Never, because all the "discussion" is being done in a gigantic echo chamber that makes it get louder and louder, with no dissenting voices
Plenty of dissenting voices. But since they've either got to defend ridiculous patents by claiming they're not ridiculous (often by insulting anyone who claims the patents are obvious extensions of existing technology), or claim the ridiculous ones are an aberration (which flies in the face of the evidence), they don't have much credibility.
Patents were never meant to cover the raw output of brainstorming sessions. Just about any patent obtained that way is going to be non-novel, obvious, non-disclosive, or some combination of the three. But since the patent office approves them anyway, they form a barrier to getting things accomplished.
This is exactly the sort of thing Justice Bradley was referring to when he wrote:
"It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith." (Atlantic Works v. Brady, 1017 U.S. 192, 200 (1882)).
You mean just shoot them? Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Someone else just picks up their portfolio and continues where they left off, only with better bodyguards.
However, any mention of DRM for audio products seems to be a lightening rod of criticism (and perhaps with good reason). I'm not making any assertions as to whether it's right or wrong (at least not yet), but I wanted to make the point that DRM is alive and well in the world around us.
It's alive, but not well. Anyone who can use Google can find reasonably friendly software to rip DVDs, and much digitally-sold music is now DRM-free.
I believe that users should be able to make backups of products that they have purchased. As a corollary to that, I believe that it should be simple to restore their backups when needed. I believe that people should be able to play their music on whatever device they own wherever they happen to be. I believe that people should not lose the music that they paid for (along with the money that they spent) if the retailer that they bought it from happens to go out of business at some distant (or not so distant) time in the future. I don't believe that honest customers should be penalized with restrictions while pirates get the same quality of product with no restrictions. I believe that paying customers shouldn't be treated like criminals. I believe that paying customers should be rewarded for their loyalty to the artist.
These are the things that DRM should have enabled and these are the reasons that DRM has failed us all.
Each and every one of those things you list is enabled "by default", without DRM.
You see, I don't believe that DRM was the antithesis of these ideals.
Well one reason might be that some of those perfect copies of your car may be used in ways you don't like - say running a red light. Now maybe you don't get a photo-ticket in the mail, but all the neighbours are talking about what a bad driver you are.
My car is one of 4000 nearly identical copies already. If anyone's thinking bad of me because they saw a car of the same make, model, and color as mine running a red light, they're idiots.
Trying to explain the concept of "fair" to a copyright lawyer is like explaining "deadlines" to a programmer. They may understand the theory, but they usually cringe at the idea and think "hell, that may be nice for someone else but it sure can't apply to me!"
Programmers will understand "deadlines" when customers/clients/bosses understand "requirements freeze". And copyright lawyers _understand_ "fair" just fine, but they don't see what's in it for them.
That said, there is a substantial class of students who NEED this class: the poor. A lot of extreme-rural and inner city children do NOT have easy access to computers, except at school. Touch-typing classes for them is the kind of basic education they need to keep up with suburban peers in our tech-heavy society.
No, reading, writing, and arithmetic are the kinds of _basic_ education they need to keep up with suburban peers. Since the inner city schools (don't know about the extreme rural ones) can't manage that, introducing touch-typing is premature.
So you would fire a 65wpm natural typer (with 100% accuracy) over a 35wpm touch typer?
Fundamentalism is stupid pretty much anywhere it rears its ugly head - if you fire someone over their _methods_ rather than their _productivity_ and thus value to your company, then you probably deserve to fail in business.
Alas, the many companies trumpeting "ISO 9000 compliance" proves that not everyone gets what they deserve.
4 years of HS, 5 years of college, 3 years in the work force and the only time I have a problem with an 'alternative layout' is the GRE test for graduate school.
When I took the GRE, there were no keyboards involved at all.
Touch-typing is one of those skills that hasn't changed much in the past century; it used to be helpful when you typed on a typewriter, it's still helpful and more or less the same process when you use a computer.
Have you ever used a manual typewriter? The process is, if not entirely different, significantly different. The main differences
1) The difference in elevation between the rows is much greater, meaning the spacing between keys is much greater 2) The keys must be struck with significant force. 3) The travel of the keys is much greater. 4) The keys can jam
All of that made formal touch typing MUCH more important on a manual typewriter than an electric or electronic. On a modern keyboard it simply isn't nearly as important to learn touch typing; anyone who uses a keyboard enough will figure out a way which works for them. High school is far too late nowadays anyway.
But the world in fact has changed. If nothing had changed, as your limited examples seem to indicate, why then have we gone from four years of obligatory education to eight, nine, ten or twelve, depending on the country? The prevailing opinion seems to be (I've asked the question many times) that there is so much more to learn than before.
That opinion is irrelevant. There's lots more to learn, but school students generally aren't learning it. Many aren't learning in 12 years what they used to learn in 8 in the US, never mind any additional information.
They have these crazy things in Europe called "trains" that connect city centres without having to hang around in an unfashionable suburb for a few hours waiting to be put into a metal tube. You don't even have to take your shoes off to get on them.
You do, however, have to go through passport control ("E.U., schmee-you, that's what we say -- Gordon Brown") to take a train between London and Paris, so I'm surprised the missing segment isn't shown.
Imagine if nobody ever pirated music, if there was no file "sharing", no Bit Torrent and everyone who wanted to listen to an album went to a record store and purchased it with cold, hard cash. Would the fee being discussed here ever have been introduced? Would it have even been considered?
Yes. Because the record companies would still want to be paid for music transfered from one of those bought-and-paid-for albums to a portable music player. Remember the RIAA seethed over "home taping" long before any of those things and got similar levies placed on blank cassette tapes.
Part of me wants to give a big Nelson ha-ha to the overprotective parents who install this crap trying to save their children from the eeeevil people on the Internet. Is it really any surprise that the corporations most interested in "protecting" your children are those who have figured out a way to exploit them?
Why? It's clearly terrorism. And I say that as an environmentalist, but one with no sympathy for the ELF's beliefs or tactics. Their actions fit the definition perfectly.
It's just vandalism. Perhaps politically motivated, but not terrorism.
"Reverse a linked list" is an even better test. If they don't understand pointers and you're trying to hire someone for C or C++ programming, you don't want them. At a former job it was stunning how many recent Computer Science graduates couldn't do that.
As I recall the form of this problem used at my previous employer was "print a linked list in reverse". If the interviewee chose recursion or making a new list, he was asked to describe the problems (memory) with that and come up with a better technique. The vast majority didn't get through the whole problem, although sometimes this was just due to losing track of pointers on the whiteboard.
Many technical people fill their resumes with buzz-words but don't actually know what's on there. You need to validate that too.
That is because HR is just clever enough (or has software clever enough) to match buzzwords on job descriptions to buzzwords on resumes. So in order to get through the first filter, one must pack the resume with enough buzzwords to match many job descriptions. If you don't have the right buzzword (and you don't necessarily know what they are), you don't even get a phone screen.
This "unschooling" as the only method of learning is IMO pretty clearly not going to instill the basic skills an educated person needs -- the typical reading, writing, arithmetic. Nor is it going to help much with the less concrete things an educated person needs -- e.g. history and literature. Nor with the more formal parts of the sciences. But if the kid is reasonably bright, he simply doesn't need to spend anything like 6 hrs * 180 days per year to reach competence for his grade level in the basics. Which leaves lots of time for less structured activity like this, especially at the primary school level when the more advanced stuff isn't being taught in the regular system either.
I'd mod this up if I could. Too many parents think they're better than "the system" and they raise social retards. I know one in particular whom was so bad, he dropped out of college his second year of music school.... after his parents OK'd him to bring his underaged girlfriend from Romania to the US.
Looks like a total non sequitur to me. What does being a "social retard" have to do with dropping out of college? And why is dropping out of college in one's second year make one "so bad"? Lots of people (even people who went through the normal system) drop out of college, many of them in their first year. And what's the girlfriend have to do with it, aside from showing characteristic naivete on the part of the student, and unfortunately common uncharacteristic naivete on the part of his parents?
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Plenty of dissenting voices. But since they've either got to defend ridiculous patents by claiming they're not ridiculous (often by insulting anyone who claims the patents are obvious extensions of existing technology), or claim the ridiculous ones are an aberration (which flies in the face of the evidence), they don't have much credibility.
Patents were never meant to cover the raw output of brainstorming sessions. Just about any patent obtained that way is going to be non-novel, obvious, non-disclosive, or some combination of the three. But since the patent office approves them anyway, they form a barrier to getting things accomplished.
This is exactly the sort of thing Justice Bradley was referring to when he wrote:
You mean just shoot them? Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Someone else just picks up their portfolio and continues where they left off, only with better bodyguards.
Allentown is a third-class city. Jonestown is a borough. Kingston is a city. Only Jamestown is a town :-)
It's alive, but not well. Anyone who can use Google can find reasonably friendly software to rip DVDs, and much digitally-sold music is now DRM-free.
Each and every one of those things you list is enabled "by default", without DRM.
Then you are mistaken.
It's been all downhill since they bought into that "kibibyte" nonsense.
My car is one of 4000 nearly identical copies already. If anyone's thinking bad of me because they saw a car of the same make, model, and color as mine running a red light, they're idiots.
Two objections:
1) The "illegally obtained" part for those 2500 tracks was not established
2) Mere possession of unauthorized copyrighted material is not actionable
Programmers will understand "deadlines" when customers/clients/bosses understand "requirements freeze". And copyright lawyers _understand_ "fair" just fine, but they don't see what's in it for them.
No, reading, writing, and arithmetic are the kinds of _basic_ education they need to keep up with suburban peers. Since the inner city schools (don't know about the extreme rural ones) can't manage that, introducing touch-typing is premature.
Alas, the many companies trumpeting "ISO 9000 compliance" proves that not everyone gets what they deserve.
When I took the GRE, there were no keyboards involved at all.
(Damn kids. Get off my lawn.)
Coding isn't. Arguing with idiots on the Internet while "compiling" is. :-)
Have you ever used a manual typewriter? The process is, if not entirely different, significantly different. The main differences
1) The difference in elevation between the rows is much greater, meaning the spacing between keys is much greater
2) The keys must be struck with significant force.
3) The travel of the keys is much greater.
4) The keys can jam
All of that made formal touch typing MUCH more important on a manual typewriter than an electric or electronic. On a modern keyboard it simply isn't nearly as important to learn touch typing; anyone who uses a keyboard enough will figure out a way which works for them. High school is far too late nowadays anyway.
That opinion is irrelevant. There's lots more to learn, but school students generally aren't learning it. Many aren't learning in 12 years what they used to learn in 8 in the US, never mind any additional information.
You do, however, have to go through passport control ("E.U., schmee-you, that's what we say -- Gordon Brown") to take a train between London and Paris, so I'm surprised the missing segment isn't shown.
They usually develop symptoms of depression and paranoia, but we've got a pill for that...
Yes. Because the record companies would still want to be paid for music transfered from one of those bought-and-paid-for albums to a portable music player. Remember the RIAA seethed over "home taping" long before any of those things and got similar levies placed on blank cassette tapes.
Part of me wants to give a big Nelson ha-ha to the overprotective parents who install this crap trying to save their children from the eeeevil people on the Internet. Is it really any surprise that the corporations most interested in "protecting" your children are those who have figured out a way to exploit them?
It's just vandalism. Perhaps politically motivated, but not terrorism.
Careful. If the interviewee asks "Little endian or big endian?", you better answer quick or you're getting tossed over the side.
As I recall the form of this problem used at my previous employer was "print a linked list in reverse". If the interviewee chose recursion or making a new list, he was asked to describe the problems (memory) with that and come up with a better technique. The vast majority didn't get through the whole problem, although sometimes this was just due to losing track of pointers on the whiteboard.
That is because HR is just clever enough (or has software clever enough) to match buzzwords on job descriptions to buzzwords on resumes. So in order to get through the first filter, one must pack the resume with enough buzzwords to match many job descriptions. If you don't have the right buzzword (and you don't necessarily know what they are), you don't even get a phone screen.
This "unschooling" as the only method of learning is IMO pretty clearly not going to instill the basic skills an educated person needs -- the typical reading, writing, arithmetic. Nor is it going to help much with the less concrete things an educated person needs -- e.g. history and literature. Nor with the more formal parts of the sciences. But if the kid is reasonably bright, he simply doesn't need to spend anything like 6 hrs * 180 days per year to reach competence for his grade level in the basics. Which leaves lots of time for less structured activity like this, especially at the primary school level when the more advanced stuff isn't being taught in the regular system either.
Looks like a total non sequitur to me. What does being a "social retard" have to do with dropping out of college? And why is dropping out of college in one's second year make one "so bad"? Lots of people (even people who went through the normal system) drop out of college, many of them in their first year. And what's the girlfriend have to do with it, aside from showing characteristic naivete on the part of the student, and unfortunately common uncharacteristic naivete on the part of his parents?
Seriously? Yes. Certain public schools, probably including many in Baltimore City.