Technically didn't the U2 iPod come with a certificate or discount allowing you up to $x toward purchasing U2's digital box set? So actually it was a physical product that contained...nothing, except a promise to help you buy something else.
Third, it might help managers to scuttle thinking that says "if you are a manager and do ____, you probably should not be managing" especially if one of the questions involves "how do I be a better manager for a group of (geeks/women/african americans/germans/single fathers/etc)?" I dread the thought of working for a manager who isn't interested in becoming a better manager and/or isn't responsive to the multitude of differences--cultural or otherwise. Note I said "responsive" and not necessarily "competent". Cultural competence is a fools game, but humanist responsiveness is very very valuable.
Personally, I think that's the most interesting thing about her so far. It's kinda fun, and it's clever that this makes the news. I think there's nothing wrong with finding a so-called "techie" angle, particularly on slashdot. Frankly, it's way more interesting than whatever CNN might be cooking up. "Miers is inexperienced" "Miers is unknown" "Conservatives don't like Miers, liberals cautiously optimistic". Blah de blah. But dang, this woman's legal maneuvering gave us DOS 6.2! Maybe she could tell us how to fix the blue screen of death, who knows? Top THAT Justice Scalia! (Actually, this raises an interesting point: to work in that area of the law, Miers probably had to be more conversant in computers than the 8 men & women currently serving on the high court. Perhaps the 21st century needs some tech-savvy judges. Though if she's worked for the Dark Prince its very self... then she's more like biz-savvy...)
Besides, isn't "black female conservative christian libertarian daughter of a sharecropper" your own version of a pigeon hole? Granted it's not the shortest shorthand, but that's a pretty descriptive designation which paints a fairly graphic picture. Some people (like me, for example) would oppose a conservative Christian whatever their gender or ethnicity. Though I'd be interested to see a true libertarian on the bench, for historical purposes, the other parts of the "package" you've described so succinctly would put me off.
Case 1: "That night, you instead set up a video camera on your seat, so you can time shift your viewing of the movie. Are you entitled to do that? No."
Sure. But you're not purchasing the "ability to view the movie" you're purchasing use of the seat at that time, and are not permitted to "time shift". A CD does not have a time stamp on it and one is not purchasing a one-time use.
Case II: "You buy some ephedrine, some lithuim batteries, some drano and some Acetone. They are your property to use as you wish. You decide to whip up a batch of Crack. Are you allowed to do this? NO."
Crack is a variant of cocaine. None of the ingredients you purchase contain cocaine. So, no. No power in the world permits you to make crack from these ingredients, even if the law did. Are you thinking meth, perhaps?
I appreciate the cuteness of these guys' efforts. But really the homebrew culture has practiced free and/or open source values for a good 30 years. In homebrewing circles, what I've noticed is a huge number of true hackers working in both hardware and software (equipment, recipes) and something else--methods and techniques. It's this last that I feel is the most "free." It gives the willing learner or enthusiastic amateur serious tools to make really world class beer through better knowledge of the various factors involved. This knowledge transfer circumvents--even disrupts--the whole copyright/IP issue.
Lots of people, myself included, recommend John Palmer's book on how to brew. It's available online for anyone to read. Since he's kept the copyright, clearly noted on the home page, it's only "free as in beer." But it embraces so much learning that a person could walk away from it, make several dozen batches of beer and write their own dang book. Then they could open source that if they really had the gumption to, I suppose.
But the point is, there's so much practical knowledge available online for free that anyone can become a brewer, and they subsequently couldn't be stopped from teaching other people how to brew--either through direct contact or through an open source/GPL/Creative Commons licensed document of their own. Functionally, that seems about as "free as in speech" as something can be.
I basically had to cheat to pass my high school chemistry final and was only moderately decent at things like physics. But I'm now quite a bit more comfortable with water chemistry, thermodynamics, electrical engineering, the chemistry involved in starch conversion, the biology of yeasts and microbial life forms, etc. All on a very practical level. And with a noble goal, too!
There's a lot of great hackers in the beer world and they're not being particularly protective or proprietary about their methods. It's a pretty impressive hack to look at a 10 gallon water cooler and say, "Hey I could use that for holding 10 pounds of ground malted grain and 1.2 qt of hot water per pound for 60 minutes at about 152F. If someone did that, heck, all those starches in the malted grain would probably turn into sugars. Then if I've thought ahead and built a manifold inside that cooler that outlets thru where the spigot used to be, I could drain out just the water and sugar into a big pot on my stove. Boil with some hops, cool, add yeast and keep everything sanitary... I gotta tell a bunch of other guys on the internet about this!" Hack complete, information shared with the world, copyrights never get involved. Sure you can buy a Phil's Phalse Bottom for convenience and there's a place for that kind of "licensed hardware" but if you wanted it, the info is out there to DIY. The knowledge is loose, and there's not much can be done about it. The information wanted to be free pretty badly, and for good reason! (40-80 cents per 12 oz. serving of beer that rivals Guinness, Paulaner or SNPA? I'm all over finding out about that!)
wow. That was like the most rewarding post on slashdot I've read all year, no joking (also a very humane story). We were just having this discussion about our two year old and "age appropriate" toys last night and now I have a way to think about it that's very insightful.
I thought of it as a laughable term but I'm not very good at using scare quotes to show that I'm "in on the joke". Schoolyard piracy is the term from the article.
I mean, are they harvesting the names of these people who request the 'hot backdoor action' and storing them for later use?
This seems a little disturbing- for the first time they're admitting they're not trying to stop big pirate-mills but slow down the consumer? Why does Sony still sell blank CDs, blank minidiscs and blank audio cassettes then? That's a hypothetical question: I mean, I know they make money off it, that's why they sell it. But they continue to distribute the tools of schoolyard piracy, why spend any more time concocting the latest protection scheme? What a waste of employees.
Except there are legitimate reasons to want to optimize a site for a search engine. If I make a product that's good, let's say a cool customizable flyswatter and I want people to find my product, I want to make it rank well in the search engines.
In order to make that happen, I sit down and think real hard about what my customer or potential customer might be looking for. Obviously "custom flyswatter" is a priority. I don't have to work hard to optimize my site to demonstrate it's an authoritative site for that search term, since that's what I sell (theoretically--I don't actually sell flyswatters).
But also maybe there's a customer out there who can't think of the word "customizable" or they want a "personalized" flyswatter. Well, I can probably speak with some authority on the subject of why it might be worthwhile to personalize your flyswatter and why you would want to buy this theoretical personalized flyswatter from my business. So I add content that reflects this to my site. Is this evil? Is this snake oil? No, it's search engine optimization and it's legitimate.
Why would it be my fault if a) google's algorithm is artificially stupid and doesn't see the similarity between "customizable" and "personalized", for example; or if b) an end user wants to be able to find something in their way that gets them to a satisfactory product; or c) everyone is too lazy to look anywhere but the top 10 (and really just top 4) listings on google?
I think link farms are shite, but they're not the only work done by SEOs. Optimizing your content to make it easier to find isn't snake oil hucksterism, it's good business-- it shows you've given consideration to what the customer is looking for and can provide a product or service that fits their needs.
This may be your experience, but it isn't applicable universally. At our company we strive not to place undue assumptions/expectations on either non-parents or parents. When I go early to deal with an unforeseen childcare issue or take my daughter to the doctor, I'm expected to fill out a PTO form. When my single, child-free coworker leaves early to play golf he has to do the same. (The golf scenario is increasingly common as the weather gets warm--none of your child-free employees has ever made more work for the others?).
I can appreciate your annoyance if your company doesn't use PTO and instead has that whole "sick time"/"vacation" thing working to foment suspicion between coworkers (it inevitably does). But I'm not sure you picked the right way to vent that spleen of yours-- are you mad at George Lucas or all of us irresponsible breeders? both? your company? neither? what, exactly?
I disagree. I thought the portrayal of the editor was very well done. The way they made him look kind of like a stiff jerk at the start, but then as Stephen Glass' shortcomings became obvious, the way they "redeemed" the character in light of Glass' weaknesses.
I watched the commentary on the DVD and I thought the director etc were very respectful of the tough place that editor was in and how hard it would be to portray him sympathetically.
Don't you know nothin? Blessed Leader Bush could tell you (as any five year old knows), The One True God(TM) created the universe in six days. Ergo, no dinosaurs crushed into oil in a 70 million year process. Ergo, no fossils makin' that oil. Q.E.D.
There may be fossils on Mars, but rest assured, Satan put them there to confuse scientists and weaker "moderates" into unbelief.
However, the presence of methane could indicate a large fuel air explosive testing field or some other weapon of mass destruction. Naturally, we must protect the homeland. Better to have our boys die in the cold deserts of Mars than find the smoking gun to be a mile high methane explosion in Topeka. Time to cowboy up.
NASA's 'The Highway in the Sky.' It is a computer system designed to let millions of people fly whenever they please, and take off and land from wherever they please, in their very own vehicles."
Some kind of computer system... or net-work, perhaps...for keeping an eye on the sky and keeping the sky safe for personal flyers? Like a Skynet of some kind?
That's it, if we're giving MIT prizes to scientists who are helping the Machines, what's the point of going on? I say we find this guy, and get Linda Hamilton to take him out. It's the only way to be sure.
Well, right now the address book only imports LDIF and vCards. That pissed me off a great deal, so knowing that.csv is going to be supported is important to me. As it stands, that's one of my top 5 "New Features" (..eatures...eatures...) in this release. Thanks for the great news!
yesss. How old do you think the average/. poster is, anyway? Does "first grade" mean something different where you come from? Cuz I was in first grade for 'Empire' and I don't actually remember a media frenzy around 'Jedi's' title.
I do recall some amusement at the twin "controversies" around "Gosh did we name it too similar to Star Trek II?" or "Gosh maybe we should change Star Trek II to 'wrath' instead of 'vengeance.'" Then if I recall, there followed plenty of geek arguments about which came first.
Hail to our powerful new gods from beneath the sea!
Also, I seem to remember a Harlan Ellison story about the "last man on earth" and about a 9 million year reign of sentient octopuses long after humanity faded...
Treat me like I'm stupid for a moment. I'm a tad confused. How many points do we put on this graph? You put a point at 100 and one at 50, even if you put that point anywhere above the x-axis, you're still only talking about 2 points. If one draws a line between two points, it's pretty much not going to be curved. Do you mean 4 points? one each at (100,0) (50,0) (100,A) (50, B)?
Perhaps you could put a link to a picture of what this curve looks like in your mind, since I'm not sure I have enough information to plot it myself.
I preach for money. (many churches look to seminary students or former seminary student to do fill in preaching - they call it pulpit supply - when a pastor is on vacation) I've been tempted to put together a business card with that side job on it, "Serving God and mammon since 1997."
Also, I work in a children's home. The overnight shift at the home allows me to work online during downtime.
And then sometimes I do the freelance gig too. Who doesn't?
Slashdot Mirror
Technically didn't the U2 iPod come with a certificate or discount allowing you up to $x toward purchasing U2's digital box set? So actually it was a physical product that contained ...nothing, except a promise to help you buy something else.
I could be misremembering.
Third, it might help managers to scuttle thinking that says "if you are a manager and do ____, you probably should not be managing" especially if one of the questions involves "how do I be a better manager for a group of (geeks/women/african americans/germans/single fathers/etc)?" I dread the thought of working for a manager who isn't interested in becoming a better manager and/or isn't responsive to the multitude of differences--cultural or otherwise. Note I said "responsive" and not necessarily "competent". Cultural competence is a fools game, but humanist responsiveness is very very valuable.
Personally, I think that's the most interesting thing about her so far. It's kinda fun, and it's clever that this makes the news. I think there's nothing wrong with finding a so-called "techie" angle, particularly on slashdot. Frankly, it's way more interesting than whatever CNN might be cooking up. "Miers is inexperienced" "Miers is unknown" "Conservatives don't like Miers, liberals cautiously optimistic". Blah de blah. But dang, this woman's legal maneuvering gave us DOS 6.2! Maybe she could tell us how to fix the blue screen of death, who knows? Top THAT Justice Scalia! (Actually, this raises an interesting point: to work in that area of the law, Miers probably had to be more conversant in computers than the 8 men & women currently serving on the high court. Perhaps the 21st century needs some tech-savvy judges. Though if she's worked for the Dark Prince its very self... then she's more like biz-savvy...)
Besides, isn't "black female conservative christian libertarian daughter of a sharecropper" your own version of a pigeon hole? Granted it's not the shortest shorthand, but that's a pretty descriptive designation which paints a fairly graphic picture. Some people (like me, for example) would oppose a conservative Christian whatever their gender or ethnicity. Though I'd be interested to see a true libertarian on the bench, for historical purposes, the other parts of the "package" you've described so succinctly would put me off.
I guess I thought that was Googve.
Case 1: "That night, you instead set up a video camera on your seat, so you can time shift your viewing of the movie. Are you entitled to do that? No."
Sure. But you're not purchasing the "ability to view the movie" you're purchasing use of the seat at that time, and are not permitted to "time shift". A CD does not have a time stamp on it and one is not purchasing a one-time use.
Case II: "You buy some ephedrine, some lithuim batteries, some drano and some Acetone. They are your property to use as you wish. You decide to whip up a batch of Crack. Are you allowed to do this? NO."
Crack is a variant of cocaine. None of the ingredients you purchase contain cocaine. So, no. No power in the world permits you to make crack from these ingredients, even if the law did. Are you thinking meth, perhaps?
Your other examples are fine I guess.
...than free as in speech.
I appreciate the cuteness of these guys' efforts. But really the homebrew culture has practiced free and/or open source values for a good 30 years. In homebrewing circles, what I've noticed is a huge number of true hackers working in both hardware and software (equipment, recipes) and something else--methods and techniques. It's this last that I feel is the most "free." It gives the willing learner or enthusiastic amateur serious tools to make really world class beer through better knowledge of the various factors involved. This knowledge transfer circumvents--even disrupts--the whole copyright/IP issue.
Lots of people, myself included, recommend John Palmer's book on how to brew. It's available online for anyone to read. Since he's kept the copyright, clearly noted on the home page, it's only "free as in beer." But it embraces so much learning that a person could walk away from it, make several dozen batches of beer and write their own dang book. Then they could open source that if they really had the gumption to, I suppose.
But the point is, there's so much practical knowledge available online for free that anyone can become a brewer, and they subsequently couldn't be stopped from teaching other people how to brew--either through direct contact or through an open source/GPL/Creative Commons licensed document of their own. Functionally, that seems about as "free as in speech" as something can be.
I basically had to cheat to pass my high school chemistry final and was only moderately decent at things like physics. But I'm now quite a bit more comfortable with water chemistry, thermodynamics, electrical engineering, the chemistry involved in starch conversion, the biology of yeasts and microbial life forms, etc. All on a very practical level. And with a noble goal, too!
There's a lot of great hackers in the beer world and they're not being particularly protective or proprietary about their methods. It's a pretty impressive hack to look at a 10 gallon water cooler and say, "Hey I could use that for holding 10 pounds of ground malted grain and 1.2 qt of hot water per pound for 60 minutes at about 152F. If someone did that, heck, all those starches in the malted grain would probably turn into sugars. Then if I've thought ahead and built a manifold inside that cooler that outlets thru where the spigot used to be, I could drain out just the water and sugar into a big pot on my stove. Boil with some hops, cool, add yeast and keep everything sanitary... I gotta tell a bunch of other guys on the internet about this!" Hack complete, information shared with the world, copyrights never get involved. Sure you can buy a Phil's Phalse Bottom for convenience and there's a place for that kind of "licensed hardware" but if you wanted it, the info is out there to DIY. The knowledge is loose, and there's not much can be done about it. The information wanted to be free pretty badly, and for good reason! (40-80 cents per 12 oz. serving of beer that rivals Guinness, Paulaner or SNPA? I'm all over finding out about that!)
wow. That was like the most rewarding post on slashdot I've read all year, no joking (also a very humane story). We were just having this discussion about our two year old and "age appropriate" toys last night and now I have a way to think about it that's very insightful.
yeah, but come on. that rusty barbed wire is a HUGE pipe. the throughput on that alone crushes fiber.
I thought Omni was the magazine of the thinking pornographer.
Prefiguring the confluence of nerd and porn, the Gucciones published both Omni & Penthouse. It's like the internet, in magazine form.
I thought of it as a laughable term but I'm not very good at using scare quotes to show that I'm "in on the joke". Schoolyard piracy is the term from the article.
I mean, are they harvesting the names of these people who request the 'hot backdoor action' and storing them for later use?
This seems a little disturbing- for the first time they're admitting they're not trying to stop big pirate-mills but slow down the consumer? Why does Sony still sell blank CDs, blank minidiscs and blank audio cassettes then? That's a hypothetical question: I mean, I know they make money off it, that's why they sell it. But they continue to distribute the tools of schoolyard piracy, why spend any more time concocting the latest protection scheme? What a waste of employees.
Except there are legitimate reasons to want to optimize a site for a search engine. If I make a product that's good, let's say a cool customizable flyswatter and I want people to find my product, I want to make it rank well in the search engines.
In order to make that happen, I sit down and think real hard about what my customer or potential customer might be looking for. Obviously "custom flyswatter" is a priority. I don't have to work hard to optimize my site to demonstrate it's an authoritative site for that search term, since that's what I sell (theoretically--I don't actually sell flyswatters).
But also maybe there's a customer out there who can't think of the word "customizable" or they want a "personalized" flyswatter. Well, I can probably speak with some authority on the subject of why it might be worthwhile to personalize your flyswatter and why you would want to buy this theoretical personalized flyswatter from my business. So I add content that reflects this to my site. Is this evil? Is this snake oil? No, it's search engine optimization and it's legitimate.
Why would it be my fault if a) google's algorithm is artificially stupid and doesn't see the similarity between "customizable" and "personalized", for example; or if b) an end user wants to be able to find something in their way that gets them to a satisfactory product; or c) everyone is too lazy to look anywhere but the top 10 (and really just top 4) listings on google?
I think link farms are shite, but they're not the only work done by SEOs. Optimizing your content to make it easier to find isn't snake oil hucksterism, it's good business-- it shows you've given consideration to what the customer is looking for and can provide a product or service that fits their needs.
Or maybe instead you could google for Bruce Sterling's lecture on spimes at Max Weber's, where he made that same joke last December?
archived at iconic-turn
This may be your experience, but it isn't applicable universally. At our company we strive not to place undue assumptions/expectations on either non-parents or parents. When I go early to deal with an unforeseen childcare issue or take my daughter to the doctor, I'm expected to fill out a PTO form. When my single, child-free coworker leaves early to play golf he has to do the same. (The golf scenario is increasingly common as the weather gets warm--none of your child-free employees has ever made more work for the others?).
I can appreciate your annoyance if your company doesn't use PTO and instead has that whole "sick time"/"vacation" thing working to foment suspicion between coworkers (it inevitably does). But I'm not sure you picked the right way to vent that spleen of yours-- are you mad at George Lucas or all of us irresponsible breeders? both? your company? neither? what, exactly?
I disagree. I thought the portrayal of the editor was very well done. The way they made him look kind of like a stiff jerk at the start, but then as Stephen Glass' shortcomings became obvious, the way they "redeemed" the character in light of Glass' weaknesses.
I watched the commentary on the DVD and I thought the director etc were very respectful of the tough place that editor was in and how hard it would be to portray him sympathetically.
Yeah, I mean, Stephen Glass wrote a novel didn't he? So he's still getting paid despite unethical journalism...
at least you had an inside for your grass clippings to be outside of
Don't you know nothin? Blessed Leader Bush could tell you (as any five year old knows), The One True God(TM) created the universe in six days. Ergo, no dinosaurs crushed into oil in a 70 million year process. Ergo, no fossils makin' that oil. Q.E.D.
There may be fossils on Mars, but rest assured, Satan put them there to confuse scientists and weaker "moderates" into unbelief.
However, the presence of methane could indicate a large fuel air explosive testing field or some other weapon of mass destruction. Naturally, we must protect the homeland. Better to have our boys die in the cold deserts of Mars than find the smoking gun to be a mile high methane explosion in Topeka. Time to cowboy up.
Some kind of computer system... or net-work, perhaps...for keeping an eye on the sky and keeping the sky safe for personal flyers? Like a Skynet of some kind?
That's it, if we're giving MIT prizes to scientists who are helping the Machines, what's the point of going on? I say we find this guy, and get Linda Hamilton to take him out. It's the only way to be sure.
Well, right now the address book only imports LDIF and vCards. That pissed me off a great deal, so knowing that .csv is going to be supported is important to me. As it stands, that's one of my top 5 "New Features" (..eatures...eatures...) in this release. Thanks for the great news!
yesss. How old do you think the average /. poster is, anyway? Does "first grade" mean something different where you come from? Cuz I was in first grade for 'Empire' and I don't actually remember a media frenzy around 'Jedi's' title.
I do recall some amusement at the twin "controversies" around "Gosh did we name it too similar to Star Trek II?" or "Gosh maybe we should change Star Trek II to 'wrath' instead of 'vengeance.'" Then if I recall, there followed plenty of geek arguments about which came first.
I have manboobs. I don't mind manboobs. What if the shooter also had a thing for manboobs? Besides, I would shoot back if I got shot at.
Hail to our powerful new gods from beneath the sea!
Also, I seem to remember a Harlan Ellison story about the "last man on earth" and about a 9 million year reign of sentient octopuses long after humanity faded...
Treat me like I'm stupid for a moment. I'm a tad confused. How many points do we put on this graph? You put a point at 100 and one at 50, even if you put that point anywhere above the x-axis, you're still only talking about 2 points. If one draws a line between two points, it's pretty much not going to be curved. Do you mean 4 points? one each at (100,0) (50,0) (100,A) (50, B)?
Perhaps you could put a link to a picture of what this curve looks like in your mind, since I'm not sure I have enough information to plot it myself.
I preach for money. (many churches look to seminary students or former seminary student to do fill in preaching - they call it pulpit supply - when a pastor is on vacation) I've been tempted to put together a business card with that side job on it, "Serving God and mammon since 1997." Also, I work in a children's home. The overnight shift at the home allows me to work online during downtime. And then sometimes I do the freelance gig too. Who doesn't?