Copyright is for the benefit of both artists and society at large. It encourages the creation of new works by making it more economically feasible to do so, by offsetting both the explicit and implicit costs of creating works.
Well, technically, there's an important distinction to be made between the goal of copyright law, and the effect copyright law has in order to achieve that goal.
The goal of copyright law is to benefit society. How it goes about doing that is by encouraging the creation of new works by providing a benefit to the creators of those works. In other words, the benefit to the creator is merely a means of achieving the ends of benefiting society.
Then go ahead and try to sell it. Nobody is saying that you can't try to sell your music, just that you shouldn't expect that, simply because you put lots of time and energy into it, you deserve to be paid handsomely for it.
People will pay what they'll pay. If that's not as much as you'd like it to be, then you'll have to come up with other ways of making money with your music. If there are no other ways, then maybe you need to consider another career and just make music on the side.
...we're not going to have time for many live performances, while recording can even be done long distance.
I'm not trying to be snarky here, and I'm also a musician who has played in a few bands and even recorded a few albums, but here's the thing: if you're not willing or able to put in the time to gig, maybe you don't deserve to make money at it.
You see, too many people think that just because they created something, they deserve to be paid for it. That's simply not true. Being in a band should be a job, not just something you do for a few weeks or months and then expect to sit back and let the royalty money flow in for the rest of your life.
You have every right to try to make money off your music. However, if it doesn't work, then too bad. Nobody owes you just because you decided to record an album.
This doesn't mean Office 2007 has a bad system, but the microsoft practice of, seemingly arbitrarily, redesigning their user interface every four years is a bad system.
It's neither arbitrary, nor every four years. The last time a UI redesign this significant happened was the switch from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, which was 13 years ago. Whether you happen to like the new UI or not, the fact is it was done in an attempt to improve usability of the software. Improving usability is not an arbitrary change. However, people are stubborn and don't want things to change, therefore they refuse to take the 30 seconds it takes to learn the new UI, and instead just whine and complain that everything changed for no reason. Meanwhile, those of us who aren't so damned stubborn just adapt, and find that the new system actually does improve usability.
Microsoft has not violated their own UI standard, they've changed their UI standard. The ribbon style is the new standard. And if you've ever tried it, you'll know that it's actually very much based on the previous standard.
If I remember correctly (I don't have any "ribboned" apps installed on this system), "Save" and "Save As" are still in the "File" menu, except that the "File" menu is now a big button on the top left of the window. And that will be the case for every program that adheres to the new standard.
The real complaint with the ribbon isn't that it isn't good, it's just that it's a change, and people are resistant to change. As someone who's been using computers for about 28 years, let me tell you that the only constant in this industry is change. Better get used to it.
It's a different system. It doesn't work like the previous system. That means that, if you're familiar with the old system, you will have to learn the new system in order to use it -- just like you once had to learn the old system. This does not mean it's a bad system.
I'm not saying it can't be done. As I said in my previous post, there are arguments in favour of keeping that kind of work in-house.
However, as much as we all love to blame clueless PHBs for every decision that appears "bad" with the benefit of hindsight, can you really fault someone for buying services from a company as knowledgeable as Google, with their 99.9% uptime guarantee (which means the ability to be compensated if that guarantee isn't met), instead of doing it internally, where the only recourse if something goes wrong is yell at someone and maybe fire them -- which doesn't actually solve the problem, or provide any kind of compensation?
doing a much better job than any internal IT dept. != never fails
True. However, they guarantee 99.9% uptime. Anything more than about 8.75 hours per year of downtime would be breaking that guarantee. So far they've got customers who have been out for more than 24 hours, and that's not even counting the 3 significant outages they had in August.
Run your own damned mail server if it's THAT IMPORTANT. Seriously, it's not hard to set one up, and you've obviously got the money to do it.
Right. Because some nerdy 20-something admin with a copy of "Sendmail for Dummies" can do a much better job than all the engineers at Google.
This is a paid service offered by one of the largest and most knowledgeable technology companies around. They should be able to do a much better job than any internal IT department. There are arguments in favour of doing it yourself, but there are definitely arguments in favour of outsourcing to a competent provider, which Google should be.
It may not matter what kind of laptop he uses. Vista has real problems with laptops and secondary monitors.
Note: unlike 99% of Slashdot comments that mention Vista, I'm not bashing it (I like it and use it daily), but that is my biggest pet peeve with it. It always gets confused about monitor configuration on laptops with a secondary monitor.
By the way, just a note to the GP poster: when an application insists on appearing on the monitor that isn't actually there, it can still be moved back to the correct monitor. Right-click it on the task bar, select "move" (or hit "m"), then press any arrow key. This will attach your mouse pointer to the window and allow you to drag it back into view.
But scope is precisely the point. Although there are many "search engines" used on various different websites, when people talk about ranking "Search Engines", they generally mean websites that have a web scoped search engine.
In fact, as I pointed out in another post, the article in question doesn't actually call YouTube a "Search Engine"; only the Slashdot headline does. The article first lists a ranking of "Search Engines", which does not include YouTube, then lists a separate ranking of overall "search activity", which includes searches with narrower scopes, such as YouTube, Amazon, MySpace, etc.
I agree that it is nevertheless interesting that YouTube's narrowly scoped searches outnumber Yahoo's web scoped searches -- if that is actually the case, which it may not be, as the article lumps all other Google-owned search properties, excluding their main web search, in with YouTube.
People who search on yahoo are not looking to stay at yahoo. People who search at youtube are looking to stay at youtube. This story is bogus.
It should be pointed out that the article doesn't call YouTube a search engine. It lists rankings of the 5 major search engines, then it does a separate ranking of "search activity", which includes any kind of searching within a website, and includes such searchable sites as MapQuest, MySpace, and Amazon.
And you make it sound as if Canada was on the verge of destruction when Stephen Harper came along and magically turned everything to gold with his impotent minority government.
The truth is, Canada was in great shape before the Conservatives came to power, and it will remain in great shape no matter who wins this election. The Conservatives are dangerously wrong on far too many issues to allow them to maintain the little power they have, or worse yet, to actually gain more power through a majority government. And if taxation is your big concern, what have the Cons done for you, other than a token few pennies with the ridiculous GST reduction? And when have they given even the slightest hint of being interested in civil liberties, other than when they talk of taking them away?
Dion: seems weak, plus the Liberals are corrupt and need a time-out
This is the problem I have with Canadians. The Chretien Liberals were definitely corrupt, and definitely needed a time-out. So what did we, the Canadian people, do to punish them for their corruption? We inflicted Stephen Harper on ourselves -- not to mention such gems as Stockwell Day, Jason Kenney, and Maxime Bernier (at least he's out of the picture now).
Today's Liberal party is mostly devoid of the people who were involved in the Sponsorship scandal. Sure, Dion seems a little weak, but have you seen Stephen Harper? We need to save ourselves from the "Reform Party dressed as the Conservative Party".
So, really, the problem is that you want it to work like Linux. Well, guess what? It doesn't. That doesn't mean it's bad or wrong. Linux's way of doing things isn't the only way of doing things. Vista does it differently. To use Vista, you have to learn to use Vista. Just like you had to learn to use Linux.
I don't think "I want to edit lots of system files, I'll run explorer as administrator." I think "Oh wait, that's a system file, I need privileges... How do I get privileges?"
The answer to that question, in Vista, is to run your process as Administrator.
In linux, a quick "su" will get me to root, in the same place, and let me give up privileges quickly when I'm done. When your GUI is more difficult to use than the command line, you know you've got a problem.
For many operations, the command line has always been simpler to use than a GUI. I agree that a "make me the administrator" button in Explorer would be nice to have. Maybe Windows 7 will add that. But the Vista way of dealing with this scenario is still a perfectly acceptable way of working. It's just different, and requires getting used to. The main point is that it's not that different than the GUI equivalent in the Linux world.
UAC is just a slightly different implementation of Linux's graphical sudo prompt. If Linux were used by the hordes of ordinary intarweb surfers and other everyday lusers, sudo would annoy them enough to want to turn it off permanently (or just log in as root).
In Vista, if you open the "all users" start menut and re-arrange 10 shortcuts, you get 10 prompts
Not if you open it as administrator (note: not the same as logging in as administrator). Then you get prompted once upon launching Explorer, and never again as long as you have that Explorer session open.
The problem with UAC is that people can't be bothered to learn how it works. Like so many computer-related problems, it's really a user problem.
For what it's worth, I've been using Vista daily for about a year and have not found the UAC prompts to be even remotely annoying.
As someone who did read your entire post, let me point out that the comment to which your post was responding to (and which you quoted) said: "Why shouldn't a homeless person have the same right to vote as me?". The list you provided following that quote is, therefore, quite clearly intended to be a list of reasons why a homeless person should not have that same right to vote.
So, while the last part of the post did state "that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote", the first part of the post was clearly arguing against that right.
Now do you see why so many people jumped all over you?
He was just some dumb cowboy that came across as more likable to people dumb enough to vote for President based on who they'd rather sit down and have a beer with.
And the irony? He doesn't even drink.
... and he's not really even a cowboy. He's a Connecticut born Yale graduate who wears a cowboy hat to foster the image described above.
Other sources are providing more information. According to CBC, the plane slammed into a mountain.
Anderson said no remains were found in or near the aircraft, but said the crash was so severe that "I doubt someone would have walked away from it."
The plane appears to have crashed head-on with the mountainside before disintegrating, he said. The aircraft's engine was found about 90 metres from where the fuselage and wings were found.
So-called "cloud computing" doesn't mean the Gestapo will bust down your door, confiscate your computer, and leave you with only a cloud terminal. It's a choice. It's an option available to those who want the convenience it provides.
The rest of us will continue using what we've always used.
If you aren't prepared to put your name to what you say, then I don't want to hear it.
Then, you will hear only those things that no one is trying to suppress by intimidation or retaliation.
Note that, according to his subject line, GP was referring specifically to mail. He was not saying that he doesn't want to hear anonymous speech in general, just not in his inbox.
I agree with him. People should have the right to speak their mind anonymously in a public forum without limitation, but I don't want anything anonymous in my private inbox.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyright is for the benefit of both artists and society at large. It encourages the creation of new works by making it more economically feasible to do so, by offsetting both the explicit and implicit costs of creating works.
Well, technically, there's an important distinction to be made between the goal of copyright law, and the effect copyright law has in order to achieve that goal.
The goal of copyright law is to benefit society. How it goes about doing that is by encouraging the creation of new works by providing a benefit to the creators of those works. In other words, the benefit to the creator is merely a means of achieving the ends of benefiting society.
Then go ahead and try to sell it. Nobody is saying that you can't try to sell your music, just that you shouldn't expect that, simply because you put lots of time and energy into it, you deserve to be paid handsomely for it.
People will pay what they'll pay. If that's not as much as you'd like it to be, then you'll have to come up with other ways of making money with your music. If there are no other ways, then maybe you need to consider another career and just make music on the side.
...we're not going to have time for many live performances, while recording can even be done long distance.
I'm not trying to be snarky here, and I'm also a musician who has played in a few bands and even recorded a few albums, but here's the thing: if you're not willing or able to put in the time to gig, maybe you don't deserve to make money at it.
You see, too many people think that just because they created something, they deserve to be paid for it. That's simply not true. Being in a band should be a job, not just something you do for a few weeks or months and then expect to sit back and let the royalty money flow in for the rest of your life.
You have every right to try to make money off your music. However, if it doesn't work, then too bad. Nobody owes you just because you decided to record an album.
This doesn't mean Office 2007 has a bad system, but the microsoft practice of, seemingly arbitrarily, redesigning their user interface every four years is a bad system.
It's neither arbitrary, nor every four years. The last time a UI redesign this significant happened was the switch from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, which was 13 years ago. Whether you happen to like the new UI or not, the fact is it was done in an attempt to improve usability of the software. Improving usability is not an arbitrary change. However, people are stubborn and don't want things to change, therefore they refuse to take the 30 seconds it takes to learn the new UI, and instead just whine and complain that everything changed for no reason. Meanwhile, those of us who aren't so damned stubborn just adapt, and find that the new system actually does improve usability.
Microsoft has not violated their own UI standard, they've changed their UI standard. The ribbon style is the new standard. And if you've ever tried it, you'll know that it's actually very much based on the previous standard.
If I remember correctly (I don't have any "ribboned" apps installed on this system), "Save" and "Save As" are still in the "File" menu, except that the "File" menu is now a big button on the top left of the window. And that will be the case for every program that adheres to the new standard.
The real complaint with the ribbon isn't that it isn't good, it's just that it's a change, and people are resistant to change. As someone who's been using computers for about 28 years, let me tell you that the only constant in this industry is change. Better get used to it.
It's a different system. It doesn't work like the previous system. That means that, if you're familiar with the old system, you will have to learn the new system in order to use it -- just like you once had to learn the old system. This does not mean it's a bad system.
I'm not saying it can't be done. As I said in my previous post, there are arguments in favour of keeping that kind of work in-house.
However, as much as we all love to blame clueless PHBs for every decision that appears "bad" with the benefit of hindsight, can you really fault someone for buying services from a company as knowledgeable as Google, with their 99.9% uptime guarantee (which means the ability to be compensated if that guarantee isn't met), instead of doing it internally, where the only recourse if something goes wrong is yell at someone and maybe fire them -- which doesn't actually solve the problem, or provide any kind of compensation?
doing a much better job than any internal IT dept. != never fails
True. However, they guarantee 99.9% uptime. Anything more than about 8.75 hours per year of downtime would be breaking that guarantee. So far they've got customers who have been out for more than 24 hours, and that's not even counting the 3 significant outages they had in August.
Run your own damned mail server if it's THAT IMPORTANT. Seriously, it's not hard to set one up, and you've obviously got the money to do it.
Right. Because some nerdy 20-something admin with a copy of "Sendmail for Dummies" can do a much better job than all the engineers at Google.
This is a paid service offered by one of the largest and most knowledgeable technology companies around. They should be able to do a much better job than any internal IT department. There are arguments in favour of doing it yourself, but there are definitely arguments in favour of outsourcing to a competent provider, which Google should be.
This is a PR disaster for Google.
It may not matter what kind of laptop he uses. Vista has real problems with laptops and secondary monitors.
Note: unlike 99% of Slashdot comments that mention Vista, I'm not bashing it (I like it and use it daily), but that is my biggest pet peeve with it. It always gets confused about monitor configuration on laptops with a secondary monitor.
By the way, just a note to the GP poster: when an application insists on appearing on the monitor that isn't actually there, it can still be moved back to the correct monitor. Right-click it on the task bar, select "move" (or hit "m"), then press any arrow key. This will attach your mouse pointer to the window and allow you to drag it back into view.
But scope is precisely the point. Although there are many "search engines" used on various different websites, when people talk about ranking "Search Engines", they generally mean websites that have a web scoped search engine.
In fact, as I pointed out in another post, the article in question doesn't actually call YouTube a "Search Engine"; only the Slashdot headline does. The article first lists a ranking of "Search Engines", which does not include YouTube, then lists a separate ranking of overall "search activity", which includes searches with narrower scopes, such as YouTube, Amazon, MySpace, etc.
I agree that it is nevertheless interesting that YouTube's narrowly scoped searches outnumber Yahoo's web scoped searches -- if that is actually the case, which it may not be, as the article lumps all other Google-owned search properties, excluding their main web search, in with YouTube.
People who search on yahoo are not looking to stay at yahoo. People who search at youtube are looking to stay at youtube. This story is bogus.
It should be pointed out that the article doesn't call YouTube a search engine. It lists rankings of the 5 major search engines, then it does a separate ranking of "search activity", which includes any kind of searching within a website, and includes such searchable sites as MapQuest, MySpace, and Amazon.
youtube is just a website with a search facility.
Google is also a website with a search facility.
YouTube is a website with the ability to search its content. Google is a website with the ability to search other sites' content.
Basically, Google is a search engine, and YouTube has a search engine.
And you make it sound as if Canada was on the verge of destruction when Stephen Harper came along and magically turned everything to gold with his impotent minority government.
The truth is, Canada was in great shape before the Conservatives came to power, and it will remain in great shape no matter who wins this election. The Conservatives are dangerously wrong on far too many issues to allow them to maintain the little power they have, or worse yet, to actually gain more power through a majority government. And if taxation is your big concern, what have the Cons done for you, other than a token few pennies with the ridiculous GST reduction? And when have they given even the slightest hint of being interested in civil liberties, other than when they talk of taking them away?
Dion: seems weak, plus the Liberals are corrupt and need a time-out
This is the problem I have with Canadians. The Chretien Liberals were definitely corrupt, and definitely needed a time-out. So what did we, the Canadian people, do to punish them for their corruption? We inflicted Stephen Harper on ourselves -- not to mention such gems as Stockwell Day, Jason Kenney, and Maxime Bernier (at least he's out of the picture now).
Today's Liberal party is mostly devoid of the people who were involved in the Sponsorship scandal. Sure, Dion seems a little weak, but have you seen Stephen Harper? We need to save ourselves from the "Reform Party dressed as the Conservative Party".
Please, end the time-out already.
So, really, the problem is that you want it to work like Linux. Well, guess what? It doesn't. That doesn't mean it's bad or wrong. Linux's way of doing things isn't the only way of doing things. Vista does it differently. To use Vista, you have to learn to use Vista. Just like you had to learn to use Linux.
I don't think "I want to edit lots of system files, I'll run explorer as administrator." I think "Oh wait, that's a system file, I need privileges... How do I get privileges?"
The answer to that question, in Vista, is to run your process as Administrator.
In linux, a quick "su" will get me to root, in the same place, and let me give up privileges quickly when I'm done. When your GUI is more difficult to use than the command line, you know you've got a problem.
For many operations, the command line has always been simpler to use than a GUI. I agree that a "make me the administrator" button in Explorer would be nice to have. Maybe Windows 7 will add that. But the Vista way of dealing with this scenario is still a perfectly acceptable way of working. It's just different, and requires getting used to. The main point is that it's not that different than the GUI equivalent in the Linux world.
UAC is just a slightly different implementation of Linux's graphical sudo prompt. If Linux were used by the hordes of ordinary intarweb surfers and other everyday lusers, sudo would annoy them enough to want to turn it off permanently (or just log in as root).
In Vista, if you open the "all users" start menut and re-arrange 10 shortcuts, you get 10 prompts
Not if you open it as administrator (note: not the same as logging in as administrator). Then you get prompted once upon launching Explorer, and never again as long as you have that Explorer session open.
The problem with UAC is that people can't be bothered to learn how it works. Like so many computer-related problems, it's really a user problem.
For what it's worth, I've been using Vista daily for about a year and have not found the UAC prompts to be even remotely annoying.
As someone who did read your entire post, let me point out that the comment to which your post was responding to (and which you quoted) said: "Why shouldn't a homeless person have the same right to vote as me?". The list you provided following that quote is, therefore, quite clearly intended to be a list of reasons why a homeless person should not have that same right to vote.
So, while the last part of the post did state "that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote", the first part of the post was clearly arguing against that right.
Now do you see why so many people jumped all over you?
He was just some dumb cowboy that came across as more likable to people dumb enough to vote for President based on who they'd rather sit down and have a beer with.
And the irony? He doesn't even drink.
... and he's not really even a cowboy. He's a Connecticut born Yale graduate who wears a cowboy hat to foster the image described above.
This is plagiarism (which implies a copyright infringement).
Just a minor note: plagiarism doesn't necessarily mean copyright infringement. One can plagiarize without infringing copyright.
Other sources are providing more information. According to CBC, the plane slammed into a mountain.
Anderson said no remains were found in or near the aircraft, but said the crash was so severe that "I doubt someone would have walked away from it."
The plane appears to have crashed head-on with the mountainside before disintegrating, he said. The aircraft's engine was found about 90 metres from where the fuselage and wings were found.
So-called "cloud computing" doesn't mean the Gestapo will bust down your door, confiscate your computer, and leave you with only a cloud terminal. It's a choice. It's an option available to those who want the convenience it provides.
The rest of us will continue using what we've always used.
If you aren't prepared to put your name to what you say, then I don't want to hear it.
Then, you will hear only those things that no one is trying to suppress by intimidation or retaliation.
Note that, according to his subject line, GP was referring specifically to mail. He was not saying that he doesn't want to hear anonymous speech in general, just not in his inbox.
I agree with him. People should have the right to speak their mind anonymously in a public forum without limitation, but I don't want anything anonymous in my private inbox.
Perhaps it is based on IP, and the slower company used NAT?
You know, I never even thought of that. The problem is other people in the same company posting on Slashdot using the same IP address.
That's actually kind of funny.