I believe that an ordinary person should not have to be encumbered with copyright law - even lawyers who specialize in it can't give you firm answers about what is and is not fair use. There was just a story yesterday about something like 57% of the population being "pirates".
As soon as you make IP part of your business, however, I believe it is fair to require you to know the ropes. It's similar to tax law IMHO - if an individual screws up their taxes, then they should just pay some interest on the money they owe and move on. If H&R block makes a habit of screwing up other people's taxes, then maybe big fines, restitution, and loss of license/certification is in order.
For a while I was willing to forgo my favorite plugins because, while they are great, they cause huge memory problems in Firefox. But then Chrome killed support for side-tabs and so I went back to Firefox with Tree-Style-Tabs.
I'm not really addressing any moral issues involved.
As a pragmatic matter, the show is available in the following ways: 1. At a regularly scheduled time on HBO (or some other premium networks worldwide). 2. About an hour after it airs on HBO, it becomes trivial to download from the internet. 3. After the season is over, it becomes available on DVD and some download services to rent or buy.
The first option would cost me about $100/month.
The second option is free (minimum entry would be about $30/month for an internet connection).
The third option is cheap but requires me to wait.
Now take a dispassionate look at the incentive system that has been created above and it is easy to see why "2" is so popular. You'd have to like other shows on HBO to pick option 1, or you'd have to be wealthy enough that the money was no issue. Three is certainly reasonable, until you factor in that the network deliberately creates the show in such a way as to make you desire the show enough to tune in every week and pay for HBO. TV has been around for 50 years or so, and they've gotten quite good at pressing the right human emotion buttons. Thus, option 2 is quite popular and always will be until the incentives change.
I'm not sure what the effect would be, but the engineer in me says that they should create an easy-to-use download of the show immediately after it airs on HBO, and perhaps poison the P2P networks just enough to make people want to pay a dollar or two to download the show in a known high-quality format. Of course, this would make it harder to monetize all of their crappy shows that they air the rest of the week... so perhaps their business model is ultimately doomed.
That's a terrific idea, and it would be a much cleaner and more reliable solution than some kind of cobbled script. Maybe he could make his working directory on Linux a ZFS volume using FUSE. Snapshot it before you go on the road, export the snapshot to the external HDD, and then periodically export the snapshot delta to the USB as a backup. When you get home, re-snapshot to the external HDD and delete the delta on the USB. The snapshot creation/destruction and export could (and probably should) be automated. Similarly, the delta export could be automated.
Recovery would be a cinch - when you get home, import the snapshot from the external HDD and then import the delta from the USB.
I would also like to second Crashplan. Mozy broke my cloud backup cherry, and Crashplan has been completely problem-free for me. I run it on every computers that I own and backup to the "cloud" as well as to my basement server. They have a great feature where you can send them a hard drive to seed your initial backup so that it doesn't take a month to do your initial backup.
Another thing that I do is install it on family and friend's computers whenever they ask me to fix them. I just point it to my basement server. That way when their hard drive crashes (and it always does - especially on laptops), it makes my life much easier. It uses some of my drive space, but even post-Thailand-flooding hard drives are pretty cheap relative to time.
I'll take this one: Apple is just a puppet through which the will of Google is manifested. Even... though... Google is... much... smaller than... Apple... or something.
Try keeping current on the status of Dropbox and SkyDrive services so you can pull your data before they disappear.
You clearly have never used DropBox. It's just a shared folder that populates on every computer you install it on. If DropBox were to die right this instant, you would still have all of your data on every one of your computers - it would just stop syncing.
If you are worried about the revision history, you could pick one computer to run a rsync job between the DropBox folder and another folder of your choice, or if you are on a Mac just use TimeMachine, or if you are on Windows run something like Areca backup or any number of other free incremental backup solutions. You should be doing this anyway.
Then when DropBox goes out of business, you can switch to one of the several competitors out there and continue as before.
It's not bullshit - we spend, as a nation, more than enough on education.
I don't claim to be an expert on education, and I don't know what's wrong with it. It could be that schools aren't funded in a fair manner. It could be that corruption is to blame. It could be that our incentive systems are all screwed up for teachers, parents, students, or all of them. But the simple fact is, throwing even more money at the schools is foolish. Spending more money than almost any other country, with fairly dismal results is not the sign of a healthy school system.
Is this really impossible for most Slashdotters? A year is nothing, really.
The studios hire the best writers that they can afford to use every trick that has been learned in 50 years of television to play on people's emotions so that they can get them to crave the show enough to tune in each week. It should not surprise anyone that people click on a link and download a show for free rather than wait a year to pay. The incentives are all messed up.
I dunno... I have a 6-year-old and I sit her in front of Khan Academy and she loves it. I love it, too - it is really fun to see her grasp these concepts for the first time. At the same time, so far all she has learned is counting up and down a number line and variations thereof. So far, more advanced lessons haven't "taken". I'm quite certain that algebra is too advanced for her at this stage. I'm sure I could teach her how to move things from one side to another in an equation, but she wouldn't be able to frame a word problem algebraically or handle the more puzzle-like concepts like factoring and simplification.
So you are right... I'm not a neuroscientist, but I do have some real-world experience:)
This is exactly my point - education in the US is not that great, but it's not because we are unwilling to fund the schools - in aggregate they are very well-funded.
Those idiots forced me to spend half my school time on arts and crafts, home economics, and other stuff that I had zero interest in, and it was a waste of my time and theirs.
We need to put a system in place to identify where kids are going at a young age and put them into schools that allow them to pursue those interests. The people who currently control our education system seem hell-bent on stamping out a bunch of identical automatons, and it's just wrong.
I feel like these two sentences are somewhat contradictory - they are trying to expose you to varied subjects as opposed to setting you on an unalterable course. In the British system, they pretty much have your career pegged by the time you are 11 and you specialize from then on. In my wife's case, this essentially pushed her towards a J.D., and she ultimately hated it and went back to school for an M.D.
I know that my wife's case is not any more statistically valid than your single case, but I wanted to point out that there may be some value to giving students a wide range of exposure and keeping their options open until they are adults.
I can't comment on your specific school district, but on average the US spends more per-pupal than just about any other country (I think we're number 2?). We rank far lower in achievement... money ain't the problem.
Elementary math is memorization and learning a mechanical system of computing. Algebra relies more on symbolic thought.
That said, I think that algebra could be taught a few years earlier. I remember seeing it for the first time in 8th grade and thinking, "Oh, wow, this is just like variables in BASIC!"
I have that! What a pile of crap! And it's worse than Windows - you can't just go to add/remove programs. You actually have to root the device (Zerg Rush) and then one-at-a-time backup the phone, remove something, and then test to make sure you didn't hose the phone.
Plus, the energy used by small cars is a small fraction of that used by a train (trains are rarely fully loaded with passengers).
Yeah, I think a hybrid system might be interesting. Handle rush hours with the usual packed trains, and then switch over to PRT vehicles off-peak. Modern trains don't need conductors or engineers, so there shouldn't be an issue with idle staff. Using the PRT for off-peak only would reduce the size of the fleet that you need to purchase and you might even get away with re-using the existing heavy or light-rail track.
I lived in NYC for a while and I was always amazed that they ran the same huge trains all night in the subway. You'd think they'd have a few smaller trains for the night shift.
As opposed to the highway paradise that is every major city in America???:)
They system didn't "break down", the highway was invented and the automobile became ubiquitous and necessary. They built 2-way track all the way out, and have since abandoned half of it on some of the branch lines because ridership dropped (or never materialized, I don't really know). The track could handle - with 1920s signalling - at least 15 trains per hour in each direction. I think we get about 3 in each direction, maybe 4 or 5 at rush hour - and we live on the main trunk. The trains are also much shorter than the stations were built for. Capacity is not currently a problem - and if it were, what is easier: finding the room for a single track in each direction or finding the room for 8 new lanes of highway in each direction?
Slashdot Mirror
I use Spousal Truecrypt. It's an unencrypted folder titled "Sports".
Oh, so you don't believe in the GPL? The GPL is a license for copyrighted code that depends on copyright law.
I fully understand that the GPL would also become a commercial-only license. I don't think your comments apply to me.
I'm one of those people.
I believe that an ordinary person should not have to be encumbered with copyright law - even lawyers who specialize in it can't give you firm answers about what is and is not fair use. There was just a story yesterday about something like 57% of the population being "pirates".
As soon as you make IP part of your business, however, I believe it is fair to require you to know the ropes. It's similar to tax law IMHO - if an individual screws up their taxes, then they should just pay some interest on the money they owe and move on. If H&R block makes a habit of screwing up other people's taxes, then maybe big fines, restitution, and loss of license/certification is in order.
That's true - I sometimes download a game (or at least the crack) so that I don't have to worry with the DRM.
This is a natural reaction when the paid-for product is not as good as the free one.
For a while I was willing to forgo my favorite plugins because, while they are great, they cause huge memory problems in Firefox. But then Chrome killed support for side-tabs and so I went back to Firefox with Tree-Style-Tabs.
It looks to me like someone is now holding it up at just below 34. I'm betting that they will give up soon if the stock doesn't go back up.
I'm not really addressing any moral issues involved.
As a pragmatic matter, the show is available in the following ways:
1. At a regularly scheduled time on HBO (or some other premium networks worldwide).
2. About an hour after it airs on HBO, it becomes trivial to download from the internet.
3. After the season is over, it becomes available on DVD and some download services to rent or buy.
The first option would cost me about $100/month.
The second option is free (minimum entry would be about $30/month for an internet connection).
The third option is cheap but requires me to wait.
Now take a dispassionate look at the incentive system that has been created above and it is easy to see why "2" is so popular. You'd have to like other shows on HBO to pick option 1, or you'd have to be wealthy enough that the money was no issue. Three is certainly reasonable, until you factor in that the network deliberately creates the show in such a way as to make you desire the show enough to tune in every week and pay for HBO. TV has been around for 50 years or so, and they've gotten quite good at pressing the right human emotion buttons. Thus, option 2 is quite popular and always will be until the incentives change.
I'm not sure what the effect would be, but the engineer in me says that they should create an easy-to-use download of the show immediately after it airs on HBO, and perhaps poison the P2P networks just enough to make people want to pay a dollar or two to download the show in a known high-quality format. Of course, this would make it harder to monetize all of their crappy shows that they air the rest of the week... so perhaps their business model is ultimately doomed.
That's a terrific idea, and it would be a much cleaner and more reliable solution than some kind of cobbled script. Maybe he could make his working directory on Linux a ZFS volume using FUSE. Snapshot it before you go on the road, export the snapshot to the external HDD, and then periodically export the snapshot delta to the USB as a backup. When you get home, re-snapshot to the external HDD and delete the delta on the USB. The snapshot creation/destruction and export could (and probably should) be automated. Similarly, the delta export could be automated.
Recovery would be a cinch - when you get home, import the snapshot from the external HDD and then import the delta from the USB.
I would also like to second Crashplan. Mozy broke my cloud backup cherry, and Crashplan has been completely problem-free for me. I run it on every computers that I own and backup to the "cloud" as well as to my basement server. They have a great feature where you can send them a hard drive to seed your initial backup so that it doesn't take a month to do your initial backup.
Another thing that I do is install it on family and friend's computers whenever they ask me to fix them. I just point it to my basement server. That way when their hard drive crashes (and it always does - especially on laptops), it makes my life much easier. It uses some of my drive space, but even post-Thailand-flooding hard drives are pretty cheap relative to time.
I'll take this one: Apple is just a puppet through which the will of Google is manifested. Even... though... Google is... much... smaller than... Apple... or something.
Try keeping current on the status of Dropbox and SkyDrive services so you can pull your data before they disappear.
You clearly have never used DropBox. It's just a shared folder that populates on every computer you install it on. If DropBox were to die right this instant, you would still have all of your data on every one of your computers - it would just stop syncing.
If you are worried about the revision history, you could pick one computer to run a rsync job between the DropBox folder and another folder of your choice, or if you are on a Mac just use TimeMachine, or if you are on Windows run something like Areca backup or any number of other free incremental backup solutions. You should be doing this anyway.
Then when DropBox goes out of business, you can switch to one of the several competitors out there and continue as before.
It's not bullshit - we spend, as a nation, more than enough on education.
I don't claim to be an expert on education, and I don't know what's wrong with it. It could be that schools aren't funded in a fair manner. It could be that corruption is to blame. It could be that our incentive systems are all screwed up for teachers, parents, students, or all of them. But the simple fact is, throwing even more money at the schools is foolish. Spending more money than almost any other country, with fairly dismal results is not the sign of a healthy school system.
Is this really impossible for most Slashdotters? A year is nothing, really.
The studios hire the best writers that they can afford to use every trick that has been learned in 50 years of television to play on people's emotions so that they can get them to crave the show enough to tune in each week. It should not surprise anyone that people click on a link and download a show for free rather than wait a year to pay. The incentives are all messed up.
I dunno... I have a 6-year-old and I sit her in front of Khan Academy and she loves it. I love it, too - it is really fun to see her grasp these concepts for the first time. At the same time, so far all she has learned is counting up and down a number line and variations thereof. So far, more advanced lessons haven't "taken". I'm quite certain that algebra is too advanced for her at this stage. I'm sure I could teach her how to move things from one side to another in an equation, but she wouldn't be able to frame a word problem algebraically or handle the more puzzle-like concepts like factoring and simplification.
So you are right... I'm not a neuroscientist, but I do have some real-world experience :)
Isn't this how most audio/video compression algorithms work?
This is exactly my point - education in the US is not that great, but it's not because we are unwilling to fund the schools - in aggregate they are very well-funded.
Those idiots forced me to spend half my school time on arts and crafts, home economics, and other stuff that I had zero interest in, and it was a waste of my time and theirs.
We need to put a system in place to identify where kids are going at a young age and put them into schools that allow them to pursue those interests. The people who currently control our education system seem hell-bent on stamping out a bunch of identical automatons, and it's just wrong.
I feel like these two sentences are somewhat contradictory - they are trying to expose you to varied subjects as opposed to setting you on an unalterable course. In the British system, they pretty much have your career pegged by the time you are 11 and you specialize from then on. In my wife's case, this essentially pushed her towards a J.D., and she ultimately hated it and went back to school for an M.D.
I know that my wife's case is not any more statistically valid than your single case, but I wanted to point out that there may be some value to giving students a wide range of exposure and keeping their options open until they are adults.
There's a difference between having an interest in a free show and feeling the need to buy $100 worth of cable to see it.
I can't comment on your specific school district, but on average the US spends more per-pupal than just about any other country (I think we're number 2?). We rank far lower in achievement... money ain't the problem.
Elementary math is memorization and learning a mechanical system of computing. Algebra relies more on symbolic thought.
That said, I think that algebra could be taught a few years earlier. I remember seeing it for the first time in 8th grade and thinking, "Oh, wow, this is just like variables in BASIC!"
No. Next question.
I have that! What a pile of crap! And it's worse than Windows - you can't just go to add/remove programs. You actually have to root the device (Zerg Rush) and then one-at-a-time backup the phone, remove something, and then test to make sure you didn't hose the phone.
Plus, the energy used by small cars is a small fraction of that used by a train (trains are rarely fully loaded with passengers).
Yeah, I think a hybrid system might be interesting. Handle rush hours with the usual packed trains, and then switch over to PRT vehicles off-peak. Modern trains don't need conductors or engineers, so there shouldn't be an issue with idle staff. Using the PRT for off-peak only would reduce the size of the fleet that you need to purchase and you might even get away with re-using the existing heavy or light-rail track.
I lived in NYC for a while and I was always amazed that they ran the same huge trains all night in the subway. You'd think they'd have a few smaller trains for the night shift.
The whole thing breaks down.
As opposed to the highway paradise that is every major city in America??? :)
They system didn't "break down", the highway was invented and the automobile became ubiquitous and necessary. They built 2-way track all the way out, and have since abandoned half of it on some of the branch lines because ridership dropped (or never materialized, I don't really know). The track could handle - with 1920s signalling - at least 15 trains per hour in each direction. I think we get about 3 in each direction, maybe 4 or 5 at rush hour - and we live on the main trunk. The trains are also much shorter than the stations were built for. Capacity is not currently a problem - and if it were, what is easier: finding the room for a single track in each direction or finding the room for 8 new lanes of highway in each direction?
I see what you mean paiute! See this pansy-ass number bullshit Nidi62 is spewing? Just pull the fucking trigger already!