Just to add to the love-fest: I decided to impulse-buy myself a Christmas present from Amazon. I ordered it December 22, in the middle of the night. I selected next-day shipping, which cost me a mere $24 (on a thousand-dollar purchase). My credit card company denied the transaction (which is fine, as it was admittedly out of character). I called the credit card company, gave them the go-ahead. Went back to Amazon and told them to re-try the charge. Some hours of eager anticipation later, my stuff arrived at 2:30pm on Christmas Eve, complete, intact, and as ordered.
So say what you will about Amazon, but that's goddamn efficiency.
Microsoft Office finished in 98 or so, and just adds bloat. OO.o is to that point now.
Nice tirade, but IMHO Office 2007 is the best version Microsoft has ever made. Sure, if all you ever use is OO.o then you probably think OO.o is a leading, high-quality office suite that matches anything else out there... but unfortunately it isn't.
Upon the return of my last trip, amoung other questions I was asked "Why are you returning to the United States? What do you do for a living? Where are you going to sleep tonight?"
Nice try, Limey! Yer high-falutin' Queen's English gives you away!
This issue has bounced back and forth in the courts a few times. I was issued a Green Card in 1978. It was a permanent card -- as in, when I turned 18 in theory I would still be carrying the same card with a picture of me as a child on it. Cards issued even earlier than mine inexplicably had wavy lines printed right over the photograph, like a canceled postage stamp.
Then one day, when I was in high school, my family all got letters saying that our cards were no longer permanent, and that not only would we need to go get new cards ASAP, but we would now need to report to the INS to renew the cards every few years (at our expense, of course -- and it wasn't cheap). Part of getting the new card also meant we needed to be fingerprinted, and I believe the fingerprint was incorporated into the new card.
Several years went by before I dealt with the INS again, but it seemed to me that a pattern of steadily eroding rights of immigrants was not advantageous for me, so I began the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. At that point I was told that citizenship applications were actually being processed faster than Green Card applications, because of the backlog under the new Green Card laws. Presumably there were lots of people whose Green Cards had expired, but who had not yet been given an appointment by the INS, and therefore they had a hard time getting work.
I became a citizen, but after that I heard the original decision had been reversed and that permanent resident alien status was now considered permanent again. I think you might still need to keep the photo up to date on the card, but the process is not as odious as it once was (and doesn't require as much in fees). Though I could be wrong. As a U.S. citizen it is no longer my concern -- until they pass some law that distinguishes between naturalized and God-given citizenship, in which case they'll be able to start taking my rights away all over again.
As a side note, I enjoyed becoming a U.S. citizen so much that I've since become a UK citizen, too. I hear tell they know how to do it over there, these days -- they'll take away your rights no matter what your immigration status is!;-)
as i understand it, Watchmen consists of only 12 standard comic books. and the hardcover release is listed on Amazon as having only 436 pages. it's not inconceivable that they could adapt the comic into a trilogy or quadrilogy/tetralogy.
It's pretty inconceivable, though. Watchmen isn't an adventure story like LotR. It's really an exploration of characters and ideas set in the form of a murder mystery within the milieu of American comic-book superheroes. Breaking it into two or more movies would be highly unsatisfying. It might be possible to break it at the point at which [characters] decide to help [character] escape from [place], but most of the "action" up until that point takes place in flashbacks! The audience would be left looking forward to the big climax, sure -- but they'd mostly feel puzzled and ripped off, because the entire setup of the movie was the mystery of who killed [character] and they never found out who. In fact, they would barely have even been offered a suspect by that point.
It is a fun idea, but so far as I know all full-language speech recognition software still requires extensive "training" by the user in order for it to get the words right consistently. It's not advanced enough yet to be able to pick up random voices and construct accurate sentences from them.
The way US copyright law works is that copyright exists automatically, no registration is necessary. However, registration *is* required before filing a lawsuit.
But the important thing to remember is that, even if you haven't registered, if someone infringes you can register and then file a lawsuit. You might not get the full advantages of registering before someone infringed, but having failed to register so far won't stop you. It can be done retroactively.
I feel as though I'm the only geek that doesn't read science fiction.
I read a good amount and I also tend to avoid genre fiction. But that's not really because I don't like the genres -- it's the trappings of genre fiction that get old and boring, IMHO. Who wants to read about a bunch of cardboard characters strung together with cliches? But there's usually something from every genre that's worth reading, just because it's good. I really can't see myself getting into Louis L'amour, for example, and I don't really even enjoy that many Western movies, but I'm perfectly happy to read a Western by Cormac McCarthy. Likewise there's definitely some good sci-fi out there, despite the fact that much of it is just pointless genre hackwork. Science fiction really did change my life, by way of Star Wars when I was five. So just because I don't enjoy mindless rehashes and pastiches of the same stuff I liked when I was in preschool hardly means I'm going to write off sci-fi altogether. There's nothing wrong with being selective. Maybe John Scalzi's books are good; I wouldn't know, I haven't read them. From what I've read in this thread, though, they might be something that I'll pick up at the library just to try.
I'm not glad he's dead, either. I wish he had spilled more, about other Nixon cronies (like Rumsfeld and Cheney), and he might have done so once the Bush era was finally safely over, and those other criminals were as "retired" as he was. But evidently there wasn't enough personal gain in that kind of disclosure, so Felt never gave it. And now he never will.
I heard Woodward interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR the other day (I think it was a rerun) and according to him, the last time he visited Mark Felt at Felt's home in California, Felt was in poor health. Specifically, he suffered from some form of dementia. According to Woodward, at that time he could barely remember why Nixon had to leave office. He knew who Woodward was, and he told Woodward that he and Bernstein "had done the right thing," but specific details of their past dealings were already lost to him. So as far as spilling any more beans, that door was closed.
I'm going to guess that Apple is backing out of Macworld SF because it's so poorly run that no one wants to go. $20k for a table? sure. five 30" Cinema displays 'go missing' from the loading dock? sorry, not our fault, not our problem. Need a new outlet? You have to hire one of our electricians. How many hours do you want him for? oh, we don't know how long it'll take, you have to figure that out yourself.
Poorly-run it may be. But though the booth pricing sounds like IDG World Expo's (the company that runs MacWorld Expo) fault, the rest should probably be chalked up to Moscone Center, which is heavily unionized. I have non-union friends who do A/V for trade shows and the like, and when they work at Moscone they're not even allowed to load their own equipment in/out, much less plug it in.
Thirded. I don't even understand what the new user page is trying to achieve. Slashdot is the only site I know that keeps the same fugly color scheme and design but expends extra effort to mess up the UI on a regular basis. If I could roll back to the design from 2000, I would.
The turnover is only "much faster" because A.) you're older; and B.) the seasons are shorter and the stories aren't episodic serials anymore.
David Tennant has already played the Doctor for three seasons. That's as long as William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, or Peter Davidson, and longer than Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy. Historically most of the Doctor's companions have only lasted one season, and the current show has actually made them all into recurring characters, so you can't exactly call it "turnover."
Years ago, when I was working the swing shift at a 7-11 store, my boss -- a great old guy by the name of Dave Clarke, now passed -- told me that if you're going to write something down that you want to say to somebody, you sign it. In fact, you sign it and date it, so people know when you said it. If you don't have the nerve to do that, then maybe it shouldn't be said. Maybe you're just being a petulant little jerk.
The more I thought about this, the more I took it to heart. Today I absolutely believe it. If you have something to say, then people should know that it was you who said it. I file it under that time-worn category that your grand-pappy would call "building character."
But imagine if, somehow, I never had the option to write something anonymously. What if we had future space-pens, and if I wrote a note and stuck it on the dorm refrigerator, they could analyze the ink and find out if it was mine? What if there was NO WAY for me to leave anonymous messages? Probably I would just not say half of the snotty things that occurred to me to say, out of fear of consequences. That would be beneficial to other people, I guess. But in a world like that, how I would I build character? How would I grow up to be a mature, responsible adult with integrity?
As irritating as it is to everybody who has already passed this particular milestone in their lives that I describe, building character basically comes down to learning to make good choices. Unfortunately, it's not a skill we're born with. If people are never even encouraged to try to learn the skill, my hunch is that they never will. Every choice that you take away from people limits their effectiveness as human beings. I believe this absolutely.
You made mistakes when you were younger. I made mistakes. It's unfortunate that grown-ups like us still have to live in a world where people still keep making mistakes, but c'est la vie. Mistakes are how we learn.
And at the end of the day, I absolutely know what Esther Dyson is saying and I agree 100 percent. On both counts. I think it's a shame that I can make a statement like "I am against abortion" and people will assume that I want to pass a law outlawing abortion. The two ideas aren't the same. And I, too, don't see a need to go around posting anonymous messages, but I actually fear the kind of world we'd live in if that were not possible. For several reasons.
P.S. Bruce, you've made your opinion on the signal-to-noise ratio on Slashdot plain many times, but I consider myself an intelligent person, and I for one browse at -1. Maybe it all comes down to expectations.
I know that both Verizon and Comcast offer no-strings-attached DSL/cable (at least in my area), although Comcast has a surcharge for TV-less internet that slightly exceeds the cost of their $15/month basic cable package, making it slightly absurd.
Right, so what I did was sign up for the TV-less Internet, then when the install guys came I chatted about sports for 15 minutes and offered them beers, so before they left they gave me a handy-dandy cable splitter, free of charge. I get more channels than I would if I paid for the basic package, as it turns out.
If you read the complaint [fsf.org], the FSF acknowledges that Linksys* has already released most of the code they are required to release. The big problem is that Linksys has a habit of releasing the binary versions first, then neglecting to release the source until the FSF complains and dragging their feet even then.
That sounds like there's a helluva good case to be made for willful infringement. Penalties for copyright violation are a lot harsher when the infringer knew that the material was copyrighted, vs. if they were ignorant of its status. It sounds like the FSF has some statutory damages coming.
(2)(a) If the teacher is not cooperative, I would remind the teacher that theft is still illegal, and that she should return the CDs to my teenager, else she could be prosecuted for criminal acts.
The thing about making threats is that if you aren't equipped to back up your words with actions, you end up just looking like a silly, weak asshole. In this case, a lawsuit against a school district that confiscated a bunch of burned CD-Rs from a student on school property during school hours would never make it as far as your lawyer's letterhead, let alone a courtroom.
(b) Schedule a meeting with the superintendent of the school district to discuss the teacher's stubbornness.
Well, that ought to elicit 20 minutes of patient smiling, at least.
Never thought about how you'd bill for freelance writing. I guess that might be easier to estimate, am I right? I mean, they dont ask you to change the entire plot mid-stream do they?
Seldom. That is, in my experience they do that far less often than they do in Web development -- where it seems sort of common.:-S
Estimating is dead easy, but it's a little bit interesting because it's sort of backwards. Basically, believe it or not, the age-old practice of paying by the word is still pretty much standard. Even if a client just wants a round figure, a per-word rate is still how I base my estimate in my mind. But the thing is, the client will say, "We want a manuscript that does XYZ and we want to get it out there at this time and it needs to be about this long." So like I said -- they've just told you how much work and when they want it. Often they will also have a standard rate, so the "how much money" factor is locked, too. Often you're better off trying to push out the deadline than trying to up the rate. But really all you have to decide is yes or no. The only card you get to keep hidden is how long it's really going to take you to complete the job -- and that's how you can tell whether it's going to be profitable for you or not. In that sense, it's kind of like Hollywood accounting -- you could just as easily come up with a per-hour rate, but it's just not done that way. But sometimes you don't even want to hold onto the time card, either -- you can make good money if your clients know you can take an assignment at 4pm and turn it around by 9pm.
Yeah, it's interesting work -- not least because the business is a little bit weird.;-)
But as far as pulling the rug out from under you, no, that's actually uncommon. I've worked on both sides of the editorial desk -- I've been the guy writing the piece and the guy commissioning it -- and often the deadlines are such that even a bad manuscript has to suffice. The thing is, in those situations the client will rarely let you know just how much they didn't like it. Unless you have a really good pre-existing relationship with that client, you'll just never get another job from that client again.
Is the business competitive? I'll put it to you this way: I believe there's room for everybody. There's enough work. I'll help anybody with promise to get into the field. But the thing is, if you're going to succeed, you need to be better at it than me. And you're not.;-) That sounds like a jerky thing to say, I know -- but I believe you need to have a little bit of that jerk in you to have enough nerve to stick with it. It's still freelance writing, and nobody ever told you freelance writing was a good way to get rich. If you want to play it safe, get a job at a corporation.
I hear you; I'm just saying it's not the perfect fit for everybody.
I should probably add at this point that in the field in which I work (freelance writing), we work for flat fees. There's no time tracking. The client tells us, essentially, how much work they want, when they want it, and what they're going to pay us for that work. We negotiate, then we say yes or no. After that, the essence of the business is A.) being able to know what the client really wants and to deliver that, consistently; and B.) being able to do it blazingly fast. Since they're paying us flat rate, the faster we can do a high-quality job, the more money we make. It's not an easy road if buying a boat is your goal, but if you can find your niche and a few reliable clients, you can do quite nicely.
I second this. As someone that had trouble getting paid when I started out, I have to acknowledge it was my own fault for doing work for either friends, or friends of friends that were just starting out.
My best friend Ryan had this problem when he started his own Web design business. He would give good rates to friends, but the problem was that his rates were so low (and he didn't charge a penalty for change orders) that they didn't mind throwing endless changes at him -- without adjusting the deadline, mind you. He ended up working round the clock for these so-called friends, literally giving up sleep so he could deliver what he promised. The shame was that most of the work was crap -- your basic logos and Web pages, nothing he'd really want to add to his portfolio.
But the real downside is that he ended up with severe, crippling Repeat Stress Injury in both arms. That's right -- he worked so long and so hard on the computer that he literally crippled himself. For a year or more he was in so much pain that he'd have to spend entire days bedridden, popping horse tranquilizers. He tried every treatment possible -- every kind of pill, massage, acupuncture, etc. -- everything short of surgery. Just to give you an idea, if he took a girl out on a date he wouldn't be able to open the car door for her because it would mean he'd lose another day due to pain. He'd have to ask her to open his door. The bottom line is that the only way he could wean himself back to health was to walk away from the computer -- probably forever. He still does some design work now but he relies heavily on assistants and he knows better than to push it.
I used to joke that he got himself into this position because he didn't charge enough. But I was only half kidding. And think about this, too -- because Ryan was self-employed at the time, he wasn't eligible for workman's compensation or state disability. You bet he moved back in with his mom. Not everybody will be so lucky.
Slashdot Mirror
But Sun open sourced Java, and Jonathan Schwartz claims that Java is Sun's most profitable software product.
Just to add to the love-fest: I decided to impulse-buy myself a Christmas present from Amazon. I ordered it December 22, in the middle of the night. I selected next-day shipping, which cost me a mere $24 (on a thousand-dollar purchase). My credit card company denied the transaction (which is fine, as it was admittedly out of character). I called the credit card company, gave them the go-ahead. Went back to Amazon and told them to re-try the charge. Some hours of eager anticipation later, my stuff arrived at 2:30pm on Christmas Eve, complete, intact, and as ordered.
So say what you will about Amazon, but that's goddamn efficiency.
Does anybody really write applications using XUL?
Miro is one.
I think it's relative. OO works well enough for most. So does word. Both a full of bugs.
If Word is "full of bugs," at least Microsoft still releases regular patches for it. The point is: Are the OO.o bugs getting fixed?
Microsoft Office finished in 98 or so, and just adds bloat. OO.o is to that point now.
Nice tirade, but IMHO Office 2007 is the best version Microsoft has ever made. Sure, if all you ever use is OO.o then you probably think OO.o is a leading, high-quality office suite that matches anything else out there ... but unfortunately it isn't.
Upon the return of my last trip, amoung other questions I was asked "Why are you returning to the United States? What do you do for a living? Where are you going to sleep tonight?"
Nice try, Limey! Yer high-falutin' Queen's English gives you away!
This issue has bounced back and forth in the courts a few times. I was issued a Green Card in 1978. It was a permanent card -- as in, when I turned 18 in theory I would still be carrying the same card with a picture of me as a child on it. Cards issued even earlier than mine inexplicably had wavy lines printed right over the photograph, like a canceled postage stamp.
Then one day, when I was in high school, my family all got letters saying that our cards were no longer permanent, and that not only would we need to go get new cards ASAP, but we would now need to report to the INS to renew the cards every few years (at our expense, of course -- and it wasn't cheap). Part of getting the new card also meant we needed to be fingerprinted, and I believe the fingerprint was incorporated into the new card.
Several years went by before I dealt with the INS again, but it seemed to me that a pattern of steadily eroding rights of immigrants was not advantageous for me, so I began the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. At that point I was told that citizenship applications were actually being processed faster than Green Card applications, because of the backlog under the new Green Card laws. Presumably there were lots of people whose Green Cards had expired, but who had not yet been given an appointment by the INS, and therefore they had a hard time getting work.
I became a citizen, but after that I heard the original decision had been reversed and that permanent resident alien status was now considered permanent again. I think you might still need to keep the photo up to date on the card, but the process is not as odious as it once was (and doesn't require as much in fees). Though I could be wrong. As a U.S. citizen it is no longer my concern -- until they pass some law that distinguishes between naturalized and God-given citizenship, in which case they'll be able to start taking my rights away all over again.
As a side note, I enjoyed becoming a U.S. citizen so much that I've since become a UK citizen, too. I hear tell they know how to do it over there, these days -- they'll take away your rights no matter what your immigration status is! ;-)
as i understand it, Watchmen consists of only 12 standard comic books. and the hardcover release is listed on Amazon as having only 436 pages. it's not inconceivable that they could adapt the comic into a trilogy or quadrilogy/tetralogy.
It's pretty inconceivable, though. Watchmen isn't an adventure story like LotR. It's really an exploration of characters and ideas set in the form of a murder mystery within the milieu of American comic-book superheroes. Breaking it into two or more movies would be highly unsatisfying. It might be possible to break it at the point at which [characters] decide to help [character] escape from [place], but most of the "action" up until that point takes place in flashbacks! The audience would be left looking forward to the big climax, sure -- but they'd mostly feel puzzled and ripped off, because the entire setup of the movie was the mystery of who killed [character] and they never found out who. In fact, they would barely have even been offered a suspect by that point.
It is a fun idea, but so far as I know all full-language speech recognition software still requires extensive "training" by the user in order for it to get the words right consistently. It's not advanced enough yet to be able to pick up random voices and construct accurate sentences from them.
The way US copyright law works is that copyright exists automatically, no registration is necessary. However, registration *is* required before filing a lawsuit.
But the important thing to remember is that, even if you haven't registered, if someone infringes you can register and then file a lawsuit. You might not get the full advantages of registering before someone infringed, but having failed to register so far won't stop you. It can be done retroactively.
I feel as though I'm the only geek that doesn't read science fiction.
I read a good amount and I also tend to avoid genre fiction. But that's not really because I don't like the genres -- it's the trappings of genre fiction that get old and boring, IMHO. Who wants to read about a bunch of cardboard characters strung together with cliches? But there's usually something from every genre that's worth reading, just because it's good. I really can't see myself getting into Louis L'amour, for example, and I don't really even enjoy that many Western movies, but I'm perfectly happy to read a Western by Cormac McCarthy. Likewise there's definitely some good sci-fi out there, despite the fact that much of it is just pointless genre hackwork. Science fiction really did change my life, by way of Star Wars when I was five. So just because I don't enjoy mindless rehashes and pastiches of the same stuff I liked when I was in preschool hardly means I'm going to write off sci-fi altogether. There's nothing wrong with being selective. Maybe John Scalzi's books are good; I wouldn't know, I haven't read them. From what I've read in this thread, though, they might be something that I'll pick up at the library just to try.
I'm not glad he's dead, either. I wish he had spilled more, about other Nixon cronies (like Rumsfeld and Cheney), and he might have done so once the Bush era was finally safely over, and those other criminals were as "retired" as he was. But evidently there wasn't enough personal gain in that kind of disclosure, so Felt never gave it. And now he never will.
I heard Woodward interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR the other day (I think it was a rerun) and according to him, the last time he visited Mark Felt at Felt's home in California, Felt was in poor health. Specifically, he suffered from some form of dementia. According to Woodward, at that time he could barely remember why Nixon had to leave office. He knew who Woodward was, and he told Woodward that he and Bernstein "had done the right thing," but specific details of their past dealings were already lost to him. So as far as spilling any more beans, that door was closed.
I'm going to guess that Apple is backing out of Macworld SF because it's so poorly run that no one wants to go. $20k for a table? sure. five 30" Cinema displays 'go missing' from the loading dock? sorry, not our fault, not our problem. Need a new outlet? You have to hire one of our electricians. How many hours do you want him for? oh, we don't know how long it'll take, you have to figure that out yourself.
Poorly-run it may be. But though the booth pricing sounds like IDG World Expo's (the company that runs MacWorld Expo) fault, the rest should probably be chalked up to Moscone Center, which is heavily unionized. I have non-union friends who do A/V for trade shows and the like, and when they work at Moscone they're not even allowed to load their own equipment in/out, much less plug it in.
Thirded. I don't even understand what the new user page is trying to achieve. Slashdot is the only site I know that keeps the same fugly color scheme and design but expends extra effort to mess up the UI on a regular basis. If I could roll back to the design from 2000, I would.
The only thing I found remotely humorous on the Catherine Tate Show was Lauren ("am I bovvered"); the rest was just unfunny (IMHO).
Have you seen this bit from one of the Comic Relief specials?
The turnover is only "much faster" because A.) you're older; and B.) the seasons are shorter and the stories aren't episodic serials anymore.
David Tennant has already played the Doctor for three seasons. That's as long as William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, or Peter Davidson, and longer than Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy. Historically most of the Doctor's companions have only lasted one season, and the current show has actually made them all into recurring characters, so you can't exactly call it "turnover."
OK, how about this angle?
Years ago, when I was working the swing shift at a 7-11 store, my boss -- a great old guy by the name of Dave Clarke, now passed -- told me that if you're going to write something down that you want to say to somebody, you sign it. In fact, you sign it and date it, so people know when you said it. If you don't have the nerve to do that, then maybe it shouldn't be said. Maybe you're just being a petulant little jerk.
The more I thought about this, the more I took it to heart. Today I absolutely believe it. If you have something to say, then people should know that it was you who said it. I file it under that time-worn category that your grand-pappy would call "building character."
But imagine if, somehow, I never had the option to write something anonymously. What if we had future space-pens, and if I wrote a note and stuck it on the dorm refrigerator, they could analyze the ink and find out if it was mine? What if there was NO WAY for me to leave anonymous messages? Probably I would just not say half of the snotty things that occurred to me to say, out of fear of consequences. That would be beneficial to other people, I guess. But in a world like that, how I would I build character? How would I grow up to be a mature, responsible adult with integrity?
As irritating as it is to everybody who has already passed this particular milestone in their lives that I describe, building character basically comes down to learning to make good choices. Unfortunately, it's not a skill we're born with. If people are never even encouraged to try to learn the skill, my hunch is that they never will. Every choice that you take away from people limits their effectiveness as human beings. I believe this absolutely.
You made mistakes when you were younger. I made mistakes. It's unfortunate that grown-ups like us still have to live in a world where people still keep making mistakes, but c'est la vie. Mistakes are how we learn.
And at the end of the day, I absolutely know what Esther Dyson is saying and I agree 100 percent. On both counts. I think it's a shame that I can make a statement like "I am against abortion" and people will assume that I want to pass a law outlawing abortion. The two ideas aren't the same. And I, too, don't see a need to go around posting anonymous messages, but I actually fear the kind of world we'd live in if that were not possible. For several reasons.
P.S. Bruce, you've made your opinion on the signal-to-noise ratio on Slashdot plain many times, but I consider myself an intelligent person, and I for one browse at -1. Maybe it all comes down to expectations.
I know that both Verizon and Comcast offer no-strings-attached DSL/cable (at least in my area), although Comcast has a surcharge for TV-less internet that slightly exceeds the cost of their $15/month basic cable package, making it slightly absurd.
Right, so what I did was sign up for the TV-less Internet, then when the install guys came I chatted about sports for 15 minutes and offered them beers, so before they left they gave me a handy-dandy cable splitter, free of charge. I get more channels than I would if I paid for the basic package, as it turns out.
If you read the complaint [fsf.org], the FSF acknowledges that Linksys* has already released most of the code they are required to release. The big problem is that Linksys has a habit of releasing the binary versions first, then neglecting to release the source until the FSF complains and dragging their feet even then.
That sounds like there's a helluva good case to be made for willful infringement. Penalties for copyright violation are a lot harsher when the infringer knew that the material was copyrighted, vs. if they were ignorant of its status. It sounds like the FSF has some statutory damages coming.
And the thing that their partners like most about them? They have a lot of money, and/or are good-looking.
(2)(a) If the teacher is not cooperative, I would remind the teacher that theft is still illegal, and that she should return the CDs to my teenager, else she could be prosecuted for criminal acts.
The thing about making threats is that if you aren't equipped to back up your words with actions, you end up just looking like a silly, weak asshole. In this case, a lawsuit against a school district that confiscated a bunch of burned CD-Rs from a student on school property during school hours would never make it as far as your lawyer's letterhead, let alone a courtroom.
(b) Schedule a meeting with the superintendent of the school district to discuss the teacher's stubbornness.
Well, that ought to elicit 20 minutes of patient smiling, at least.
Whereas I thought it was pretty good. Oryx and Crake is even better.
Never thought about how you'd bill for freelance writing. I guess that might be easier to estimate, am I right? I mean, they dont ask you to change the entire plot mid-stream do they?
Seldom. That is, in my experience they do that far less often than they do in Web development -- where it seems sort of common. :-S
Estimating is dead easy, but it's a little bit interesting because it's sort of backwards. Basically, believe it or not, the age-old practice of paying by the word is still pretty much standard. Even if a client just wants a round figure, a per-word rate is still how I base my estimate in my mind. But the thing is, the client will say, "We want a manuscript that does XYZ and we want to get it out there at this time and it needs to be about this long." So like I said -- they've just told you how much work and when they want it. Often they will also have a standard rate, so the "how much money" factor is locked, too. Often you're better off trying to push out the deadline than trying to up the rate. But really all you have to decide is yes or no. The only card you get to keep hidden is how long it's really going to take you to complete the job -- and that's how you can tell whether it's going to be profitable for you or not. In that sense, it's kind of like Hollywood accounting -- you could just as easily come up with a per-hour rate, but it's just not done that way. But sometimes you don't even want to hold onto the time card, either -- you can make good money if your clients know you can take an assignment at 4pm and turn it around by 9pm.
Yeah, it's interesting work -- not least because the business is a little bit weird. ;-)
But as far as pulling the rug out from under you, no, that's actually uncommon. I've worked on both sides of the editorial desk -- I've been the guy writing the piece and the guy commissioning it -- and often the deadlines are such that even a bad manuscript has to suffice. The thing is, in those situations the client will rarely let you know just how much they didn't like it. Unless you have a really good pre-existing relationship with that client, you'll just never get another job from that client again.
Is the business competitive? I'll put it to you this way: I believe there's room for everybody. There's enough work. I'll help anybody with promise to get into the field. But the thing is, if you're going to succeed, you need to be better at it than me. And you're not. ;-) That sounds like a jerky thing to say, I know -- but I believe you need to have a little bit of that jerk in you to have enough nerve to stick with it. It's still freelance writing, and nobody ever told you freelance writing was a good way to get rich. If you want to play it safe, get a job at a corporation.
I hear you; I'm just saying it's not the perfect fit for everybody.
I should probably add at this point that in the field in which I work (freelance writing), we work for flat fees. There's no time tracking. The client tells us, essentially, how much work they want, when they want it, and what they're going to pay us for that work. We negotiate, then we say yes or no. After that, the essence of the business is A.) being able to know what the client really wants and to deliver that, consistently; and B.) being able to do it blazingly fast. Since they're paying us flat rate, the faster we can do a high-quality job, the more money we make. It's not an easy road if buying a boat is your goal, but if you can find your niche and a few reliable clients, you can do quite nicely.
I second this. As someone that had trouble getting paid when I started out, I have to acknowledge it was my own fault for doing work for either friends, or friends of friends that were just starting out.
My best friend Ryan had this problem when he started his own Web design business. He would give good rates to friends, but the problem was that his rates were so low (and he didn't charge a penalty for change orders) that they didn't mind throwing endless changes at him -- without adjusting the deadline, mind you. He ended up working round the clock for these so-called friends, literally giving up sleep so he could deliver what he promised. The shame was that most of the work was crap -- your basic logos and Web pages, nothing he'd really want to add to his portfolio.
But the real downside is that he ended up with severe, crippling Repeat Stress Injury in both arms. That's right -- he worked so long and so hard on the computer that he literally crippled himself. For a year or more he was in so much pain that he'd have to spend entire days bedridden, popping horse tranquilizers. He tried every treatment possible -- every kind of pill, massage, acupuncture, etc. -- everything short of surgery. Just to give you an idea, if he took a girl out on a date he wouldn't be able to open the car door for her because it would mean he'd lose another day due to pain. He'd have to ask her to open his door. The bottom line is that the only way he could wean himself back to health was to walk away from the computer -- probably forever. He still does some design work now but he relies heavily on assistants and he knows better than to push it.
I used to joke that he got himself into this position because he didn't charge enough. But I was only half kidding. And think about this, too -- because Ryan was self-employed at the time, he wasn't eligible for workman's compensation or state disability. You bet he moved back in with his mom. Not everybody will be so lucky.