/. needs to do a scientific poll to tell us how many people who are reading/. at the moment are "pretending to work at the office" and how many are "pretending to be working" while telecommuting. They might also have a Cowboy Neal style question for those who are actually reading/. on their own time.
My reaction to that quote was simply that a recession might be good for the economy. Recessions generally help realign imbalances in the job market and in people's attitudes.
Of course the other part of the article didn't make sense. What is an "entry wage?"
More often than not, companies lowball starting workers. Comparing wages to housing, the price of gold and other indicators, I think there is good indication all workers are getting lowballed at the moment. If wages were somehow correlated with productivity, then the value of workers (along with the amount that they are paid) may have jumped while us old timey IT folks failed to realize it.
I am not a fan of media consolidation. For that matter, I actively work promoting alternative media.
That said, what is going on in the technology is a blurring of lines between different media. FCC rules that assume some sort of clear and magical distinction between newspaper, TV and radio are faced with a market where newspapers have a need to stream audio and video content to the public. TV shows need to be making print copies of their programs available and radio are compelled to push out more print and video material.
There are now 500+ channels on cable, on demand shows and the Internet.
Tossing out old regulations based on some sort of idea of completely separate media channels is more likely to generate more competition as different concerns struggle to make a multimedia presence.
I have not illusions that there is a good party and a bad party. Both seem to be getting worse.
The only way for things to get better is for use to judge individuals. Unfortunately, what we seem to have now is a generation of politicians that is appealing to nihilistic instincts.
"Blaming the geeks is unacceptable, even if the technology was faulty."
I think you just made a false assumption that geeks are, by definition, powerless workers. In this case, the geeks were at the top of the chain of command. The article notes:
George W. Bush embraced the philosophy, as did his eventual choice for defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld
The network design mentioned in the article came from the top. The workers who weren't comfortable with the idea and who thought that controlling Iraq would take more troops were silenced.
You have a valid point that the leaders should be the ones ladled with the responsibility. In this case, the geeks were the leaders.
It is really sad that the Republicans of the '00s decided to start acting like the Democrats of the '60s. Bush outspent LBJ. Like LBJ, he started a war that his predecessors must finish.
The Republicans deserve being kicked for their idiocy. Bush made one of the classic blunders: Never start a war when you are having diplomatic success.
The Republicans deserve to get whacked upside the head. The problem is that the Bush adminstrations leap to left was matched by the Democratic Party's wild flailing to the outer most fringes of the left.
Our problem is that that opposition party hasn't spent its decade in minority improving. So, we are in cycle where we will have politicians behaving badly for the foreseeable future.
I would actually go as far as to say that Science is largely built by people using the representations of others.
If one scientist reads about a scientific experiment of another scientist. The scientist decides to try the experiment. The scientist sits down and repeats the experiment and carefully writes down each step he takes in the experiment. When he is done, he has a notebook full of information and test results that are surprisingly similar to the first scientist.
So, we now have the case where scientist A has a notebook that says I did this and got these results. Scientist B has a notebook says I did this and got these results. The two notebooks are surprisingly similar.
Is Scientist B a copyright violating plagiarist?
There is one very subtle point to be made. Yes, there is an argument that Scientist B should cite Scientist A. However, this is countered by the idea that nature is the source of the information. Scientists may intentionally distance themselves the original experiment to make sure that information from the first experiment does not affect the second experiment; in which case it is easy to accidentally lose the citation.
Science was built by people repeating the same experiments over, over and over again. When they repeat the same experiments, they come up with the same results. If we had a lawsuit every time one scientist repeated an experiment of another simply because the notes on the experiment came out similar, then science would halt dead in its tracks.
Lets say Scientist A and Scientist B had different theories about what caused a result set. In that case the two scientists would have different narratives for the existing data. They then would put together a third experiment to test different predictions.
It sounds likely that this Discovery group is engaged in crap science. There really is no experiment which can ever prove of disprove the disagreement between evolutionists and creationists. The fact that creationists can stick their narrative on the works of other scientists proves this point.
We may hate creationists with every fiber of our being. They may be a thorn in our sides. But do we really want courts controlling the natural give and take that exists in the scientific community because we hate creationists? Do we really want science to be driven by our hatred of a group that is on the fringe?
Marketing it as the original work would be a violation of copyright and would be plagiarism. The article did not really make that case. The case they made was simply that the the writers of the article hate the group in question. Hating somebody does not make their actions wrong. The fact that this group does junk science does not make what they did illegal either.
On the parody front. There is a whole bunch of really crappy parody. Most people who attempt parody fail at it. Most parodies aren't funny. Most if it is mean spirited and cynical. In most cases, a person engages in parody simply to shoot down the arguments of their opponents. The fact that something isn't funny doesn't mean the person wasn't trying to parody.
Speaking of parody, this guy spaff is funny. He puts silly lyrics a top famous pop songs. The funny lyric songs are often dead ringers for the real songs. The courts have ruled that Spaff's sophomoric behavior is legal, although some singers really dislike being spaffed.
It is possible that what this Discovery group did was illegal. Sticking a different narrative on a set of pictures is not illegal. Now, Publishing the new work and saying that the pictures were the creation of the new author would be wrong.
Simply the fact that something exists does not show if the person who created it was doing something wrong. It would be plagiarism if the guy passed off the underlying work as his own. It would be copyright violations if he were selling it. In this case, the question would be about how the creationist group was marketing the piece. But that really is not what the linked article was doing. The linked article was full of people who wanted to express their hatred of the Discovery group. There was speculation on the intent of the Discovery group, and it is possible that the speculation is correct.
Simply hating someone does not make them wrong. The people writing in the article clearly hate the group they are writing about. My life experience is that you really shouldn't trust such groups when they decry the intent of the person they hate. You need to find other sources to find out what is really going wrong.
There might be some claim of fair use for parody or for educational purposes.
Showing that you can stick a different narrative to a data set or to a film is a standard part of discourse. Even if intelligent design is fake science, putting a different narrative to data sets is part of the way real science works.
Scientist A says, "I have a data set and this is what I think happened." Scientist B might take the same thing and say "This story works as well."
Scientist B's showing that a different narrative works for the data is neither plagiarism nor copyright violation. It is discourse.
The article in the link was just about the utter contempt the writers feel about any ideas that fall outside the scope of their narrow little minds. I didn't bother watching the videos, but from the info in the blog I wouldn't say Harvard has either a slam dunk case on proving plagiarism or copyright violation. The fact that a copy exists without citations does not mean that the people doing the parody were passing off the work as their own. The parody clearly is not depriving Harvard of anything, which is the real kicker in copyright cases.
If this video simply exists to show that you can put a different narrative on a piece about cells, then it probably would pass the balancing test. If they were trying to sell it as their own research, it probably would not.
Of course, what people really want to talk about is how much they hate creationists... A topic I find boring.
How the person got the address is central to determining if the Link Exchange Request was spam. The post really was not clear on this issue. If this was the point of the article, then there would be an interesting discussion about whether or presence of an email address on a web site is sufficient in itself to conclude that the email address wants emails about the site.
Clearly the bots that make and sell email lists by scraping sites are spammers, but there are many legimate reasons for sending emails to email addresses found on a site. I admit, I've sent emails to addresses I found on a website telling them that they had broken links or bad information on their site. On today's slashdot article on banner ads installing malware, several people seemed to be of the opinion that web surfers should send emails to sites running Doubleclick ads to complain about the malware banners.
At what point is sending an email to an address posted on the site spam? I don't think the/. post that started this thread made a sufficient case for a lawsuit. He may have had a better case, and just failed to give all the evidence in the post.
Imagine that the SaveTheWhales site had a list of email addresses on it. My organization is holding a SaveTheDolphin rally. Would it be wrong for my organization to send these people a notification of the rally? It is possiple that SaveTheWhale people would like to know of other organizations protecting mammals of the sea. Of course, it is possible that SaveTheWhale-types think dolphins are nothing but swimming rats compared to the mighty whale. Such people would consider my dolphin loving organization as second rate hacks and the email spam.
I would consider the SaveTheDolphins scraping the SaveTheWhale site of emails bad etiquette, but I am not sure when I would want to see lawsuits flying.
I think link exchange requests are annoying, but I don't consider them spam when they are sent to a contact address for a web site. The world wide web is premised on the idea that people will be actively building links to resources. Most link exchange requests are garbage, but it is part of a legimate process. Even though I ignore the things, I hate seeing small businesses sued for the practice.
It is possible for mail with the subject line "Link Exchange Request" to be spam, just as it is possible for mail with the subject "You won ebay auction #1234..." to be spam.
Unfortunately, the slashdot article was too vague to let us know if this mail was really spam or something else.
What I take from the post is that there is a guy name Haselton who sues people when he gets unsolicited email. This guy received a link exchange request. He sued the sender. He lost the case, then posted a poorly edited self-righteous account of the event on slashdot.
The thing we don't know is how the Link-Exchange-Requester got Haselton's email address. We also don't know how many of these requests the guy sent.
I've designed web sites that solicit information from the public. In every single case, the site gets bombarded with erroneous information. For example, I find it highly unlikely that George Bush really wants information on buying real estate in podunk whereever. Often people put in names of people that they want to annoy.
Let's think about Haselton for a second. Here is a guy who is well known for suing people when he gets unsolicited email. Such people tend to get spammers ticked off. And, what do spammers do when they get ticked off?
You've got it! They enterd the person's email address in every single mail list and request for information form that they can find.
So, what we know from this poorly written post is that a guy requesting link exchanges has an entry in his mail list that says Haselton owns slashdot. We know that there is no public information that makes this connection.
My conclusion from this information is that someone who hates Haselton managed to sneak this entry into a database of people interested in link exchanges, and that some poor schmuck who isn't familiar with slashdot sent a link exchange request based on that erroneous information.
It is possible that the Link-Exchange-requester really is a spammer. The fact that Haselton got email that he did not request is not sufficient to say it is so. If Haselton really did sue a guy for having a database entry with erroneous information, then this entry should be filed under the heading of "nuisance law suits" and we should be complaining about how litigation happy souls like Haselton have a a chilling effect on legitimate business operations.
Who is right or wrong in this case depends entirely on how the link-exchange-requestor get the email address. That issue was not mentioned in the post.
The problem isn't unique to Doubleclick. It exists anytime you have multiple parties producing dynamic content for a site. The producers of Malware seek out every opportunity to inject their slime onto the net. If you have a forum, guestbook or allow comments on blogs, you will get hit by bots trying to find ways to inject malware into a post. The people playing this game buy expired domains and fill them with malware garbage.
If you look at the logs for any web site, you will probably find hits from malware distributors trying to find ways to hack in and inject their poison.
I suspect that thousands of links on posts from slashdot go to sites that try to do wrong. Undoubtedly the purveyors of malware have probably tried to inject their slime into Wikipedia.
I don't think the game of declaring any site that allows third party creatives an enemy of the people will solve the problem. A better approach to blocking sites like Doubleclick is to try and engage the people allowing third party creatives to develop better ways to monitor and reduce the malware problem.
We also have to accept that there will never be a perfect way to stop malware and the creators of malware are very good at adapting.
"people will not be inclined to rigorously follow those protocols."
Just having a bunch of protocols for people to follow just creates an illusion of security. It doesn't create real security. If you are actually depending on a protocol to protect you, then someone will probably figure out that the way to do wrong is to violate that protocol.
What matters is the implementation of security. If an implementation of security requires a great deal of work on the part of the employees, you are pretty much guaranteed that it will become lax with time. It seems to me that real security starts by keeping things physically and logically separate and by limiting access to key areas and with secure audit trails.
I admit, I stopped reading Jordan's series myself until I had some indication that he was going to actually finish it. When he chose the title "Wheel of Time," I was really hoping that he would do something along the lines of Ursula K. le Guin's trilogy of trilogies.
Speaking of finishing things. I am really happy that JL Rowlings finished her series. She was making so much cash, that there must have been pressure to push the book beyond the originally planned 7 volumes.
Unless the writer has access to the sales history, it shouldn't have said that the books are going at going at $150-200. The books are simply listed at that price.
The big prices show something that is true of a large number of computer books. When the books are out of print they can shoot way up in price. Often you will find some poor schmuck having to support a legacy program and they are willing to spend a good deal of money on used books.
If you happen to have computer books for older versions of software that you no longer need, you can often sell the used book for more than you bought it.
One way of playing the Amazon used book game is to list all of the out of print books you are willing to part with at a price some 25% higher than the going sale price. You wait, and every once in a while a book will sell and you will ge money for more computer books.
I've worked in several industries where the changes were made after hours, but the decisions were made during working hours. Of course, when something goes wrong with a decision, the system would be broken for a 24 hour period.
This article was about catching people selling stolen merchandise and not about fraud on ebay.
I would think that fences would have good feedback ratings. It is not like they are trying to cheat the ebay buyer. A fence would want to get the stolen merchandise out of their garage and into the hands of the buyers as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. Since the entire sale is profit, the fence would make enough from the sale to expedite the whole process, package the goods well and communicate with the buyer.
Someone who has stolen merchandise to sell would probably want to sell it with as little fuss and notice as possible. So they would have a good feedback. The complaints would all be about people committing fraud.
It would be interesting to study the different feedback rates for different types of criminal.
The problems may involve interfaces with the American Banking System. Organizations that deal with large quantities of money are usually not keen on making major changes after hours. When you have a large number of third parties involved in an interface (like you would for money transfers), the timeframe for repairs could well be dictated by third parties.
I would not rush to blame any company for having a hard time responding to an outage on a national holiday, as they may dependent on infrastructure outside their control.
There is some ado here. Basically, if you have information that you really care about that you want to publish online, it is probably better to just go with one of the numerous discount hosts, rather than using a free publishing service. I might use blogspot for mindfarts. For ideas I want to develop further in more detail, I just pay out $50 bucks a year it costs for a web host.
The point of a free publishing service is that you provide free content that they will display in ways that make money to pay the hosting costs. Such companies will always be adding features and changing formats. A format change might increase or reduce the numbers of ads displayed along with your content. There legal language has to include terms to allow such changes, or the site is pretty much guaranteed to perish.
BTW, every publishing mechanism has some sort of compromise.
Walmart pays several dollars above minimum wage. I read an article from a Walmart analyst who said the last minimum wage increase will actually help Walmart. The Walmart model actually put less labor into each sales than traditional mom and pop shops. Minimum wage increases will have a greater affect on Walmart's competitors. The competitors either have to raise their prices or close. Walmart estimates that the minimum wage increase will wipe out thousands of its competitors. The companies that remain will have higher prices. So they anticipate that the minimum wage increase will transfer a good amount of this business to Walmart.
Walmart's biggest challenge is finding labor. They think the biggest benefit to Walmart is that the minimum wage increase will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that they will be able to pick up a sizable portion of this displaced labor.
I am not being a fan of Walmart. This is what I see. Walmart has a massive turnover. A google search found several reports claiming a 70% turnover in the first year of employment. Providing insurance for a group with a massive turn over rate like this is problematic.
A company with this type of structure does more for the world by giving money to the local public services infrastructure, and educating their workers on available public services than they do by buying insurance benefits that just doesn't short duration employment structures.
The reasoning makes sense. Whether or nor Walmart is carrying out this goal is up for debate.
The model of an employer of last resort is sound. Any company that uses makes widespread use of marginal workers will be upon for attack from the left.
The real problem with Walmart isn't that it uses the model of "employer of last resort." The real problem is that Walmart has become one of the largest employers in the world. The fact that our largest employer is an "employer of last resort" indicates that there is either something wrong with our economy which is pushing too many people into the margins, or there is something wrong with an unacceptably large number of people in the economy.
"Than why do so many Wal Mart employees in California require social assistance to just to scrape by?"
Walmart is an employer of last resort.
Employers of last resort tend to hire people who are already on the margins. Walmart is more likely to be drawing people from the welfare roles than say Sun Microsystems.
Since Walmart is an employer of last resort there will be a lot more movement between welfare roles and employment than in higher end companies. It is difficult to tell if Walmart is abusing the welfare system.
There are cases where Walmart has shown workers how to use the local welfare system. This appears to be abusive. However, these people are generally the marginalized people who the welfare system is intending to help. Even here it is difficult to say if Walmart is abusing the system. These people in the margins often only work at Walmart for a short spell. Learning about local public services is probably more valuable for them than becoming dependent on a job that they are unlikely to hold for a long period of time.
An employer of last resort will always have a greater give and take with the welfare system. It is a fallacy, however, to assume that companies that hire people off the welfare rolls are evil simply because their ex-employees are more likely to fall back onto the welfare rolls when the job is done.
Yes, it is true that if you look at a single case, a particular corporation would suffer as much damage from litigation as they would from mediation.
If you look at the market as a whole, I think you would find a completely different situation.
Litigation often hurts, but it rarely destroys a mega corporation. In the worst case scenario, the current owners of a corporation might get wiped out. The assets of that corporation would generally be sucked into an even larger corporation that affectively passes the cost of the litigation on to consumers. A particular litigation might hurt one group of investors, but it really doesn't hurt the soulless corporation.
I would like you to look beyond the Marxist training you had in school for a moment and answer the following question: Lets say a piece of litigation all but wipes out a company, and that company is forced to merge with a larger corporation as a result of the litigation. What do you have as the result of the litigation?
The answer is "an even larger corporation."
We have lived in a litigation happy society for the last thirty years. During those years, has our litigation happy society reduced the influence of the corporations actually gotten larger.
Personally, I have seen a large number of small firms wiped out by litigation. Very few mega firms have been destroyed by litigations. Those that have have all consolidated into even larger firms.
In many cases, I've seen small firms forced into consolidating simply because the liability risks of the litigious society was too high.
When you look at industries as a whole you will find that small companies are systematically wiped out by litigation. The liability and risk exposure of litigation is often sufficient in itself to force small companies to merge with larger companies.
If mediation were to become the norm, you would reduce liability risks to medium size and you would see a reduction in the forces that lead to consolidation.
How to put this another way. We have been a litigation happy society for the last thirty or so years. During all of these litigation happy years, have we seen the size of corporations drop or have they gotten even bigger?
Our litigation happy courts have created a climate where megacorporations thrive and small firms are forced to consolidate. So, while a big class action suit might hurt the investors of one corporation, it does not hurt corporate world as a whole. All of the cost of the litigation get passed on to consumers and the megacorporations as a whole get larger.
If you talk to the arbitrators of the world, they would say that litigation leads to more harm than arbitration. In litigation, there is always a winner and loser. In more cases than not the primary loser of litigation is the public at large.
Arbitration seeks to redress contract disputes in ways that are beneficial to both members of a dispute.
The ruling like the one not cited in this/. post are really ruling that litigation lawyers should have a monopoly on class actions.
While I do not like corporations sneaking things into agreements, the result of choosing arbitration over litigation as a means of handling disputes is probably reflected in the price of the product.
Personally, I wish the arbitration community could find a way to break the litigation monopoly as arbitration generally leads to a better result than litigation which generally leads to inequitable results with one winner and vanquished losers.
Slashdot Mirror
/. needs to do a scientific poll to tell us how many people who are reading /. at the moment are "pretending to work at the office" and how many are "pretending to be working" while telecommuting. They might also have a Cowboy Neal style question for those who are actually reading /. on their own time.
My reaction to that quote was simply that a recession might be good for the economy. Recessions generally help realign imbalances in the job market and in people's attitudes.
Of course the other part of the article didn't make sense. What is an "entry wage?"
More often than not, companies lowball starting workers. Comparing wages to housing, the price of gold and other indicators, I think there is good indication all workers are getting lowballed at the moment. If wages were somehow correlated with productivity, then the value of workers (along with the amount that they are paid) may have jumped while us old timey IT folks failed to realize it.
I am not a fan of media consolidation. For that matter, I actively work promoting alternative media.
That said, what is going on in the technology is a blurring of lines between different media. FCC rules that assume some sort of clear and magical distinction between newspaper, TV and radio are faced with a market where newspapers have a need to stream audio and video content to the public. TV shows need to be making print copies of their programs available and radio are compelled to push out more print and video material.
There are now 500+ channels on cable, on demand shows and the Internet.
Tossing out old regulations based on some sort of idea of completely separate media channels is more likely to generate more competition as different concerns struggle to make a multimedia presence.
I have not illusions that there is a good party and a bad party. Both seem to be getting worse.
The only way for things to get better is for use to judge individuals. Unfortunately, what we seem to have now is a generation of politicians that is appealing to nihilistic instincts.
I think you just made a false assumption that geeks are, by definition, powerless workers. In this case, the geeks were at the top of the chain of command. The article notes:
The network design mentioned in the article came from the top. The workers who weren't comfortable with the idea and who thought that controlling Iraq would take more troops were silenced.
You have a valid point that the leaders should be the ones ladled with the responsibility. In this case, the geeks were the leaders.
The Republicans deserve being kicked for their idiocy. Bush made one of the classic blunders: Never start a war when you are having diplomatic success.
The Republicans deserve to get whacked upside the head. The problem is that the Bush adminstrations leap to left was matched by the Democratic Party's wild flailing to the outer most fringes of the left.
Our problem is that that opposition party hasn't spent its decade in minority improving. So, we are in cycle where we will have politicians behaving badly for the foreseeable future.
I would actually go as far as to say that Science is largely built by people using the representations of others.
If one scientist reads about a scientific experiment of another scientist. The scientist decides to try the experiment. The scientist sits down and repeats the experiment and carefully writes down each step he takes in the experiment. When he is done, he has a notebook full of information and test results that are surprisingly similar to the first scientist.
So, we now have the case where scientist A has a notebook that says I did this and got these results. Scientist B has a notebook says I did this and got these results. The two notebooks are surprisingly similar.
Is Scientist B a copyright violating plagiarist?
There is one very subtle point to be made. Yes, there is an argument that Scientist B should cite Scientist A. However, this is countered by the idea that nature is the source of the information. Scientists may intentionally distance themselves the original experiment to make sure that information from the first experiment does not affect the second experiment; in which case it is easy to accidentally lose the citation.
Science was built by people repeating the same experiments over, over and over again. When they repeat the same experiments, they come up with the same results. If we had a lawsuit every time one scientist repeated an experiment of another simply because the notes on the experiment came out similar, then science would halt dead in its tracks.
Lets say Scientist A and Scientist B had different theories about what caused a result set. In that case the two scientists would have different narratives for the existing data. They then would put together a third experiment to test different predictions.
It sounds likely that this Discovery group is engaged in crap science. There really is no experiment which can ever prove of disprove the disagreement between evolutionists and creationists. The fact that creationists can stick their narrative on the works of other scientists proves this point.
We may hate creationists with every fiber of our being. They may be a thorn in our sides. But do we really want courts controlling the natural give and take that exists in the scientific community because we hate creationists? Do we really want science to be driven by our hatred of a group that is on the fringe?
Marketing it as the original work would be a violation of copyright and would be plagiarism. The article did not really make that case. The case they made was simply that the the writers of the article hate the group in question. Hating somebody does not make their actions wrong. The fact that this group does junk science does not make what they did illegal either.
On the parody front. There is a whole bunch of really crappy parody. Most people who attempt parody fail at it. Most parodies aren't funny. Most if it is mean spirited and cynical. In most cases, a person engages in parody simply to shoot down the arguments of their opponents. The fact that something isn't funny doesn't mean the person wasn't trying to parody.
Speaking of parody, this guy spaff is funny. He puts silly lyrics a top famous pop songs. The funny lyric songs are often dead ringers for the real songs. The courts have ruled that Spaff's sophomoric behavior is legal, although some singers really dislike being spaffed.
It is possible that what this Discovery group did was illegal. Sticking a different narrative on a set of pictures is not illegal. Now, Publishing the new work and saying that the pictures were the creation of the new author would be wrong.
Simply the fact that something exists does not show if the person who created it was doing something wrong. It would be plagiarism if the guy passed off the underlying work as his own. It would be copyright violations if he were selling it. In this case, the question would be about how the creationist group was marketing the piece. But that really is not what the linked article was doing. The linked article was full of people who wanted to express their hatred of the Discovery group. There was speculation on the intent of the Discovery group, and it is possible that the speculation is correct.
Simply hating someone does not make them wrong. The people writing in the article clearly hate the group they are writing about. My life experience is that you really shouldn't trust such groups when they decry the intent of the person they hate. You need to find other sources to find out what is really going wrong.
There might be some claim of fair use for parody or for educational purposes.
... A topic I find boring.
Showing that you can stick a different narrative to a data set or to a film is a standard part of discourse. Even if intelligent design is fake science, putting a different narrative to data sets is part of the way real science works.
Scientist A says, "I have a data set and this is what I think happened." Scientist B might take the same thing and say "This story works as well."
Scientist B's showing that a different narrative works for the data is neither plagiarism nor copyright violation. It is discourse.
The article in the link was just about the utter contempt the writers feel about any ideas that fall outside the scope of their narrow little minds. I didn't bother watching the videos, but from the info in the blog I wouldn't say Harvard has either a slam dunk case on proving plagiarism or copyright violation. The fact that a copy exists without citations does not mean that the people doing the parody were passing off the work as their own. The parody clearly is not depriving Harvard of anything, which is the real kicker in copyright cases.
If this video simply exists to show that you can put a different narrative on a piece about cells, then it probably would pass the balancing test. If they were trying to sell it as their own research, it probably would not.
Of course, what people really want to talk about is how much they hate creationists
How the person got the address is central to determining if the Link Exchange Request was spam. The post really was not clear on this issue. If this was the point of the article, then there would be an interesting discussion about whether or presence of an email address on a web site is sufficient in itself to conclude that the email address wants emails about the site.
/. post that started this thread made a sufficient case for a lawsuit. He may have had a better case, and just failed to give all the evidence in the post.
Clearly the bots that make and sell email lists by scraping sites are spammers, but there are many legimate reasons for sending emails to email addresses found on a site. I admit, I've sent emails to addresses I found on a website telling them that they had broken links or bad information on their site. On today's slashdot article on banner ads installing malware, several people seemed to be of the opinion that web surfers should send emails to sites running Doubleclick ads to complain about the malware banners.
At what point is sending an email to an address posted on the site spam? I don't think the
Imagine that the SaveTheWhales site had a list of email addresses on it. My organization is holding a SaveTheDolphin rally. Would it be wrong for my organization to send these people a notification of the rally? It is possiple that SaveTheWhale people would like to know of other organizations protecting mammals of the sea. Of course, it is possible that SaveTheWhale-types think dolphins are nothing but swimming rats compared to the mighty whale. Such people would consider my dolphin loving organization as second rate hacks and the email spam.
I would consider the SaveTheDolphins scraping the SaveTheWhale site of emails bad etiquette, but I am not sure when I would want to see lawsuits flying.
I think link exchange requests are annoying, but I don't consider them spam when they are sent to a contact address for a web site. The world wide web is premised on the idea that people will be actively building links to resources. Most link exchange requests are garbage, but it is part of a legimate process. Even though I ignore the things, I hate seeing small businesses sued for the practice.
It is possible for mail with the subject line "Link Exchange Request" to be spam, just as it is possible for mail with the subject "You won ebay auction #1234..." to be spam.
Unfortunately, the slashdot article was too vague to let us know if this mail was really spam or something else.
What I take from the post is that there is a guy name Haselton who sues people when he gets unsolicited email. This guy received a link exchange request. He sued the sender. He lost the case, then posted a poorly edited self-righteous account of the event on slashdot.
The thing we don't know is how the Link-Exchange-Requester got Haselton's email address. We also don't know how many of these requests the guy sent.
I've designed web sites that solicit information from the public. In every single case, the site gets bombarded with erroneous information. For example, I find it highly unlikely that George Bush really wants information on buying real estate in podunk whereever. Often people put in names of people that they want to annoy.
Let's think about Haselton for a second. Here is a guy who is well known for suing people when he gets unsolicited email. Such people tend to get spammers ticked off. And, what do spammers do when they get ticked off?
You've got it! They enterd the person's email address in every single mail list and request for information form that they can find.
So, what we know from this poorly written post is that a guy requesting link exchanges has an entry in his mail list that says Haselton owns slashdot. We know that there is no public information that makes this connection.
My conclusion from this information is that someone who hates Haselton managed to sneak this entry into a database of people interested in link exchanges, and that some poor schmuck who isn't familiar with slashdot sent a link exchange request based on that erroneous information.
It is possible that the Link-Exchange-requester really is a spammer. The fact that Haselton got email that he did not request is not sufficient to say it is so. If Haselton really did sue a guy for having a database entry with erroneous information, then this entry should be filed under the heading of "nuisance law suits" and we should be complaining about how litigation happy souls like Haselton have a a chilling effect on legitimate business operations.
Who is right or wrong in this case depends entirely on how the link-exchange-requestor get the email address. That issue was not mentioned in the post.
I am waiting for the Rainbow coalition to weigh in on this.
Rainbows are people too.
The problem isn't unique to Doubleclick. It exists anytime you have multiple parties producing dynamic content for a site. The producers of Malware seek out every opportunity to inject their slime onto the net. If you have a forum, guestbook or allow comments on blogs, you will get hit by bots trying to find ways to inject malware into a post. The people playing this game buy expired domains and fill them with malware garbage.
If you look at the logs for any web site, you will probably find hits from malware distributors trying to find ways to hack in and inject their poison.
I suspect that thousands of links on posts from slashdot go to sites that try to do wrong. Undoubtedly the purveyors of malware have probably tried to inject their slime into Wikipedia.
I don't think the game of declaring any site that allows third party creatives an enemy of the people will solve the problem. A better approach to blocking sites like Doubleclick is to try and engage the people allowing third party creatives to develop better ways to monitor and reduce the malware problem.
We also have to accept that there will never be a perfect way to stop malware and the creators of malware are very good at adapting.
Just having a bunch of protocols for people to follow just creates an illusion of security. It doesn't create real security. If you are actually depending on a protocol to protect you, then someone will probably figure out that the way to do wrong is to violate that protocol.
What matters is the implementation of security. If an implementation of security requires a great deal of work on the part of the employees, you are pretty much guaranteed that it will become lax with time. It seems to me that real security starts by keeping things physically and logically separate and by limiting access to key areas and with secure audit trails.
I admit, I stopped reading Jordan's series myself until I had some indication that he was going to actually finish it. When he chose the title "Wheel of Time," I was really hoping that he would do something along the lines of Ursula K. le Guin's trilogy of trilogies.
Speaking of finishing things. I am really happy that JL Rowlings finished her series. She was making so much cash, that there must have been pressure to push the book beyond the originally planned 7 volumes.
Sad,but commercial success can ruin a product.
Unless the writer has access to the sales history, it shouldn't have said that the books are going at going at $150-200. The books are simply listed at that price.
The big prices show something that is true of a large number of computer books. When the books are out of print they can shoot way up in price. Often you will find some poor schmuck having to support a legacy program and they are willing to spend a good deal of money on used books.
If you happen to have computer books for older versions of software that you no longer need, you can often sell the used book for more than you bought it.
One way of playing the Amazon used book game is to list all of the out of print books you are willing to part with at a price some 25% higher than the going sale price. You wait, and every once in a while a book will sell and you will ge money for more computer books.
I've worked in several industries where the changes were made after hours, but the decisions were made during working hours. Of course, when something goes wrong with a decision, the system would be broken for a 24 hour period.
This article was about catching people selling stolen merchandise and not about fraud on ebay.
I would think that fences would have good feedback ratings. It is not like they are trying to cheat the ebay buyer. A fence would want to get the stolen merchandise out of their garage and into the hands of the buyers as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. Since the entire sale is profit, the fence would make enough from the sale to expedite the whole process, package the goods well and communicate with the buyer.
Someone who has stolen merchandise to sell would probably want to sell it with as little fuss and notice as possible. So they would have a good feedback. The complaints would all be about people committing fraud.
It would be interesting to study the different feedback rates for different types of criminal.
The problems may involve interfaces with the American Banking System. Organizations that deal with large quantities of money are usually not keen on making major changes after hours. When you have a large number of third parties involved in an interface (like you would for money transfers), the timeframe for repairs could well be dictated by third parties.
I would not rush to blame any company for having a hard time responding to an outage on a national holiday, as they may dependent on infrastructure outside their control.
There is some ado here. Basically, if you have information that you really care about that you want to publish online, it is probably better to just go with one of the numerous discount hosts, rather than using a free publishing service. I might use blogspot for mindfarts. For ideas I want to develop further in more detail, I just pay out $50 bucks a year it costs for a web host.
The point of a free publishing service is that you provide free content that they will display in ways that make money to pay the hosting costs. Such companies will always be adding features and changing formats. A format change might increase or reduce the numbers of ads displayed along with your content. There legal language has to include terms to allow such changes, or the site is pretty much guaranteed to perish.
BTW, every publishing mechanism has some sort of compromise.
Walmart pays several dollars above minimum wage. I read an article from a Walmart analyst who said the last minimum wage increase will actually help Walmart. The Walmart model actually put less labor into each sales than traditional mom and pop shops. Minimum wage increases will have a greater affect on Walmart's competitors. The competitors either have to raise their prices or close. Walmart estimates that the minimum wage increase will wipe out thousands of its competitors. The companies that remain will have higher prices. So they anticipate that the minimum wage increase will transfer a good amount of this business to Walmart.
Walmart's biggest challenge is finding labor. They think the biggest benefit to Walmart is that the minimum wage increase will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that they will be able to pick up a sizable portion of this displaced labor.
I am not being a fan of Walmart. This is what I see. Walmart has a massive turnover. A google search found several reports claiming a 70% turnover in the first year of employment. Providing insurance for a group with a massive turn over rate like this is problematic.
A company with this type of structure does more for the world by giving money to the local public services infrastructure, and educating their workers on available public services than they do by buying insurance benefits that just doesn't short duration employment structures.
The reasoning makes sense. Whether or nor Walmart is carrying out this goal is up for debate.
The model of an employer of last resort is sound. Any company that uses makes widespread use of marginal workers will be upon for attack from the left.
The real problem with Walmart isn't that it uses the model of "employer of last resort." The real problem is that Walmart has become one of the largest employers in the world. The fact that our largest employer is an "employer of last resort" indicates that there is either something wrong with our economy which is pushing too many people into the margins, or there is something wrong with an unacceptably large number of people in the economy.
Walmart is an employer of last resort.
Employers of last resort tend to hire people who are already on the margins. Walmart is more likely to be drawing people from the welfare roles than say Sun Microsystems.
Since Walmart is an employer of last resort there will be a lot more movement between welfare roles and employment than in higher end companies. It is difficult to tell if Walmart is abusing the welfare system.
There are cases where Walmart has shown workers how to use the local welfare system. This appears to be abusive. However, these people are generally the marginalized people who the welfare system is intending to help. Even here it is difficult to say if Walmart is abusing the system. These people in the margins often only work at Walmart for a short spell. Learning about local public services is probably more valuable for them than becoming dependent on a job that they are unlikely to hold for a long period of time.
An employer of last resort will always have a greater give and take with the welfare system. It is a fallacy, however, to assume that companies that hire people off the welfare rolls are evil simply because their ex-employees are more likely to fall back onto the welfare rolls when the job is done.
Yes, it is true that if you look at a single case, a particular corporation would suffer as much damage from litigation as they would from mediation.
If you look at the market as a whole, I think you would find a completely different situation.
Litigation often hurts, but it rarely destroys a mega corporation. In the worst case scenario, the current owners of a corporation might get wiped out. The assets of that corporation would generally be sucked into an even larger corporation that affectively passes the cost of the litigation on to consumers. A particular litigation might hurt one group of investors, but it really doesn't hurt the soulless corporation.
I would like you to look beyond the Marxist training you had in school for a moment and answer the following question: Lets say a piece of litigation all but wipes out a company, and that company is forced to merge with a larger corporation as a result of the litigation. What do you have as the result of the litigation?
The answer is "an even larger corporation."
We have lived in a litigation happy society for the last thirty years. During those years, has our litigation happy society reduced the influence of the corporations actually gotten larger.
Personally, I have seen a large number of small firms wiped out by litigation. Very few mega firms have been destroyed by litigations. Those that have have all consolidated into even larger firms.
In many cases, I've seen small firms forced into consolidating simply because the liability risks of the litigious society was too high.
When you look at industries as a whole you will find that small companies are systematically wiped out by litigation. The liability and risk exposure of litigation is often sufficient in itself to force small companies to merge with larger companies.
If mediation were to become the norm, you would reduce liability risks to medium size and you would see a reduction in the forces that lead to consolidation.
How to put this another way. We have been a litigation happy society for the last thirty or so years. During all of these litigation happy years, have we seen the size of corporations drop or have they gotten even bigger?
Our litigation happy courts have created a climate where megacorporations thrive and small firms are forced to consolidate. So, while a big class action suit might hurt the investors of one corporation, it does not hurt corporate world as a whole. All of the cost of the litigation get passed on to consumers and the megacorporations as a whole get larger.
If you talk to the arbitrators of the world, they would say that litigation leads to more harm than arbitration. In litigation, there is always a winner and loser. In more cases than not the primary loser of litigation is the public at large.
/. post are really ruling that litigation lawyers should have a monopoly on class actions.
Arbitration seeks to redress contract disputes in ways that are beneficial to both members of a dispute.
The ruling like the one not cited in this
While I do not like corporations sneaking things into agreements, the result of choosing arbitration over litigation as a means of handling disputes is probably reflected in the price of the product.
Personally, I wish the arbitration community could find a way to break the litigation monopoly as arbitration generally leads to a better result than litigation which generally leads to inequitable results with one winner and vanquished losers.