The Italian researchers fail to understand a key point: The Religion. It's not sufficient that Man may resolve his struggles with Gaia via our intellect and our technology. We must first SUFFER, and then know Redemption. We must SACRIFICE, deprive ourselves of our modern conveniences, and the most ARROGANT among our tribes must know economic UPHEAVAL before we may enter the PROMISED LAND.
What you're missing here is that it's the government's fault for creating our system of copyright without instituting systems to make it simpler.
And what you are missing is that outfits like YouTube and Google can't just erase the current distribution contracts and copyright laws by virtue of some rapidly developed, virally distributed and generally groovy and ginchy technology. If I signed away the distribution rights to my glorious creative work to some e-e-e-e-vil media conglomerate last year, well, that's my problem. Chad, Sergei, and the great Slashdot unwashed can simply butt the fsck out.
I know many artists and entertainers who are re-thinking their distribution deals...going forward. Hell, everyone I know is. It's a new era, the genie is out of the bottle, the times they are a-changin', etc. etc. But you just can't morally grab a TV show whose producer sold into syndication through, say, Fox or DIC and distribute it yourself and not expect to pay a lot of people their percentages and residuals.
This is the entertainment business, Chad. Not a friggin' server farm.
Why could it not just be doomed to failure because it was a really silly and poorly-conceived plan by an ivory-tower egghead obsessed with "being digital" to the exclusion of all else including common sense? No one has convinced me of the value of a PC in the education of American and European grade school children, let alone in the third world. Buy them books, pencils, and notepads, and be sure they are fed and loved. Small out-of-pocket cost, huge and time-honored return on investment.
With half of the 50.000 expected contributers buying a DVD, a shirt or something like that they'll make already quite a lot of money. Sounds doable!
We call that the "Community Theatre" model. You figure that every kid in the cast has at minimum five friends/family members who will be buying tickets. (The old mantra "Everybody gets a part" really means "We want to make as much money as possible.")
Which is to say, yah, it's a valid business model, but is it valid entertainment?
Since I'm about as anxious to see a wiki-communal-collaborative-online-cluster-film as I am to see the Podunk Town Players put on "Oklahoma!," my guess would be no.
It's the divisive politics of Illegal immigration. I know and have read of no one who is against immigration in the U.S. We're all too closely descended from immigrants.
It's *Illegal* immigration that causes the rift.
Don't lose control of the words. Words mean something.
Does anyone smell a marketing rat trying to push new software?
Push it... to what end? To make more money? It's all free! And my experience is that the free software guys don't have Marketing Rats, or at least none worthy of the name, else the products wouldn't have names like "The GIMP."
The lunch should be tasty, but nutritionally balanced. I'm thinking it should start with a small salad, tossed greens, crushed pepper, oil & vinegar, nothing too fancy. Some porto bello mushrooms would be nice. Then perhaps a small cup of soup, either a light tomato or some gazpacho. Some of that freshly-grated parmesan would go great with either, I'm thinking. For the main event, no big deal, howza bout some roast beef, thinly sliced, on a French baquette, lightly buttered, and some au jus to dip it in, A half-bottle of a good Aussie Shiraz to help it down. Coffee and cookies for dessert.
You let me know how your search works out; I'll keep you posted on mine, 'kay?
The right to walk through an airport and not be watched?
When you leave your home, you may be monitored. In the old days, it was by a plainsclothes detective popping stay-awake pills and eating doughnuts in his car parked across the street. In modern times, it is through camera surveillance and RFID.
"You" have a right to try and elude the surveillance, by sneaking out the back door (then) and wearing tin-foil underwear (now), and "They" have the right to raise the ante by hiring smarter policemen and designing more powerful scanners.
That's the game. Play, or stay home. If "They" start spying on you in your home, *then* you can call the lawyers.
Go to a popular bittorrent site. For TV Series posted, count the number of seeders and leachers.
Except that would be completely incorrect.
I straddle the high and the low tech in my day-to-day, and what I see -- totally anecdotal, of course -- is that the "high tech" guys, often a younger demographic, and not always the attractively younger demographic, are all about the torrent and pod. They just don't watch a lot of TV. The older demographic, the one in that advertisers' sweet spot, still for the most part are not drawing upon the torrents for their entertainment. Sure, they'll have a music video or an episode of Galactica on their pod to show off to their envious buds around the water cooler, but they're still watching live or TIVO'ing.
If Neilsen were to over-weight downloads as a metric for popularity, then Smallville would be renewed for the next ten years immediately and the Galactica movie could not be made fast enough.
None of the downloaders I know walk around with American Idol on their laptops, but there is no denying the show's insane popularity.
If you don't see the latest fox piece of crap out there (When toasters attack), chances are it sucks...can it.
This is not about what "sucks," it's about what people are watching. Entertainment is a business. The networks want to know what shows the demographic with the most disposable income are watching. Shows that don't do well outside the teen demographic will continue to drive new media penetration, and sell portable gadgets (c.f., AMP'd Mobile's fixation with motocross), but the big TV Money is still with the shows that play on a big cable/satellite-connected box in the Living Room.
Do you think that the New York Times should be paying you for each newspaper they sell which has a review of your book? After all, they are making money off your work, right?
Oh, boy! A coward AND completely ignorant of the way the world works. Hopefully you can at least play the banjo or know some card tricks or your gonna have some trouble with small groups of people later on in life...
Listen, Citizen Kane, the publisher SENDS a copy of the book to the NY Times, and practically BEGS them to review it because a review in the Times almost inevitably boosts both placement in bookstores AND sales (regardless of whether the review was favorable or not). Passages from the book may be excerpted without explicit permission, as per fair use. This relationship exists because it is mutually beneficial to both the newspaper and the publisher. It is a relationship into which both parties enter, happily and willingly.
There is no relationship between Google and the publisher, beyond Google saying, "I'm going to scan your client's book, usurp some of the distribution rights he sold to you, and make a lot of money from it (while my Marketing Department keeps convincing the kids that I'm the Sugar Plum Fairy and not some rapacious global corporation with more power than Microsoft ever dreamed of). So shut up, you can't afford the legal fees to come after me, but if you're lucky, and your client is relatively unknown with not much of a following, maybe -- just maybe -- my illegal scan-and-search-enable will goose his sales a little."
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on
Ohhhh, let me guess: You're one of the "Code is Poetry" crowd, am I right? Or maybe your idea of a good read is curling up with a Zaurus full of the latest Buffy fanfic, yes? You resent the sales people in your organization because they don't do any of the REAL work, like fixing the mail server or de-bugging the wireless print server, right? Here's a tip: You know all those happy, creative, good-looking, funny and stylishly-dressed people who shun you? It's NOT because they're bitter that God made you better with mechanical objects than they are...
Librarians make money, and yet they are allowed to do just such a search, and even return to you a photocopied page.
[rolls eyes and sighs, deeply] Some days I wonder why I ever bother...
D00D!! It's a friggin' PUBLIC Library! Your tax dollars at work! Laws, rules, regulations passed by your representatives in Congress!
Or did I miss the part where The Library, Inc., is now traded on NASDAQ?
Just tell me you're under eighteen and I'll feel a little better, cuz I really don't want to believe that our public schools are releasing kids into the wild who don't know the difference between public libraries and publicly-traded corporations.
Imagine if a friend asked you to search through a book for him and let him know what you found. Would this also be a violation? Chances are, you'd only quote a paragraph or so back to him - Google quotes even less of the book.
The difference is, your friend does not increase his market share every time he lets someone search through a book. Neither is your friend selling advertising on the walls of the room into which he escorts you to take his book. Nor is he capturing your search request in a database for cross-reference with other search requests from people in your zipcode later on.
Google profits from your search. Your friend allows your search out of charity.
If Google wants to include my copyrighted content as part of their profit-making venture, they can pay me. I'm a poor starving writer (or maybe I'm Stephen King, it doesn't matter), and Google is a super-mega-global-corporation (or maybe their a mom-and-pop store, it doesn't matter), and if they want to use my stuff to make some scratch, I'll take my percentage, thanks very much. If my price is too high, we can negotiate. If it's still too high, we can walk away and talk about doing business another day. That's Business. And Google is in Business.
Google plays up the peace-love-understanding-happy-hippie-new-age-new- media dance, and it was really cute, back in the day. But the Piper's arrived, and just in time, too, cuz a whole generation of kids was just starting to believe that "do no evil" thing somehow exempted Google from obeying laws they thought were old-fashioned (i.e., prevented them from making money).
Maybe if we adopted stringent population controls like china did, we'd be better off.
Maybe if China was more like the US, they'd be better off.
Of course, China *HAS* to adopt strict population controls, because of all those people from the neighboring companies constantly crashing their borders to sneak into China for the better life it offers them there.
Given the technical capability and the dedication, a PhD with certain sales/marketing knowledge could take off quickly.
That's the point. ANYTHING with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge could take off quickly. A beautiful woman with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge, a comic book artist with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge, a mousetrap builder, a garbage collector, a carpenter, a plumber... even a web designer with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge can take off quickly.
Of course, no program, PhD or otherwise, teaches what that "certain" knowledge is, or everybody would be rich.
Someone with a PhD does not add anything to a business enterprise except so far as that enterprise can market the fact that one of its principals has a PhD. You typically see this with engineering projects, as geeks -- the target consumers -- are traditionally impressed by the whole higher degree thing.
It's like Architectural Digest: not meant to be read, per se, but placed on a coffee table nonchalantly so as to impress guests. Do you think anyone who has had their house featured in AD actually *subscribes* to AD? What little leisure they have is spent reading the targeted trade magazines for whatever industry they are captains of.
Anyone who is so "technorati" as to be within Wired's alleged target audience is not reading paper.
Google is the darling of The Street, stock's trading at a bazillion a share, we're a Google nation. Of course their managers are all paradigm-shattering super-geniuses, and all the "normal," plodding-along companies will be buying Google-branded Kool-Aid and foosball tables in the hopes some of the magic drips off.
Check back in five years, there's some kind of upheaval in Middle-Central-Lower Slobovia, the Market tanks, Sergey's enmeshed in a sex scandal with an Israeli weight-lifter, shareholders revolt, The Next Big Thing hits (something with a Google-opposite development philosophy, perhaps involving chains and semi-regular beatings), and all the wonks who are praising Gooogle's brilliant policies today are writing best-selling books with titles like "What Were They Thinking?" and "...Damn Hippies!"
"Are not very bright, have an over important opinion of themselves and become hostile if contradicted."
You've just described every Systems Admin I've ever worked with.
Can anyone suggest a more proactive solution?
A lot less emotion and a little common sense goes a long way. Recognize when you are in "their" world, and tread softly. Feign respect if you cannot muster up the genuine article. Derive solace from the fact that, at the end of the day, you'll be relaxing at home or in your comfortable hotel room and Mr. Big Stuff will still be patting down smelly old ladies for hair gels or struggling to get the Exchange Server back online.
Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, and they'll get it. The trick is not to let them have it on your time.
Nature is the ultimate check on hubris as she either gives you walls you can't surmount, tests you constantly for weakness, or patiently waits for your first fatal mistake.
Sort of like God, without the compassion.
Oh, wait. There is no God, only some mythological patriarchal Hairy Thunderer, worshipped by the warring monotheists. In reality there is only some kind of feminized Gaia Spirit, albeit one that is stern and unforgiving and seeks to impede human progress.
"So here we stand at the edge of 1984 Bracing ourselves once again For the storm approaching as those Who long before huddled in caves from the rain The enemy's face is so hard to see Sometimes it seems that I see him in you Sometimes in me Who can he be? No use consulting the prophets and leaders they all disagree
"Russians and Americans, here's a song for you Who carry the weight of the world on your heads Russians and Americans, tell me if it's true You really believe all the things that you've said The red-white-and-blue running into the red
"From the wars of Europe, the pilgrim fathers Set off with their hopes and their bond Some settled down by the coast, others crossed The mountains and into the flatlands beyond From scramble and dust of Muscovite streets Merchants develop the trade routes, And open the door to the East. Pioneer waves Choked by the cold breath of winter, Or baked by the heat of the day
"Russians and Americans Passing through the fire of revolution and coming of age Russians and Americans Driven by desire, two players push to the front of the stage The whole world now watches each move that you make
"Two runners caught in the thrill of the race, The finishing line is as far as the stars that the satellites chase Why quicken the pace? Why does it seem that you choose to lose reason before losing face?
"Russians and Americans Driven by the past, the third world moves in the shadows you cast Russians and Americans Could turn the world to dust, so much to live for, so much undiscussed So much in common and so little trust
"From the streets of Athens and Rome the voices still echo to crumbling walls Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall Forever the changes we still have to face Some people say that a country is more and idea than a place Though nothing is safe We still choose the mark that we leave on the open canvas of space
"Russians and Americans Maybe you should see into the heart of the world, not its head Russians and Americans If you want to be the feet of the world, better mind where you tread, The footsteps of history are left where you step
This seems to me that Wal-mart is using its position as a major distributor to strong arm against its would be competitors. It's not quite a monopoly (read Target, K-Mart, etc...) so is there any legal avenue to take against Wal-mart for this kind of action (other than consumer action which doesn't work so well when dealing with lower prices)?
Uhhh, no. Happily.
What is it with you litigious anti-Walmart goons?
It's NOT a monopoly, as you stated. Plenty of other big stores in the same business, competing on selection and price and service and all those other B-School 101 points. When Martha Stewart made her exclusivity deal with K-Mart, I'm sure she knew that Walmart would be pushing all her cookbooks to the back shelves and start promoting Rachel Ray's. She makes her deals, she takes her chances. As do the studios. Risk, Reward, Business. How do they do it on your planet?
What, because iTunes delivers movies tek-no-log-ee-cully ("oooh, shiny!"), all the brick-and-mortar operations that have pumped truckloads of money into the studios' pockets over the years are supposed to just roll over and cave?
"Gosh, dern, there, Mister Studio Boss, shucks, we're just a simple uber-ultra-mega-chain from Arkansas, don't know nothing 'bout birthin' no downloads. Shure, we brung ya to the dance, bought ya dinner, drinks, and flowers, but it's OK if ya want to leave with that there Miss Apple. We understand, she shore is purty!"
Are you naive, blindly hate Walmart cuz you're some too-cool-for-the-country urban Goth, or do you just like litigation? (It's OK, you can check off more than one.)
Oh, wait, I know! It's unfair because Walmart uses under-age Chinese vagrants to put the DVD's on the shelves. Is that it? Would you feel better knowing that these were the same under-age Chinese vagrants that Apple uses to build its iPods? Would that make it all better?
It remains the only effective means of convincing some developers that they are *NOT* designers in the first place.
"Art? Design? C'mon, I've mastered AJAX, XHTML, JAVA, JavaScript, ColdFusion, PHP, Ruby, PERL, and I own the only remaining data glove on the East Coast, what do I need art for? See, it's got a template... I'll just change the colors... try and find out the client's favorite color... hell, I've been building websites since '93, and I'm no artist... and I used vi... still use vi, heh... look here, I've got a CD full of clipart, we can use one of these... pic of an Asian chick on the phone, yeah, this'll work fine... designers? gimme a break... look, here's a website with cool fonts we can download, I'll download a bunch, client'll love 'em, never seen anything like 'em... talk to legal, see if we can get the rights to "Dark Side of the Moon," it'll be cool, see, when you first come to the client's site, Floyd's "Money" will start playing. Get it? Damn! I'm good! friggin' designers, who needs a designer, just make everything more complex, take all the credit, man..."
am i alone when i say i am blown away that record labels ask stations for a penny to show their videos?
Pretty much, unless you can somehow cross the time-barrier about 15 years.
The labels have all made it pretty clear (and the analysts have agreed) that they made a big-time mistake providing free content to MTV for as long as they did. Sure, Huey Lewis and The News and a-Ha never would have had the careers they did were it not for the freebies, but at the end of the cycle MTV (and it's johnny-come-lately rivals, like Fuse) fared far, far better in the deal than did the labels. When MTV captured the eyeballs and mind-set, it switched gears away from vids to original programming, leaving their "purist" rivals stuck with paying the bills to the newly educated and enraged recording labels.
I was there (literally, as it turns out) when MTV launched in '82, and I can tell you that everyone I knew just kept their tube on that channel cuz there was no where else you could see these vids or hear these artists. And you couldn't search an archive, and no metadata indexing engine type-matched your interests so you could discover similar artists, and nobody dreamed of "owning" a vid they liked, they just hoped they were in front of the tube when it played again.
Why would anyone watch MTV or Fuse for the videos when they have broadband? And why would a label give a free ride to a video network, knowing what it knows now? (If Fuse does not get vids for free, it will have to pay somebody for some kind of content; label figures, 'why not me?' And they're right.)
MySpace is to youth culture in 2006 what MTV was to it in 1982. It is through the conduit of the social networking sites that the labels will be promoing their wares, not linear-ly programmed TV networks.
I just love how innovative companies like Google are forced to spend all this money on lobbyists just so Congress doesn't screw them over. Why isn't it all spent on making a better product? Because some people gave the government so much power beyond its strict Constitutional limits, which given enough time would mean lobbyists would be fighting over all that juicy government money and to shackle their competitors.
The folks who gave Congress power to lean on Big, Gigantic Corporations like Google are the people who fear Big, Gigantic Corporations. According to my scorecard, that's usually been a Left-Wing plank. The folks who try to limit Congress's ability to make life miserable for Big, Gigantic Corporations like Google are usually depicted as Right-Wingers.
The inability of the Congress-Monster to discern between Democrat-leaning darling-of-the-latte-technorati-crowd Google and some EEEEEEvil-Big-Bellied-Energy-Oil-Mean-Nasty-Republ ican-Contributor, the fact that Big, Giant Corporate Blood (and money) tastes the all the same to this Frankenstein, is, frankly, funny and ironic as hell.
Not as funny as that whole "Do No Evil" corporate motto, but still pretty funny.
Slashdot Mirror
The Italian researchers fail to understand a key point: The Religion. It's not sufficient that Man may resolve his struggles with Gaia via our intellect and our technology. We must first SUFFER, and then know Redemption. We must SACRIFICE, deprive ourselves of our modern conveniences, and the most ARROGANT among our tribes must know economic UPHEAVAL before we may enter the PROMISED LAND.
What, they thought this was about Science?
heh.
What you're missing here is that it's the government's fault for creating our system of copyright without instituting systems to make it simpler.
And what you are missing is that outfits like YouTube and Google can't just erase the current distribution contracts and copyright laws by virtue of some rapidly developed, virally distributed and generally groovy and ginchy technology. If I signed away the distribution rights to my glorious creative work to some e-e-e-e-vil media conglomerate last year, well, that's my problem. Chad, Sergei, and the great Slashdot unwashed can simply butt the fsck out.
I know many artists and entertainers who are re-thinking their distribution deals...going forward. Hell, everyone I know is. It's a new era, the genie is out of the bottle, the times they are a-changin', etc. etc. But you just can't morally grab a TV show whose producer sold into syndication through, say, Fox or DIC and distribute it yourself and not expect to pay a lot of people their percentages and residuals.
This is the entertainment business, Chad. Not a friggin' server farm.
Why could it not just be doomed to failure because it was a really silly and poorly-conceived plan by an ivory-tower egghead obsessed with "being digital" to the exclusion of all else including common sense? No one has convinced me of the value of a PC in the education of American and European grade school children, let alone in the third world. Buy them books, pencils, and notepads, and be sure they are fed and loved. Small out-of-pocket cost, huge and time-honored return on investment.
We call it "Embrace, Extend, Destroy."
Blessed Be, D00d...
With half of the 50.000 expected contributers buying a DVD, a shirt or something like that they'll make already quite a lot of money. Sounds doable!
We call that the "Community Theatre" model. You figure that every kid in the cast has at minimum five friends/family members who will be buying tickets. (The old mantra "Everybody gets a part" really means "We want to make as much money as possible.")
Which is to say, yah, it's a valid business model, but is it valid entertainment?
Since I'm about as anxious to see a wiki-communal-collaborative-online-cluster-film as I am to see the Podunk Town Players put on "Oklahoma!," my guess would be no.
there is no complete freedom of speech without the ability to be anonymous
Sure there is. There is just no *comfortable* freedom of speech without anonymity.
It's the divisive politics of Illegal immigration. I know and have read of no one who is against immigration in the U.S. We're all too closely descended from immigrants.
It's *Illegal* immigration that causes the rift.
Don't lose control of the words. Words mean something.
Does anyone smell a marketing rat trying to push new software?
Push it... to what end? To make more money? It's all free! And my experience is that the free software guys don't have Marketing Rats, or at least none worthy of the name, else the products wouldn't have names like "The GIMP."
Wotta Coincidence!
The lunch should be tasty, but nutritionally balanced. I'm thinking it should start with a small salad, tossed greens, crushed pepper, oil & vinegar, nothing too fancy. Some porto bello mushrooms would be nice. Then perhaps a small cup of soup, either a light tomato or some gazpacho. Some of that freshly-grated parmesan would go great with either, I'm thinking. For the main event, no big deal, howza bout some roast beef, thinly sliced, on a French baquette, lightly buttered, and some au jus to dip it in, A half-bottle of a good Aussie Shiraz to help it down. Coffee and cookies for dessert.
You let me know how your search works out; I'll keep you posted on mine, 'kay?
The right to walk through an airport and not be watched?
When you leave your home, you may be monitored. In the old days, it was by a plainsclothes detective popping stay-awake pills and eating doughnuts in his car parked across the street. In modern times, it is through camera surveillance and RFID.
"You" have a right to try and elude the surveillance, by sneaking out the back door (then) and wearing tin-foil underwear (now), and "They" have the right to raise the ante by hiring smarter policemen and designing more powerful scanners.
That's the game. Play, or stay home. If "They" start spying on you in your home, *then* you can call the lawyers.
Go to a popular bittorrent site. For TV Series posted, count the number of seeders and leachers.
Except that would be completely incorrect.
I straddle the high and the low tech in my day-to-day, and what I see -- totally anecdotal, of course -- is that the "high tech" guys, often a younger demographic, and not always the attractively younger demographic, are all about the torrent and pod. They just don't watch a lot of TV. The older demographic, the one in that advertisers' sweet spot, still for the most part are not drawing upon the torrents for their entertainment. Sure, they'll have a music video or an episode of Galactica on their pod to show off to their envious buds around the water cooler, but they're still watching live or TIVO'ing.
If Neilsen were to over-weight downloads as a metric for popularity, then Smallville would be renewed for the next ten years immediately and the Galactica movie could not be made fast enough.
None of the downloaders I know walk around with American Idol on their laptops, but there is no denying the show's insane popularity.
If you don't see the latest fox piece of crap out there (When toasters attack), chances are it sucks...can it.
This is not about what "sucks," it's about what people are watching. Entertainment is a business. The networks want to know what shows the demographic with the most disposable income are watching. Shows that don't do well outside the teen demographic will continue to drive new media penetration, and sell portable gadgets (c.f., AMP'd Mobile's fixation with motocross), but the big TV Money is still with the shows that play on a big cable/satellite-connected box in the Living Room.
Do you think that the New York Times should be paying you for each newspaper they sell which has a review of your book? After all, they are making money off your work, right?
Oh, boy! A coward AND completely ignorant of the way the world works. Hopefully you can at least play the banjo or know some card tricks or your gonna have some trouble with small groups of people later on in life...
Listen, Citizen Kane, the publisher SENDS a copy of the book to the NY Times, and practically BEGS them to review it because a review in the Times almost inevitably boosts both placement in bookstores AND sales (regardless of whether the review was favorable or not). Passages from the book may be excerpted without explicit permission, as per fair use. This relationship exists because it is mutually beneficial to both the newspaper and the publisher. It is a relationship into which both parties enter, happily and willingly.
There is no relationship between Google and the publisher, beyond Google saying, "I'm going to scan your client's book, usurp some of the distribution rights he sold to you, and make a lot of money from it (while my Marketing Department keeps convincing the kids that I'm the Sugar Plum Fairy and not some rapacious global corporation with more power than Microsoft ever dreamed of). So shut up, you can't afford the legal fees to come after me, but if you're lucky, and your client is relatively unknown with not much of a following, maybe -- just maybe -- my illegal scan-and-search-enable will goose his sales a little."
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on
Ohhhh, let me guess: You're one of the "Code is Poetry" crowd, am I right? Or maybe your idea of a good read is curling up with a Zaurus full of the latest Buffy fanfic, yes? You resent the sales people in your organization because they don't do any of the REAL work, like fixing the mail server or de-bugging the wireless print server, right? Here's a tip: You know all those happy, creative, good-looking, funny and stylishly-dressed people who shun you? It's NOT because they're bitter that God made you better with mechanical objects than they are...
Librarians make money, and yet they are allowed to do just such a search, and even return to you a photocopied page.
[rolls eyes and sighs, deeply] Some days I wonder why I ever bother...
D00D!! It's a friggin' PUBLIC Library! Your tax dollars at work! Laws, rules, regulations passed by your representatives in Congress!
Or did I miss the part where The Library, Inc., is now traded on NASDAQ?
Just tell me you're under eighteen and I'll feel a little better, cuz I really don't want to believe that our public schools are releasing kids into the wild who don't know the difference between public libraries and publicly-traded corporations.
Imagine if a friend asked you to search through a book for him and let him know what you found. Would this also be a violation? Chances are, you'd only quote a paragraph or so back to him - Google quotes even less of the book.
- media dance, and it was really cute, back in the day. But the Piper's arrived, and just in time, too, cuz a whole generation of kids was just starting to believe that "do no evil" thing somehow exempted Google from obeying laws they thought were old-fashioned (i.e., prevented them from making money).
The difference is, your friend does not increase his market share every time he lets someone search through a book. Neither is your friend selling advertising on the walls of the room into which he escorts you to take his book. Nor is he capturing your search request in a database for cross-reference with other search requests from people in your zipcode later on.
Google profits from your search. Your friend allows your search out of charity.
If Google wants to include my copyrighted content as part of their profit-making venture, they can pay me. I'm a poor starving writer (or maybe I'm Stephen King, it doesn't matter), and Google is a super-mega-global-corporation (or maybe their a mom-and-pop store, it doesn't matter), and if they want to use my stuff to make some scratch, I'll take my percentage, thanks very much. If my price is too high, we can negotiate. If it's still too high, we can walk away and talk about doing business another day. That's Business. And Google is in Business.
Google plays up the peace-love-understanding-happy-hippie-new-age-new
Maybe if we adopted stringent population controls like china did, we'd be better off.
Maybe if China was more like the US, they'd be better off.
Of course, China *HAS* to adopt strict population controls, because of all those people from the neighboring companies constantly crashing their borders to sneak into China for the better life it offers them there.
Oh, wait...
Given the technical capability and the dedication, a PhD with certain sales/marketing knowledge could take off quickly.
That's the point. ANYTHING with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge could take off quickly. A beautiful woman with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge, a comic book artist with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge, a mousetrap builder, a garbage collector, a carpenter, a plumber... even a web designer with "certain" sales/marketing knowledge can take off quickly.
Of course, no program, PhD or otherwise, teaches what that "certain" knowledge is, or everybody would be rich.
Someone with a PhD does not add anything to a business enterprise except so far as that enterprise can market the fact that one of its principals has a PhD. You typically see this with engineering projects, as geeks -- the target consumers -- are traditionally impressed by the whole higher degree thing.
It's like Architectural Digest: not meant to be read, per se, but placed on a coffee table nonchalantly so as to impress guests. Do you think anyone who has had their house featured in AD actually *subscribes* to AD? What little leisure they have is spent reading the targeted trade magazines for whatever industry they are captains of.
Anyone who is so "technorati" as to be within Wired's alleged target audience is not reading paper.
Google is the darling of The Street, stock's trading at a bazillion a share, we're a Google nation. Of course their managers are all paradigm-shattering super-geniuses, and all the "normal," plodding-along companies will be buying Google-branded Kool-Aid and foosball tables in the hopes some of the magic drips off.
Check back in five years, there's some kind of upheaval in Middle-Central-Lower Slobovia, the Market tanks, Sergey's enmeshed in a sex scandal with an Israeli weight-lifter, shareholders revolt, The Next Big Thing hits (something with a Google-opposite development philosophy, perhaps involving chains and semi-regular beatings), and all the wonks who are praising Gooogle's brilliant policies today are writing best-selling books with titles like "What Were They Thinking?" and "...Damn Hippies!"
Been there. We called it "The Nineties."
"Are not very bright, have an over important opinion of themselves and become hostile if contradicted."
You've just described every Systems Admin I've ever worked with.
Can anyone suggest a more proactive solution?
A lot less emotion and a little common sense goes a long way. Recognize when you are in "their" world, and tread softly. Feign respect if you cannot muster up the genuine article. Derive solace from the fact that, at the end of the day, you'll be relaxing at home or in your comfortable hotel room and Mr. Big Stuff will still be patting down smelly old ladies for hair gels or struggling to get the Exchange Server back online.
Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, and they'll get it. The trick is not to let them have it on your time.
Nature is the ultimate check on hubris as she either gives you walls you can't surmount, tests you constantly for weakness, or patiently waits for your first fatal mistake.
Sort of like God, without the compassion.
Oh, wait. There is no God, only some mythological patriarchal Hairy Thunderer, worshipped by the warring monotheists. In reality there is only some kind of feminized Gaia Spirit, albeit one that is stern and unforgiving and seeks to impede human progress.
Okay, I got it.
Written back in 1983, as a matter of fact
"Russians & Americans"
-Al Stewart-
"So here we stand at the edge of 1984
Bracing ourselves once again
For the storm approaching as those
Who long before huddled in caves from the rain
The enemy's face is so hard to see
Sometimes it seems that I see him in you
Sometimes in me
Who can he be?
No use consulting the prophets and leaders they all disagree
"Russians and Americans, here's a song for you
Who carry the weight of the world on your heads
Russians and Americans, tell me if it's true
You really believe all the things that you've said
The red-white-and-blue running into the red
"From the wars of Europe, the pilgrim fathers
Set off with their hopes and their bond
Some settled down by the coast, others crossed
The mountains and into the flatlands beyond
From scramble and dust of Muscovite streets
Merchants develop the trade routes,
And open the door to the East.
Pioneer waves
Choked by the cold breath of winter,
Or baked by the heat of the day
"Russians and Americans
Passing through the fire of revolution and coming of age
Russians and Americans
Driven by desire, two players push to the front of the stage
The whole world now watches each move that you make
"Two runners caught in the thrill of the race,
The finishing line is as far as the stars that the satellites chase
Why quicken the pace?
Why does it seem that you choose to lose reason before losing face?
"Russians and Americans
Driven by the past, the third world moves in the shadows you cast
Russians and Americans
Could turn the world to dust, so much to live for, so much undiscussed
So much in common and so little trust
"From the streets of Athens and Rome the voices still echo to crumbling walls
Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall
Forever the changes we still have to face
Some people say that a country is more and idea than a place
Though nothing is safe
We still choose the mark that we leave on the open canvas of space
"Russians and Americans
Maybe you should see into the heart of the world, not its head
Russians and Americans
If you want to be the feet of the world, better mind where you tread,
The footsteps of history are left where you step
"So here we stand at the edge of 1984"
This seems to me that Wal-mart is using its position as a major distributor to strong arm against its would be competitors. It's not quite a monopoly (read Target, K-Mart, etc...) so is there any legal avenue to take against Wal-mart for this kind of action (other than consumer action which doesn't work so well when dealing with lower prices)?
Uhhh, no. Happily.
What is it with you litigious anti-Walmart goons?
It's NOT a monopoly, as you stated. Plenty of other big stores in the same business, competing on selection and price and service and all those other B-School 101 points. When Martha Stewart made her exclusivity deal with K-Mart, I'm sure she knew that Walmart would be pushing all her cookbooks to the back shelves and start promoting Rachel Ray's. She makes her deals, she takes her chances. As do the studios. Risk, Reward, Business. How do they do it on your planet?
What, because iTunes delivers movies tek-no-log-ee-cully ("oooh, shiny!"), all the brick-and-mortar operations that have pumped truckloads of money into the studios' pockets over the years are supposed to just roll over and cave?
"Gosh, dern, there, Mister Studio Boss, shucks, we're just a simple uber-ultra-mega-chain from Arkansas, don't know nothing 'bout birthin' no downloads. Shure, we brung ya to the dance, bought ya dinner, drinks, and flowers, but it's OK if ya want to leave with that there Miss Apple. We understand, she shore is purty!"
Are you naive, blindly hate Walmart cuz you're some too-cool-for-the-country urban Goth, or do you just like litigation? (It's OK, you can check off more than one.)
Oh, wait, I know! It's unfair because Walmart uses under-age Chinese vagrants to put the DVD's on the shelves. Is that it? Would you feel better knowing that these were the same under-age Chinese vagrants that Apple uses to build its iPods? Would that make it all better?
It remains the only effective means of convincing some developers that they are *NOT* designers in the first place.
"Art? Design? C'mon, I've mastered AJAX, XHTML, JAVA, JavaScript, ColdFusion, PHP, Ruby, PERL, and I own the only remaining data glove on the East Coast, what do I need art for? See, it's got a template... I'll just change the colors... try and find out the client's favorite color... hell, I've been building websites since '93, and I'm no artist... and I used vi... still use vi, heh... look here, I've got a CD full of clipart, we can use one of these... pic of an Asian chick on the phone, yeah, this'll work fine... designers? gimme a break... look, here's a website with cool fonts we can download, I'll download a bunch, client'll love 'em, never seen anything like 'em... talk to legal, see if we can get the rights to "Dark Side of the Moon," it'll be cool, see, when you first come to the client's site, Floyd's "Money" will start playing. Get it? Damn! I'm good! friggin' designers, who needs a designer, just make everything more complex, take all the credit, man..."
am i alone when i say i am blown away that record labels ask stations for a penny to show their videos?
Pretty much, unless you can somehow cross the time-barrier about 15 years.
The labels have all made it pretty clear (and the analysts have agreed) that they made a big-time mistake providing free content to MTV for as long as they did. Sure, Huey Lewis and The News and a-Ha never would have had the careers they did were it not for the freebies, but at the end of the cycle MTV (and it's johnny-come-lately rivals, like Fuse) fared far, far better in the deal than did the labels. When MTV captured the eyeballs and mind-set, it switched gears away from vids to original programming, leaving their "purist" rivals stuck with paying the bills to the newly educated and enraged recording labels.
I was there (literally, as it turns out) when MTV launched in '82, and I can tell you that everyone I knew just kept their tube on that channel cuz there was no where else you could see these vids or hear these artists. And you couldn't search an archive, and no metadata indexing engine type-matched your interests so you could discover similar artists, and nobody dreamed of "owning" a vid they liked, they just hoped they were in front of the tube when it played again.
Why would anyone watch MTV or Fuse for the videos when they have broadband? And why would a label give a free ride to a video network, knowing what it knows now? (If Fuse does not get vids for free, it will have to pay somebody for some kind of content; label figures, 'why not me?' And they're right.)
MySpace is to youth culture in 2006 what MTV was to it in 1982. It is through the conduit of the social networking sites that the labels will be promoing their wares, not linear-ly programmed TV networks.
I just love how innovative companies like Google are forced to spend all this money on lobbyists just so Congress doesn't screw them over. Why isn't it all spent on making a better product? Because some people gave the government so much power beyond its strict Constitutional limits, which given enough time would mean lobbyists would be fighting over all that juicy government money and to shackle their competitors.
l ican-Contributor, the fact that Big, Giant Corporate Blood (and money) tastes the all the same to this Frankenstein, is, frankly, funny and ironic as hell.
The folks who gave Congress power to lean on Big, Gigantic Corporations like Google are the people who fear Big, Gigantic Corporations. According to my scorecard, that's usually been a Left-Wing plank. The folks who try to limit Congress's ability to make life miserable for Big, Gigantic Corporations like Google are usually depicted as Right-Wingers.
The inability of the Congress-Monster to discern between Democrat-leaning darling-of-the-latte-technorati-crowd Google and some EEEEEEvil-Big-Bellied-Energy-Oil-Mean-Nasty-Repub
Not as funny as that whole "Do No Evil" corporate motto, but still pretty funny.