I do not have an extensive background with call centers. I worked in one for exactly one year to reenter the computer field in 1995.
Based on my experience, I wrote a proof that call centers for computer support were impossible to maintain. We started with over 200 people. Some (like me) were trying to reenter the computer business because there had been major layoffs in the area over the last few years. Some wanted to enter the computer field. The hiring was done through temp agencies, and many of the people just wanted a job.
We were trained on the about-to-be-released Windows95. By the 4 month mark, almost everybody who had previous computer knowledge had found better jobs. (I stayed because I promised 1 year, and I stayed for 1 year, but at 6 months I had a promise to be transferred to another department.) Phone support is intense work, and anybody with skills could find something better. That means the quality of the people is constantly decreasing. (Call centers work better when the job market is depressed because higher-quality people are willing to do it, and everybody stays longer.)
We had an "expert system" to assist with troubleshooting. It was awful. The worst flaw was that we could not add to the system. Only Compaq HQ could maintain the information. I started my help system because I needed a better tool. The only program available was WordPad, so it was a collection of links to the intranet, plus tons of text copied from the 4 tools provided by Compaq. My text-based system was great for solving issues, but it would not scale.
For an expert system to work, every phone support person must be able to add information. It should be integrated with the call logging system. Any call that required more than reading from existing entries should automatically be added.
It has been 7 years, so maybe there is a new tool that works. Yes, I could write a simple-but-powerful application, but why? Call centers are low profit business, and prefer to buy the standard-but-awful programs. I will not enter the market because internet search is more useful than an expert system (unless your call center denies internet access to the phone support people, which is very counter-productive.)
=== Compaq was using power supplies that were known to be bad more than 4 years after the problem was known. I cannot understand the decision to keep using bad hardware for so long. Releasing information about it could have brought lawsuits from customers and hard drive manufacturers. I have not heard of such a lawsuit, so their policy seems to have been successful.
Sorry, no links. Too much time has passed, and the web pages have disappeared.
I found my old article about the Windows95 patching issue. It was dated May 1997, so it has been almost 7 years. I was the one who discovered what caused the problem; my article includes how to compare the Display Properties layout to the System Properties stated version. I searched on microsoft.com and Google, but did not find the article. Microsoft seems to have removed most of the information relating to Windows95 from their web site.
I compiled and edited tons of information about Compaq PCs available before August 1996. I wrote entries whenever a common issue had no (or wrong) information available from Compaq. While some of it has "written by {my name}" at the top, it is difficult to remember how much was truly original and how much was compiled from other sources. Searching today for pieces of the information shows that some of my information was never released. I found the hard drive error codes, but the websites only tell what they mean, rather than specific information like: - the Presario 992's hard drive was known to have problems and should be replaced gratis, and - some system boards could not handle a second hard drive and should be replaced gratis, and - installing additional hard drives usually requires clearing the CMOS, and - a power connector on the power supplies in the tower cases was wired wrong, so any hard drive connected to it would be fried.
The last one upset me, because the problem was discovered with the Presario 800s and 900s before the 9500s were released, but Compaq was still using the bad power supplies. Just before I transferred, they updated the article to include the tower PCs that were being released in AUG 1996, more than 2 years after the problem was known. Did the hard drive manufacturers ever receive compensation from Compaq for all the hard drives that were returned after being installed in a Compaq Presario tower?
I sometimes think I should publish the information. Compaq PCs having problems does not affect me (I build PCs for myself and everybody I know), but Compaq was one of the top sellers of PCs, and I know their problems. Releasing the information might do some good, but I would probably get sued, and it was not worth the effort to me.
The 300 miles per tank standard is for highway driving. City driving assumes driving shorter distances with more gas stations, so a lower miles per tank is acceptable.
Hummers are definitely in the large vehicle category. They have 32-33 gal tanks. The deisel gets 12-15 mpg; the gas engine gets 8-10 mpg. Even the gas engine Hummers should be able to drive 300 highway miles on a tank.
In contrast, the Geo Metro has a 10 gal tank, and gets 36-39 mpg. This incredibly fuel efficient car gets just under 400 miles per tank. The car would need to be filled slightly less often than the Hummer, but a tank's worth of gas would much less expensive.
I write songs, and play guitar and other instruments. I cannot have music playing while I program. If there is music playing, I am writing lyrics or adding another musical part. Programming seems to require the same part of the brain that those tasks use.
Is there a divider between musician and non-musician programmers? Musicians analyze the music, and so cannot program while it is playing, since their analysis circuits are already in use. Non-musicians do not analyze the music, and so can use music to filter out the world so they can concentrate better.
My content ended up on microsoft.com
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· Score: 4, Interesting
In 1995-6, I did support for Compaq at a Unisys facility. I wrote many solutions for our call center, including several guides for troubleshooting various issues. I distributed them on floppies to many of the phone support people, since we were not allowed to have our own resources. Many of them ended up on Compaq's website, attributed to someone else. Some of them ended up on Microsoft's website, attributed to another someone else. [A manager received permission to put my help system on the network just before I transferred. I still have copies.]
Later, I described how you could not detach attachments in Lotus Notes if Windows95B had been patched with the "a" patch intended for the original Windows95. (The policy to immediately patch Windows95 after installation survived long after the standard install was Windows95B.) I added it to the internal Unisys online help system. A few months later, I found it on Microsoft's site with 3 words changed and attributed to someone else.
In every case, the words changed were prepositions. I thought my original choices were better than the new version (probably because they were MY choices), but the content was otherwise identical. I guess they liked my style, but I would have enjoyed searching for my name and having many results pointing to microsoft.com.
My sig: I spend my life entertaining my brain.
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Entertaining Your Brain?
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Do I get points because my sig was used as the title of an article? Is that why I have been moderating for more than 2 weeks? (I did manage to use up the points twice, but every day I have 5 again.)
I'm constantly told that I have an extremely high intelligence.
This gets annoying before finishing elementary school. Learn to change the subject. Discover what is interesting to the other person. Find subjects where there is a good chance the other person will give information you did not know. [This does not always work. A new girlfriend introduced me to one of her friends, who had just bought a house. I was ASKING questions about how he was remodelling the kitchen when he blurted, "You are a genius, aren't you?"]
You will still get comments like "We have never talked about X, but you seem to know everything, so what do I do about X?" If you can lie [I cannot], tell them you have never heard of X, and then ask questions. Otherwise, quickly give them the solution, and move the conversation so you have a dialogue instead of a lesson.
I always feel like I should know so much more, though.
As long as you are always learning, do not worry about what you do not know. When something enters your interest, learn the basics quickly to know if it is worth researching. I prefer to work on creating new things rather than trying to keep up with the combined progress of all humanity.
Do you, the Slashdot readers, know of any ways to improve ones brain power? [Learn to use apostrophes. It should be "one's".]
The only exercise to help you think better is thinking.
Perhaps books, Web sites, etc., that provide questions that involve ways to increase memory, creativity, mental agility, logic reasoning, intelligence, etc. [Learn to construct sentences. Every sentence should have a subject and a verb.] [Avoid the word "that". You used it 3 times. The first was unnecessary; the other two could have been avoided by changing the tense of the verbs.]
Most geniuses read constantly. The material does not matter. Think about any new ideas. Think about what prompted it to be written. For fiction, think of alternate plots. Keep thinking. If you want to be more creative, you need to create. If you want to be better at logical reasoning, devise proofs. If you want to be more mentally agile, question every assumption, both your own and other people's: why is it an assumption, and what are the alternatives?
Are there any diets/exercises that really help? I eat steak. It does not seem to make me any smarter, but it tastes good. I avoid anything that seems popular with the masses: potatoes, bread, rice, broccoli. (I would include pasta, but my Italian blood refuses to recommend against it.)
Any exercise will help the blood to flow better. Do what you like, or do the same exercise as your friends. I bowl because a variety of interesting people practice with the bowlers I know. I kick around a soccer ball with several techies. I run just to enjoy the sun. I swim because I love swimming. Exercise helps, but do it because you enjoy it, and see if you can combine it with your desire for knowledge.
The MSWindows "Open With" opens the file chooser expecting the user to find the program to use from the file system. Some programs use strangely named EXE files, and some require additional settings in the command to work correctly. This cannot be called "user friendly".
If MS cared, there is a much better method.
Every application installed on MSWindows must tell the registry which file extensions (since MSWindows does not check the actual file type) it can open. It then overwrites the setting for each of those extensions.
A better method is for the registry to add the program as one of the choices for that extension. When right-clicking, the menu would show all the programs that claim to open that extension. When double-clicking, it uses the last program chosen. Let the users decide during installation which extensions now default to use the new program (most programs do ask), but do not remove the previous choices. Remove the choice when the program is uninstalled. The "Open With" option should allow adding new programs, without "Always use this program" deleting the old choice.
If they want to get fancy, right-click to show the choices, then right-click on a program would prompt to remove it from the list for that extension.
--- I do not expect MS to make choices easy. They want their programs to be the default, and making it difficult to choose another program means less people will even think about having choices.
I have rewritten my registry so I can choose several programs to edit HTML files while keeping Mozilla as the default. I even have a choice to open with MSIE. Installing a new browser or HTML editor can discard my settings. (I use a REG file to restore my settings, but I wonder if allowing the mission-critical registry to be written so easily is a good thing.) - I also added choices for playing videos to the right-click menu. When one player will not work with an MPEG, I right-click and try a different player, without using the awful "Open With" dialogbox. - It would be much nicer if the OS maintained the list of programs.
Non-MS OSes could implement something like this. How are file types associated with programs? KDE shows multiple programs for viewing/editing text files in the file browser. Is that a start towards the above suggestion?
Miles per gallon is important to consumers. A car that cannot be driven 300 miles on one tank will not sell. Most cars are just under 30 miles to the gallon, so a 12-16 gallon tank is sufficient. Buyers of sports cars and large vehicles (trucks, SUVs) expect 16 mpg, and the large vehicles have large tanks to maintain the 300 mile criteria. [My sports car can reach 300 miles on highways. City driving uses much more gas.]
Emissions were regulated. Most people do not want a cloud of black smoke, but it required legislation to make a difference. The States made it as a profit center by charging for extra stesting and stickers. Citizens were aware of the issue because of the extra stickers, and because they were responsible for more money if their car did not pass. So the manufacturers had to satisfy the buyers.
Regulating software would need to be done the same way. It is not enough to penalize the manufacturers; the users must feel the penalties. The laws would need to penalize a user for having a PC that spams or is used for a DOS attack. Unfortunately, it is difficult to verify the packets originated at a specific IP Address. What if you happened to check sco.com on the day of a DOS? Were you part of the attack, or just wondering if the website survived?
Once these issues are resolved, and the users feel the penalties, then they will demand that their software protects them. Software like MSWindows, where it is impossible to load a firewall before loading the network drivers, would disappear.
Lotus Notes is an application platform. The insurance agents would have have local copies ("replicas") of the application that includes business logic. The data is synched ("replicated") with the corporate servers whenever the PC is connected to the intranet. The application could easily mail notifications to the office workers who process the claims, but that does not require the mail client to be overloaded (or even using Notes for email.) Lotus Notes started as a secure application platform, then added email as another application with some special code to handle routing.
MS needed something that could claim to compete with Lotus Notes for the rich thin-client marketspace. Where Lotus Notes added email as another application on a secure platform, MS overloaded their email platform with an application platform. This small difference in philosophy has allowed MSOutlook to become the Virus Distribution System we all know and hate. The insurance agents use MSOutlook to create messages using Forms, and the client could synch with the corporate servers. The MSOutlook Forms are very limited when compared to what is possible with Lotus Notes. MS "synchronization" is like overwriting a file; Lotus Notes Replication is very like merging patches in CVS: only the changed fields are updated, so there is no conflict if 2 people change different fields on the same record.
MS's marketing machine has made the products seem to have similar capabilities, but the development effort is much greater and the applications have less functionality when using the MS platform. - Every Lotus Notes application starts as a database with integrated security. Every MSOutlook application starts as secure as internet email. - The business logic is updated every time Lotus Notes replicates. How do you update the MSOutlook clients? - The Lotus Notes address book requires a password from every program before granting access. How many viruses and other programs read the MSOutlook address book? - Lotus Notes asks for verification that you want to allow some code to read the file system. MSOutlook viruses email random files from your PC to your friends.
The philosophy behind these systems is so different that it is difficult to remember that they are trying to solve similar issues.
2. Many cops will just outright lie to write a ticket.
I am about to send a letter to the court about a ticket I received 2 weeks ago, and have already paid.
I believe that the primary purpose of our traffic laws is to make every driver into a criminal. The officer wrote me a "Disregarding the Signs" ticket which costs money, but does not affect my license. If he felt I was a dangerous driver, he should have written the ticket to reduce my ability to drive, or to force me to take driving classes. His performance showed that his true purpose was literally highway robbery.
If you travel in eastern PA, please remember that the areas around the Turnpike exit for Morgantown, and Route 422 on the east side of Reading are popular places for ambushes by the local police. The ambushes are usually at night in areas where if you did go off the road at twice the speed limit, you would travel almost 100 feet before meeting a tree.
The Valley Forge Turnpike exit leads to the King of Prussia mall. The local police like to give tickets on the roads around the mall. They do not patrol the rest of the town. There have been 3 hit-and-runs damaging cars in front of my house in the last 2 years. My car was damaged in one of them; the paint left on my car was a distintive green, and enough silver paint was gone from my car that some must have been on the other car. The police's only assistance was to offer to write a report for my insurance claim. (Another police officer stated that posting a message to the nearby bodyshops was standard procedure in his town.)
Here is my letter:
--- Letter Please send the officer who wrote me a ticket to classes in observation and public safety.
The following happened on Route 10 South between the ramp from I176 and the light at Route 23.
The officer told me that I "almost hit that other vehicle". That is his phrase for safely coming to a stop about three feet behind a truck that had parked in the middle of the exit ramp. He was aware the other vehicle had stopped unsafely while there were plenty of places to pull off the road, but did nothing about it.
The officer told me I was speeding, and following too closely. The distance between my car and the truck constantly increased until there were more than 6 car lengths between us when the truck's brake lights lit to stop at the red light. (I was under the previous traffic light and the truck was about halfway between the two lights if someone needs to measure.) The truck must have been travelling faster than my vehicle (or physics dictates that I would have hit it.)
The officer told me the speed limit was 35 mph. The posted speed limit sign states 45 mph. Please correct whichever is wrong.
The officer said that I did not come to a complete stop at the red light at Route 23. I came to a complete stop. I checked for a "No Turn on Red" sign. Then I turned my head to check for traffic. My car has a manual transmission, and I did not put it into first gear until after I checked for traffic. All this took at least the two seconds required by state law. If the law is different in your district, then it should be posted.
When I arrived at my friend's house about 2 blocks from where I was pulled over, their first remark was that one of my headlights was out. The officer made no mention of this, even though it is a safety issue.
Every statement the officer said was false. If he was concerned with safety, he would have pulled over the truck that stopped in the middle of the exit ramp. If he was concerned with speeding, he would have pulled over the truck as the fastest moving vehicle. You decide the motivation behind his actions, and whether he should remain a member of your police force.
BACKGROUND: I live in an area where we have snow in the winter, and worked for several gas stations during the early 90s.
The price of gasoline at the pump has no relation to the price the gas stations are charged. - The price the gas stations were charged for gasoline was almost static for 3 years. - The price at the pump is higher FRI to MON than TUE to THU. - The price slowly rises over the 2 weeks before any holiday (usually by skipping the decline on TUE.) - The price is raised on the first warm day after a cold spell. The price rises slowly from mid-May until July 4th. The price declines slowly after most colleges start the Fall session. (The decline lasts until the Thanksgiving increase.)
Most gas stations are very aware of what other gas stations in the area charge. I worked at one chain where the manager was required to record the price of every gas station within a few miles at least twice each week. Then the price would be set to the lowest price of the others.
--- I watched a gas station price war near where I lived. Two new stations opened, and undercut the price of other nearby stations by $0.10/gal. When the other stations lowered their price to compete, these stations lowered theirs. Three gas stations went out of business within a year, and two more followed the second year. One of the new stations kept the price for gas in that area about $0.20 lower than gas stations 10 to 30 miles away, even though they all use the same suppliers, and that area is far from the depots. It is now 6 years since they opened, and the price is still at least 5 cents lower than the surrounding areas.
(I had a long commute at the time, and I saved over 15% on gasoline by always filling up before leaving the area.)
--- The price is usually set by the owners or managers, although it is set by headquarters for at least one chain. IANAL, but it probably would not be considered a conspiracy in the legal sense. They are forced to agree on a price, and all have agreed to choose a price for great profit.
The specifications are controlled by the JCL. Sun has a never-used veto power that allows them to keep control of the trademark. Can this be more "open"? Java is a programming language being designed by a committee. Do you really want everyone in the world to be on the committee?
Are they talking about the StandardEdition, or every version of Java? If SUN will lose the revenues from the cell phone makers, this is not feasible.
Are they talking about releasing the JVM under the GPL? Why does IBM need SUN to help with this? IBM has their own JVM that was faster than SUN's JVM (from my own experiences using JVM 1.3.) Is there a reason that IBM cannot GPL their version? IBM has been trying to wrest control of Java from SUN for years. Could IBM GPL their JVM and force the issue for SUN?
Is the issue that SUN should be the one to dual-license the code so that GPL'd code changes can be added to the commercial branch? I am not clear about the legality of that.
The only real issue seems that OSS needs a freely redistributable JVM to include with Linux distros and other software. OSS is good so debugging can see further down, although that can be difficult when the layers change language. A GPL'd JVM might be forked over features as well as implementation, but implementations have already forked, and Sun can control the features by not allowing their trademark to be used for non-compliant VMs. Please reply with clarifications.
I find great answers for MS on the web, although windowsannoyances.org seems much better than microsoft.com. That is how I discovered that need to upgrade the virtual network driver if you want to use large hard drives (64GB for Win98, 130GB for Win2K.)
And Linux is difficult. I still have not found out why grub cannot read a partition after "hide", even though it can "unhide" it. It is so much fun to hide the drive that has grub.conf and boot to the grub prompt. But after "unhide" the partition, Windows decided that it should not show the Linux partition anyway.
[Disclaimer: I am attempting to be funny by contrasting something easy (adding a hard drive) to something rather advanced (using grub), along with examples that make no sense to me.]
--- As far as upgrading, I do not think I have ever had an RPM (usually from RedHat) install properly. But the ability to uncompress tars into their own directories makes it very easy to switch versions just by changing the startup scripts.
I have not been responsible for administrating enterprise production systems for some time, but it sounds like I need to test Debian to make knowledgable recommendations.
Here's an OS under which an application can not only nuke the OS, but also the machine itself. The BSOD may have gone away to a large degree under Windows XP, but the random reboots continue.
This is considered a feature. People have been complaining about the BSOD for about a decade, so MS removed it. Whenever the BSOD would have appeared, the machine just reboots. Most of the time you could not do anything to recover from the BSOD anyway, and this saves pushing the power switch.
It is too bad that MS is incapable of deciding which program is hogging resources. The BSOD usually listed the KERNEL, GDI, or EXPLORER as the offensive process. - If the kernel is hung, you need to reboot. - If the graphics are hung, you need to reboot since there is no X server that can be independently restarted. - If Explorer hangs, it can usually be restarted without shutting down all other programs, but you lose the ability to monitor the other programs because they lost their hooks into the UI. It would be better if Explorer could tell other programs they need to restart any systray processes, or just maintain a list of what should be running in the systray, but that level of recovery is well beyond MS's designers. - Instead of the BSOD or rebooting, MS could kill an offensive process and garbage collect the resources. Again, that would require knowing how to write an OS.
--- I was running Railroad Tycoon 3 and the machine suddenly rebooted. I have not upgraded from RailroadTycoon2 yet.
The only program that BSODed my Win98SE PC more than WindowsExplorer was InternetExplorer. I've been using Mozilla for a few years, so now the only BSODs I see are when I do weird things like attempt to look at the files on the hard drive.
Eight Mile Style filed the copyright infringement suit... At issue is an ad for Apple's iTunes pay-per-download music software, in which a 10-year-old sings Eminem's "Lose Yourself."
I agree. If a 10-year-old is singing the song, then it is a new performance (unless Eminem has a time machine.) To use Eminem's song for a new performance requires "mechanical rights", which are automatically granted for a set fee. Mechanical rights are applied for selling something that includes the copyright (but not perfomances) of an artist. I believe that should apply to advertising that does not include the artist's performance, but IANAL.
Most songs are handled by the The Harry Fox Agency (HFA). Eminem has 50 songs listed at Songfile.com, which is HFA's online license application for low volume use. The list does not include "Lose Yourself". If the song is not handled by HFA, then you must contact the publisher directly.
There is a lawsuit, so somebody believes they had the right to tell Apple they could not use lyrics in a commercial. But it is not about a "sample", because Apple did not use a "sample" of Eminem's performance.
Science fiction: what to read
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Orson Scott Card and Spider Robinson are the only living authors that I will buy as full-price hardcovers. I buy most of my hardcovers at Atlantic Books for $2-$6. Almost the only paperbacks I buy are Robert Asprin, since they are rarely released as hardcovers. I do have a few of the Myth series as hardcovers, but they were difficult to find.
I just got around to reading all of OSC's Alvin Maker series. I will be reading "Crystal City" tonight. I had read the first 2 books before the others were published. I did not realize that "Red Prophet" was hard to find. (I have 2 copies.) It is good story-telling, internally consistent, and I keep researching the real people from history to see how OSC modified them for the series. The series is alternate historical fantasy, but does meet the definition of science fiction. Just do not expect anything to do with space travel. - The Ender series is required reading for every nerd, particularly "Ender's Game". "Ender's Shadow" and its sequels offer an expansion on the original story, and are better written, but you should read "Ender's Game" first. They do have some space travel.
Greg Bear's "Eon" and "Eternity" are original. He sometimes used 20 pages to cover what could have been one, and switched between characters without purpose, but his originality makes the books worth it. He is one of the hard-core science fiction writers, where the science must make sense, so that adds some of the long explanantions.
Gordon R. Dickson never seems to be mentioned on Slashdot. His Chantry Guild series is incredible, and his storytelling keeps improving. "Dorsai", "Soldier, Ask Not" and other early books contain great short stories. He switched to writing full novels. "Other" is one of the latest books, and one of the best. Many of his other books are insightful, original, and/or just fun. For fun, see "The Right to Arm Bears". Most of his books deal with social conditions on other planets.
I read Larry Niven's "Rainbow Mars" last week. This is a time-travel and weird technology book, not a typical "Mars" book. The title story is placed first, even though it happens after the other stories, so read it last. Most of Niven's other books are classics.
--- Off-topic Please use Preview to remind yourself to add line breaks. Capitalizing "I" when it is used as a pronoun is common practice. Your post was informative, but very difficult to read.
Google already took googlegear.com from its originial owners. I started buying from them because googlegear.com was always with a few percent of the lowest price for computer hardware on several of the best-price-search websites. The first time I saw the site, I looked for anything that suggested they were connected to Google-the-Search-Engine, but the fonts and everything else was very different. A disclaimer might have been nice, but may have gained them the trouble with Google even sooner.
Googlegear.com sent all customers a notice that their web site was changing to ZipZoomFly.com. Awful name, but they still have the best prices, and friends have returned parts easily. (One bought an Intel CPU and a motherboard for an AMD processor. I was there to help put it together, saw the shipping list, and told him it would not work.)
Now, WHOIS Googlegear.com shows the same information as the other Google sites. The site opens a page on google.com explaining the name change, with a link to the new site. It looks like Google was just protecting their trademark, and is not taking advantage of the goodwill from the previous owners.
WHOIS ZipZoomFly.com has contacts with email addresses @googlegear.com. I wonder if the mail is being redirected by Google, or if these addresses are broken.
I thought Sam Rockwell did an incredible job in Charlie's Angels. [Spoiler]For an action movie about watching beautiful women, he was great transforming from innocent victim to evil mastermind.[/Spoiler] - It was the first (and still only) time I had seen him act, and I wondered how he did so well if it was his first production, but IMDB shows an impressive resume starting in 1988. I think he will do great with Zaphod's completely-strange-but-said-naturally lines.
Samples require the permission of the publisher and the owner of the master. They set the terms, so they can easily charge enough to make it infeasible.
From the copyright office: There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.
I know that chord progressions cannot be copyrighted, or all combinations of I-IV-V would have been eliminated long ago. But I would not use Star Wars' Imperial March without disguising it. The similarity argument rests on amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The only case I remember was Bon Jovi suing and winning for one line of "Living on a Prayer", but I cannot find a reference. They won because the line was the same words and melody in the chorus. (I think it was "We're halfway there".)
If "On Top of Old Smokey" was not public domain, we would not have "Chariots of Fire". Restaurants write their own (awful) birthday songs to avoid paying for "Happy Birthday" written in 1893.
I wonder that melody is considered so important, since every singer applies very different melodies to my songs. I usually write 2 melodies for each song for my own singing so I can change depending if my voice has warmed up. Live versions usually have different melodies than the studio versions. I saw Britney Spears do "Baby One More Time" in a medley on TV once, and the melody was very different than the radio version. (I think it was because the TV version was live and only had one note.)
Today it is up to the artist to notice that someone released a very similar song. "Melancholy Elephants" refers to a world where the copyrights are checked against existing music before being issued. Given the patent office's reluctance to do anything resembling work, we should not have to worry about automatic copyright validation, but it would be much easier to validate music with computers than patents.
I think we agree on the major points. I want the return of reasonable time limits to copyright protection. Software patents are counter to the purpose of patents. The world was better when software was considered mathematical algorithms that could not be patented. Does anybody believe that software patents are encouraging progress?
--- The nature of the music industry for the past century was that to distribute your music, you had to deal with the distributors, and they are an oligopoly that forced the artists to give up their rights.
Have you read the short story "Melancholy Elephants" (C)1984 Spider Robinson? It was released free on the web, but baen.com seems to be down. Humans have very limited ideas about what sounds good, and we will run out of them. I am very careful that each of my songs is unique. I get upset when I hear something that sounds much like one of my songs. I was extremely angry at a friend when he played me "Welcome to the Jungle" because I thought his band was stealing my music. (I forgave him when he convinced me it was not his band and they were from the other coast, but I still discarded the music.) The worst compliment is "That sounds like that song by so-and-so" because that means my song may not be truly original.
"Oops I did it again" was written by Max Martin and Rami and released in 2000. Do we have to wait 50 years past their deaths to be able to create a song that is similar? Or is the copyright owned by an immortal corporation? Someday someone may want to use words or melody similar to "Oops, I did it again". They will not be allowed to distribute it until the copyright laws are changed. It is not about having to pay for THIS song. It is that we have lost the ability to create anything similar to this song.
--- I write software, music, lyrics, and books. Much of my life is based on IP. I decided in the 1980s that publishing music under the terms allowed by the music industry was bad for me. The only music I have downloaded was provided free on the artists' websites, except for a Dave Matthews song provided by Yahoo. My interest in copyrights is as a producer, not as a consumer.
Is IP something that the creator has the right to control, or should it be in the public domain?
Copyright was created so that other people would not profit from an artist's work without compensating the artist. The time period was limited so all work would enter public domain in about a generation.
Today, copyright is used to keep work under the control of corporations. The period has increased to 50 years past the death of the author. Corporations do not die. I do not want Disney hit-squads coming for me because I wrote a book for which they want to make a movie someday. I want to be able to integrate the works of my grandparent's generation into my own efforts. (Oops, my song used 2 lines from Elvis or the Beatles. Here comes the lawsuit.) I want my grandchildren to be able to write a story or song without worrying that it is similar to any work that was written after Steamboat Willy.
The free distribution of works without generating profits is happening. Fiction and reference materials are already available. Music is available, but some countries (the US) allow the profit seeking companies to terrorize the people who use the modern methods for no-profit distribution. It is not whether music will be distributed for free; it is about how much harm the dying industry will cause before disappearing.
I will be releasing my songs under a license that states they may be shared for any purpose that cannot be connected with benefit to others beyond enjoyment of the music. I believe the legal eagles are creating a similar license. Eventually most music will be released this way.
creators are perfectly free to release their IP for free distribution
Much of recent music is controlled by a few companies that will not open their catalogs, and that hurts humanity. One century of music that will never be free. One century of music that can never be used again. Our descendants are going to curse the Twentieth Century until they revolt.
* Artistic license about calling it a century. Actual period = ~1930 to ~2010 AD.
My post was specific to music. Music is a medium where more awareness means more sales. That does not apply to any other type of IP.
I break IP into several categories. Each has a different purpose. Each SHOULD have separate laws. The US legal system tries to group most of them together, then have exceptions for a variety of situations. I believe they should be defined separately, and then laws can be made to deal with each. My categories and opinions are:
1. Sound recordings, typically music. - The creation is done by a very small group of people. The production is handled by a slightly larger, but still small number of people over hours or days. - Awareness sells. The more you hear a song, the more you will like it. Distribution was the main cost, but technology has effectively lowered it to zero. An individual will play a song many times, and if it is popular enough, it will be used in profit generating settings. - Laws should encourage distribution where no money is involved, but require payment in all profit generating settings.
2. Visual recordings, typically movies and TV shows. - Creation may be handled by small teams. Production requires large and expensive teams for months. TV revenues come from paid subscriptions. Movie revenues come from theaters and home purchases/rentals. - Most video is watched once per person. A few may be watched many times by a small minority. The home market developed because the movie theater was (and still is) an incredibly poor experience. Too many other people in very uncomfortable seats = no comfort, privacy, or control. The home experience solves these issues, but most people do not want to own the movies; they will rent them to watch once. A second viewing usually happens only when a visitor expresses interest. - On-demand viewing is the preferred method of delivery. People are willing to rent video from a store. Time-shifting technology is incredibly popular for TV. - Large production costs. Limited viewing because of the time investment by the consumer. The industry should improve and capitalize the market they control if they want to survive. Change the theaters to have comfortable box seats so you do not see your neighbors, and keep the movies in the theater for more than 2 months to avoid the "I'll see it on video" syndrome. Couches with private (but very large) screens that can be paused, and movies that will only be available in the theater for at least one year, will revitalize that industry. There would be more choices, and start times are whenever your entire group is there. The home video market will still be there next year; it does not need to and should not attempt to capitalize on the promotion of the theater release.
3. Text for entertainment, books of fiction. - Creation and production handled by a very small group. - Most people read a book once. Electronic distribution can be free, but the current generation of people prefer paper. The next generation may prefer to read on a portable electronic device. - The small cost of production and willingness of people to give away their work may kill the industry. Popular artists will sell paper-based copies for some time, but expect this industry to be overrun by amateurs. Laws cannot protect anybody if the majority of work is priced zero.
4. Text for information - Creation and production handled by a very small group. - Used as on-demand reference. Many people just use free sites on the web. Will encyclopedias and other references just disappear? Is there a method to make any money by providing information as a web service? - This industry may be doomed. I doubt any laws can save it.
5. Ideas - This is handled by patents, not copyrights. The current system is broken, because there are no tests before a patent is granted, and the patent office assumes the legal system will decide if the patent should be valid. Since patents are expensive, this gives a very large advantage to large companies that have the money to buy them. The system would be greatly improved if there was a period of public review, such as used for trademarks.
I do not want to "give away my copyrights." I want to profit when someone uses my work for profit. If the Eagles record a performance of my song, then they pay me as the songwriter. Why would I want to stop them from using my work? I will probably sell more copies of my own performance because people are interested in hearing the "original". - If someone uses a sample of my performance, then I get money for my performance. Due to our weird laws, if they did not negotiate with me before using it, then they may owe me more than they made from using the sample. Usually it would be in my interest to encourage them to use my music since then I make some money. Forcing the album to be pulled, or charging so much that they will stop selling it does not generate income for me.
Music equipment is expensive. (My new Schecter guitar was $700, but I also want an all-rosewood PRS guitar that costs ~$2400.) The ability to make music that people want to hear is rare. Both deserve to be compensated when music is played for profit. But music file-sharing is free advertising, and does not directly generate profits. Claiming "lost" sales for an action where no money is involved seems ridiculous. The hardest part of the music industry is getting people to know your music exists. More advertising = more money. Period. Discouraging people from hearing your music is self-destructive.
--- there goes my chance to mod any posts in this thread I just received my 4th set of mod points since Friday, and have completely forgotten which threads I have modded. I wish Slashdot had a mark letting me know I modded a thread so I wouldn't post later. And no, I have not been able to use all the points before I get another set.
I go to a customers site as a computer consultant. As I am fixing whatever is wrong, the IT people are there taking notes of everything that I do. Now, I am no longer called when that problem arises. Have they "stolen" something from me or made my services any less valuable? Short answer, no.
This often happens to me. I am called to troubleshoot specific issues. I do the work, and IT people follow me and take note of every change. If the problem recurs, they know how to fix it without calling me.
This is offset because the training is included in my price. (I cost about 3 times the going rate for a normal consultant in my field.) I know before I arrive that they are going to do this. Sometimes the contract even specifies that there will be "knowledge transfer". This usually means there will be a period of Q&A so the IT people can ask about issues unrelated to the problem I was hired to fix. Sometimes it means I have to give a lecture. Either way, I am paid for my time.
The fun part is that the fulltime IT people may gain "knowledge", but they do not gain my experience. They now know how to fix specific issues. When something goes wrong, they try to do what I did last time, even if it is not appropriate to the current solution. They have the recipe for cooking a cake, but are applying it to cooking a steak. The results may be edible, but usually not what was expected.
The good part is that these attempts make me look good. When their attempts cause enough damage, I will be called again to fix the new problem. I often make more money because I have to fix the problems they caused by attempting an inappropriate solution.
--- This also applies for development. Last week, I was sent some code that a client wanted to put into production. The code itself was awful. Several variables were defined without being used. Another variable was used to recreate one of the parameters. The function would corrupt data. The code would not run under many circumstances because it did not respect the security system (which could not be bypassed.) - I have dealt with this functionality before and have a standard algorithm that solves it and avoids the security issues. It would have cost less if they had paid me to implement it than it cost for me to review this code. (This client usually calls me before attempting something in-house so I tell them about any dangers, and if I feel the in-house developers can handle it. This particular case had political issues that meant we had to let their developer try before I was given the assignment.)
--- The point is that many companies see consultants as costly specialists to be avoided if possible. Make certain your price is high enough to include the costs the "knowledge transfer". There are several companies that use me for 2 weeks each year specifically so their fulltimers can benefit from my experience; the fulltimers greet me with lists of difficult issues. I benefit from the "consistent" work; the companies benefit from the incredible productivity during and after each of my visits.
=== Back to the main topic If I write a song, I expect to be compensated when that song generates any profit. If I record my performance of a song, I expect to be compensated when use of that recording generates a profit. It is a profit-generating performance for which I expect compensation if: - you expect money for the performance. (Cover bands, DJs, street players with a hat in front of them.) - you play it for people who have paid to be there. (Any place with a charge at the door: dance clubs, sporting events) - people are expected to spend money there. (clubs without cover charges, any store.) - people are expected to spend money on other things, but my song added to the experience. (Radio or websites with advertisements.)
If you are playing my song for friends (who did not pay for the priviledge), or are distributing it through file-sharing (with a program that does not ha
QBasic is included with MSWindows95 through MSWindows98SE. (I do not have a WinME CD for obvious reasons.) QBasic is not an option during install. The WIN98SE CD has QBASIC.EXE and QBASIC.HLP in the/TOOLS/OLDMSDOS directory. DELTREE, XCOPY, and HELP (for MSDOS commands) are also there.
--- I write most of my Java in Wordpad. I use Eclipse to check for improvements, but I have yet to become comfortable generating code with the IDE. I was using Notepad, but the lack of a Replace function made me convert. - Isn't replaceSubstring() taught in Programming 101? Notepad is how old? And nobody at MS has the ability to add one simple control? - java.lang.String does not have a replaceSubstring() either.
I use (text-based) vi for Unix and Linux. When I started with Unix, Emacs was new and was not guaranteed to be installed. I only wanted to learn one, so vi was the best choice.
I have yet to find a decent GUI text editor on Linux. Trying to delete and enter new text in config files drives me crazy. I usually open a terminal and use vi. The terminals have trouble with the DEL and BACKSPACE keys. There must be a better method.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not have an extensive background with call centers. I worked in one for exactly one year to reenter the computer field in 1995.
Based on my experience, I wrote a proof that call centers for computer support were impossible to maintain. We started with over 200 people. Some (like me) were trying to reenter the computer business because there had been major layoffs in the area over the last few years. Some wanted to enter the computer field. The hiring was done through temp agencies, and many of the people just wanted a job.
We were trained on the about-to-be-released Windows95. By the 4 month mark, almost everybody who had previous computer knowledge had found better jobs. (I stayed because I promised 1 year, and I stayed for 1 year, but at 6 months I had a promise to be transferred to another department.) Phone support is intense work, and anybody with skills could find something better. That means the quality of the people is constantly decreasing. (Call centers work better when the job market is depressed because higher-quality people are willing to do it, and everybody stays longer.)
We had an "expert system" to assist with troubleshooting. It was awful. The worst flaw was that we could not add to the system. Only Compaq HQ could maintain the information. I started my help system because I needed a better tool. The only program available was WordPad, so it was a collection of links to the intranet, plus tons of text copied from the 4 tools provided by Compaq. My text-based system was great for solving issues, but it would not scale.
For an expert system to work, every phone support person must be able to add information. It should be integrated with the call logging system. Any call that required more than reading from existing entries should automatically be added.
It has been 7 years, so maybe there is a new tool that works. Yes, I could write a simple-but-powerful application, but why? Call centers are low profit business, and prefer to buy the standard-but-awful programs. I will not enter the market because internet search is more useful than an expert system (unless your call center denies internet access to the phone support people, which is very counter-productive.)
===
Compaq was using power supplies that were known to be bad more than 4 years after the problem was known. I cannot understand the decision to keep using bad hardware for so long. Releasing information about it could have brought lawsuits from customers and hard drive manufacturers. I have not heard of such a lawsuit, so their policy seems to have been successful.
Sorry, no links. Too much time has passed, and the web pages have disappeared.
I found my old article about the Windows95 patching issue. It was dated May 1997, so it has been almost 7 years. I was the one who discovered what caused the problem; my article includes how to compare the Display Properties layout to the System Properties stated version. I searched on microsoft.com and Google, but did not find the article. Microsoft seems to have removed most of the information relating to Windows95 from their web site.
I compiled and edited tons of information about Compaq PCs available before August 1996. I wrote entries whenever a common issue had no (or wrong) information available from Compaq. While some of it has "written by {my name}" at the top, it is difficult to remember how much was truly original and how much was compiled from other sources. Searching today for pieces of the information shows that some of my information was never released. I found the hard drive error codes, but the websites only tell what they mean, rather than specific information like:
- the Presario 992's hard drive was known to have problems and should be replaced gratis, and
- some system boards could not handle a second hard drive and should be replaced gratis, and
- installing additional hard drives usually requires clearing the CMOS, and
- a power connector on the power supplies in the tower cases was wired wrong, so any hard drive connected to it would be fried.
The last one upset me, because the problem was discovered with the Presario 800s and 900s before the 9500s were released, but Compaq was still using the bad power supplies. Just before I transferred, they updated the article to include the tower PCs that were being released in AUG 1996, more than 2 years after the problem was known. Did the hard drive manufacturers ever receive compensation from Compaq for all the hard drives that were returned after being installed in a Compaq Presario tower?
I sometimes think I should publish the information. Compaq PCs having problems does not affect me (I build PCs for myself and everybody I know), but Compaq was one of the top sellers of PCs, and I know their problems. Releasing the information might do some good, but I would probably get sued, and it was not worth the effort to me.
[Giving more info to an AC agreeing with me.]
The 300 miles per tank standard is for highway driving. City driving assumes driving shorter distances with more gas stations, so a lower miles per tank is acceptable.
Hummers are definitely in the large vehicle category. They have 32-33 gal tanks. The deisel gets 12-15 mpg; the gas engine gets 8-10 mpg. Even the gas engine Hummers should be able to drive 300 highway miles on a tank.
In contrast, the Geo Metro has a 10 gal tank, and gets 36-39 mpg. This incredibly fuel efficient car gets just under 400 miles per tank. The car would need to be filled slightly less often than the Hummer, but a tank's worth of gas would much less expensive.
I write songs, and play guitar and other instruments. I cannot have music playing while I program. If there is music playing, I am writing lyrics or adding another musical part. Programming seems to require the same part of the brain that those tasks use.
Is there a divider between musician and non-musician programmers? Musicians analyze the music, and so cannot program while it is playing, since their analysis circuits are already in use. Non-musicians do not analyze the music, and so can use music to filter out the world so they can concentrate better.
In 1995-6, I did support for Compaq at a Unisys facility. I wrote many solutions for our call center, including several guides for troubleshooting various issues. I distributed them on floppies to many of the phone support people, since we were not allowed to have our own resources. Many of them ended up on Compaq's website, attributed to someone else. Some of them ended up on Microsoft's website, attributed to another someone else.
[A manager received permission to put my help system on the network just before I transferred. I still have copies.]
Later, I described how you could not detach attachments in Lotus Notes if Windows95B had been patched with the "a" patch intended for the original Windows95. (The policy to immediately patch Windows95 after installation survived long after the standard install was Windows95B.) I added it to the internal Unisys online help system. A few months later, I found it on Microsoft's site with 3 words changed and attributed to someone else.
In every case, the words changed were prepositions. I thought my original choices were better than the new version (probably because they were MY choices), but the content was otherwise identical. I guess they liked my style, but I would have enjoyed searching for my name and having many results pointing to microsoft.com.
Do I get points because my sig was used as the title of an article? Is that why I have been moderating for more than 2 weeks? (I did manage to use up the points twice, but every day I have 5 again.)
I'm constantly told that I have an extremely high intelligence.
This gets annoying before finishing elementary school. Learn to change the subject. Discover what is interesting to the other person. Find subjects where there is a good chance the other person will give information you did not know.
[This does not always work. A new girlfriend introduced me to one of her friends, who had just bought a house. I was ASKING questions about how he was remodelling the kitchen when he blurted, "You are a genius, aren't you?"]
You will still get comments like "We have never talked about X, but you seem to know everything, so what do I do about X?" If you can lie [I cannot], tell them you have never heard of X, and then ask questions. Otherwise, quickly give them the solution, and move the conversation so you have a dialogue instead of a lesson.
I always feel like I should know so much more, though.
As long as you are always learning, do not worry about what you do not know. When something enters your interest, learn the basics quickly to know if it is worth researching. I prefer to work on creating new things rather than trying to keep up with the combined progress of all humanity.
Do you, the Slashdot readers, know of any ways to improve ones brain power?
[Learn to use apostrophes. It should be "one's".]
The only exercise to help you think better is thinking.
Perhaps books, Web sites, etc., that provide questions that involve ways to increase memory, creativity, mental agility, logic reasoning, intelligence, etc.
[Learn to construct sentences. Every sentence should have a subject and a verb.]
[Avoid the word "that". You used it 3 times. The first was unnecessary; the other two could have been avoided by changing the tense of the verbs.]
Most geniuses read constantly. The material does not matter. Think about any new ideas. Think about what prompted it to be written. For fiction, think of alternate plots. Keep thinking. If you want to be more creative, you need to create. If you want to be better at logical reasoning, devise proofs. If you want to be more mentally agile, question every assumption, both your own and other people's: why is it an assumption, and what are the alternatives?
Are there any diets/exercises that really help?
I eat steak. It does not seem to make me any smarter, but it tastes good. I avoid anything that seems popular with the masses: potatoes, bread, rice, broccoli. (I would include pasta, but my Italian blood refuses to recommend against it.)
Any exercise will help the blood to flow better. Do what you like, or do the same exercise as your friends. I bowl because a variety of interesting people practice with the bowlers I know. I kick around a soccer ball with several techies. I run just to enjoy the sun. I swim because I love swimming. Exercise helps, but do it because you enjoy it, and see if you can combine it with your desire for knowledge.
The MSWindows "Open With" opens the file chooser expecting the user to find the program to use from the file system. Some programs use strangely named EXE files, and some require additional settings in the command to work correctly. This cannot be called "user friendly".
If MS cared, there is a much better method.
Every application installed on MSWindows must tell the registry which file extensions (since MSWindows does not check the actual file type) it can open. It then overwrites the setting for each of those extensions.
A better method is for the registry to add the program as one of the choices for that extension. When right-clicking, the menu would show all the programs that claim to open that extension. When double-clicking, it uses the last program chosen. Let the users decide during installation which extensions now default to use the new program (most programs do ask), but do not remove the previous choices. Remove the choice when the program is uninstalled. The "Open With" option should allow adding new programs, without "Always use this program" deleting the old choice.
If they want to get fancy, right-click to show the choices, then right-click on a program would prompt to remove it from the list for that extension.
---
I do not expect MS to make choices easy. They want their programs to be the default, and making it difficult to choose another program means less people will even think about having choices.
I have rewritten my registry so I can choose several programs to edit HTML files while keeping Mozilla as the default. I even have a choice to open with MSIE. Installing a new browser or HTML editor can discard my settings. (I use a REG file to restore my settings, but I wonder if allowing the mission-critical registry to be written so easily is a good thing.)
- I also added choices for playing videos to the right-click menu. When one player will not work with an MPEG, I right-click and try a different player, without using the awful "Open With" dialogbox.
- It would be much nicer if the OS maintained the list of programs.
Non-MS OSes could implement something like this. How are file types associated with programs? KDE shows multiple programs for viewing/editing text files in the file browser. Is that a start towards the above suggestion?
Miles per gallon is important to consumers. A car that cannot be driven 300 miles on one tank will not sell. Most cars are just under 30 miles to the gallon, so a 12-16 gallon tank is sufficient. Buyers of sports cars and large vehicles (trucks, SUVs) expect 16 mpg, and the large vehicles have large tanks to maintain the 300 mile criteria. [My sports car can reach 300 miles on highways. City driving uses much more gas.]
Emissions were regulated. Most people do not want a cloud of black smoke, but it required legislation to make a difference. The States made it as a profit center by charging for extra stesting and stickers. Citizens were aware of the issue because of the extra stickers, and because they were responsible for more money if their car did not pass. So the manufacturers had to satisfy the buyers.
Regulating software would need to be done the same way. It is not enough to penalize the manufacturers; the users must feel the penalties. The laws would need to penalize a user for having a PC that spams or is used for a DOS attack. Unfortunately, it is difficult to verify the packets originated at a specific IP Address. What if you happened to check sco.com on the day of a DOS? Were you part of the attack, or just wondering if the website survived?
Once these issues are resolved, and the users feel the penalties, then they will demand that their software protects them. Software like MSWindows, where it is impossible to load a firewall before loading the network drivers, would disappear.
Lotus Notes is an application platform. The insurance agents would have have local copies ("replicas") of the application that includes business logic. The data is synched ("replicated") with the corporate servers whenever the PC is connected to the intranet. The application could easily mail notifications to the office workers who process the claims, but that does not require the mail client to be overloaded (or even using Notes for email.) Lotus Notes started as a secure application platform, then added email as another application with some special code to handle routing.
MS needed something that could claim to compete with Lotus Notes for the rich thin-client marketspace. Where Lotus Notes added email as another application on a secure platform, MS overloaded their email platform with an application platform. This small difference in philosophy has allowed MSOutlook to become the Virus Distribution System we all know and hate. The insurance agents use MSOutlook to create messages using Forms, and the client could synch with the corporate servers. The MSOutlook Forms are very limited when compared to what is possible with Lotus Notes. MS "synchronization" is like overwriting a file; Lotus Notes Replication is very like merging patches in CVS: only the changed fields are updated, so there is no conflict if 2 people change different fields on the same record.
MS's marketing machine has made the products seem to have similar capabilities, but the development effort is much greater and the applications have less functionality when using the MS platform.
- Every Lotus Notes application starts as a database with integrated security. Every MSOutlook application starts as secure as internet email.
- The business logic is updated every time Lotus Notes replicates. How do you update the MSOutlook clients?
- The Lotus Notes address book requires a password from every program before granting access. How many viruses and other programs read the MSOutlook address book?
- Lotus Notes asks for verification that you want to allow some code to read the file system. MSOutlook viruses email random files from your PC to your friends.
The philosophy behind these systems is so different that it is difficult to remember that they are trying to solve similar issues.
2. Many cops will just outright lie to write a ticket.
I am about to send a letter to the court about a ticket I received 2 weeks ago, and have already paid.
I believe that the primary purpose of our traffic laws is to make every driver into a criminal. The officer wrote me a "Disregarding the Signs" ticket which costs money, but does not affect my license. If he felt I was a dangerous driver, he should have written the ticket to reduce my ability to drive, or to force me to take driving classes. His performance showed that his true purpose was literally highway robbery.
If you travel in eastern PA, please remember that the areas around the Turnpike exit for Morgantown, and Route 422 on the east side of Reading are popular places for ambushes by the local police. The ambushes are usually at night in areas where if you did go off the road at twice the speed limit, you would travel almost 100 feet before meeting a tree.
The Valley Forge Turnpike exit leads to the King of Prussia mall. The local police like to give tickets on the roads around the mall. They do not patrol the rest of the town. There have been 3 hit-and-runs damaging cars in front of my house in the last 2 years. My car was damaged in one of them; the paint left on my car was a distintive green, and enough silver paint was gone from my car that some must have been on the other car. The police's only assistance was to offer to write a report for my insurance claim. (Another police officer stated that posting a message to the nearby bodyshops was standard procedure in his town.)
Here is my letter:
--- Letter
Please send the officer who wrote me a ticket to classes in observation and public safety.
The following happened on Route 10 South between the ramp from I176 and the light at Route 23.
The officer told me that I "almost hit that other vehicle". That is his phrase for safely coming to a stop about three feet behind a truck that had parked in the middle of the exit ramp. He was aware the other vehicle had stopped unsafely while there were plenty of places to pull off the road, but did nothing about it.
The officer told me I was speeding, and following too closely. The distance between my car and the truck constantly increased until there were more than 6 car lengths between us when the truck's brake lights lit to stop at the red light. (I was under the previous traffic light and the truck was about halfway between the two lights if someone needs to measure.) The truck must have been travelling faster than my vehicle (or physics dictates that I would have hit it.)
The officer told me the speed limit was 35 mph. The posted speed limit sign states 45 mph. Please correct whichever is wrong.
The officer said that I did not come to a complete stop at the red light at Route 23. I came to a complete stop. I checked for a "No Turn on Red" sign. Then I turned my head to check for traffic. My car has a manual transmission, and I did not put it into first gear until after I checked for traffic. All this took at least the two seconds required by state law. If the law is different in your district, then it should be posted.
When I arrived at my friend's house about 2 blocks from where I was pulled over, their first remark was that one of my headlights was out. The officer made no mention of this, even though it is a safety issue.
Every statement the officer said was false. If he was concerned with safety, he would have pulled over the truck that stopped in the middle of the exit ramp. If he was concerned with speeding, he would have pulled over the truck as the fastest moving vehicle. You decide the motivation behind his actions, and whether he should remain a member of your police force.
BACKGROUND: I live in an area where we have snow in the winter, and worked for several gas stations during the early 90s.
The price of gasoline at the pump has no relation to the price the gas stations are charged.
- The price the gas stations were charged for gasoline was almost static for 3 years.
- The price at the pump is higher FRI to MON than TUE to THU.
- The price slowly rises over the 2 weeks before any holiday (usually by skipping the decline on TUE.)
- The price is raised on the first warm day after a cold spell. The price rises slowly from mid-May until July 4th. The price declines slowly after most colleges start the Fall session. (The decline lasts until the Thanksgiving increase.)
Most gas stations are very aware of what other gas stations in the area charge. I worked at one chain where the manager was required to record the price of every gas station within a few miles at least twice each week. Then the price would be set to the lowest price of the others.
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I watched a gas station price war near where I lived. Two new stations opened, and undercut the price of other nearby stations by $0.10/gal. When the other stations lowered their price to compete, these stations lowered theirs. Three gas stations went out of business within a year, and two more followed the second year. One of the new stations kept the price for gas in that area about $0.20 lower than gas stations 10 to 30 miles away, even though they all use the same suppliers, and that area is far from the depots. It is now 6 years since they opened, and the price is still at least 5 cents lower than the surrounding areas.
(I had a long commute at the time, and I saved over 15% on gasoline by always filling up before leaving the area.)
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The price is usually set by the owners or managers, although it is set by headquarters for at least one chain. IANAL, but it probably would not be considered a conspiracy in the legal sense. They are forced to agree on a price, and all have agreed to choose a price for great profit.
What part of Java is being open sourced?
The specifications are controlled by the JCL. Sun has a never-used veto power that allows them to keep control of the trademark. Can this be more "open"? Java is a programming language being designed by a committee. Do you really want everyone in the world to be on the committee?
Are they talking about the StandardEdition, or every version of Java? If SUN will lose the revenues from the cell phone makers, this is not feasible.
Are they talking about releasing the JVM under the GPL? Why does IBM need SUN to help with this? IBM has their own JVM that was faster than SUN's JVM (from my own experiences using JVM 1.3.) Is there a reason that IBM cannot GPL their version? IBM has been trying to wrest control of Java from SUN for years. Could IBM GPL their JVM and force the issue for SUN?
Is the issue that SUN should be the one to dual-license the code so that GPL'd code changes can be added to the commercial branch? I am not clear about the legality of that.
The only real issue seems that OSS needs a freely redistributable JVM to include with Linux distros and other software. OSS is good so debugging can see further down, although that can be difficult when the layers change language. A GPL'd JVM might be forked over features as well as implementation, but implementations have already forked, and Sun can control the features by not allowing their trademark to be used for non-compliant VMs. Please reply with clarifications.
I find great answers for MS on the web, although windowsannoyances.org seems much better than microsoft.com. That is how I discovered that need to upgrade the virtual network driver if you want to use large hard drives (64GB for Win98, 130GB for Win2K.)
And Linux is difficult. I still have not found out why grub cannot read a partition after "hide", even though it can "unhide" it. It is so much fun to hide the drive that has grub.conf and boot to the grub prompt. But after "unhide" the partition, Windows decided that it should not show the Linux partition anyway.
[Disclaimer: I am attempting to be funny by contrasting something easy (adding a hard drive) to something rather advanced (using grub), along with examples that make no sense to me.]
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As far as upgrading, I do not think I have ever had an RPM (usually from RedHat) install properly. But the ability to uncompress tars into their own directories makes it very easy to switch versions just by changing the startup scripts.
I have not been responsible for administrating enterprise production systems for some time, but it sounds like I need to test Debian to make knowledgable recommendations.
Here's an OS under which an application can not only nuke the OS, but also the machine itself. The BSOD may have gone away to a large degree under Windows XP, but the random reboots continue.
This is considered a feature. People have been complaining about the BSOD for about a decade, so MS removed it. Whenever the BSOD would have appeared, the machine just reboots. Most of the time you could not do anything to recover from the BSOD anyway, and this saves pushing the power switch.
It is too bad that MS is incapable of deciding which program is hogging resources. The BSOD usually listed the KERNEL, GDI, or EXPLORER as the offensive process.
- If the kernel is hung, you need to reboot.
- If the graphics are hung, you need to reboot since there is no X server that can be independently restarted.
- If Explorer hangs, it can usually be restarted without shutting down all other programs, but you lose the ability to monitor the other programs because they lost their hooks into the UI. It would be better if Explorer could tell other programs they need to restart any systray processes, or just maintain a list of what should be running in the systray, but that level of recovery is well beyond MS's designers.
- Instead of the BSOD or rebooting, MS could kill an offensive process and garbage collect the resources. Again, that would require knowing how to write an OS.
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I was running Railroad Tycoon 3 and the machine suddenly rebooted.
I have not upgraded from RailroadTycoon2 yet.
The only program that BSODed my Win98SE PC more than WindowsExplorer was InternetExplorer. I've been using Mozilla for a few years, so now the only BSODs I see are when I do weird things like attempt to look at the files on the hard drive.
Eight Mile Style filed the copyright infringement suit ... At issue is an ad for Apple's iTunes pay-per-download music software, in which a 10-year-old sings Eminem's "Lose Yourself."
I agree. If a 10-year-old is singing the song, then it is a new performance (unless Eminem has a time machine.) To use Eminem's song for a new performance requires "mechanical rights", which are automatically granted for a set fee. Mechanical rights are applied for selling something that includes the copyright (but not perfomances) of an artist. I believe that should apply to advertising that does not include the artist's performance, but IANAL.
Most songs are handled by the The Harry Fox Agency (HFA). Eminem has 50 songs listed at Songfile.com, which is HFA's online license application for low volume use. The list does not include "Lose Yourself". If the song is not handled by HFA, then you must contact the publisher directly.
There is a lawsuit, so somebody believes they had the right to tell Apple they could not use lyrics in a commercial. But it is not about a "sample", because Apple did not use a "sample" of Eminem's performance.
Orson Scott Card and Spider Robinson are the only living authors that I will buy as full-price hardcovers. I buy most of my hardcovers at Atlantic Books for $2-$6. Almost the only paperbacks I buy are Robert Asprin, since they are rarely released as hardcovers. I do have a few of the Myth series as hardcovers, but they were difficult to find.
I just got around to reading all of OSC's Alvin Maker series. I will be reading "Crystal City" tonight. I had read the first 2 books before the others were published. I did not realize that "Red Prophet" was hard to find. (I have 2 copies.) It is good story-telling, internally consistent, and I keep researching the real people from history to see how OSC modified them for the series. The series is alternate historical fantasy, but does meet the definition of science fiction. Just do not expect anything to do with space travel.
- The Ender series is required reading for every nerd, particularly "Ender's Game". "Ender's Shadow" and its sequels offer an expansion on the original story, and are better written, but you should read "Ender's Game" first. They do have some space travel.
Greg Bear's "Eon" and "Eternity" are original. He sometimes used 20 pages to cover what could have been one, and switched between characters without purpose, but his originality makes the books worth it. He is one of the hard-core science fiction writers, where the science must make sense, so that adds some of the long explanantions.
Gordon R. Dickson never seems to be mentioned on Slashdot. His Chantry Guild series is incredible, and his storytelling keeps improving. "Dorsai", "Soldier, Ask Not" and other early books contain great short stories. He switched to writing full novels. "Other" is one of the latest books, and one of the best. Many of his other books are insightful, original, and/or just fun. For fun, see "The Right to Arm Bears". Most of his books deal with social conditions on other planets.
I read Larry Niven's "Rainbow Mars" last week. This is a time-travel and weird technology book, not a typical "Mars" book. The title story is placed first, even though it happens after the other stories, so read it last. Most of Niven's other books are classics.
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Please use Preview to remind yourself to add line breaks. Capitalizing "I" when it is used as a pronoun is common practice. Your post was informative, but very difficult to read.
Google already took googlegear.com from its originial owners. I started buying from them because googlegear.com was always with a few percent of the lowest price for computer hardware on several of the best-price-search websites. The first time I saw the site, I looked for anything that suggested they were connected to Google-the-Search-Engine, but the fonts and everything else was very different. A disclaimer might have been nice, but may have gained them the trouble with Google even sooner.
Googlegear.com sent all customers a notice that their web site was changing to ZipZoomFly.com. Awful name, but they still have the best prices, and friends have returned parts easily. (One bought an Intel CPU and a motherboard for an AMD processor. I was there to help put it together, saw the shipping list, and told him it would not work.)
Now, WHOIS Googlegear.com shows the same information as the other Google sites. The site opens a page on google.com explaining the name change, with a link to the new site. It looks like Google was just protecting their trademark, and is not taking advantage of the goodwill from the previous owners.
WHOIS ZipZoomFly.com has contacts with email addresses @googlegear.com. I wonder if the mail is being redirected by Google, or if these addresses are broken.
I thought Sam Rockwell did an incredible job in Charlie's Angels.
[Spoiler]For an action movie about watching beautiful women, he was great transforming from innocent victim to evil mastermind.[/Spoiler]
- It was the first (and still only) time I had seen him act, and I wondered how he did so well if it was his first production, but IMDB shows an impressive resume starting in 1988. I think he will do great with Zaphod's completely-strange-but-said-naturally lines.
Weird Al does attempt to contact the artists he is parodying, but parody is acceptable under copyright law.
Coolio included a sample as well as a rewrite, so he must have gotten permission.
Reference website.
Cover songs are covered under a mechanical license. The artist cannot stop you from covering their song.
Samples require the permission of the publisher and the owner of the master. They set the terms, so they can easily charge enough to make it infeasible.
From the copyright office:
There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.
I know that chord progressions cannot be copyrighted, or all combinations of I-IV-V would have been eliminated long ago. But I would not use Star Wars' Imperial March without disguising it. The similarity argument rests on
amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The only case I remember was Bon Jovi suing and winning for one line of "Living on a Prayer", but I cannot find a reference. They won because the line was the same words and melody in the chorus. (I think it was "We're halfway there".)
If "On Top of Old Smokey" was not public domain, we would not have "Chariots of Fire". Restaurants write their own (awful) birthday songs to avoid paying for "Happy Birthday" written in 1893.
I wonder that melody is considered so important, since every singer applies very different melodies to my songs. I usually write 2 melodies for each song for my own singing so I can change depending if my voice has warmed up. Live versions usually have different melodies than the studio versions. I saw Britney Spears do "Baby One More Time" in a medley on TV once, and the melody was very different than the radio version. (I think it was because the TV version was live and only had one note.)
Today it is up to the artist to notice that someone released a very similar song. "Melancholy Elephants" refers to a world where the copyrights are checked against existing music before being issued. Given the patent office's reluctance to do anything resembling work, we should not have to worry about automatic copyright validation, but it would be much easier to validate music with computers than patents.
I think we agree on the major points. I want the return of reasonable time limits to copyright protection. Software patents are counter to the purpose of patents. The world was better when software was considered mathematical algorithms that could not be patented. Does anybody believe that software patents are encouraging progress?
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The nature of the music industry for the past century was that to distribute your music, you had to deal with the distributors, and they are an oligopoly that forced the artists to give up their rights.
Have you read the short story "Melancholy Elephants" (C)1984 Spider Robinson? It was released free on the web, but baen.com seems to be down. Humans have very limited ideas about what sounds good, and we will run out of them. I am very careful that each of my songs is unique. I get upset when I hear something that sounds much like one of my songs. I was extremely angry at a friend when he played me "Welcome to the Jungle" because I thought his band was stealing my music. (I forgave him when he convinced me it was not his band and they were from the other coast, but I still discarded the music.) The worst compliment is "That sounds like that song by so-and-so" because that means my song may not be truly original.
"Oops I did it again" was written by Max Martin and Rami and released in 2000. Do we have to wait 50 years past their deaths to be able to create a song that is similar? Or is the copyright owned by an immortal corporation? Someday someone may want to use words or melody similar to "Oops, I did it again". They will not be allowed to distribute it until the copyright laws are changed. It is not about having to pay for THIS song. It is that we have lost the ability to create anything similar to this song.
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I write software, music, lyrics, and books. Much of my life is based on IP. I decided in the 1980s that publishing music under the terms allowed by the music industry was bad for me. The only music I have downloaded was provided free on the artists' websites, except for a Dave Matthews song provided by Yahoo. My interest in copyrights is as a producer, not as a consumer.
Is IP something that the creator has the right to control, or should it be in the public domain?
Copyright was created so that other people would not profit from an artist's work without compensating the artist. The time period was limited so all work would enter public domain in about a generation.
Today, copyright is used to keep work under the control of corporations. The period has increased to 50 years past the death of the author. Corporations do not die. I do not want Disney hit-squads coming for me because I wrote a book for which they want to make a movie someday. I want to be able to integrate the works of my grandparent's generation into my own efforts. (Oops, my song used 2 lines from Elvis or the Beatles. Here comes the lawsuit.) I want my grandchildren to be able to write a story or song without worrying that it is similar to any work that was written after Steamboat Willy.
The free distribution of works without generating profits is happening. Fiction and reference materials are already available. Music is available, but some countries (the US) allow the profit seeking companies to terrorize the people who use the modern methods for no-profit distribution. It is not whether music will be distributed for free; it is about how much harm the dying industry will cause before disappearing.
I will be releasing my songs under a license that states they may be shared for any purpose that cannot be connected with benefit to others beyond enjoyment of the music. I believe the legal eagles are creating a similar license. Eventually most music will be released this way.
creators are perfectly free to release their IP for free distribution
Much of recent music is controlled by a few companies that will not open their catalogs, and that hurts humanity. One century of music that will never be free. One century of music that can never be used again. Our descendants are going to curse the Twentieth Century until they revolt.
* Artistic license about calling it a century. Actual period = ~1930 to ~2010 AD.
My post was specific to music. Music is a medium where more awareness means more sales. That does not apply to any other type of IP.
I break IP into several categories. Each has a different purpose. Each SHOULD have separate laws. The US legal system tries to group most of them together, then have exceptions for a variety of situations. I believe they should be defined separately, and then laws can be made to deal with each. My categories and opinions are:
1. Sound recordings, typically music.
- The creation is done by a very small group of people. The production is handled by a slightly larger, but still small number of people over hours or days.
- Awareness sells. The more you hear a song, the more you will like it. Distribution was the main cost, but technology has effectively lowered it to zero. An individual will play a song many times, and if it is popular enough, it will be used in profit generating settings.
- Laws should encourage distribution where no money is involved, but require payment in all profit generating settings.
2. Visual recordings, typically movies and TV shows.
- Creation may be handled by small teams. Production requires large and expensive teams for months. TV revenues come from paid subscriptions. Movie revenues come from theaters and home purchases/rentals.
- Most video is watched once per person. A few may be watched many times by a small minority. The home market developed because the movie theater was (and still is) an incredibly poor experience. Too many other people in very uncomfortable seats = no comfort, privacy, or control. The home experience solves these issues, but most people do not want to own the movies; they will rent them to watch once. A second viewing usually happens only when a visitor expresses interest.
- On-demand viewing is the preferred method of delivery. People are willing to rent video from a store. Time-shifting technology is incredibly popular for TV.
- Large production costs. Limited viewing because of the time investment by the consumer. The industry should improve and capitalize the market they control if they want to survive. Change the theaters to have comfortable box seats so you do not see your neighbors, and keep the movies in the theater for more than 2 months to avoid the "I'll see it on video" syndrome. Couches with private (but very large) screens that can be paused, and movies that will only be available in the theater for at least one year, will revitalize that industry. There would be more choices, and start times are whenever your entire group is there. The home video market will still be there next year; it does not need to and should not attempt to capitalize on the promotion of the theater release.
3. Text for entertainment, books of fiction.
- Creation and production handled by a very small group.
- Most people read a book once. Electronic distribution can be free, but the current generation of people prefer paper. The next generation may prefer to read on a portable electronic device.
- The small cost of production and willingness of people to give away their work may kill the industry. Popular artists will sell paper-based copies for some time, but expect this industry to be overrun by amateurs. Laws cannot protect anybody if the majority of work is priced zero.
4. Text for information
- Creation and production handled by a very small group.
- Used as on-demand reference. Many people just use free sites on the web. Will encyclopedias and other references just disappear? Is there a method to make any money by providing information as a web service?
- This industry may be doomed. I doubt any laws can save it.
5. Ideas
- This is handled by patents, not copyrights. The current system is broken, because there are no tests before a patent is granted, and the patent office assumes the legal system will decide if the patent should be valid. Since patents are expensive, this gives a very large advantage to large companies that have the money to buy them. The system would be greatly improved if there was a period of public review, such as used for trademarks.
I already posted in this thread with some ideas relevant here.
I do not want to "give away my copyrights." I want to profit when someone uses my work for profit. If the Eagles record a performance of my song, then they pay me as the songwriter. Why would I want to stop them from using my work? I will probably sell more copies of my own performance because people are interested in hearing the "original".
- If someone uses a sample of my performance, then I get money for my performance. Due to our weird laws, if they did not negotiate with me before using it, then they may owe me more than they made from using the sample. Usually it would be in my interest to encourage them to use my music since then I make some money. Forcing the album to be pulled, or charging so much that they will stop selling it does not generate income for me.
Music equipment is expensive. (My new Schecter guitar was $700, but I also want an all-rosewood PRS guitar that costs ~$2400.) The ability to make music that people want to hear is rare. Both deserve to be compensated when music is played for profit. But music file-sharing is free advertising, and does not directly generate profits. Claiming "lost" sales for an action where no money is involved seems ridiculous. The hardest part of the music industry is getting people to know your music exists. More advertising = more money. Period. Discouraging people from hearing your music is self-destructive.
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there goes my chance to mod any posts in this thread
I just received my 4th set of mod points since Friday, and have completely forgotten which threads I have modded. I wish Slashdot had a mark letting me know I modded a thread so I wouldn't post later. And no, I have not been able to use all the points before I get another set.
I go to a customers site as a computer consultant. As I am fixing whatever is wrong, the IT people are there taking notes of everything that I do. Now, I am no longer called when that problem arises. Have they "stolen" something from me or made my services any less valuable? Short answer, no.
This often happens to me. I am called to troubleshoot specific issues. I do the work, and IT people follow me and take note of every change. If the problem recurs, they know how to fix it without calling me.
This is offset because the training is included in my price. (I cost about 3 times the going rate for a normal consultant in my field.) I know before I arrive that they are going to do this. Sometimes the contract even specifies that there will be "knowledge transfer". This usually means there will be a period of Q&A so the IT people can ask about issues unrelated to the problem I was hired to fix. Sometimes it means I have to give a lecture. Either way, I am paid for my time.
The fun part is that the fulltime IT people may gain "knowledge", but they do not gain my experience. They now know how to fix specific issues. When something goes wrong, they try to do what I did last time, even if it is not appropriate to the current solution. They have the recipe for cooking a cake, but are applying it to cooking a steak. The results may be edible, but usually not what was expected.
The good part is that these attempts make me look good. When their attempts cause enough damage, I will be called again to fix the new problem. I often make more money because I have to fix the problems they caused by attempting an inappropriate solution.
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This also applies for development. Last week, I was sent some code that a client wanted to put into production. The code itself was awful. Several variables were defined without being used. Another variable was used to recreate one of the parameters. The function would corrupt data. The code would not run under many circumstances because it did not respect the security system (which could not be bypassed.)
- I have dealt with this functionality before and have a standard algorithm that solves it and avoids the security issues. It would have cost less if they had paid me to implement it than it cost for me to review this code.
(This client usually calls me before attempting something in-house so I tell them about any dangers, and if I feel the in-house developers can handle it. This particular case had political issues that meant we had to let their developer try before I was given the assignment.)
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The point is that many companies see consultants as costly specialists to be avoided if possible. Make certain your price is high enough to include the costs the "knowledge transfer". There are several companies that use me for 2 weeks each year specifically so their fulltimers can benefit from my experience; the fulltimers greet me with lists of difficult issues. I benefit from the "consistent" work; the companies benefit from the incredible productivity during and after each of my visits.
=== Back to the main topic
If I write a song, I expect to be compensated when that song generates any profit. If I record my performance of a song, I expect to be compensated when use of that recording generates a profit. It is a profit-generating performance for which I expect compensation if:
- you expect money for the performance.
(Cover bands, DJs, street players with a hat in front of them.)
- you play it for people who have paid to be there.
(Any place with a charge at the door: dance clubs, sporting events)
- people are expected to spend money there.
(clubs without cover charges, any store.)
- people are expected to spend money on other things, but my song added to the experience.
(Radio or websites with advertisements.)
If you are playing my song for friends (who did not pay for the priviledge), or are distributing it through file-sharing (with a program that does not ha
QBasic is included with MSWindows95 through MSWindows98SE. (I do not have a WinME CD for obvious reasons.) QBasic is not an option during install. The WIN98SE CD has QBASIC.EXE and QBASIC.HLP in the /TOOLS/OLDMSDOS directory. DELTREE, XCOPY, and HELP (for MSDOS commands) are also there.
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I write most of my Java in Wordpad. I use Eclipse to check for improvements, but I have yet to become comfortable generating code with the IDE. I was using Notepad, but the lack of a Replace function made me convert.
- Isn't replaceSubstring() taught in Programming 101? Notepad is how old? And nobody at MS has the ability to add one simple control?
- java.lang.String does not have a replaceSubstring() either.
I use (text-based) vi for Unix and Linux. When I started with Unix, Emacs was new and was not guaranteed to be installed. I only wanted to learn one, so vi was the best choice.
I have yet to find a decent GUI text editor on Linux. Trying to delete and enter new text in config files drives me crazy. I usually open a terminal and use vi. The terminals have trouble with the DEL and BACKSPACE keys. There must be a better method.