This is flat out wrong. First sale doctrine gives you the right to do whatever you want with the physical disk (including rent it to people from a vending machine). The content isn't yours, you still can't do public performance or make copies to rent but the original disk is yours.
The reason you pay more for a rented disk that you lose is probably because they like to gouge you. Also, sometimes "rental" copies are different, often they might have a different set of previews and a lack of special features (but get sold at an initial discount with a higher later replacement cost). In the VHS days, the expensive tapes were actually nicer than the retail copies--blockbuster would buy a couple copies on the expensive tape for long term rental and a bunch on retail quality (fast degrading) tape that they would sell off after new-release status was over.
Please don't spread incorrect info about things like first sale doctrine...it is a very important part of copyright law that a lot of companies would like to see go away and that will be easy if people already think it doesn't exist.
Even if it was about the same speed...cost is a factor as well as speed...
You could probably set up an extra google book scanner and pay someone to staff it round the clock for about the same price as taking an MRI of a book with some special MRI setup.
My parents have had reliable power outage internet for years (and they still have a landline)...
I was used the funny feeling of my dialup connection still working when the backup battery kicked in in a power outage. That feeling went away when we switched to cable as the modem and router in the basement would die at the first power flicker. I hooked up a little APC thing with the essential networking hardware plugged into the battery backup ports.
Seemed to still be up and running when I was home for christmas. Of course I don't know whether the cable provider hardware is more resistant to power outages than the phone company's
Once you are at a professional level, it is not too much to ask that if you are going to have to wear a uniform, it should be provided and cared for to the same standards as you might treat your own personal garments.
I'd probably be cool wearing my own pants at a fast food job, just like I was cool with the polyester content of the clothes I wore on the shop floor (lets face it, grease doesn't get along with ANY fabric that well). If I am sitting in a desk chair most of the day, things like the breath-ability and feel of the clothes start to become more important unless you like a sweaty ass (they stopped giving aeron style mesh chairs to IT grunts in 2000 right?)
I'm not saying change the requirements so that only the best 25% can pass and drive or something like that
While making it harder will have to reduce the number of drivers somewhat, I think peoples desire to drive would force a majority of the drivers to become better drivers. When I was getting my license, there were tons of other teenagers who were atrocious drivers who got their licenses on the second attempt (often by scheduling the second attempt at the "easier" DMV site out in the boonies). Those kids *really* wanted to drive, they just didn't think it was important to be very good at driving (always scares me when people admit to personally being a bad driver).
If there had been additional training, harder tests, and longer time gaps, I am sure the kids would practice as much as it took to pass the test (and not a bit more)
Where are all of these people getting worker numbers far higher than computer numbers? (2600/900, 200/50, 250/120, etc)
Maybe it was the case many years ago, but every place I have worked had at least 1:1 if not more when you take into account machines kept as live spares and users with several computers. Gets even worse when you factor in the IT people also supporting blackberry deployments and the like. I can see it in a factory of some sort...or I have a friend in IT for a coffee shop chain--its probably 1:1 in the office but when users call in from a shop, they are calling about the shared POS machines. In an office setting people use individual computers...even interns who work on opposing days get their "own" system.
I'm not even sure I see the relevance of knowing that information. I mean...I know that they want to emphasize the fact that those actions are punished harshly in order to discourage them...but I am pretty sure the judge would tell you everything you need to know about license suspension after you actually get DUI.
I don't understand why the driving rules can be so lax. Sure, people "depend" on driving, but they only depend on it because they are used to it--if you suddenly told someone who wasn't a professional driver that they couldn't drive anymore, you know damn well that they would figure something out. If you suddenly told a LOT of people they couldn't drive, you would just end up with more places like new york or chicago where many residents don't own a car or even have a license.
I had an interesting conversation the other day where it came up about how many more people were killed in car accidents in september than were killed in 9/11. How many deaths could be prevented by adding even half of the inconvenience of flying to the process of getting a drivers license. I'm not talking about tougher DUI laws or something (lots of people can drive far better at.08 than others have ever been able to drive)...I want to see driving tests that actually require some amount of skill, written tests that ask real questions, more frequent road retests, and much longer intervals before you can retake a failed test. I get especially annoyed with people who complain about the test/retake interval by saying that they were nervous or the test was stressful but they are really a fine driver (and should be able to retake the test asap to pass)--I wan't the test to be stressful because stress or nerves are not valid excuses for crashing. If you can't pass a test in all conditions, I don't want you getting a free pass to drive whenever you want.
Also, don't forget that once you get into using the most "advanced" features of office, there may not be an equivalent in OpenOffice.
OO has no trouble with the sort of documents that a 5 year old would use, but it gets wonky with really complicated stuff that was originally made in Excel (and sometimes powerpoint documents just turn into a clusterfuck).
I like office 2007 though...I'm still not convinced that the ribbon was a great idea (though some of the new keyboard shortcuts aren't so bad) but the new and improved features FAR outweigh the minor annoyance of learning a new interface. This applies more to excel though...I can't think of any astounding changes made to word--openoffice writer has always been fine for me though...unlike calc
It is more along the lines of the difference between non-copyrighted (as in the public domain) and copyrighted works.
Think about things like trade secrets...they are not patented or under copyright (though a specific document describing them might be) but still kept secret. Companies like Coca Cola use trade secrets to protect their recipe because asking for legal protection of the recipe would open it up for others to use...If they patent Coke, they can refuse to license it and have the power of injunctions on their side, but after XX years, anyone can make it for free (thus being the initial intent of the patent system). By keeping it a trade secret, they guarantee that it can be theirs forever but at the cost of not being able to use the courts to prosecute someone who came up with the identical recipe.
I feel like most contracts should fit into this arena...you can keep them secret (many good business reasons to do so) but when one party has decided they have had enough (usually a sign of a bad contract anyways), there isn't much that you can do to them for making it public except maybe breach it yourself.
If you are going to allow people to copyright contracts, I would suggest that the only fair thing to do is grant the copyright to all signees. Even if you personally drafted a contract that I signed with you, it is still something that *WE* are agreeing to...most contracts I have signed usually even have a blank where I have to write my name in the body of the contract...wouldn't that make me an author?
Will they clean and press your uniforms for you? Including pants? Made out of non-polyester fabrics?
While I would much prefer to wear my own clothes, it might be ok if my work uniform was comfortable fabric, not overly baggy, paid for by the company, and saved me from having to do extra laundry and ironing.
I spent a summer working at a car dealership and you got a weeks worth of uniforms or so slipped into your locker...toss them in the laundry bin when you are done and they will show up clean and pressed a few days later. Only had to pay for anything if they went missing...repairs were taken care of by attaching a little card to it when you threw it in the laundry bin.
If I had to pay for the uniform parts AND take care of them...then I would feel like I was working fast food
And it reads like a comedy/satire blog...but serious
"Even More Proof That Global Warming Is A Communist Front"
"Thai troops raid Hmong camp, deport 4,000 seeking asylum:
What a concept - deporting 4000 people.
Perhaps the U.S. needs to do the same to the FOUR MILLION India, Inc. racketeers running loose in the U.S. raping our economy."
"India, Inc. hacks Citigroup for millions"
And when a brick and mortar store sets up shop, the government probably shows up and kindly informs them how much tax they should be paying.
Not that I am in favor of applying state sales tax on internet purchases (I am very much against it), but if they were really going to do it, the fair way woudl probably be for the government provide a system and set of APIs where any retailer can plug in the shipping address (or should you use billing? mine are in very different states with very different tax laws) and get a tax breakdown.
I live in chicago and frequently buy things online, often from retailers with an in-state and in-city presence. Even though chicago has had the highest sales tax in the country (ridiculous for such a liberal city to have such a regressive tax), when I buy something online, I only pay something like 6.25%.
I can walk into the apple store and buy a $1000 computer and end up paying ~$100 in sales tax or I can order it online and save $30-40 if the shipping is free. I think its rather bad for business downtown...especially if you go to the apple store to try the computer and then order it online or go to the clothing store, figure out the sizes you want, and then order it online.
I do think it is silly though to levy any state sales tax on online purchases if they don't have a retail outlet in the area...there is simply no way that the state did enough to help me out on that purchase for it to be worth the additional tax. Postal service/UPS would all run just fine without sales tax (people get packages in Delaware right?). I get it that my local government wants a cut...but I am pretty sure they already took a cut out of my paycheck and unlike store purchases (where I might be traveling to somewhere where I haven't paid income taxes), you can be almost sure that any online purchase is getting mailed to a place where I have already had my income taxed.
It is definitely unusual...and a lot of people would say that public shaming counts as cruel (it may well be done by a newspaper but that would be collateral damage and not a court ordered punishment).
I don't have too much experience in this arena but once I was running a few units and got a rack mounted sun box to play with. Thing didn't have video IIRC and it was all done via suns various terminal connections. Once I got the box set up on the rack (in a room I didnt have normal access to), I ran the terminal cable to a linux webserver that I ran on the same rack.
One day, the sun stopped responding over its ethernet connection I thought I was screwed until I remembered that cable...sshed into the other box, brought up the terminal cable and I was soon at sun's management console that let me figure out what was going on.
I would assume any reasonable host would be willing to get you a similar sort of hookup.
Yeah...I also do not see the problem. It's great that people are picking up android and developing for it and I don't know why having a commercial market for apps (open and closed) is a bad thing.
A lot of us here make some use of linux...I've used it as my laptop OS for years...that doesn't mean that we only use or want to use free software (in price or concept). A lot of closed source software is developed for linux; think of things like big statistical analysis packages. Thinking about what I have used of the years, I can come up with several development tools that were not open source. I've also used photoshop (not developed for linux but it can be made to work) and right now I've even got a game (world of goo) that is closed source, cost real money, and is linux native and has a higher level of polish and ingeniuity than most FOSS games you come across. If excel worked right, I would use it as well--over any open or free contender (I'm fine with open office writer though).
Just because I like the fact that our OS and a lot of things connected to it are free as in speech (the free as in beer part doesn't hurt either), doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge that a closed, for pay piece of software isn't enough of an improvement over the open options to justify the cost. In the case of android apps (just like world of goo), maybe a free and open equivalent doesn't even exist so it is pretty easy to justify the cost.
I try to avoid them whenever possible (places like CVS will always swipe the store copy of the card if you talk to them right) but sometimes I just apply with bogus info. The only problem with applying with bogus info is that I still let them link all of my purchases together to determine more info about me. Sure, they think I am a 70 year old man with the buying habits of a college student but they still have a full customers worth of info. I want a system that lets me use a new account every time...one day I can use a code provided by a 45 year old mother of 3 and the next day I can use the code that belongs to the 23 year old WoW player who likes the discounts he gets on his hot pockets.
Of course maybe paying with a credit card defeats all of this...I'm not sure they are allowed to keep my CC data in its entirety for these purposes but I don't see what would stop them from making a hash from my CC number and having a record of all my purchases between card expirations.
well thanks to googles "contribute a better translation" function, it looks like it has been fixed.
My limited knowledge of Scandinavian languages would not have caught that (though I have no real exposure to written swedish...just a year of norwegian applied against my danish heritage) although it would seem fishy for this particular group to want to log *anything*.
stoning used to happen a lot too...and I seem to recall a lot of people being strung out on a cross.
Just because you can group something with two other things that are now not so acceptable doesn't automatically make the third thing unacceptable...There are much better arguments for both sides that you could make that actually have some reasonable basis
I believe this is true with verizon's contract as well...
I often see threads on slickdeals.net saying something like "Get out of your $wirelessprovider$ account free!". People there look out for changes in the small print (or in the case of termination fees...big print) which opens you up to something like 30 days to break your contract without penalty.
Of course, they like to do this on slickdeals because they can go jump into a new contract for another free/subsidised phone that is however much newer than their old one. If you weren't interested ins signing a new contract or getting a new phone (remember that in the US, your verizon phone will not work with the other major providers that use GSM), this might not be a great option because I don't know if they will let you call them up and break your contract without canceling service...i.e. you can't just break your contract into a month to month deal--you need to leave for another provider.
it still works fine for all the tasks netbooks were designed for...have you actually used any of the early netbooks that started this whole craze? They really weren't any more powerful (although PPC flash is lacking optimization so flash was often better on the early netbooks).
I know people who played WoW on G4 ibooks....I'd be scared to try that on my 1st gen atom netbook (let alone the first netbooks that used some bastardized celeron chip)
I am going to vote lemon...one of my roommates got a 1000HA (exact same case), another got a 1000HE (different keyboard but takes same size battery and the outside of the case all looks the same), and another friend got another 1000HE...so far they have all had great luck.
Sorry to hear about yours...surprised asus didn't just replace after a few repairs
Go to yelp...see how all the maps are provided by google (and how the sites usefulness often depends on finding nearby businesses)? Notice how all of the ads are provided by google? Since I didn't make a clickable link, how did you find yelp? did you google it?
Looks like google already owns yelp...they provide the hardest to develop part of the website, they provide the revenue, and they provide most of the traffic (I rarely go to yelp first for a review...I search for the restaurant and then click the review link). Maybe they just want to make it official.
Slashdot Mirror
This is flat out wrong. First sale doctrine gives you the right to do whatever you want with the physical disk (including rent it to people from a vending machine). The content isn't yours, you still can't do public performance or make copies to rent but the original disk is yours.
The reason you pay more for a rented disk that you lose is probably because they like to gouge you. Also, sometimes "rental" copies are different, often they might have a different set of previews and a lack of special features (but get sold at an initial discount with a higher later replacement cost). In the VHS days, the expensive tapes were actually nicer than the retail copies--blockbuster would buy a couple copies on the expensive tape for long term rental and a bunch on retail quality (fast degrading) tape that they would sell off after new-release status was over.
Please don't spread incorrect info about things like first sale doctrine...it is a very important part of copyright law that a lot of companies would like to see go away and that will be easy if people already think it doesn't exist.
You could probably set up an extra google book scanner and pay someone to staff it round the clock for about the same price as taking an MRI of a book with some special MRI setup.
I was used the funny feeling of my dialup connection still working when the backup battery kicked in in a power outage. That feeling went away when we switched to cable as the modem and router in the basement would die at the first power flicker. I hooked up a little APC thing with the essential networking hardware plugged into the battery backup ports.
Seemed to still be up and running when I was home for christmas. Of course I don't know whether the cable provider hardware is more resistant to power outages than the phone company's
I'd probably be cool wearing my own pants at a fast food job, just like I was cool with the polyester content of the clothes I wore on the shop floor (lets face it, grease doesn't get along with ANY fabric that well). If I am sitting in a desk chair most of the day, things like the breath-ability and feel of the clothes start to become more important unless you like a sweaty ass (they stopped giving aeron style mesh chairs to IT grunts in 2000 right?)
While making it harder will have to reduce the number of drivers somewhat, I think peoples desire to drive would force a majority of the drivers to become better drivers. When I was getting my license, there were tons of other teenagers who were atrocious drivers who got their licenses on the second attempt (often by scheduling the second attempt at the "easier" DMV site out in the boonies). Those kids *really* wanted to drive, they just didn't think it was important to be very good at driving (always scares me when people admit to personally being a bad driver).
If there had been additional training, harder tests, and longer time gaps, I am sure the kids would practice as much as it took to pass the test (and not a bit more)
Because every word in that press release isn't already deliberated over on how to increase and maintain share price?
Maybe it was the case many years ago, but every place I have worked had at least 1:1 if not more when you take into account machines kept as live spares and users with several computers. Gets even worse when you factor in the IT people also supporting blackberry deployments and the like. I can see it in a factory of some sort...or I have a friend in IT for a coffee shop chain--its probably 1:1 in the office but when users call in from a shop, they are calling about the shared POS machines. In an office setting people use individual computers...even interns who work on opposing days get their "own" system.
I don't understand why the driving rules can be so lax. Sure, people "depend" on driving, but they only depend on it because they are used to it--if you suddenly told someone who wasn't a professional driver that they couldn't drive anymore, you know damn well that they would figure something out. If you suddenly told a LOT of people they couldn't drive, you would just end up with more places like new york or chicago where many residents don't own a car or even have a license.
I had an interesting conversation the other day where it came up about how many more people were killed in car accidents in september than were killed in 9/11. How many deaths could be prevented by adding even half of the inconvenience of flying to the process of getting a drivers license. I'm not talking about tougher DUI laws or something (lots of people can drive far better at .08 than others have ever been able to drive)...I want to see driving tests that actually require some amount of skill, written tests that ask real questions, more frequent road retests, and much longer intervals before you can retake a failed test. I get especially annoyed with people who complain about the test/retake interval by saying that they were nervous or the test was stressful but they are really a fine driver (and should be able to retake the test asap to pass)--I wan't the test to be stressful because stress or nerves are not valid excuses for crashing. If you can't pass a test in all conditions, I don't want you getting a free pass to drive whenever you want.
OO has no trouble with the sort of documents that a 5 year old would use, but it gets wonky with really complicated stuff that was originally made in Excel (and sometimes powerpoint documents just turn into a clusterfuck).
I like office 2007 though...I'm still not convinced that the ribbon was a great idea (though some of the new keyboard shortcuts aren't so bad) but the new and improved features FAR outweigh the minor annoyance of learning a new interface. This applies more to excel though...I can't think of any astounding changes made to word--openoffice writer has always been fine for me though...unlike calc
Think about things like trade secrets...they are not patented or under copyright (though a specific document describing them might be) but still kept secret. Companies like Coca Cola use trade secrets to protect their recipe because asking for legal protection of the recipe would open it up for others to use...If they patent Coke, they can refuse to license it and have the power of injunctions on their side, but after XX years, anyone can make it for free (thus being the initial intent of the patent system). By keeping it a trade secret, they guarantee that it can be theirs forever but at the cost of not being able to use the courts to prosecute someone who came up with the identical recipe.
I feel like most contracts should fit into this arena...you can keep them secret (many good business reasons to do so) but when one party has decided they have had enough (usually a sign of a bad contract anyways), there isn't much that you can do to them for making it public except maybe breach it yourself.
If you are going to allow people to copyright contracts, I would suggest that the only fair thing to do is grant the copyright to all signees. Even if you personally drafted a contract that I signed with you, it is still something that *WE* are agreeing to...most contracts I have signed usually even have a blank where I have to write my name in the body of the contract...wouldn't that make me an author?
While I would much prefer to wear my own clothes, it might be ok if my work uniform was comfortable fabric, not overly baggy, paid for by the company, and saved me from having to do extra laundry and ironing.
I spent a summer working at a car dealership and you got a weeks worth of uniforms or so slipped into your locker...toss them in the laundry bin when you are done and they will show up clean and pressed a few days later. Only had to pay for anything if they went missing...repairs were taken care of by attaching a little card to it when you threw it in the laundry bin.
If I had to pay for the uniform parts AND take care of them...then I would feel like I was working fast food
"Even More Proof That Global Warming Is A Communist Front"
"Thai troops raid Hmong camp, deport 4,000 seeking asylum: What a concept - deporting 4000 people. Perhaps the U.S. needs to do the same to the FOUR MILLION India, Inc. racketeers running loose in the U.S. raping our economy."
"India, Inc. hacks Citigroup for millions"
Not that I am in favor of applying state sales tax on internet purchases (I am very much against it), but if they were really going to do it, the fair way woudl probably be for the government provide a system and set of APIs where any retailer can plug in the shipping address (or should you use billing? mine are in very different states with very different tax laws) and get a tax breakdown.
I live in chicago and frequently buy things online, often from retailers with an in-state and in-city presence. Even though chicago has had the highest sales tax in the country (ridiculous for such a liberal city to have such a regressive tax), when I buy something online, I only pay something like 6.25%.
I can walk into the apple store and buy a $1000 computer and end up paying ~$100 in sales tax or I can order it online and save $30-40 if the shipping is free. I think its rather bad for business downtown...especially if you go to the apple store to try the computer and then order it online or go to the clothing store, figure out the sizes you want, and then order it online.
I do think it is silly though to levy any state sales tax on online purchases if they don't have a retail outlet in the area...there is simply no way that the state did enough to help me out on that purchase for it to be worth the additional tax. Postal service/UPS would all run just fine without sales tax (people get packages in Delaware right?). I get it that my local government wants a cut...but I am pretty sure they already took a cut out of my paycheck and unlike store purchases (where I might be traveling to somewhere where I haven't paid income taxes), you can be almost sure that any online purchase is getting mailed to a place where I have already had my income taxed.
It is definitely unusual...and a lot of people would say that public shaming counts as cruel (it may well be done by a newspaper but that would be collateral damage and not a court ordered punishment).
I don't have too much experience in this arena but once I was running a few units and got a rack mounted sun box to play with. Thing didn't have video IIRC and it was all done via suns various terminal connections. Once I got the box set up on the rack (in a room I didnt have normal access to), I ran the terminal cable to a linux webserver that I ran on the same rack.
One day, the sun stopped responding over its ethernet connection I thought I was screwed until I remembered that cable...sshed into the other box, brought up the terminal cable and I was soon at sun's management console that let me figure out what was going on.
I would assume any reasonable host would be willing to get you a similar sort of hookup.
A lot of us here make some use of linux...I've used it as my laptop OS for years...that doesn't mean that we only use or want to use free software (in price or concept). A lot of closed source software is developed for linux; think of things like big statistical analysis packages. Thinking about what I have used of the years, I can come up with several development tools that were not open source. I've also used photoshop (not developed for linux but it can be made to work) and right now I've even got a game (world of goo) that is closed source, cost real money, and is linux native and has a higher level of polish and ingeniuity than most FOSS games you come across. If excel worked right, I would use it as well--over any open or free contender (I'm fine with open office writer though).
Just because I like the fact that our OS and a lot of things connected to it are free as in speech (the free as in beer part doesn't hurt either), doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge that a closed, for pay piece of software isn't enough of an improvement over the open options to justify the cost. In the case of android apps (just like world of goo), maybe a free and open equivalent doesn't even exist so it is pretty easy to justify the cost.
I try to avoid them whenever possible (places like CVS will always swipe the store copy of the card if you talk to them right) but sometimes I just apply with bogus info. The only problem with applying with bogus info is that I still let them link all of my purchases together to determine more info about me. Sure, they think I am a 70 year old man with the buying habits of a college student but they still have a full customers worth of info. I want a system that lets me use a new account every time...one day I can use a code provided by a 45 year old mother of 3 and the next day I can use the code that belongs to the 23 year old WoW player who likes the discounts he gets on his hot pockets.
Of course maybe paying with a credit card defeats all of this...I'm not sure they are allowed to keep my CC data in its entirety for these purposes but I don't see what would stop them from making a hash from my CC number and having a record of all my purchases between card expirations.
My limited knowledge of Scandinavian languages would not have caught that (though I have no real exposure to written swedish...just a year of norwegian applied against my danish heritage) although it would seem fishy for this particular group to want to log *anything*.
Just because you can group something with two other things that are now not so acceptable doesn't automatically make the third thing unacceptable...There are much better arguments for both sides that you could make that actually have some reasonable basis
I often see threads on slickdeals.net saying something like "Get out of your $wirelessprovider$ account free!". People there look out for changes in the small print (or in the case of termination fees...big print) which opens you up to something like 30 days to break your contract without penalty.
Of course, they like to do this on slickdeals because they can go jump into a new contract for another free/subsidised phone that is however much newer than their old one. If you weren't interested ins signing a new contract or getting a new phone (remember that in the US, your verizon phone will not work with the other major providers that use GSM), this might not be a great option because I don't know if they will let you call them up and break your contract without canceling service...i.e. you can't just break your contract into a month to month deal--you need to leave for another provider.
I know people who played WoW on G4 ibooks....I'd be scared to try that on my 1st gen atom netbook (let alone the first netbooks that used some bastardized celeron chip)
Sorry to hear about yours...surprised asus didn't just replace after a few repairs
It has great battery life (well it did for its time), a 12" screen (well, 12" 4:3 is slightly larger than 12" wide), and can be had for around $500
Looks like google already owns yelp...they provide the hardest to develop part of the website, they provide the revenue, and they provide most of the traffic (I rarely go to yelp first for a review...I search for the restaurant and then click the review link). Maybe they just want to make it official.