The RIAA isn't a court of law. It simply sent a letter telling the University to remove copywritten material from their site, or they would engage in legal action. You don't have to presume someone innocent before sending them a letter. In this case, it was a temporary employee who didn't do all the legwork he could have, but it still was an easy mistake to make. Considering many million (billion) number of sites/pages they search for possible infractions, it's understandable that they might make a mistake from time to time.
Had they brought this to a court, then yes, they would have lost the case. So, fortunately, the university figured out what was going on and was able to set it right with the RIAA.
The RIAA can't actually force someone to remove an URL; it can bring them to court if they won't comply (after all, what are they going to do -- send special police or something? [answer: no]).
Yes, the DMCA is excessive in the rights it gives to intellectual property holders. It's also true that if someone is making copyrighted material available on a publically available FTP server, they're breaking the law.
Banks and other companies send erroneous bills to people all the time. If they used "due diligence" this would hopefully never happen (although our dependence on computers has unfortunately made it harder to avoid these problems). If the customer gets a bill that looks excessively high, unfortunately it is their responsibility to bring that up with the company. If they call the company and point out the error, then the company will correct their mistake and send out a new bill. This is the same sort of situation -- a mistake was made, a letter was sent out threatening legal action, and when the University pointed out the error, the RIAA apologized. Problem solved.
The only reason this got news was because it was the RIAA. If a news article was written every time a company sent you a letter stating something that was in fact incorrect, no one would ever get anything done.
It would take longer, because the system would have to send some sort of notification to the human: "Hey, I found an infringement." Then, the that person would have to download the file, then play it. It probably would take at least one minute per possible infraction (and that would be if the whole process was really, really streamlined).
So:
1 minute * 1,000 possible infractions per day (a LOW estimate)= 1,000 minutes = 16 hours, 40 minutes. That's two people, working full time. Whereas a computer could do the same thing in an hour or so.
It was an honest mistake on RIAA's case, and they apologized for it. I respect that they're putting the effort into protecting the works of the artists they represent. They're protecting their interests, just like I would be upset if people started copying my work without permission and freely sharing it.
There isn't enough time in the world to go through and have a human listen to all possible infractions. They're probably sending thousands of these letters out each day, because there's just so many potential infringements.
What would be better if they phrased it to the University:
"There is high probability that this file: Usher.mp3 contains copyrighted information. Please ensure that this content is being used according to blah blah blah blah."
I would agree that their intent is clear. Here's their intent, are you ready? Here it goes:
Please don't sue us for lots of money.
That's it. Really.
I doubt that they will ever use the content on these pages for their own use. And actually, no, they do not distribute other parties' personal copyrighted material, because of the terms of their TOS, which states that anything published on the forums by definition isn't copyrighted. I do believe, though, that if I post a personal journal on my personal website on AOL, then I *can* copyright that material.
Now, if by "they distribute other parties' personal copyrighted material" you mean that they distribute television shows or movies that are copyrighted by another author or company, well, probably, yeah. They're a media company, and one of their jobs is distributing that media. I don't see how that relates to AOL's TOS agreement, however.
They are in the business of copyrighten works so THEY SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
Huh?!? Um, they do know better. As in, "We'd better make sure that no one can accuse us of intellectual property infringment just because someone once posted an idea to one of our forums."
Instead they claim, they can use your work any way they want. Just like M$ did. THAT IS STEALING.
Okay, I'm sure that IHBT, but this is just really stupid. The agreement also says that anyone can use your work any way they want, not just them. In other words, don't post something to a forum if you yourself want to own it as intellectual property in the future. It's not stealing, because anything you are posting becomes public domain (Think Bill Shakespeare and Company have gotten any royalty checks recently?)
And yes, they are in the clear.
So this whole thread should be labeled "Smart Corporate Lawyers"
They do not "own" the content. They are making no claim for ownership of content. The text makes this clear. It is the user who is waiving the right to ownership.
Why?
I think the main reason is simply because AOL/Time Warner is a big media company, making lots of movies all of the time. Now suppose in 2003 I post a comment saying, "Hey, someone should do a movie about a guy who talks to his dead mother and says all of these crazy things!" Suppose, totally coincidentally, AOL/Time Warner releases a made-for-TV movie in 2005 about a guy who talks to his dead mother.
I could then say, "Hey! Look at this message I posted in 2003 on the AOL Message Boards! They clearly stole my idea!" It would be hard for them to prove that they didn't use the posting as the source for their movie.
I think most of the people posting on/. are being unrealistic about AOL's intents here. I don't see the new language as all that different from the old content, with the exception of the addition of a waiver of moral rights, which probably has something to do with a recent legal precedent in the UK. I have severe doubts that people at AOL are trolling (in the fishing sense) message boards searching for piece bits of prose or cool movie ideas.
Rather, they are preventing themselves from being sued whenever someone decides that a movie they're watching sounds like a comment they made on a message board three years before.
If you want to retain your intellectual property, don't post it to a public forum.
Essentially, what happens when you post it to a public place on AOL is that it becomes public domain -- notice that AOL states that others can also make derivative works from your content. This ensures that if, say, Steven Speilberg has an AOL account, he won't be sued if he makes a movie that resembles a comment made in a message boards forum that he may or may not have read.
Incremental knowledge is useful towards achieving certain goals, but isn't required for understanding.
Take language. Language is *not* learned incrementally. Oh sure, you learn your vocabulary one word at a time -- mostly -- but it's not like one day you're only understanding key phrases and eventually you work your way up to sentences.
Instead, we have the entire map of language in our heads from the very start like a gigantic coat rack, and we just place the various grammar rules and meanings on the hooks that are already correctly placed.
Independent thought exists long before any incremental learning takes place. The human brain is basically a never-ending thought engine. The things we can think about change as we grow, but not the *way* that we think.
They can't all be that dumb. Otherwise, we wouldn't need to be spending $50k+ to track them down. Actually, at a certain point, criminal behavior -- particularly what is known as "organized crime" -- resembles a corporation in its structure and in the ability of its workers.
These criminals' key weakness may not be normal run of the mill "I broke my cup holder" stupidity, but an arrogant belief that, unlike most criminals that came before them, they will not be caught.
If these people really were stupid we'd be using the crew from COPS, not surveillance teams.
My main point was that rather than having the URL actually contain the query, it was storing information about the session, so someone coming in later to that link wouldn't get anything at all.
I use session ids all the time in sites I design, but unless the data needs to be kept secure, I go ahead and make URLs work for queries even when the session has expired.
This is very similar to this servey lumping people who use the internet solely for the purposes of e mail into a broad group of 'internet users.' Sure, they use the internet, but to such a limited degree that they should, by reasonable accounts, be considered non-users (analogous to having a mobile phone just to have the time of the day beamed to your pocket, or getting a newspaper just to remember what day it is, or just to get the coupons)
Actually, e-mail is *the* killer app of the Internet.
It's not as cool or flashy as the web, but it is without question the most important way that information is shared on the Internet. Sure, there's a lot of crap in your inbox too, but there's a lot of crap out there on the Internet. You just get less of a choice about what lands in your inbox.
I think a better analagy with cell phones is that "e-mail only" users would only use them to make phone calls -- they don't download web pages, or play games, or play music -- In short, they are using a cell phone for its primary purpse, talking to other people. The Internet was first designed to be a way to communicate textual information over far distances. E-mail does this admirably.
Simple. Most of the guys who watch action movies have girlfriends. Most of the geeks who watch sci-fi flicks don't.:-)
Not that male geeks aren't necessarily sexist, but I think most of your action movie watching types actually like the idea of submissive women, whereas geeks tend to like the idea of the aggressive female (consider: submissive women wait to be asked out. Aggressive women ask the guy out. This is every geek's fantasy).
This was probably a big concern when LOTR was being scripted. If you read the book, it's one big happy man-ily, with hardly a female in sight. So, Arwen's role gets played up. She becomes the hotshot horseback rider who defiantly faces the Nazgul ("If you want him, come and claim him" etc). Granted, geeks would have gone to see LOTR anyways, but having female characters in the movie didn't hurt.
The WHOIS information is now gone. Has anyone else been able to find it? My guess is that someone wised up to it and has removed the record from the database, although I was not aware that this could be done...
Check it out for yourself. Try to register it -- you can't, it's taken. Now just try and do a whois on it. You get a not found.
Here's what's on the agenda for the May 1st meeting:
Exemption for literary works/eBooks for persons with disabilities
And on the 2nd:
Motion pictures and audiovisual works:
DVD tethering/alternative platforms DVD backups/noninfringing uses DVD/Video Game Region Coding
Literary works:
Damaged, malfunctioning, obsolete Other noninfringing uses
Of all of the issues, I think the DVD issues would be of highest interest to Slashdotters, right? Sounds like issues might include viewing DVDs on Linux (ie, DeCSS) and, of course, region encoding is always an issue.
If no one else can make the May 2nd hearing, I suppose I'd be willing to make the trip (2+ hours), but if there's anyone who already lives in DC, and, better yet, gets Fridays off, that'd be even better.
Since it seems this public hearing isn't open to public comment/participation (some are), it may be that we can just keep our eyes glued on the site and look for transcripts/summaries of the hearings to get further insight.
Although I'd be happy to lend whatever support I could to defending consumer rights in this area, I'm afraid I just don't know enough about the issues involved. I've ready plenty of Slashdot articles in the past, all of which go on and on about intellectual property laws becoming increasingly invasive. Most of these discussions devolve into invectives (is that the right word?...I think so...) against the DMCA, the RIAA, the MPAA, etc.
However, it'd be nice to be pointed to some specific websites that discuss the issues, specific legislation or regulations under review.
For instance, if I were to go to the hearing, what questions can I/should I ask? Will I be able to present any opinions or viewpoints, and what should they be on? I myself am tired of being one of the ones who moans and complains about these issues but then doesn't do anything about it. I'd like to be informed so I can act.
I think the important thing is what kind of group it is.
For instance, part of the main feature of an all-female group is that it is generally a "safe place" to be female.
Most groups that were men-only in the past were simply groups that wanted to do things that were really unrelated to gender. So, say some guys set up a Linux Users Group. The goal of the group would be to explore and learn about Linux, not to revel in their manhood (hopefully -- boy, that's a scary image). If they decided women couldn't join the group, that would be simple discrimination. However, if there was a Women's Linux Group that was set up, probably part of its goal would be to offer a setting that was more comfortable for women -- an environment where the male geeks wouldn't always be trying to hit on them or dominate the conversations.
I can't recall where I read this, but it appears that girls who go to all-girls schools tend to do better emotionally and academically, whereas boys tend to better in environments in which there are both boys and girls. This means that it is to everyone's benefit to have generalized groups which allow both men and women, and groups that are exclusively female.
Gender, race, and other divisions are very problematic -- that's why, after over 3000+ years of civilization, we still haven't necessary come up with a solution to all of it.
During high school/middle school, whenever we were snowed in, one of the traditions we would have each year was to watch all three movies over the course of the day.
I'm not sure how Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Reinstalled with Service Pack 9 and Security Update 2004-05-09 are going to turn out, but my stomach churns at the idea of watching much beyond the Matrix. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Matrix -- well, I liked the *idea* of the Matrix.
I still hate that Keneau Reeves was the one. I don't care if he actually is smarter or more intelligent than me in real life (hey, he could be). I still think he's an idiot.
What made Star Wars great was not just because it placed you in a fascinating world, but also because it had probably the most charismatic and enjoyable action movie actor ever -- Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford made that movie, in my opinion. When I first saw Star Wars as a little kid (I was born the year it came out), I was all about Luke, since he was the "hero" of the movies. But as time went on, it was Han Solo who kept bringing me back.
And to all those who are going on and on about Trinity's breasts. Yeah, they're nice, but breasts in tight shirts do not a movie make (unless, of course, that movie is Breasts in Tight Shirts).
Okay, so maybe *you* didn't find it funny. Well, then, maybe in your mind it was "overrated", but I don't think it was so unfunny as to drop down to zero.
If you don't like Funny posts, just set your Funny modifier to -5.
Also, this was not a troll. This person's goal was to be funny, not to incite a bunch of people to respond to some dumb provocative statement.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead and mod me down as offtopic. Glad to know those mod points are going to good use!
Web designers who INSIST on using fixed width for news sites (while wasting screen real estate) should be bloody well fired.
Web designers who insist on making websites that are browser friendly WILL be bloody well fired.
As a web designer/developer -- and, let me clarify -- one who has to do it for a LIVING, and not by having a website that makes ME money, but rather making websites for OTHERS -- you have little to no control over how you design the website. The client wants to have blue columns on each side of the text? You put them in. They have some weird configuration in their browser that makes the website display funny? You recode the site so it looks good on *their* browser, even if you have to jump through hoops to do it.
There are a lot of people who design websites poorly because they are bad website developers. I would say, though, that there are at least as many who develop a website in a certain way because of the whims of their clients or lead designers.
I'd say, more than a web developer's familiarity with print design, clients' familiarity with print design, and with having print-based promotional materials made, leads them to believe that they can expect controlled widths and placement, and that the layout will have just one appearance.
I agree with your last point -- developers who purposefully don't center their websites in the browser should be taken out and shot. Again, though, it's difficult to say whether they have any control over even that.
Actually, Access *does* support transactions. I'm not sure how well it does it on the client level, but I know for a fact that it does through the ODBC interface, because I've used it that way very successfully in the past.
I do want to comment, a little, on the huge number of people who have bad-mouthed Access in this thread.
I am not a lover of Microsoft, and we are moving our entire office over to Linux/OS, blah blah blah.
HOWEVER, I am currently moving sites over to using Postgres (yes, MySQL *is* faster, but that's because you can't do as much with it). One thing I've noticed--it is much, much slower than Microsoft Acccess over ODBC. Now, it's possible that if I was to do load testing, it would beat MS Access handily (in fact, I've tested this and it's true). However, for your run-of-the mill complex select query, MS Access handily outperforms Postgres on speed, with equally complex queries.
Everyone consistently says how using MS Access is inherently worse than using a database server. I'm sure, in cases of heavy load, it is. But if you have only 50 users accessing a database (and it's doubtful that they would all access the same database at the same time), Access will actually respond fairly well.
I'd like to add that when I was working on porting a website from using Access to using MS SQL Server, I noticed an instant drop in speed and response. We don't host that site, so I don't know what the setup is for their SQL Server machine, but queries took often 2-10x as long to execute. We switched over to avoid problems that came up a few times during the month when too many people were accessing the database. Now I get server disconnect errors all the time--a few times per week.
So for all those who've suggested switching to SQL Server as a more stable solution--<Bronx cheer>.
Oh, and also:
I wonder if they're even normalized?
This is, sorry, an arrogant and stupid assumption. The quality of data organization is dependent entirely on the designer of the database, *not* on the type of database used. It is just as easy to make a crappy flat database in Oracle as it is in Access.
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA isn't a court of law. It simply sent a letter telling the University to remove copywritten material from their site, or they would engage in legal action. You don't have to presume someone innocent before sending them a letter. In this case, it was a temporary employee who didn't do all the legwork he could have, but it still was an easy mistake to make. Considering many million (billion) number of sites/pages they search for possible infractions, it's understandable that they might make a mistake from time to time.
Had they brought this to a court, then yes, they would have lost the case. So, fortunately, the university figured out what was going on and was able to set it right with the RIAA.
The RIAA can't actually force someone to remove an URL; it can bring them to court if they won't comply (after all, what are they going to do -- send special police or something? [answer: no]).
Yes, the DMCA is excessive in the rights it gives to intellectual property holders. It's also true that if someone is making copyrighted material available on a publically available FTP server, they're breaking the law.
Banks and other companies send erroneous bills to people all the time. If they used "due diligence" this would hopefully never happen (although our dependence on computers has unfortunately made it harder to avoid these problems). If the customer gets a bill that looks excessively high, unfortunately it is their responsibility to bring that up with the company. If they call the company and point out the error, then the company will correct their mistake and send out a new bill. This is the same sort of situation -- a mistake was made, a letter was sent out threatening legal action, and when the University pointed out the error, the RIAA apologized. Problem solved.
The only reason this got news was because it was the RIAA. If a news article was written every time a company sent you a letter stating something that was in fact incorrect, no one would ever get anything done.
It would take longer, because the system would have to send some sort of notification to the human: "Hey, I found an infringement." Then, the that person would have to download the file, then play it. It probably would take at least one minute per possible infraction (and that would be if the whole process was really, really streamlined).
So:
1 minute * 1,000 possible infractions per day (a LOW estimate)= 1,000 minutes = 16 hours, 40 minutes. That's two people, working full time. Whereas a computer could do the same thing in an hour or so.
It was an honest mistake on RIAA's case, and they apologized for it. I respect that they're putting the effort into protecting the works of the artists they represent. They're protecting their interests, just like I would be upset if people started copying my work without permission and freely sharing it.
There isn't enough time in the world to go through and have a human listen to all possible infractions. They're probably sending thousands of these letters out each day, because there's just so many potential infringements.
What would be better if they phrased it to the University:
"There is high probability that this file: Usher.mp3 contains copyrighted information. Please ensure that this content is being used according to blah blah blah blah."
I would agree that their intent is clear. Here's their intent, are you ready? Here it goes:That's it. Really.
I doubt that they will ever use the content on these pages for their own use. And actually, no, they do not distribute other parties' personal copyrighted material, because of the terms of their TOS, which states that anything published on the forums by definition isn't copyrighted. I do believe, though, that if I post a personal journal on my personal website on AOL, then I *can* copyright that material.
Now, if by "they distribute other parties' personal copyrighted material" you mean that they distribute television shows or movies that are copyrighted by another author or company, well, probably, yeah. They're a media company, and one of their jobs is distributing that media. I don't see how that relates to AOL's TOS agreement, however.
They are in the business of copyrighten works so THEY SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
Huh?!? Um, they do know better. As in, "We'd better make sure that no one can accuse us of intellectual property infringment just because someone once posted an idea to one of our forums."
Instead they claim, they can use your work any way they want. Just like M$ did. THAT IS STEALING.
Okay, I'm sure that IHBT, but this is just really stupid. The agreement also says that anyone can use your work any way they want, not just them. In other words, don't post something to a forum if you yourself want to own it as intellectual property in the future. It's not stealing, because anything you are posting becomes public domain (Think Bill Shakespeare and Company have gotten any royalty checks recently?)
And yes, they are in the clear.
So this whole thread should be labeled "Smart Corporate Lawyers"
No.
/. are being unrealistic about AOL's intents here. I don't see the new language as all that different from the old content, with the exception of the addition of a waiver of moral rights, which probably has something to do with a recent legal precedent in the UK. I have severe doubts that people at AOL are trolling (in the fishing sense) message boards searching for piece bits of prose or cool movie ideas.
They do not "own" the content. They are making no claim for ownership of content. The text makes this clear. It is the user who is waiving the right to ownership.
Why?
I think the main reason is simply because AOL/Time Warner is a big media company, making lots of movies all of the time. Now suppose in 2003 I post a comment saying, "Hey, someone should do a movie about a guy who talks to his dead mother and says all of these crazy things!" Suppose, totally coincidentally , AOL/Time Warner releases a made-for-TV movie in 2005 about a guy who talks to his dead mother.
I could then say, "Hey! Look at this message I posted in 2003 on the AOL Message Boards! They clearly stole my idea!" It would be hard for them to prove that they didn't use the posting as the source for their movie.
I think most of the people posting on
Rather, they are preventing themselves from being sued whenever someone decides that a movie they're watching sounds like a comment they made on a message board three years before.
If you want to retain your intellectual property, don't post it to a public forum.
Essentially, what happens when you post it to a public place on AOL is that it becomes public domain -- notice that AOL states that others can also make derivative works from your content. This ensures that if, say, Steven Speilberg has an AOL account, he won't be sued if he makes a movie that resembles a comment made in a message boards forum that he may or may not have read.
Wrong.
Incremental knowledge is useful towards achieving certain goals, but isn't required for understanding.
Take language. Language is *not* learned incrementally. Oh sure, you learn your vocabulary one word at a time -- mostly -- but it's not like one day you're only understanding key phrases and eventually you work your way up to sentences.
Instead, we have the entire map of language in our heads from the very start like a gigantic coat rack, and we just place the various grammar rules and meanings on the hooks that are already correctly placed.
Independent thought exists long before any incremental learning takes place. The human brain is basically a never-ending thought engine. The things we can think about change as we grow, but not the *way* that we think.
Hmm,
They can't all be that dumb. Otherwise, we wouldn't need to be spending $50k+ to track them down. Actually, at a certain point, criminal behavior -- particularly what is known as "organized crime" -- resembles a corporation in its structure and in the ability of its workers.
These criminals' key weakness may not be normal run of the mill "I broke my cup holder" stupidity, but an arrogant belief that, unlike most criminals that came before them, they will not be caught.
If these people really were stupid we'd be using the crew from COPS, not surveillance teams.
My main point was that rather than having the URL actually contain the query, it was storing information about the session, so someone coming in later to that link wouldn't get anything at all.
I use session ids all the time in sites I design, but unless the data needs to be kept secure, I go ahead and make URLs work for queries even when the session has expired.
I think Apple uses some special kind of session tracking system or something. That link does not work anymore.
This link should be persistent.
Actually, a CS professor I had in college wrote an interesting essay defining computer science. I think it was quite good, actually.
Does anyone else thinks that the ASCII version of C3P0 looks just like Bender?
This is very similar to this servey lumping people who use the internet solely for the purposes of e mail into a broad group of 'internet users.' Sure, they use the internet, but to such a limited degree that they should, by reasonable accounts, be considered non-users (analogous to having a mobile phone just to have the time of the day beamed to your pocket, or getting a newspaper just to remember what day it is, or just to get the coupons)
Actually, e-mail is *the* killer app of the Internet.
It's not as cool or flashy as the web, but it is without question the most important way that information is shared on the Internet. Sure, there's a lot of crap in your inbox too, but there's a lot of crap out there on the Internet. You just get less of a choice about what lands in your inbox.
I think a better analagy with cell phones is that "e-mail only" users would only use them to make phone calls -- they don't download web pages, or play games, or play music -- In short, they are using a cell phone for its primary purpse, talking to other people. The Internet was first designed to be a way to communicate textual information over far distances. E-mail does this admirably.
Okay, so according to that article, one type of neutrino is an electron.
That doesn't make sense, does it? I thought that the definition of neutrinos were that they had a neutral charge.
Simple. Most of the guys who watch action movies have girlfriends. Most of the geeks who watch sci-fi flicks don't. :-)
Not that male geeks aren't necessarily sexist, but I think most of your action movie watching types actually like the idea of submissive women, whereas geeks tend to like the idea of the aggressive female (consider: submissive women wait to be asked out. Aggressive women ask the guy out. This is every geek's fantasy).
This was probably a big concern when LOTR was being scripted. If you read the book, it's one big happy man-ily, with hardly a female in sight. So, Arwen's role gets played up. She becomes the hotshot horseback rider who defiantly faces the Nazgul ("If you want him, come and claim him" etc). Granted, geeks would have gone to see LOTR anyways, but having female characters in the movie didn't hurt.
The WHOIS information is now gone. Has anyone else been able to find it? My guess is that someone wised up to it and has removed the record from the database, although I was not aware that this could be done...
Check it out for yourself. Try to register it -- you can't, it's taken. Now just try and do a whois on it. You get a not found.
Here's what's on the agenda for the May 1st meeting:
Exemption for literary works/eBooks for persons with disabilities
And on the 2nd:
Motion pictures and audiovisual works:
DVD tethering/alternative platforms
DVD backups/noninfringing uses
DVD/Video Game Region Coding
Literary works:
Damaged, malfunctioning, obsolete
Other noninfringing uses
Of all of the issues, I think the DVD issues would be of highest interest to Slashdotters, right? Sounds like issues might include viewing DVDs on Linux (ie, DeCSS) and, of course, region encoding is always an issue.
If no one else can make the May 2nd hearing, I suppose I'd be willing to make the trip (2+ hours), but if there's anyone who already lives in DC, and, better yet, gets Fridays off, that'd be even better.
Since it seems this public hearing isn't open to public comment/participation (some are), it may be that we can just keep our eyes glued on the site and look for transcripts/summaries of the hearings to get further insight.
Although I'd be happy to lend whatever support I could to defending consumer rights in this area, I'm afraid I just don't know enough about the issues involved. I've ready plenty of Slashdot articles in the past, all of which go on and on about intellectual property laws becoming increasingly invasive. Most of these discussions devolve into invectives (is that the right word?...I think so...) against the DMCA, the RIAA, the MPAA, etc.
However, it'd be nice to be pointed to some specific websites that discuss the issues, specific legislation or regulations under review.
For instance, if I were to go to the hearing, what questions can I/should I ask? Will I be able to present any opinions or viewpoints, and what should they be on? I myself am tired of being one of the ones who moans and complains about these issues but then doesn't do anything about it. I'd like to be informed so I can act.
Thanks.
Wow! That must have been some game he was playing.
I wonder what game it was. I want to play that game!
Oh, wait, it was probably this.
I've always read that many people consider Ruby to be an excellent programming language.
I wonder, then, why it doesn't seem to have that many developers using it? Is it only because it is new?
IANAW, but I think I can safely respond to this.
I think the important thing is what kind of group it is.
For instance, part of the main feature of an all-female group is that it is generally a "safe place" to be female.
Most groups that were men-only in the past were simply groups that wanted to do things that were really unrelated to gender. So, say some guys set up a Linux Users Group. The goal of the group would be to explore and learn about Linux, not to revel in their manhood (hopefully -- boy, that's a scary image). If they decided women couldn't join the group, that would be simple discrimination. However, if there was a Women's Linux Group that was set up, probably part of its goal would be to offer a setting that was more comfortable for women -- an environment where the male geeks wouldn't always be trying to hit on them or dominate the conversations.
I can't recall where I read this, but it appears that girls who go to all-girls schools tend to do better emotionally and academically, whereas boys tend to better in environments in which there are both boys and girls. This means that it is to everyone's benefit to have generalized groups which allow both men and women, and groups that are exclusively female.
Gender, race, and other divisions are very problematic -- that's why, after over 3000+ years of civilization, we still haven't necessary come up with a solution to all of it.
I agree 100%.
Even better, consider this:
During high school/middle school, whenever we were snowed in, one of the traditions we would have each year was to watch all three movies over the course of the day.
I'm not sure how Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Reinstalled with Service Pack 9 and Security Update 2004-05-09 are going to turn out, but my stomach churns at the idea of watching much beyond the Matrix. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Matrix -- well, I liked the *idea* of the Matrix.
I still hate that Keneau Reeves was the one. I don't care if he actually is smarter or more intelligent than me in real life (hey, he could be). I still think he's an idiot.
What made Star Wars great was not just because it placed you in a fascinating world, but also because it had probably the most charismatic and enjoyable action movie actor ever -- Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford made that movie, in my opinion. When I first saw Star Wars as a little kid (I was born the year it came out), I was all about Luke, since he was the "hero" of the movies. But as time went on, it was Han Solo who kept bringing me back.
And to all those who are going on and on about Trinity's breasts. Yeah, they're nice, but breasts in tight shirts do not a movie make (unless, of course, that movie is Breasts in Tight Shirts).
Hello Mods!
Just in case you were wondering, this was funny.
Okay, so maybe *you* didn't find it funny. Well, then, maybe in your mind it was "overrated", but I don't think it was so unfunny as to drop down to zero.
If you don't like Funny posts, just set your Funny modifier to -5.
Also, this was not a troll. This person's goal was to be funny, not to incite a bunch of people to respond to some dumb provocative statement.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead and mod me down as offtopic. Glad to know those mod points are going to good use!
Web designers who INSIST on using fixed width for news sites (while wasting screen real estate) should be bloody well fired.
Web designers who insist on making websites that are browser friendly WILL be bloody well fired.
As a web designer/developer -- and, let me clarify -- one who has to do it for a LIVING, and not by having a website that makes ME money, but rather making websites for OTHERS -- you have little to no control over how you design the website. The client wants to have blue columns on each side of the text? You put them in. They have some weird configuration in their browser that makes the website display funny? You recode the site so it looks good on *their* browser, even if you have to jump through hoops to do it.
There are a lot of people who design websites poorly because they are bad website developers. I would say, though, that there are at least as many who develop a website in a certain way because of the whims of their clients or lead designers.
I'd say, more than a web developer's familiarity with print design, clients' familiarity with print design, and with having print-based promotional materials made, leads them to believe that they can expect controlled widths and placement, and that the layout will have just one appearance.
I agree with your last point -- developers who purposefully don't center their websites in the browser should be taken out and shot. Again, though, it's difficult to say whether they have any control over even that.
Uh, insert something funny here.
No seriously, I was searching through all of the comments to make sure I wouldn't be redundant.
I must have been the only one to read this and think "Asian webcams. Huh huh."
Okay, joke #2.
If they ever want to go out, they can always just put the webcam on a loop, just like in Speed!
*sigh*
I should probably stop posting now.
Actually, Access *does* support transactions. I'm not sure how well it does it on the client level, but I know for a fact that it does through the ODBC interface, because I've used it that way very successfully in the past.
I do want to comment, a little, on the huge number of people who have bad-mouthed Access in this thread.
I am not a lover of Microsoft, and we are moving our entire office over to Linux/OS, blah blah blah.
HOWEVER, I am currently moving sites over to using Postgres (yes, MySQL *is* faster, but that's because you can't do as much with it). One thing I've noticed--it is much, much slower than Microsoft Acccess over ODBC. Now, it's possible that if I was to do load testing, it would beat MS Access handily (in fact, I've tested this and it's true). However, for your run-of-the mill complex select query, MS Access handily outperforms Postgres on speed, with equally complex queries.
Everyone consistently says how using MS Access is inherently worse than using a database server. I'm sure, in cases of heavy load, it is. But if you have only 50 users accessing a database (and it's doubtful that they would all access the same database at the same time), Access will actually respond fairly well.
I'd like to add that when I was working on porting a website from using Access to using MS SQL Server, I noticed an instant drop in speed and response. We don't host that site, so I don't know what the setup is for their SQL Server machine, but queries took often 2-10x as long to execute. We switched over to avoid problems that came up a few times during the month when too many people were accessing the database. Now I get server disconnect errors all the time--a few times per week.
So for all those who've suggested switching to SQL Server as a more stable solution--<Bronx cheer>.
Oh, and also:
I wonder if they're even normalized?
This is, sorry, an arrogant and stupid assumption. The quality of data organization is dependent entirely on the designer of the database, *not* on the type of database used. It is just as easy to make a crappy flat database in Oracle as it is in Access.