I don't agree with what they are trying to do, but there is an important distinction between playing the music from your car radio and the music at a dentist's office. The dentists's office is a commercial establishment, so it is possible to claim that the music is being used for something other than personal use.
I can understand wanting extra payment (than that already paid when the CD was purchased) from something that could be called a "performance" -- such as DJing, but background music in the workplace is something that a reasonable person would assume they had already paid for. Does MS insist you pay extra for Powerpoint if you use it to run a projected slideshow? Where does this end?
My grocery market switched to playing a country station last week. I still haven't decided which is worse, starving to death or having to listen to that again.
I can't go into a supermarket from September till January for fear of being driven insane by Christmas carols. How the staff can stand it without recourse to illegal drugs or piercing their own eardrums I don't know.
You are right, keeping the From: and changing Reply-To would work. Also, the change that MS proposed will check "Sender:" before checking "From:"... so you can actually keep From: as your permanent address and set Sender: to your mobile address.
I don't want anyone to know my "real" ISP address. It's fine that if they look at the "Receoved:" headers they can see it came from my ISP's SMTP server. I don't want my ISP address to get in people's mailing lists, or harvested, either by spammers or by mailing worms.
Mr. Clancy's nonfiction is more engaging. One dose of Jack Ryan was enough for a lifetime, but I eagerly await his next documentary or backgrounder.
I should say that, like a lot of bestselling thriller writers, his early novels were much better than his latter, million-dollar-advance ones. Haven't read any of hids non-fction, I'll look out for it. But his fact checking in the novels is pretty sloppy, I would have thought he would have a proofreader to tell him how to spell "Guangzhou", for instance (in Bear and Dragon, what I hope is the last novel of his I read).
Actually, that would be cool. You could get a lot of mileage out of your favorite novel: Hey! A Tom Clancy novel I haven't read! Boof! Hey! A Tom Clancy novel I haven't read! Boof!
Actually, I have the opposite feeling: every new Clancy I read seemed identical to the last (except longer, more boring, and with more gratuitous attacks on greenies, liberal, non-smokers, etc), till I swore off them. They're like McDonalds, you salivate when you smell them, but feel queasy and guilty at the what you've done to your belly/brain after you've finished.
There have been lots of SF stories based on this idea, though, especally of course by PK Dick, now fashionable in movies (Paycheck).
Exactly, that seems absurd. Who buys a Linux installed machine and then formats and installs Windows?
In Thailand the government is promoting a low-cost PC program, the cheapest version has Linux (MS recently introduced a cheap version of XP to compete). It's common practice to take the Linux machine home and just install a pirated XP over the Linux install. Some stick to Linux though.
Gartner Encourages Realistic Desktop Linux Expectations
Excitement might be growing about the prospects for Linux on the desktop following several high-profile government contracts, but research firm Gartner Inc is injecting a dose of realism by playing down the potential for desktop Linux.
High-profile contracts with government organizations such as City of Munich in Germany have raised excitement about Linux on the desktop, with Gartner's prediction that 220 million PCs will be replaced in 2004 and 2005 adding fuel to the fire.
However, Gartner research VP, Brian Gammage, has cast doubt on how significant a percentage of those replacement PCs will be running the open source operating system. "I think it will be significant for the Linux vendors that's for sure, but we don't see them picking up any more than 5%," he said.
In the coming weeks, Gartner will officially announce figures that show Linux has shipped on 5% of all PCs worldwide this year. It expects that figure to grow to 7.5% by 2008, but is quick to point out that this is not necessarily a representative figure of the number of Linux PCs being used.
The company estimates that perhaps 2% of all PCs shipped worldwide this year will actually be used with Linux, with that figure growing to 3.5% by 2008. "Not every PC that ships with a version of Linux continues to run with that," noted Gammage.
Nevertheless, there will be many more PCs deployed with Linux than there are today, although Gammage maintained that excitement over government contracts might be focusing attention in the wrong areas.
"All the politically motivated news from the last year did not help," he said. "The noise regarding government contracts is actually self-defeating." Gammage added that the government contracts are primarily serving a large number of users with wide application requirements, which is not necessarily a good thing for proving return on investment to cash-strapped CIOs.
"Where you have a closed domain of users and a fixed application set the ROI will be quicker," he said. "There is a sustainable opportunity for Linux in certain sectors and fixed devices."
"They [desktop Linux vendors] are doing some business but it's still niche," he said. "We're seeing slow, organic growth, which is good because it means it won't be short-lived."
Gammage also stated that until Linux is shown to support the NX (No eXecute) security technology supported in Microsoft Corp's forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2, it will be seen as potentially deficient to Windows. However, Red Hat released a patch for the Linux kernel to support NX in June that has the full blessing of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
I started a new job recently, and they seem to live and die by these fucking Gartner reports. I hadn't heard of them up until recently. Can someone tell me what the deal is?
No, we can't, because the fucking Gartner link is to a PAY ONLY site:
"This article/section can only be accessed by ComputerWire registered users". What was the point of that?
Why does every article about anything have to have the word "terrorist" in it, these days?
The guy is "Eli Yablonovitch, UCLA professor of electrical engineering, director of UCLA's Center for Nanoscience Innovation for Defense", so it'll help to get more funding (almost wrote "FUDding" there, I wonder why?).
the files you're downloading through P2P networks might be of poorer quality, be a virus or something else rather than the actual song, etc.
There's no such thing as an MP3 virus. Some pathological files mught crash your player, but that's it. Unless you're foolish enough to download "U2-new-album.MP3.exe" and click on it.
No chance but to break the law? Are you serious. How about exercising the slightest bit of self-restraint and waiting another 2 weeks.
The album was scheduled for release in November. Not in two weeks. If they hadn't changed that, the choice would be P2P now or wait 4 months. (Not that I personally care much either way, but we're a talking of fans.) They could probbaly just ignore it, but making this response gets them a nice burst of publicity and digital chic.
Some AC wrote: "The/. editors rarely (never?) change any part of the text submitted by the users (the part in italics). They may add a comment pointing out a big error, or fix a broken link, but they won't fix small typos unless people complain loud enough. Probably, they don't fix anything because the text in italics is quoting the article submitter. The non-italics part is what the/. editor writes. If the typo was in the non-italics text, then you can yell at Jesus Timothy, but here, the typo was made by Iphtashu Fitz, so you should yell at that user.
Actually, not true. I've sent emails to the editors on similar things and about 50% of the time they fix things like this, especially Taco. Timothy, however, rarely does so. (His emails usually bounce, as a matter of fact.) And speaking as a professional editor, if you don't check and clean up submitted text then you aren't an editor. A professional editor would be fired if he allowed mistakes with the frequency these guys do -- I used to edit 10 stories an hour for a website once, these guys do about one paragraph in that time. (I know they actually read many more, but still they could take a little care with what they do select.) I don't blame the submitters, they're not being paid to write, but Timothy et al. are collecting a cheque to edit, describe themselves as editors, and can't even spell, let alone punctuate, and never seem to fact check at all.
chools get lassoed into using Office. Office requires windows
Mactopia: MSoffice for Macintosh. Not to mention Star/Open Office, which are pretty file compatible with MS -- except for some pathologically formatted documents.
At the college of Education at ASU they have a Mac classroom in the computer lab that students are free to use whenever there isn't a class going on. There used to be a number of macs in the main lab as well. But practically nobody used them unless the rest of the PCs were already taken.
What are people using these machines for? Typing essays? Sending email? So I can understand that simply on mouse behaviour people stick with one system. But as an educational institution, it's sad that neither the students nor the administration look beyond what's simplest for those brought up suckling the MS nipple. Does your college teach foreign languages? Why -- everyone can just speak English. What a waste of an opportunity to learn.
I see perhaps an analogy with metrification. Without pushing, most will never choose to switch to metric, despite its obvious advantages, simply because it's different. But those places that have find after a short period of transition that it's so much easier.
Let us not forget when Apple did the same thing 10-15 years ago. They flooded the elementary and high schools with machines, hoping students would be indoctrinated as they graduated and go with the flow. Why is everyone so hell-bent now that Microsoft is doing the same thing?
Because, sorry to bore everyone with the standard response, Microsoft is already a monopoly in most markets. When a monopolist takes actions, (eg subsidising sales to make alternatives uncompetitive) to increase market share, that would be fine for a minor player, like Apple, it's quite different, and in some cases illegal.
Think in terms of out of print books that you can't easily get locally or the public domain. For example I live in a fairly small town in Oregon. There is not a copy of "Warlord of Mars" within 50 miles. I could order one from Barnes and Noble but shipping would double the cost of the book. So how would something like this hurt a local bookseller.
Doesn't your local bookshop take orders? (Or don't you have one at all?) Most will, I lived in a small town, no bookshop as such, a newspaper/stationey/bookshop was all there was for years, but they would get books I ordered, no extra charge, just wait a week or two. (Warlord of Mars is not out of print, del Rey has it for $5.99.)
Alternatively, if you go to one of the many 2nd hand dealers online (Amazon, though I hate to advertise them, has it "Used & new from $0.88"), postage can't be that much.
Another harsh reality I learned while working for a publisher was that many of the books did not have electronic versions - either did not exist, were lost or existed in very old formats. Sometimes it just isn't worth paying someone to re-type an entire book just to make a handfuld of sales- setting up Print-On-Demand does cost a fair bit.
I've done a few PODs. So far all from purpose-made PDFs, but they also accept scanned (bitmap) formats for exactly that case. If you dismember a book and do it carefully, or send it to them to do it for you, it gives good results and is much cheaper than retyping. I've done a couple of new editions when I had to work from a hard copy; a huge hassle to get it cleanly converted to a text file and checked, almost as much work as a new book. (OCR is far from adequate, don't even think of doing that.)
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. That was exactly what I was referring to. I've already heard of publishers uses these digital presses to hold on to copyrights without having to deal with the huge investment traditionally associated with a new run.
1) Publishers very rarely have the copyright. They have limited rights to publish as defined in their contract with the author.
2) The cost of reprinting a book is about $1/copy for 500 or so paperback books ($2 for hardback). Is that huge? Print few thousand and the unit cost is halved. (The unit cost for POD is a few dollars a book, though you save on shipping and other overhead.)
But some publishers are arseholes (as are many authors) and often logic has little to do with what and how a book is published, and termianting a contract can be like a divorce, full of recriminations and malice on both sides. Or a simple business arangement if both are sensible.
What the previous poster is referring to is the common "out-of-print clause" between writers and publishers. It's not a law, but it's common to many contracts. Basically if a publisher stops publishing a book after a certain period of time the copyright is supposed to return to the author.
Not quite. In most cases, the copyright ALWAYS belongs to the author (except for a few cases where he's been contracted to write a book, usually non-fiction, for a set fee). Just look at the legal page: the copyright notice tells you who the copyright belongs to, almost always the author.
However, the author's contract with the publisher usually gives the publisher exclusive rights to print the book (maybe only in certain countries, maybe only in hard or paperback). This contact generally is of indefinite duration, but terminated some time (say 6 months) after a book "goes out of print". The latter phrase is usually further defined as selling less than a stated (small) number per year; not just the publisher having a pile of books rotting in a warehouse, or having the book available on print-on-demand.
There has been some discussion amongst authors about publishers using POD as a way to hold onto a book when the "out of print" definition in the contract is undefined; but having worked at a publishing company, if a book is selling a dozen copies a year the income is not worth dealing with a hostile author, so most would be happy to terminate on request in that case.
PS: and as for it being "impossible to see", with a little messing around with proxies it shouldn't be hard to circumvent, or perhaps it's your own site; in that case you'd be pissed if there was no appeal, as there apparently isn't even an acknowledgement that a site is blocked, there likely isn't an avenue of appeal -- and anyone asking for one is going to be lookd at with suspicion and marked as a pervert.
And how are you supposed to report an error if it is impossible to see what is there in the first place?
Presumably you have some reason to want to see the page (assuming it's not really kiddie porn). Most likely, following a link from another site, or maybe it's a site you've visited before. (Maybe it's a "lolita" page about the actual book Lolita in Russian and the censors just canned it to be on the safe side.) In any case, you're not arguing the case, just requesting that a page be re-evaluated.
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My dentist plays a horrble talk radio station -- perhaps it's meant to be a distraction, making me lose focus on the pain he's inflicting.
I can understand wanting extra payment (than that already paid when the CD was purchased) from something that could be called a "performance" -- such as DJing, but background music in the workplace is something that a reasonable person would assume they had already paid for. Does MS insist you pay extra for Powerpoint if you use it to run a projected slideshow? Where does this end?
I can't go into a supermarket from September till January for fear of being driven insane by Christmas carols. How the staff can stand it without recourse to illegal drugs or piercing their own eardrums I don't know.
I don't want anyone to know my "real" ISP address. It's fine that if they look at the "Receoved:" headers they can see it came from my ISP's SMTP server. I don't want my ISP address to get in people's mailing lists, or harvested, either by spammers or by mailing worms.
I should say that, like a lot of bestselling thriller writers, his early novels were much better than his latter, million-dollar-advance ones. Haven't read any of hids non-fction, I'll look out for it. But his fact checking in the novels is pretty sloppy, I would have thought he would have a proofreader to tell him how to spell "Guangzhou", for instance (in Bear and Dragon, what I hope is the last novel of his I read).
Actually, that would be cool. You could get a lot of mileage out of your favorite novel:
Hey! A Tom Clancy novel I haven't read!
Boof!
Hey! A Tom Clancy novel I haven't read!
Boof!
Actually, I have the opposite feeling: every new Clancy I read seemed identical to the last (except longer, more boring, and with more gratuitous attacks on greenies, liberal, non-smokers, etc), till I swore off them. They're like McDonalds, you salivate when you smell them, but feel queasy and guilty at the what you've done to your belly/brain after you've finished.
There have been lots of SF stories based on this idea, though, especally of course by PK Dick, now fashionable in movies (Paycheck).
In Thailand the government is promoting a low-cost PC program, the cheapest version has Linux (MS recently introduced a cheap version of XP to compete). It's common practice to take the Linux machine home and just install a pirated XP over the Linux install. Some stick to Linux though.
No, we can't, because the fucking Gartner link is to a PAY ONLY site: "This article/section can only be accessed by ComputerWire registered users". What was the point of that?
The guy is "Eli Yablonovitch, UCLA professor of electrical engineering, director of UCLA's Center for Nanoscience Innovation for Defense", so it'll help to get more funding (almost wrote "FUDding" there, I wonder why?).
There's no such thing as an MP3 virus. Some pathological files mught crash your player, but that's it. Unless you're foolish enough to download "U2-new-album.MP3.exe" and click on it.
The album was scheduled for release in November. Not in two weeks. If they hadn't changed that, the choice would be P2P now or wait 4 months. (Not that I personally care much either way, but we're a talking of fans.) They could probbaly just ignore it, but making this response gets them a nice burst of publicity and digital chic.
How do you know it's waving -- i.e. moving? -- it's just wrinkled. It's supported by a wire along the top if that's what you mean.
Actually, not true. I've sent emails to the editors on similar things and about 50% of the time they fix things like this, especially Taco. Timothy, however, rarely does so. (His emails usually bounce, as a matter of fact.) And speaking as a professional editor, if you don't check and clean up submitted text then you aren't an editor. A professional editor would be fired if he allowed mistakes with the frequency these guys do -- I used to edit 10 stories an hour for a website once, these guys do about one paragraph in that time. (I know they actually read many more, but still they could take a little care with what they do select.) I don't blame the submitters, they're not being paid to write, but Timothy et al. are collecting a cheque to edit, describe themselves as editors, and can't even spell, let alone punctuate, and never seem to fact check at all.
"the gang reportedly would demand a sum of between $18,000 and $55,000 (10,000 pounds and 30,000 pounds)."
"Britian" -- Jesus Timothy, you're paid to edit. Be professional. Use a spellchecker.
Mactopia: MSoffice for Macintosh. Not to mention Star/Open Office, which are pretty file compatible with MS -- except for some pathologically formatted documents.
What are people using these machines for? Typing essays? Sending email? So I can understand that simply on mouse behaviour people stick with one system. But as an educational institution, it's sad that neither the students nor the administration look beyond what's simplest for those brought up suckling the MS nipple. Does your college teach foreign languages? Why -- everyone can just speak English.
What a waste of an opportunity to learn.
I see perhaps an analogy with metrification. Without pushing, most will never choose to switch to metric, despite its obvious advantages, simply because it's different. But those places that have find after a short period of transition that it's so much easier.
Because, sorry to bore everyone with the standard response, Microsoft is already a monopoly in most markets. When a monopolist takes actions, (eg subsidising sales to make alternatives uncompetitive) to increase market share, that would be fine for a minor player, like Apple, it's quite different, and in some cases illegal.
Doesn't your local bookshop take orders? (Or don't you have one at all?) Most will, I lived in a small town, no bookshop as such, a newspaper/stationey/bookshop was all there was for years, but they would get books I ordered, no extra charge, just wait a week or two. (Warlord of Mars is not out of print, del Rey has it for $5.99.)
Alternatively, if you go to one of the many 2nd hand dealers online (Amazon, though I hate to advertise them, has it "Used & new from $0.88"), postage can't be that much.
I've done a few PODs. So far all from purpose-made PDFs, but they also accept scanned (bitmap) formats for exactly that case. If you dismember a book and do it carefully, or send it to them to do it for you, it gives good results and is much cheaper than retyping. I've done a couple of new editions when I had to work from a hard copy; a huge hassle to get it cleanly converted to a text file and checked, almost as much work as a new book. (OCR is far from adequate, don't even think of doing that.)
1) Publishers very rarely have the copyright. They have limited rights to publish as defined in their contract with the author.
2) The cost of reprinting a book is about $1/copy for 500 or so paperback books ($2 for hardback). Is that huge? Print few thousand and the unit cost is halved. (The unit cost for POD is a few dollars a book, though you save on shipping and other overhead.)
But some publishers are arseholes (as are many authors) and often logic has little to do with what and how a book is published, and termianting a contract can be like a divorce, full of recriminations and malice on both sides. Or a simple business arangement if both are sensible.
Not quite. In most cases, the copyright ALWAYS belongs to the author (except for a few cases where he's been contracted to write a book, usually non-fiction, for a set fee). Just look at the legal page: the copyright notice tells you who the copyright belongs to, almost always the author.
However, the author's contract with the publisher usually gives the publisher exclusive rights to print the book (maybe only in certain countries, maybe only in hard or paperback). This contact generally is of indefinite duration, but terminated some time (say 6 months) after a book "goes out of print". The latter phrase is usually further defined as selling less than a stated (small) number per year; not just the publisher having a pile of books rotting in a warehouse, or having the book available on print-on-demand.
There has been some discussion amongst authors about publishers using POD as a way to hold onto a book when the "out of print" definition in the contract is undefined; but having worked at a publishing company, if a book is selling a dozen copies a year the income is not worth dealing with a hostile author, so most would be happy to terminate on request in that case.
PS: and as for it being "impossible to see", with a little messing around with proxies it shouldn't be hard to circumvent, or perhaps it's your own site; in that case you'd be pissed if there was no appeal, as there apparently isn't even an acknowledgement that a site is blocked, there likely isn't an avenue of appeal -- and anyone asking for one is going to be lookd at with suspicion and marked as a pervert.
Presumably you have some reason to want to see the page (assuming it's not really kiddie porn). Most likely, following a link from another site, or maybe it's a site you've visited before. (Maybe it's a "lolita" page about the actual book Lolita in Russian and the censors just canned it to be on the safe side.) In any case, you're not arguing the case, just requesting that a page be re-evaluated.