This isn't about money, this is about public perception.
The goal of this strategy is to convince the people that music costs money. The way to do that, after the file sharing splurge of the past 5-7 years, is to make it criminal. The problem with that is the high burden of proof required by standards of criminal law.
If the RIAA sues people, it sends a completely different message - one of greed, which is being actively capitalized upon by certain anti-RIAA segments of society.
This bill puts Federal prosecutors in charge of the filing of the civil suits, making it look like a government action. It's fairly nifty. If this passes, file sharing in the US will die, mostly because of the deterrent factor of having the government enforce it.
This is odious law, though. It needs to be stopped. I might even write a letter, though my state has two scumbag Democrat rich men (Lautenberg and Corzine) as senators - they're probably bought and paid for by Hollywood already.
This isn't intended to sue everyone. The intent is to deter people from doing it. They're trying to change society's belief that music is free by using a big stick.
True, in the city they get tossed into dumpsters, but not before the IT people get first shot at them. I still have computers from before 1990. I'm sure some of the rest of us do too.
Every few weeks one of my employees is talking about their latest dumpster dive acquisition - a dual processor p2 box was a recent acquisition by one of them.
Umm, Mabu - they mod anything they don't agree with to Troll status.
Reminds me of the weekly political meetings in the old USSR where a different person would have to give an 'original' recital of Marxist/Leninist thought drawn from one of the approved works. Original thought was not permitted. The will of the masses shall not be denied.
They pretty much were the Linux of their day, is my point. Their OS was a clone of CP/M. It wasn't anything original. You didn't say anything incorrect, you were just being too generous to them imo.
CP/M 86, the 8088/8086 version of CP/M, was released in 1982, long after the IBM search for a disk operating system for the PC (which was in 1980). The very reason Seattle Computer produced their QDOS was that CP/M 86 wasn't available yet. This is what Microsoft bought, a veritable port of CP/M to the 8086.
If you were working at DRI, it was after the events cited, obviously.
I posted something a few months ago about some personal experiences my gf had while working with Mr. Fleury and members of the JBoss team in close contact.
I have to tell you that he and his wife pay very close attention to this board and presumably other sites where their interests are reflected. I know this because the details of my post were soon known to them (under 24 hours), and caused some disarray in her household because her parents are personal friends of the Fleurys.
Basically, a guilt trip was delivered to her to squelch any further negative commentary regarding them. Given my past experience in this regard, I can't help but find the astroturfing semi-admission to be quite credible. Business isn't just business to them, and no tactic is beyond consideration if it furthers their livelihood.
Homosexuality was in the DSM as a treatable psychological disorder up till 1973.
This is indicative of the trustworthiness of such things. Please...
Medicalizing everything is a specialty of psychology in general. Astrology has more hard fact in it than psychology does. At least we can look up and see the constellations and planets. Most of psychology rests upon a few semi-understood brain chemicals and the ethereal realm of consciousness which no one can define, but lots of people are manufacturing lucrative careers pretending to understand.
I sat in on an undergrad psych presentation at Lehigh a few years back and was amazed to hear one of the presenters talking about the 'blood/brain barrier'. It was the most logical, scientific thing i'd ever heard anyone say in a psych forum. Fluff is the norm.
If psychology is so effective, why do women go to shrinks and get drugs rather than undergo Freudian psychoanalysis? I've sat in on several sessions for an agoraphobic individual - with multiple shrinks, mind you - and saw no actual psychoanalysis attempted. The shrinks are drug dispensers, basically. Moreover, in many cases the drugs dispensed are inappropriate. Agoraphobia has no known treatment. So, therefore they load the patient up with stuff to zonk them out and not give two shits about the world or anyone living on it, like Xanax.
Read a few testimonial books on conquering agoraphobia in particular and you find that they basically tell people to 'overcome their fears, and just do what you are afraid to do'. Well, doh. I never would have figured that out. The amazing part is that this actually works...i've witnessed an agoraphobic become productive by being forced by circumstances to go out and get a job and function like a real mother.
Imagine that.
Ponder also, when was the last time you heard of someone being let out of a mental institution without being on semipermanent drug therapy?
The pro-shrink defense squad can go get stuffed, the truth is the truth.
If you don't have budget you can't keep people in the NYC area. Too much competition for bodies. Even if you pay well and kiss ass, they still leave. Imagine if you don't pay well.
I'm running a training center because I have to hire either the dregs of the support field or people who aren't qualified. I get by hiring the unqualified and then whipping them into shape fast, using them for a bit and then replacing them. It isn't some warped American dream ethic, it's simple pragmatism.
If businesses weren't undercapitalized this wouldn't be an issue, but they always are, and technology is still considered a cost center in most firms.
The very existence of this thread indicates dissatisfaction with help desks/tech support in general.
Why would I want to hire someone that I would have to first beat their old habits out of before I can train them properly? True, not everyone would need this, but 75% would. Why bother when I can get more efficient results with complete blank slates?
Ever been directly told to hire someone based on gender?
Didn't think so.
Welcome to the real world. It happens all the time. In several cases the HR department was cited as the very reason for the hire. "Well, we aren't real balanced you see."
The problem is simple: you have a fixed budget which is universally too little to hire a lot of good people. You have a fixed (or increasing) call volume. So, what to do?
Well, in most places today they construct scripts and then hire peons to read them. They figure that most people will be deterred by this. They spend their nut on a theoretical third level person or people who are going to take care of the insurmountable issues. The rest of the people are there to obstruct the majority of people from the people who actually have a shot at fixing problems.
I've never worked that kind of desk. I actually know what i'm doing and if I don't, I find out fast. I hire people who are either tabula rasa, whom I can turn into something decent, or who have worked in service industries (I don't hire other people's help desk people, in other words). I prefer ex-military people. They are used to being treated like mushrooms and still solving problems. I also like to hire bright young women fresh out of college (or even those who didn't finish). Besides the obvious improvement in the surroundings, they tend to be pretty good at first level support if you give them a solid grounding. They're better at settling customers down in many cases. Then, garnish with one or two talented techs to sit in the middle and start spreading knowledge around. No scripts. Keep a team together for 6 months and everyone pretty much rises to the level of the 2nd level people.
The funny thing is that I can't keep employees very well (heh). They leave me and go make more money elsewhere with the skills they gain. Good money, too. I'm glad to see so many of them succeed. At my current job they have budget, and we've had the same team for 2.5 years. That's an all time record for me.
Even in 1994, imagine being told in NYC to hire 6 techs at salaries between $25k and $35k (preferred under 30). Even getting people to show up for that money in Manhattan is a pain in the ass.
As for problem solving skills, you tend to like those who worked in service industries. I personally worked at an appliance store for my parents from when I was 11 on. Me and my brother used to go out on a truck and fix refrigerators, washers, dryers, etc. It wasn't all that dissimilar to fixing up computers - there was a user interface, and a good portion of the time the problem was that the people were using the interface wrong. Say, not knowing how to use the washer timer or overloading the dryer or letting crap melt in the dishwasher and foul things up, or failing to clean the condenser coil at the bottom of the fridge (this is important). The rest of the time it was hardware issues. The hardware was modular and easily replaceable. Sound familiar?
Good support isn't unattainable. The sucky help desks have thrown in the towel though and basically don't care.
By the logic of your argument all kinds of unacceptable things happen.
Military personnel are permitted to strike
Any necessary professions (police, fire, teachers, there are a few others) are permitted to shut down the economy virtually at will
Your ideas are unrealistic - both now and in the future. Furthermore you will find them unacceptable to a logical body politic. The pursuit of fairness doesn't extend to the point of collective suicide. If you wish not to be bound by these restrictions, do not choose the professions affected by this.
The day your ideas become reality is the day we deserve to be tossed on the ash heap of history.
Umm, since when is at-will employment slavery, exactly? Are you implying that air traffic controllers were not allowed to get another job? Hmm?
Or are you saying that not being permitted to strike is slavery? If so, then police are assuredly enslaved as well. I'm sure having the cops on strike would do wonders for traffic safety and crime rates nationwide. Some jobs are vital enough to demand this restriction - air traffic controllers are clearly in this category.
Leaving out your silly allusion to slavery, I'm sure everyone working the fryer at McDonalds would just love to go on strike and demand higher pay with a gun to all of our collective heads. Fortunately they can't. PATCO could, and got what they deserved in return.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't about money, this is about public perception.
The goal of this strategy is to convince the people that music costs money. The way to do that, after the file sharing splurge of the past 5-7 years, is to make it criminal. The problem with that is the high burden of proof required by standards of criminal law.
If the RIAA sues people, it sends a completely different message - one of greed, which is being actively capitalized upon by certain anti-RIAA segments of society.
This bill puts Federal prosecutors in charge of the filing of the civil suits, making it look like a government action. It's fairly nifty. If this passes, file sharing in the US will die, mostly because of the deterrent factor of having the government enforce it.
This is odious law, though. It needs to be stopped. I might even write a letter, though my state has two scumbag Democrat rich men (Lautenberg and Corzine) as senators - they're probably bought and paid for by Hollywood already.
Umm, hating your enemy is important. You need that killer instinct to really go for the throat.
That said, you should never be emotional about business decisions. Very foolish indeed to be that way.
s/will/would
It's May. I've been through a lot of presidential races. Don't start calling it until September at least.
I guess they'd better find a new business model, huh?
If books were this easy to copy, publishers wouldn't exist in their current form, either.
This isn't intended to sue everyone. The intent is to deter people from doing it. They're trying to change society's belief that music is free by using a big stick.
This may just work. Then again it may not.
You head down to the 'save the rats' protest first - i'll meet you there.
The check is in the mail, too.
So THAT is why the joystick was always busted on the one Sinistar machine in Seaside Heights, NJ.
Great game, too. (this is mid-80s i'm talking about here)
There used to be a smaller model for about $1500, the 8100C. We have one of these and it's quite useful.
Not as fast as they claim though. Take the speed with a grain of salt, assume half.
Does it have a serial port? A term program?
Probably...I got an old CP/M machine to serve as a BBS client in 1992, why not your BBC microcomputer?
That sits on a curb for longer than an hour.
True, in the city they get tossed into dumpsters, but not before the IT people get first shot at them. I still have computers from before 1990. I'm sure some of the rest of us do too.
Every few weeks one of my employees is talking about their latest dumpster dive acquisition - a dual processor p2 box was a recent acquisition by one of them.
This guy might just have a point.
Umm, Mabu - they mod anything they don't agree with to Troll status.
Reminds me of the weekly political meetings in the old USSR where a different person would have to give an 'original' recital of Marxist/Leninist thought drawn from one of the approved works. Original thought was not permitted. The will of the masses shall not be denied.
Hence my tagline...
They pretty much were the Linux of their day, is my point. Their OS was a clone of CP/M. It wasn't anything original. You didn't say anything incorrect, you were just being too generous to them imo.
CP/M 86, the 8088/8086 version of CP/M, was released in 1982, long after the IBM search for a disk operating system for the PC (which was in 1980). The very reason Seattle Computer produced their QDOS was that CP/M 86 wasn't available yet. This is what Microsoft bought, a veritable port of CP/M to the 8086.
If you were working at DRI, it was after the events cited, obviously.
You only wish you were, Marc! :-B
You're being way too fair to Microsoft. They bought a clone of CP/M ported to the 8086. Then, they sold a license for it to IBM.
In other words, they pretty much pulled a SCO, or at least SCO's stated intention at the outset of the current flurry of lawsuits.
She's in ATL, i'm in NJ, so I wasn't getting any anyway :-)
That isn't what the original poster said. Scalia is right, there's nothing like that in the Constitution.
Lying is not a good way to gain converts.
I posted something a few months ago about some personal experiences my gf had while working with Mr. Fleury and members of the JBoss team in close contact.
I have to tell you that he and his wife pay very close attention to this board and presumably other sites where their interests are reflected. I know this because the details of my post were soon known to them (under 24 hours), and caused some disarray in her household because her parents are personal friends of the Fleurys.
Basically, a guilt trip was delivered to her to squelch any further negative commentary regarding them. Given my past experience in this regard, I can't help but find the astroturfing semi-admission to be quite credible. Business isn't just business to them, and no tactic is beyond consideration if it furthers their livelihood.
Homosexuality was in the DSM as a treatable psychological disorder up till 1973.
This is indicative of the trustworthiness of such things. Please...
Medicalizing everything is a specialty of psychology in general. Astrology has more hard fact in it than psychology does. At least we can look up and see the constellations and planets. Most of psychology rests upon a few semi-understood brain chemicals and the ethereal realm of consciousness which no one can define, but lots of people are manufacturing lucrative careers pretending to understand.
I sat in on an undergrad psych presentation at Lehigh a few years back and was amazed to hear one of the presenters talking about the 'blood/brain barrier'. It was the most logical, scientific thing i'd ever heard anyone say in a psych forum. Fluff is the norm.
If psychology is so effective, why do women go to shrinks and get drugs rather than undergo Freudian psychoanalysis? I've sat in on several sessions for an agoraphobic individual - with multiple shrinks, mind you - and saw no actual psychoanalysis attempted. The shrinks are drug dispensers, basically. Moreover, in many cases the drugs dispensed are inappropriate. Agoraphobia has no known treatment. So, therefore they load the patient up with stuff to zonk them out and not give two shits about the world or anyone living on it, like Xanax.
Read a few testimonial books on conquering agoraphobia in particular and you find that they basically tell people to 'overcome their fears, and just do what you are afraid to do'. Well, doh. I never would have figured that out. The amazing part is that this actually works...i've witnessed an agoraphobic become productive by being forced by circumstances to go out and get a job and function like a real mother.
Imagine that.
Ponder also, when was the last time you heard of someone being let out of a mental institution without being on semipermanent drug therapy?
The pro-shrink defense squad can go get stuffed, the truth is the truth.
Two points:
If you don't have budget you can't keep people in the NYC area. Too much competition for bodies. Even if you pay well and kiss ass, they still leave. Imagine if you don't pay well.
I'm running a training center because I have to hire either the dregs of the support field or people who aren't qualified. I get by hiring the unqualified and then whipping them into shape fast, using them for a bit and then replacing them. It isn't some warped American dream ethic, it's simple pragmatism.
If businesses weren't undercapitalized this wouldn't be an issue, but they always are, and technology is still considered a cost center in most firms.
The very existence of this thread indicates dissatisfaction with help desks/tech support in general.
Why would I want to hire someone that I would have to first beat their old habits out of before I can train them properly? True, not everyone would need this, but 75% would. Why bother when I can get more efficient results with complete blank slates?
Ever been directly told to hire someone based on gender?
Didn't think so.
Welcome to the real world. It happens all the time. In several cases the HR department was cited as the very reason for the hire. "Well, we aren't real balanced you see."
The problem is simple: you have a fixed budget which is universally too little to hire a lot of good people. You have a fixed (or increasing) call volume. So, what to do?
Well, in most places today they construct scripts and then hire peons to read them. They figure that most people will be deterred by this. They spend their nut on a theoretical third level person or people who are going to take care of the insurmountable issues. The rest of the people are there to obstruct the majority of people from the people who actually have a shot at fixing problems.
I've never worked that kind of desk. I actually know what i'm doing and if I don't, I find out fast. I hire people who are either tabula rasa, whom I can turn into something decent, or who have worked in service industries (I don't hire other people's help desk people, in other words). I prefer ex-military people. They are used to being treated like mushrooms and still solving problems. I also like to hire bright young women fresh out of college (or even those who didn't finish). Besides the obvious improvement in the surroundings, they tend to be pretty good at first level support if you give them a solid grounding. They're better at settling customers down in many cases. Then, garnish with one or two talented techs to sit in the middle and start spreading knowledge around. No scripts. Keep a team together for 6 months and everyone pretty much rises to the level of the 2nd level people.
The funny thing is that I can't keep employees very well (heh). They leave me and go make more money elsewhere with the skills they gain. Good money, too. I'm glad to see so many of them succeed. At my current job they have budget, and we've had the same team for 2.5 years. That's an all time record for me.
Even in 1994, imagine being told in NYC to hire 6 techs at salaries between $25k and $35k (preferred under 30). Even getting people to show up for that money in Manhattan is a pain in the ass.
As for problem solving skills, you tend to like those who worked in service industries. I personally worked at an appliance store for my parents from when I was 11 on. Me and my brother used to go out on a truck and fix refrigerators, washers, dryers, etc. It wasn't all that dissimilar to fixing up computers - there was a user interface, and a good portion of the time the problem was that the people were using the interface wrong. Say, not knowing how to use the washer timer or overloading the dryer or letting crap melt in the dishwasher and foul things up, or failing to clean the condenser coil at the bottom of the fridge (this is important). The rest of the time it was hardware issues. The hardware was modular and easily replaceable. Sound familiar?
Good support isn't unattainable. The sucky help desks have thrown in the towel though and basically don't care.
By the logic of your argument all kinds of unacceptable things happen.
Your ideas are unrealistic - both now and in the future. Furthermore you will find them unacceptable to a logical body politic. The pursuit of fairness doesn't extend to the point of collective suicide. If you wish not to be bound by these restrictions, do not choose the professions affected by this.
The day your ideas become reality is the day we deserve to be tossed on the ash heap of history.
Umm, since when is at-will employment slavery, exactly? Are you implying that air traffic controllers were not allowed to get another job? Hmm?
Or are you saying that not being permitted to strike is slavery? If so, then police are assuredly enslaved as well. I'm sure having the cops on strike would do wonders for traffic safety and crime rates nationwide. Some jobs are vital enough to demand this restriction - air traffic controllers are clearly in this category.
Leaving out your silly allusion to slavery, I'm sure everyone working the fryer at McDonalds would just love to go on strike and demand higher pay with a gun to all of our collective heads. Fortunately they can't. PATCO could, and got what they deserved in return.