Indeed. ISTR people doing this for China, but I'd be curious to see this sort of thing for western democracies, e.g., to see what the UK's firewall is really blocking (we all heard about Wikipedia, which they backed down on, but we only found out about that because the proxying caused a problem with accessing, and it affected a major website - how many less popular sites are having legal text inadvertently blocked, with no one knowing because all they get is a fake 404?)
For someone who hasn't been following this too closely - were they still pretending that this was about blocking child pr0n (in which case, this shows the claim up to be false), or did they drop that pretence?
(Even if it was about blocking child images, laws about automatic fines for linking are very worrying - linking to such images can be dealt with specific laws, and it should be up to a court to decide if the image constituted an illegal image; it shouldn't be a case that linking to something on a (secret) list is automatically illegal, no matter what the content.)
Indeed, I'm not saying that the employee should be sacked - just that this doesn't mean he is blameless or not responsible for his own work. He clearly is. Both him, and management, are to blame here. This also doesn't excuse behaviour that affects other employees (e.g., harrassment), which should taken seriously no matter how good he is.
"The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked."
That's reassuring to hear - and on a related note, I presume that this is due to Australia using proportional representation?
I'm in the UK, where the Government is also making moves of various kind of censorship of Internet and criminalising possession of private material - even if both other parties were to oppose a measure, the Government can just force whatever they like through, as their thirty-something per cent voting share gives them greater than 50% of seats in Parliament.
(The usual argument against PR is that it makes it harder for Governments to do things - my response is that that's a good thing.)
I agree the guy is an ass-hat (well, if he posted during the trial that is). But given that jurors are forced to work for no pay, it's not clear to me that it's fair they should have to pay for everyone else's time just for making a mistake. Finding the money for a 2nd trial is no different to what jurors have to do as standard for the 1st trial.
But that's not really what we're talking about - the problem is that Josh didn't build the bridge he was asked to (refusing to write documentation etc). It's like them building you a bridge, but it requires them to continue to maintain it, because no one else can. And one day, they're gone, and the bridge falls apart. If they were asked to build a bridge, and everyone else is capable of building a bridge that stays up like they were told, yes that's their fault.
Well, according to this list, it's about the functionality that they'll add in the next version;)
I was going to joke about copy/paste, only to see that they're seriously having to ask for it (and what happened to "But we don't need primitive features like copy/paste, because Apple does it in some new manner, although I can't tell you how"?) In fact, I note that my years old cheap non-smart Motorola V980 has 5 of the "features" on this list (I don't even consider them features, just standard functionality). I had no idea that you couldn't even use the Iphone as an Internet connection for computer.
I'm wondering why this is news at all. Most new phones don't get a Slashdot story at all - even from major players - let alone a story about a mere wish list before a product's even released.
But that's part of Apple's brilliant marketing: the fact that the Iphone misses basic bog standard features itself gets them free advertising, because you have everyone requesting the features, and then queuing up desperately to get hold of the new phone when it's finally released, years behind the competition (as happened with the Iphone 3G).
Let's start a thread here - What Features Should Be Included With The Next Phone From Motorola Or Nokia?
This will be a much more interesting discussion, since we don't need to fill the list with basic features that other cheap phones have had for years - we can discussing interesting new possibilities that people would like to see? Let's hear an idea that's more innovative that "custom ringtones for my voicemail"(!)
So you had a crap phone - it doesn't make the Iphone the best ever (and $150 to $200 is hardly a fair comparison). My Motorola V980 phone can do all of the things you list, no problem. I don't go on posting Slashdot articles about it all the time though. I paid £80 for it four years ago, whilst the Iphone would cost me, today, £342.50 (price from the Apple store). (Of course, I realise that the Iphone has much better features that my phone in other areas, but this would be expected with such a difference in price, and a gap of four years, and the same would be true of any high end modern smartphone - the point is that if I'm paying for such a phone, especially one that gets paraded on Slashdot as if it was the Best Thing Ever, I expect more than simply "getting photos off it" etc.)
I agree (many items on these list have been standard for years on any cheap old phone!), but I wonder why we put hopes on Apple on the first place. Why not just focus on the market leaders who are ahead? An article on what features we want in a new Motorola or Nokia phone would be much more interesting, and we wouldn't have to bog ourselves down with "Ooh, can we have custom ringtones on my voicemail, just like every other phone has done for years?" It's like complaining that the Amiga isn't as good as the competition, and hoping that maybe they'll catch up.
Indeed:) Though I think part of the problem is that they think it's real - they want to ban it, because it really is learning about "evil" magic...
No different to other kinds of censorship really - the ones who have most trouble telling the difference between fictional acts, and actual acts, are the ones who want the fictional acts banned.
Second. In a small confined space I can see that smoking should be curtailed. Really though. A lot of place have laws now that you cant smoke outside.
Unless he was talking about some kind of open-air bus, the law referred to here was about confined spaces.
The fact that some other places might have mad laws about smoking outside is another matter. Nowhere did Scrameustache suggest that he was in favour of those laws, so his reasoning of it being about where people's rights end is entirely logical, and arguing against a ban on smoking outside is arguing with a straw man.
Sir you show your true extreme left wing colors when you think that escalating from smoking in a bus to shooting someone is anywhere near the ability to even be mentioned.
What on earth do economical views have to do with this?
He was making an analogy. His analogy, though extreme, was perfectly sound, because the same argument about doing what you like to other people applies to both. Your analogy of comparing bans in buses to bans outside is not, because his reasoning about not harming others doesn't apply there.
By "mandate" you mean money as well as the decision. I'm aware that companies sometimes build parts, but in a socialist state, the work is still done by the people or organisations - the point is that the decisions and the money come from the state. And NASA are not private industry in any meaningful sense.
My point being, if someone is going to make a troll-ish statement about capitalism versus socialism, space exploration right now is the last example you want to pick! (And I speak as someone who is pro-capitalist for the most part. Living in the non-socialist UK.)
Audience not buying? Place a tax on blank CDs, DVDs, hard drives, etc and give the proceeds to the labels and movie studios.
Not to mention that in the UK, everyone who watches any TV has to pay £140 per year. Now, I don't have a problem with the idea of a state funded TV organisation - but I do if I get labelled a pirate, as a result of downloading material that was shown on TV that I can legally watch, just because it's more convenient for me to watch it that way (not having to be in, remember when it's on etc - for me, this is no different to someone with a TIVO).
(Similarly with the CD tax - if you're going to charge people anyway, they should have the right to legally have that material.)
Indeed - they've already started by criminalising possession of adult images that they define to be "extreme" using the argument that a child might see them, and the lobbyists who called for this law want the laws to go further.
In answer to the question as to why the Government is so eager to do something about copyright, I do wonder if it relates to their general trend of wanting to censor and control the Internet. Censoring data transmitted over P2P is much harder, so the copyright argument provides a way to shut it down. More generally, blocking people's access on a suspicion (especially as a large number of people have probably downloaded at least something) is an easy way to censor people at an individual level.
My experience doing the maths degree was the opposite. Not to say that it was boring; not at all - but the example applications were the mundane or obvious stuff (the obvious example from A Levels would be using integration to calculate the volume of a sphere). In the real world, I've found far more interesting things that one can apply mathematics too (and part of the reason it's more interesting is because I know that I'm solving real world problems that are useful and in demand, instead just doing some contrived example that you know other people have already worked out loads of times before).
I think it would be nice to give students more of an indication of what interesting things their education can be used to solve in the real world, especially at school, where there was the common attitude of "what use is this?" - have attitudes really changed this much in the last 10-15 years?
If students are now excited about what you can use their education for, I think that's a good thing - even if there's a danger of going too far in the other direction.
I visited my alma mater recently, and I was stuck by how much changed in just ten years time. The students are doing "cool" projects that I can only dream of doing in the real world. (Example - Programming a robot to swim across a lake and collect trash.) It makes me wonder if they will be disappointed with their first jobs, which will mostly consist of sitting at a cubicle all day and writing documents.
If someone's hiring people who have studied things such as robot programming, in order to do documentation all day, I think the problem is more with their interviewing scheme than allegedly narcissistic students...
Yes, it's true that most programming jobs still involve a certain amount of boring/admin stuff, but what would be the point of training people to do the simple menial stuff at University? (Anyway, that's what part time jobs are for...)
If he's releasing software under a licence that allows commercial usage, and then complains about people doing that, he's a fool. Now what has that got to do with the claim that OSS doesn't have a proper business model behind it?
One person isn't representative of the entirety of open source.
The problem there wasn't people making money out of it, it was using hardware to restrict people's freedom. Thus they decided to write a new licence to take account of that. In particular, previous licences won't be changed, so it's still not true that they "shut down their software" (if you have something released under GPL v2, you can continue to use it under that licence).
Heh - indeed, it would be funny to see this backfire. Imagine him revealing a load of depressing emo poetry and suicide notes. He'd get triple damages!
But he's not sending all those SMSs himself. A more accurate analogy would be that ten people in the room have headaches, and he gives pills to all of them. So more usage, but why is it abusive, when the service was offered for free to all, and it's simply that more people are now able to take advantage of it?
And before you suggest it, no, he's not charging for the pills. It would be like pills only being available in some remote location, and he sells you a car to travel them. The increased demand might decide them to stop giving out free pills. But there's no abuse here. It's just a consequence of offering something for free, when you can't actually support that for too many people.
Would it have been different if they weren't making money from it?
It didn't increase the cost, it was only due to more people using it (which could have happened through all sorts of means). A free application would be even more popular, making it even more likely that Google would decide to shut it down. Same result, even though they weren't "abusing" it.
I'm not sure why the economy going to shit makes a difference. Google are more likely to suspend a free service anyway in these economic conditions, all things being equal. And it works both ways - all the while free services are available, people are more likely to take advantage of them in these conditions.
When people buy this app, they are paying for the functionality that comes from the combination of the app's software and Google's service.
And when people buy a web browser, they are paying for the functionality that comes from the combination of the app's software, and the websites they visit?
The Internet would ground to a halt if we went down this route. Thankfully Google took the correct route and shut down their service, rather than trying to go after the application developers.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. ISTR people doing this for China, but I'd be curious to see this sort of thing for western democracies, e.g., to see what the UK's firewall is really blocking (we all heard about Wikipedia, which they backed down on, but we only found out about that because the proxying caused a problem with accessing, and it affected a major website - how many less popular sites are having legal text inadvertently blocked, with no one knowing because all they get is a fake 404?)
The link in question was to an anti-abortion page
For someone who hasn't been following this too closely - were they still pretending that this was about blocking child pr0n (in which case, this shows the claim up to be false), or did they drop that pretence?
(Even if it was about blocking child images, laws about automatic fines for linking are very worrying - linking to such images can be dealt with specific laws, and it should be up to a court to decide if the image constituted an illegal image; it shouldn't be a case that linking to something on a (secret) list is automatically illegal, no matter what the content.)
Indeed, I'm not saying that the employee should be sacked - just that this doesn't mean he is blameless or not responsible for his own work. He clearly is. Both him, and management, are to blame here. This also doesn't excuse behaviour that affects other employees (e.g., harrassment), which should taken seriously no matter how good he is.
"The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked."
That's reassuring to hear - and on a related note, I presume that this is due to Australia using proportional representation?
I'm in the UK, where the Government is also making moves of various kind of censorship of Internet and criminalising possession of private material - even if both other parties were to oppose a measure, the Government can just force whatever they like through, as their thirty-something per cent voting share gives them greater than 50% of seats in Parliament.
(The usual argument against PR is that it makes it harder for Governments to do things - my response is that that's a good thing.)
I agree the guy is an ass-hat (well, if he posted during the trial that is). But given that jurors are forced to work for no pay, it's not clear to me that it's fair they should have to pay for everyone else's time just for making a mistake. Finding the money for a 2nd trial is no different to what jurors have to do as standard for the 1st trial.
But that's not really what we're talking about - the problem is that Josh didn't build the bridge he was asked to (refusing to write documentation etc). It's like them building you a bridge, but it requires them to continue to maintain it, because no one else can. And one day, they're gone, and the bridge falls apart. If they were asked to build a bridge, and everyone else is capable of building a bridge that stays up like they were told, yes that's their fault.
Well, according to this list, it's about the functionality that they'll add in the next version ;)
I was going to joke about copy/paste, only to see that they're seriously having to ask for it (and what happened to "But we don't need primitive features like copy/paste, because Apple does it in some new manner, although I can't tell you how"?) In fact, I note that my years old cheap non-smart Motorola V980 has 5 of the "features" on this list (I don't even consider them features, just standard functionality). I had no idea that you couldn't even use the Iphone as an Internet connection for computer.
I'm wondering why this is news at all. Most new phones don't get a Slashdot story at all - even from major players - let alone a story about a mere wish list before a product's even released.
But that's part of Apple's brilliant marketing: the fact that the Iphone misses basic bog standard features itself gets them free advertising, because you have everyone requesting the features, and then queuing up desperately to get hold of the new phone when it's finally released, years behind the competition (as happened with the Iphone 3G).
Let's start a thread here - What Features Should Be Included With The Next Phone From Motorola Or Nokia?
This will be a much more interesting discussion, since we don't need to fill the list with basic features that other cheap phones have had for years - we can discussing interesting new possibilities that people would like to see? Let's hear an idea that's more innovative that "custom ringtones for my voicemail"(!)
So you had a crap phone - it doesn't make the Iphone the best ever (and $150 to $200 is hardly a fair comparison). My Motorola V980 phone can do all of the things you list, no problem. I don't go on posting Slashdot articles about it all the time though. I paid £80 for it four years ago, whilst the Iphone would cost me, today, £342.50 (price from the Apple store). (Of course, I realise that the Iphone has much better features that my phone in other areas, but this would be expected with such a difference in price, and a gap of four years, and the same would be true of any high end modern smartphone - the point is that if I'm paying for such a phone, especially one that gets paraded on Slashdot as if it was the Best Thing Ever, I expect more than simply "getting photos off it" etc.)
I agree (many items on these list have been standard for years on any cheap old phone!), but I wonder why we put hopes on Apple on the first place. Why not just focus on the market leaders who are ahead? An article on what features we want in a new Motorola or Nokia phone would be much more interesting, and we wouldn't have to bog ourselves down with "Ooh, can we have custom ringtones on my voicemail, just like every other phone has done for years?" It's like complaining that the Amiga isn't as good as the competition, and hoping that maybe they'll catch up.
You can get phones, mp3 playing, and copy/paste for much less than $200 these days.
Indeed :) Though I think part of the problem is that they think it's real - they want to ban it, because it really is learning about "evil" magic...
No different to other kinds of censorship really - the ones who have most trouble telling the difference between fictional acts, and actual acts, are the ones who want the fictional acts banned.
Second. In a small confined space I can see that smoking should be curtailed. Really though. A lot of place have laws now that you cant smoke outside.
Unless he was talking about some kind of open-air bus, the law referred to here was about confined spaces.
The fact that some other places might have mad laws about smoking outside is another matter. Nowhere did Scrameustache suggest that he was in favour of those laws, so his reasoning of it being about where people's rights end is entirely logical, and arguing against a ban on smoking outside is arguing with a straw man.
Sir you show your true extreme left wing colors when you think that escalating from smoking in a bus to shooting someone is anywhere near the ability to even be mentioned.
What on earth do economical views have to do with this?
He was making an analogy. His analogy, though extreme, was perfectly sound, because the same argument about doing what you like to other people applies to both. Your analogy of comparing bans in buses to bans outside is not, because his reasoning about not harming others doesn't apply there.
By "mandate" you mean money as well as the decision. I'm aware that companies sometimes build parts, but in a socialist state, the work is still done by the people or organisations - the point is that the decisions and the money come from the state. And NASA are not private industry in any meaningful sense.
My point being, if someone is going to make a troll-ish statement about capitalism versus socialism, space exploration right now is the last example you want to pick! (And I speak as someone who is pro-capitalist for the most part. Living in the non-socialist UK.)
Audience not buying? Place a tax on blank CDs, DVDs, hard drives, etc and give the proceeds to the labels and movie studios.
Not to mention that in the UK, everyone who watches any TV has to pay £140 per year. Now, I don't have a problem with the idea of a state funded TV organisation - but I do if I get labelled a pirate, as a result of downloading material that was shown on TV that I can legally watch, just because it's more convenient for me to watch it that way (not having to be in, remember when it's on etc - for me, this is no different to someone with a TIVO).
(Similarly with the CD tax - if you're going to charge people anyway, they should have the right to legally have that material.)
Indeed - they've already started by criminalising possession of adult images that they define to be "extreme" using the argument that a child might see them, and the lobbyists who called for this law want the laws to go further.
In answer to the question as to why the Government is so eager to do something about copyright, I do wonder if it relates to their general trend of wanting to censor and control the Internet. Censoring data transmitted over P2P is much harder, so the copyright argument provides a way to shut it down. More generally, blocking people's access on a suspicion (especially as a large number of people have probably downloaded at least something) is an easy way to censor people at an individual level.
What's "EU-style socialism"? It can't be anything like socialism, since the EU isn't a socialist state.
And remind me again, how exactly did the US "lead in space"? Was that through private means of production, or a Government funded organisation?
My experience doing the maths degree was the opposite. Not to say that it was boring; not at all - but the example applications were the mundane or obvious stuff (the obvious example from A Levels would be using integration to calculate the volume of a sphere). In the real world, I've found far more interesting things that one can apply mathematics too (and part of the reason it's more interesting is because I know that I'm solving real world problems that are useful and in demand, instead just doing some contrived example that you know other people have already worked out loads of times before).
I think it would be nice to give students more of an indication of what interesting things their education can be used to solve in the real world, especially at school, where there was the common attitude of "what use is this?" - have attitudes really changed this much in the last 10-15 years?
If students are now excited about what you can use their education for, I think that's a good thing - even if there's a danger of going too far in the other direction.
I visited my alma mater recently, and I was stuck by how much changed in just ten years time. The students are doing "cool" projects that I can only dream of doing in the real world. (Example - Programming a robot to swim across a lake and collect trash.) It makes me wonder if they will be disappointed with their first jobs, which will mostly consist of sitting at a cubicle all day and writing documents.
If someone's hiring people who have studied things such as robot programming, in order to do documentation all day, I think the problem is more with their interviewing scheme than allegedly narcissistic students...
Yes, it's true that most programming jobs still involve a certain amount of boring/admin stuff, but what would be the point of training people to do the simple menial stuff at University? (Anyway, that's what part time jobs are for...)
If he's releasing software under a licence that allows commercial usage, and then complains about people doing that, he's a fool. Now what has that got to do with the claim that OSS doesn't have a proper business model behind it?
One person isn't representative of the entirety of open source.
The problem there wasn't people making money out of it, it was using hardware to restrict people's freedom. Thus they decided to write a new licence to take account of that. In particular, previous licences won't be changed, so it's still not true that they "shut down their software" (if you have something released under GPL v2, you can continue to use it under that licence).
Heh - indeed, it would be funny to see this backfire. Imagine him revealing a load of depressing emo poetry and suicide notes. He'd get triple damages!
But he's not sending all those SMSs himself. A more accurate analogy would be that ten people in the room have headaches, and he gives pills to all of them. So more usage, but why is it abusive, when the service was offered for free to all, and it's simply that more people are now able to take advantage of it?
And before you suggest it, no, he's not charging for the pills. It would be like pills only being available in some remote location, and he sells you a car to travel them. The increased demand might decide them to stop giving out free pills. But there's no abuse here. It's just a consequence of offering something for free, when you can't actually support that for too many people.
Would it have been different if they weren't making money from it?
It didn't increase the cost, it was only due to more people using it (which could have happened through all sorts of means). A free application would be even more popular, making it even more likely that Google would decide to shut it down. Same result, even though they weren't "abusing" it.
I'm not sure why the economy going to shit makes a difference. Google are more likely to suspend a free service anyway in these economic conditions, all things being equal. And it works both ways - all the while free services are available, people are more likely to take advantage of them in these conditions.
Yes, because OSS developers are always whining, and shutting down their software, everytime someone makes money from their product.
Oh wait, they don't. In fact, Open Source explicitly allows, by definition, other people to make money from it.
When people buy this app, they are paying for the functionality that comes from the combination of the app's software and Google's service.
And when people buy a web browser, they are paying for the functionality that comes from the combination of the app's software, and the websites they visit?
The Internet would ground to a halt if we went down this route. Thankfully Google took the correct route and shut down their service, rather than trying to go after the application developers.