The first one should be free. Copyright renewal should cost money.
The only ones who will bother to renew a copyright are those who are making money off of it, and can therefore afford to renew it. If you're not making money off of it anyway, why bother renewing?
All the guy did was prove that the system they payed so much money for was crap, but we can't have that now can we? It would displease our corporate overlords.
Yes, he was such a noble crusader....
"I really wasn't making any point at all," Nematbakhsh admits, debunking news reports to the contrary. "It was a senior prank, a silly thing."
The debate is whether or not the resulting death is caused by the taser or by the excited delirium.
Or by some combination of excited dilirium, police intervention, and Taser use.
Have there been cases of people just dropping dead of excited delirium without any police intervention?
If excited delirium is a legitimate condition, then the reality is likely that death is caused by the actions of the police, usually (but not necessarily) using a Taser, on an individual experiencing excited delirium. Excited delirium alone should not be listed as cause of death.
I mean, think about the small sample of cases I've listed. I can't think of many of them which would have warranted even the use of the baton. I mean, just replace "tased" with "beaten with a nightstick" in any of them, and in most cases you'd probably be outraged.
Absolutely. I'm not at all suggesting that the cases you mentioned are in any way justified. I just wanted to try to eliminate the justification that police, politicians, and many of the posters in this forum use to defend the Taser.
This justification is particularly disturbing in light of the cases you mentioned. In the many years prior to the introduction of the Taser, cases similar to the ones you described did occur involving either batons or pepper spray or just good old fashioned fists. Police brutality is nothing new. However, in the age of cell phone cameras and the Intarweb, what we have is a situation where police brutality can be hidden behind a simple press of a button, then supported by police and politicians saying "but it's better than using a gun", and justified in just about any case by pointing out that Tasers are "safe".
Actually, the Taser is not supposed to be used as an alternative to the gun. Unfortunately, even the police themselves perpetuate this myth.
The Taser is supposed to be an alternative to the baton and other physical attempts to subdue an individual. This is somewhat evidenced by the fact that the rate of occurrences in which the police use their gun have remained constant with the introduction of the Taser (at least in Canada -- I have no American statistics). Clearly, the Taser is not being used instead of the gun -- as it should not be.
However, police and politicians repeatedly use the "instead of a gun" argument to justify to the public the need for Tasers. They repeatedly say that there will be less shootings thanks to Tasers, even though they know -- and statistics show -- that this is not the case. Now that Tasers are being linked with a number of deaths, police and politicians are continuing to use this as a defense of Taser use.
I'm not saying that being Tasered isn't preferable to being beaten with a baton or pepper sprayed. I've never had any of them done to me. But let's at least frame the debate in the correct context. The number of injuries among both the police and the perpetrator resulting from attempts to subdue have decreased since Tasers were introduced.
"Use of force experts across Canada right now, we're kind of shaking our heads going, 'How did we give the impression to the lay public or the media that Tasers were ever supposed to be a replacement for lethal force?'" said Staff Sergeant Chris Butler.
"They were another use of force tool in the same regard as the baton, the pepper spray. Just another tool!"
Nevertheless, Gate's definition is indeed a little strange.
Only strange to the Slashdot crowd.
You see, to almost everyone in the world who isn't an OSS advocate, "free software" means the same thing as "free beer", except referring to software rather than beer. This is how Gates is using the term. It's a simple difference. "Free" means you don't have to pay for the software. "Open source" means you have access to the source code in one way or another. "Free/open source" means both.
Personally, this is how I prefer to use these terms.
Maybe then there will be a reduction in the saccharine pap that invades our eardrums.
Don't hold your breathe waiting. That saccharine pap isn't entirely a music industry conspiracy. Sadly enough, a lot of people actually like that drivel. As long as somebody is willing to buy it, somebody will make it. It'll just be independent saccharine pap.
Agreed. My laptop has a 17" widescreen, and when I'm at my desk I hook up to a 19" (non-widescreen) LCD monitor (I've been a dual-monitor junkie for a couple years now).
Even when I'm away from my desk, I don't mind developing on the widescreen, but it is much larger than the ones the article is talking about. The submitter should look at 17" widescreens if he's that concerned about vertical space. It'll give you all the vertical space of a regular 15" laptop, plus the extra width. It's a thing of beauty.
Not everybody learns the same way. I retain a lot more information by listening and taking notes...
Exactly. In fact, what I found most productive when I was in school was to read the material before class, then go to class where the professor would lecture on the exact same material, and I would take notes on all the things that didn't sink in when I was reading.
In addition to that, I could ask questions about things that I didn't understand, and even better than that, I could listen to the questions that other students asked that hadn't even occurred to me. You can learn a hell of a lot from the other students in the class who ask a lot of questions.
Basically, if you're not interested in the material, don't go to class. If you think you need to be there (pop quizes or whatever), then bring a book from another class and use the time to read, or some other quiet, non-distracting-to-the-other-students activity.
Hiring decisions don't have to be subjective. They don't have to be difficult either. The criteria can be as simple as "has degree in x, y, or z", perhaps some relevant experience, and no obviously non-professional behavior. If there are too many qualified applicants, it seems it could be fairer to be random and choose among them by lot than to start looking for feeble excuses to reject people. At least there'd be nothing subjective about random choice.
Life is complicated. So is work. Entry-level positions can sometimes be summed up in simple criteria such as "has degree in x, y, or z", but anything beyond that is inherently more complex.
In your example where you're asking would you rather have A) the more skilled person who doesn't "fit", or B) the less skilled person who does, you go for B because of the capacity to improve.
No, I go for B because B can do the job right now, and A simply can't. The fact that B can improve is just icing on the cake. You're absolutely right that social skills can be learned, but if you don't have the social skills to do the job now, then you're not qualified and should not be hired, no matter how well you fit the checklist of technical criteria.
The thing is is, hiring is an inherently subjective process.
In theory, you could just put out a job posting that says "looking for people with technical skills A, B, and C", but when you get 50 resumes from people who all have those skills, who do you choose? In reality, you're left looking at other harder to quantify factors, which are also important. For example, although it's essential that I, in my job as a software developer, be capable of, you know, developing software, it's also essential that I be capable of fitting in with the team I'm going to work with. If the brightest developer in the world is incapable of working with others in any capacity, then it makes no sense to hire him to work on a development project where he'll be expected to work with a team of 10 other developers. Instead, hire someone who is maybe not as good a developer, but still good enough and possibly has the capacity to improve, who is capable of working with the team.
How do you judge these factors? That's a question that HR people have been asking for decades. Countless books have been written about it. I don't think anyone has come up with an absolute answer, and I doubt anyone ever will. Many of the interviewing techniques that are popular right now are bunk, as far as I'm concerned. But simply checking off a list of technical skills just doesn't cut it in the real world.
I'm curious about what it took to get that pilot's license?
Time and money.
I have a private pilot license. It cost me about $10,000 and took about two years to complete the training. It took so long because I work full-time and just did the training on weekends, and then only when I had the extra cash. At one point I took a 6-month break from training because I was running short on cash and had other priorities (selling my house, buying a new one, moving, etc). A person with unlimited time and money could get a private pilot license in 2 months.
Getting a float rating is extra, but the time and cost involved isn't much. Personally, I love the air, but I'm terrified of water, so I've never been too keen on getting a float rating. Nevertheless, I'd love to fly in BC. I'm stuck (for now, at least) in boring Manitoba. Not much to see from the air around here.
Anyway, it's easy enough to just go out and do it, as long as you can commit to it. I had dreamed of doing it my whole life, then one day it suddenly occurred to me that I could just go out and do it. So I did.
I'm Canadian, so it's possible that there are cultural differences here, but a friend of mine does a lot of hiring, and he's told me that part of what he looks for in a candidate is what knowledge, experience, and interests they have outside of computers. For example, if he were considering hiring me, and didn't know me, he would be impressed to learn that I have a pilot's license, as it shows two things: I'm a well-rounded individual with interests beyond just computers (ie. not obsessive and unbalanced); and I'm capable of learning and understanding concepts beyond just those involving bits.
So, don't be a one-trick pony. For the sake of your resume, and for the sake of your own sanity, get an education that covers more than just technology.
I was a bit concerned about the glossy screen on my new laptop as well, but it's given me no problems so far. I didn't even notice any adjustment period, and I'm normally pretty picky about these things. I think it looks great. Of course, this is my personal laptop for home use, so I don't have to work under fluorescent lighting.
Hey, anyone remember 16-color EGA?
Yeah, that was the fancy new-fangled technology that replaced 4-colour CGA, right?:)
It really is not difficult to keep a windows box secure. Granted, it requires more attention than a Linux box, but still...it's quite easy to set up and maintain.
Honestly, if you're behind a firewall, you don't run random executables or click random links in emails, and you stay away from porn and other sketchy websites, there's no reason a Windows box should require any more attention than a Linux box to stay secure.
would a transcript not be considered a derived work from the recording?
IANAL, but it seems to me a derived work has to have some original content.
And even if it was exactely the same, its not a copy, because you didn't duplicate it.. it's an original piece of work derived from the recording, which happens to be identical to the original written speech
It's not original. It's still a copy. If I write a book that is word-for-word the same as another book, but I actually type the whole thing out myself rather than photocopy it, it's still a copy. I didn't come up with any part of it on my own.
A public speech is only copyrightable if it is written down, and then it is only the written version that is copyrighted, not the public reading of it. You can record the reading, and then you hold the copyright to the recording, while the speaker still holds the copyright to the written speech. I don't think you could post a transcript of it online, because you would effectively be copying the written speech, which you do not have the rights to.
... unlike most Slashdotters (who have likely never even tried Vista)...
And this is where you manage to piss me off. Seriously.
I am sick and tired of the above so-called argument.
You have no basis for that statement. For example, I have tried Vista, and I dislike it vehemently, for a great many reasons, and I will never, ever, install it again, on any computers under my control.
I do have a basis for that statement. I have had numerous discussions with people who tell me outright that they have not tried Vista, and proceed to tell me all the things that they dislike about it, entirely based on things they've read. Most of the time, my personal experience was many times better than all the horror stories I'd hear from these people. This experience was based on actually having given it a chance -- reluctantly, thanks to my own initial dislike of it which was also based purely on what I'd read.
Additionally, I've read countless posts here on Slashdot from people who state outright that they haven't used Vista, don't like it, and will never use it.
Most of what I've read about Vista is grossly exaggerated. Most of what I read on Slashdot is mindless regurgitation of those exaggerations.
I personally don't give a flying fuck whether or not you or anyone else likes Vista or ever intend to use it. I like it and will continue to use it. It has its problems, but it's actually a good OS. After a couple service packs, it will kick the living shit out of XP. What annoys me is the moronic blind hatred that people have for it. It's a fucking operating system. Calm the fuck down and get some perspective.
Now take your shitty argument(s) back, and try to find new, and actual ones. Please.
Why? You haven't actually refuted a single point I made. You simply stated that my opinion was my opinion. Well, duh.
Slashdot Mirror
The first one should be free. Copyright renewal should cost money.
The only ones who will bother to renew a copyright are those who are making money off of it, and can therefore afford to renew it. If you're not making money off of it anyway, why bother renewing?
Yes, he was such a noble crusader....
"I really wasn't making any point at all," Nematbakhsh admits, debunking news reports to the contrary. "It was a senior prank, a silly thing."Or by some combination of excited dilirium, police intervention, and Taser use.
Have there been cases of people just dropping dead of excited delirium without any police intervention?
If excited delirium is a legitimate condition, then the reality is likely that death is caused by the actions of the police, usually (but not necessarily) using a Taser, on an individual experiencing excited delirium. Excited delirium alone should not be listed as cause of death.
Absolutely. I'm not at all suggesting that the cases you mentioned are in any way justified. I just wanted to try to eliminate the justification that police, politicians, and many of the posters in this forum use to defend the Taser.
This justification is particularly disturbing in light of the cases you mentioned. In the many years prior to the introduction of the Taser, cases similar to the ones you described did occur involving either batons or pepper spray or just good old fashioned fists. Police brutality is nothing new. However, in the age of cell phone cameras and the Intarweb, what we have is a situation where police brutality can be hidden behind a simple press of a button, then supported by police and politicians saying "but it's better than using a gun", and justified in just about any case by pointing out that Tasers are "safe".
Actually, the Taser is not supposed to be used as an alternative to the gun. Unfortunately, even the police themselves perpetuate this myth.
The Taser is supposed to be an alternative to the baton and other physical attempts to subdue an individual. This is somewhat evidenced by the fact that the rate of occurrences in which the police use their gun have remained constant with the introduction of the Taser (at least in Canada -- I have no American statistics). Clearly, the Taser is not being used instead of the gun -- as it should not be.
However, police and politicians repeatedly use the "instead of a gun" argument to justify to the public the need for Tasers. They repeatedly say that there will be less shootings thanks to Tasers, even though they know -- and statistics show -- that this is not the case. Now that Tasers are being linked with a number of deaths, police and politicians are continuing to use this as a defense of Taser use.
I'm not saying that being Tasered isn't preferable to being beaten with a baton or pepper sprayed. I've never had any of them done to me. But let's at least frame the debate in the correct context. The number of injuries among both the police and the perpetrator resulting from attempts to subdue have decreased since Tasers were introduced.
From this article:
"Use of force experts across Canada right now, we're kind of shaking our heads going, 'How did we give the impression to the lay public or the media that Tasers were ever supposed to be a replacement for lethal force?'" said Staff Sergeant Chris Butler."They were another use of force tool in the same regard as the baton, the pepper spray. Just another tool!"
Hibernate guards against SQL Injection by using PreparedStatements with bind variables.
Exactly. And its interesting that this coincides so nicely with this story.
Or, maybe, just maybe, the poster calling himself "gazbo" actually likes their music, and you just do not.
Radical idea.
Only strange to the Slashdot crowd.
You see, to almost everyone in the world who isn't an OSS advocate, "free software" means the same thing as "free beer", except referring to software rather than beer. This is how Gates is using the term. It's a simple difference. "Free" means you don't have to pay for the software. "Open source" means you have access to the source code in one way or another. "Free/open source" means both.
Personally, this is how I prefer to use these terms.
Yeah, because OSS developers are just starving.
Don't hold your breathe waiting. That saccharine pap isn't entirely a music industry conspiracy. Sadly enough, a lot of people actually like that drivel. As long as somebody is willing to buy it, somebody will make it. It'll just be independent saccharine pap.
Agreed. My laptop has a 17" widescreen, and when I'm at my desk I hook up to a 19" (non-widescreen) LCD monitor (I've been a dual-monitor junkie for a couple years now).
Even when I'm away from my desk, I don't mind developing on the widescreen, but it is much larger than the ones the article is talking about. The submitter should look at 17" widescreens if he's that concerned about vertical space. It'll give you all the vertical space of a regular 15" laptop, plus the extra width. It's a thing of beauty.
Exactly. In fact, what I found most productive when I was in school was to read the material before class, then go to class where the professor would lecture on the exact same material, and I would take notes on all the things that didn't sink in when I was reading.
In addition to that, I could ask questions about things that I didn't understand, and even better than that, I could listen to the questions that other students asked that hadn't even occurred to me. You can learn a hell of a lot from the other students in the class who ask a lot of questions.
Basically, if you're not interested in the material, don't go to class. If you think you need to be there (pop quizes or whatever), then bring a book from another class and use the time to read, or some other quiet, non-distracting-to-the-other-students activity.
Evolution?
Life is complicated. So is work. Entry-level positions can sometimes be summed up in simple criteria such as "has degree in x, y, or z", but anything beyond that is inherently more complex.
In your example where you're asking would you rather have A) the more skilled person who doesn't "fit", or B) the less skilled person who does, you go for B because of the capacity to improve.No, I go for B because B can do the job right now, and A simply can't. The fact that B can improve is just icing on the cake. You're absolutely right that social skills can be learned, but if you don't have the social skills to do the job now, then you're not qualified and should not be hired, no matter how well you fit the checklist of technical criteria.
The thing is is, hiring is an inherently subjective process.
In theory, you could just put out a job posting that says "looking for people with technical skills A, B, and C", but when you get 50 resumes from people who all have those skills, who do you choose? In reality, you're left looking at other harder to quantify factors, which are also important. For example, although it's essential that I, in my job as a software developer, be capable of, you know, developing software, it's also essential that I be capable of fitting in with the team I'm going to work with. If the brightest developer in the world is incapable of working with others in any capacity, then it makes no sense to hire him to work on a development project where he'll be expected to work with a team of 10 other developers. Instead, hire someone who is maybe not as good a developer, but still good enough and possibly has the capacity to improve, who is capable of working with the team.
How do you judge these factors? That's a question that HR people have been asking for decades. Countless books have been written about it. I don't think anyone has come up with an absolute answer, and I doubt anyone ever will. Many of the interviewing techniques that are popular right now are bunk, as far as I'm concerned. But simply checking off a list of technical skills just doesn't cut it in the real world.
Hey, I may be Canadian, but I'm still a nerd. Sports just don't interest me.
Time and money.
I have a private pilot license. It cost me about $10,000 and took about two years to complete the training. It took so long because I work full-time and just did the training on weekends, and then only when I had the extra cash. At one point I took a 6-month break from training because I was running short on cash and had other priorities (selling my house, buying a new one, moving, etc). A person with unlimited time and money could get a private pilot license in 2 months.
Getting a float rating is extra, but the time and cost involved isn't much. Personally, I love the air, but I'm terrified of water, so I've never been too keen on getting a float rating. Nevertheless, I'd love to fly in BC. I'm stuck (for now, at least) in boring Manitoba. Not much to see from the air around here.
Anyway, it's easy enough to just go out and do it, as long as you can commit to it. I had dreamed of doing it my whole life, then one day it suddenly occurred to me that I could just go out and do it. So I did.
This post raises a crucial point:
There's more to life than technology.
I'm Canadian, so it's possible that there are cultural differences here, but a friend of mine does a lot of hiring, and he's told me that part of what he looks for in a candidate is what knowledge, experience, and interests they have outside of computers. For example, if he were considering hiring me, and didn't know me, he would be impressed to learn that I have a pilot's license, as it shows two things: I'm a well-rounded individual with interests beyond just computers (ie. not obsessive and unbalanced); and I'm capable of learning and understanding concepts beyond just those involving bits.
So, don't be a one-trick pony. For the sake of your resume, and for the sake of your own sanity, get an education that covers more than just technology.
I was a bit concerned about the glossy screen on my new laptop as well, but it's given me no problems so far. I didn't even notice any adjustment period, and I'm normally pretty picky about these things. I think it looks great. Of course, this is my personal laptop for home use, so I don't have to work under fluorescent lighting.
Hey, anyone remember 16-color EGA?Yeah, that was the fancy new-fangled technology that replaced 4-colour CGA, right? :)
...simply viewing the page in IE...Okay, so I left "use Firefox" off the list. My point remains.
Honestly, if you're behind a firewall, you don't run random executables or click random links in emails, and you stay away from porn and other sketchy websites, there's no reason a Windows box should require any more attention than a Linux box to stay secure.
IANAL, but it seems to me a derived work has to have some original content.
And even if it was exactely the same, its not a copy, because you didn't duplicate it.. it's an original piece of work derived from the recording, which happens to be identical to the original written speechIt's not original. It's still a copy. If I write a book that is word-for-word the same as another book, but I actually type the whole thing out myself rather than photocopy it, it's still a copy. I didn't come up with any part of it on my own.
A public speech is only copyrightable if it is written down, and then it is only the written version that is copyrighted, not the public reading of it. You can record the reading, and then you hold the copyright to the recording, while the speaker still holds the copyright to the written speech. I don't think you could post a transcript of it online, because you would effectively be copying the written speech, which you do not have the rights to.
... unlike most Slashdotters (who have likely never even tried Vista)And this is where you manage to piss me off. Seriously.
I am sick and tired of the above so-called argument.
You have no basis for that statement. For example, I have tried Vista, and I dislike it vehemently, for a great many reasons, and I will never, ever, install it again, on any computers under my control.
I do have a basis for that statement. I have had numerous discussions with people who tell me outright that they have not tried Vista, and proceed to tell me all the things that they dislike about it, entirely based on things they've read. Most of the time, my personal experience was many times better than all the horror stories I'd hear from these people. This experience was based on actually having given it a chance -- reluctantly, thanks to my own initial dislike of it which was also based purely on what I'd read.
Additionally, I've read countless posts here on Slashdot from people who state outright that they haven't used Vista, don't like it, and will never use it.
Most of what I've read about Vista is grossly exaggerated. Most of what I read on Slashdot is mindless regurgitation of those exaggerations.
I personally don't give a flying fuck whether or not you or anyone else likes Vista or ever intend to use it. I like it and will continue to use it. It has its problems, but it's actually a good OS. After a couple service packs, it will kick the living shit out of XP. What annoys me is the moronic blind hatred that people have for it. It's a fucking operating system. Calm the fuck down and get some perspective.
Now take your shitty argument(s) back, and try to find new, and actual ones. Please.Why? You haven't actually refuted a single point I made. You simply stated that my opinion was my opinion. Well, duh.