinarily wide net, potentially ensnaring millions of Americans who have an arrest or other record that shows up in a routine check," said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. "These background checks are supposed to promote safety in the workplace, but many employers have gone way overboard, refusing to even consider highly qualified applicants just because of an old arrest or conviction. They're not even bothering to ask what the arrest or conviction was for, how far in the past it was, whether it's in any way related to the job, or what the person has done with his or her life since," said Owens.
The NELP report, entitled "65 Million ‘Need Not Apply': The Case for Reforming Criminal Background Checks for Employment," surveys online job ads posted on Craigslist in five major cities—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta. The survey found numerous examples in which extreme requirements precluded consideration of anyone with a criminal record, in clear violation of federal civil rights law. Major companies, such as Domino's Pizza, the Omni Hotel, and Adecco USA, were just some of the employers that listed entry-level jobs on Craigslist—ranging from warehouse workers to delivery drivers to sales clerks—that unambiguously shut the door on applicants with criminal records:
And with more than a million people in jail at any one time ...
And that doesn't count the 1 in 10 that pass through juvie.
It's already more than half. Netflix and youtube alone make up half, and there are other sources of streaming video. Web pages with embedded video, video ads, porn, your local TV broadcaster, whatever ... Also, the percentage of streaming video is growing - it's projected to be 84% of all traffic by 2017 (link posted elsewhere in thread).
You question doesn't answer why there shouldn't be a tax. Personally I think it's stupid, but I don't expect governments to act rationally. On the bright side, less video streaming might mean people getting off their behinds and engaging in physical activities - including rallies against Viktor Orban if they feel like it.
And less video streaming doesn't mean NO video streaming. Video streaming is one of those services that is elastic - demand is influenced by price.
To answer your question
Let me rephrase the question: How can someone starting out in the business determine what is original?
You can never be sure, especially if you're a newcomer to the field, that someone hasn't plowed that field before. How many times have you heard someone who isn't in tech come up to you and say "I've got this great idea ..." and they haven't even bothered to do the most cursory search, which would have revealed that it's not original at all?
Obviously you can't do this.
And then there's the whole question of timing. Sometimes, an idea's time has come, and multiple people will express it at the same time, then complain that someone else "stole their idea."
In other words, we're in an imperfect world, and you pays your money (or in this case, sweat equity) and you takes your chances. And the more experience you have, (hopefully) the less likely you'll end up pursuing an unoriginal idea.
Now, onto Harrison ... (rant time :-)
George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was as blatant a ripoff as I have ever heard. I recognized it as a ripoff of "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons the first time I heard it (with 5 sisters, you can be sure that the radio was tuned to top 40 a lot). Considering that the Chiffons hit came out in '63 and got LOTS of air time over the next few years because it was such a hit, and that Harrison started writing My Sweet Lord in 69. He even admitted to the obvious similarities
Harrison admits to having thought "Why didn't I realise?" when others started pointing out the similarity between the two songs
On the question of subconscious plagiarism>
In a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, John Lennon expressed his doubts about the notion of "subconscious" plagiarism: "He must have known, you know. He's smarter than that ... He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off."
There is no question that Harrison was guilty of plagiarism - just "was it intentional or subconscious."
And the song sucks. The Chffons was a bouncy happy tune, Harrison's more like something you'd play at a funeral. But that's just my opinion, and obviously I'm in the minority :-)
The issue I was highlighting is that more than half the bandwidth consumed is by video, and is definitely not essential. Neither netflix nor youtube, which contribute to more than half of ALL internet bandwidth usage, are essential. Cut off streaming video and your bandwidth requirements drop significantly. It's the same as with ad blockers - not downloading those video and graphic and flash and popup/popunder ads cuts down on bandwidth usage. It's not all bad.