then running a W3C CSS and HTML validator and having everything check out 100 percent....why does the site now look so shitty?
Um. Maybe you haven't noticed, but MS in general and IE in particular have a long history of <South Park Voice>"I am above the law!"</South Park Voice> kinds of behavior. Need I remind everyone of the Opera "bug" in displaying the MSN homepage that was "fixed" by causing Opera to self-identify as IE? I mean, I'm in full support of you and people like you designing things to be 100% W3C-compliant, but anyone who really expects that 100% W3C site to also be 100% IE-complaint, well...this reminds me of a (supposedly Indian) proverb I once heard. "Women want hot ice". It doesn't say great things about the gender, but my point here is that you've got your W3C (ice) on one hand, and it's supposed to work with IE (hot). Answer? No.
*wild-eyed gentleman in khakis and funny hat creeps through the underbrush*
*whispering* Now, we're about to see the rare American FUD-monkey! It seldom shows its face down under, but it's very dangerous when unprovoked and somehow convinced that it owns, well...everything.
*DARL hops out from behind a bush* Crikey! That'll take your arm clean off!! *he shoots a tranquilizer dart at the DARL*
*high pitched shrieking ensues. the call of the DARL sounds remarkably like the words "pump-and-dump" repeated over and over*
internet users watch less television, read more books and engage in more social activities.
Next week, we'll hear that it's recently been discovered that internet users simply lie for the purposes of polls and statistics more than non-users do, and those that don't lie outright simply know how to crack the World Internet Project's records and alter their annual reports to be more favorable to the 'net-bound...
"A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature," Langley said. "Today he's Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he's Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he's something else. These people change their identity all the time. A picture's worth a thousand words."
"These people"?? If questioned, I'd bet money that Mr. Langley would argue that he's talking about "these [dirty communist CD pirates]", but that quote could easily be read as "these [Hispanic people]".
That's suspiciously akin to what it might look like if the US law enforcement community as a whole started to look more carefully at people of Arab descent every time a security check at an airport was called for, for instance...
Oh, wait, at least that's the actual US law enforcement, whether or not I agree with it. We're talking about the "music police" here. Can we at least use the Chewbacca Defense against this kind of FUD?
I'm sure there are actual professional types who do this sort of thing for a living, but if it were me trying to get a rough guesstimate of the risk or damage involved in a crash like that...
For starters, I'd figure the % of time that each employee, on average, spends using a PC for an important work-related task. Multiply that % by the average hourly wage of each employee, and figure that [average wage] * [hours of downtime] * [percentage of time spent using computer]= total loss. Then figure out what it costs to run that research project that requires functioning PCs for a day. Every day it's down, you've effectively lost that day's productivity. Add to that the estimated number and duration of support calls that your tech staff usually fields from students in the event of a crash ("No, the network is down. No, it won't be up in time for you to get back on KaZaa and ICQ before tonight's kegger."), then bill that at the tech staff's average rate. For lost student productivity, I have no idea...something silly like $1 per hour per student just so you can quantify the loss? But yeah, that would quickly become a large number.
But your corporate masters have already told you that a Windows environment is better, so why do you even begin to question the holy edict? TK-421, why aren't you at your post?
I'm sorry, if my teammates are groping, I'm quitting.
I am one of two males on a team of over a dozen. The other male is my boss, generally thought of as "the boss" rather than as a teammate, and my cow-orkers are pretty much all in the "hi I'm fresh out of college and my name is Bambi wanna see my old sorority house photos?" stage. Don't tell my boss this, but if my teammates are groping, I'll stay on and work more or less for free.
For a reasonable $699 license fee, I'll generously give the whole/. crew access to the website I will register shortly after the teammate groping begins.
If the phone connection were clean enough to trick people (not end-lusers, mind you, real people like/.ers) into thinking that they were on the line with someone in the US. When I call my weird uncle up in Alaska, the connection always sounds like he's picked up in the middle of a grizzly attack and we frequently talk over one another because the sound doesn't hit his ear as soon as it leaves my mouth. I make very few overseas calls, but I can only imagine that it gets worse from there, especially if the call centers get the same quality of equipment that they do staffing.
Just me, though.
RE: call centers and scripts-
Don't know if you're lumping all technical support people into that group of "call centers", but my first job out of college was in tech support (and branched out into implementation and development within a year, but I digress), and we actually supported the people who called in. Yes, we had "trees" and top 10 lists to refer to, nifty little reports that we printed out from our tracking database telling us that 98% of the calls in X category were fixed by telling the user to pick the mouse up off of the floor, but we weren't forced to follow any sort of script or format beyond what common sense dictated. We weren't a huge freakin' cube farm, either, so if it's that kind of call center you're talking about it lets me out.
So now we're going to be complaining about the Blue Sound of Death? What would that even sound like? Is it anything like one hand clapping?
Now we're in for it. I can imagine the DRM attached to an MSN music service would the most restrictive yet, allowing only one copy of each file downloaded on one PC, ever. The real run happens when the clueless user installs the latest security patch, only to find that none of their music works, and reads the fine print to discover that a PC is defined as "the unique collection of hardware, software, and specific Windows version that exists at the time of each music download". Don't like it? Well, if you had never stolen that music and put J.Lo out on the streets, this never would have happened, Bobby. Now, pony up for another copy of that track and we'll call it even, and might not even send Lars and Mungo to your house for a visit...say, would you like to buy a Longhorn upgrade?
I found this on The RIAA's website, an article I skimmed while looking for their take on these "facts" as reported by CNN. At the bottom of the article, I saw the following (emphasis is mine):
The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA(R) members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.
The Anti-Piracy division of the RIAA investigates the illegal production and distribution of sound recordings that cost the music industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year domestically. Consumers, retailers and replicators can report suspected music piracy to the RIAA by dialing a toll-free hotline, 1.800.BAD.BEAT, or sending email to badbeat@riaa.com or cdreward@riaa.com.
Well, I can imagine that it would be fine to use "like Frontpage" in the context of "this app with run, look, feel, behave, and function nothing like Frontpage".
I highly recommend using "like Frontpage" all over the place if he's using it that way.
Okay, which of you bastards wrote this article? I know it was a Slashdotter. Here's my proof.
Now contrast this with an open source business model:
1. Modify an open source software package to fit a niche market
2. Sell installations, manuals, customization service, and support to that market
3. Profit!
Seriously, isn't there some sort of recourse for the VARs to get access to the servers/backup media/whatever from the Appgen people, no matter which creditor ends up owning the machines and such? Presumably, the source code was promised to the VARs in an agreement that existed before the bills and the disappearance of the company, so there's some provision for a first-come, first-serve sort of situation, especially since the creditors can go ahead and take posession of the machines and/or physical media once the VARs have copies of the source to distribute, right? I have a hard time believing that once the company is gone no one is responsible for an agreement like this. I-ANAL, though....
I've heard this comparison a couple of times before and it is just wrong.
I've heard the same "Napster = P2P" argument myself, and what you have to consider is that it doesn't seem to matter to non-geeks how Napster, KaZaa, or whatever accomplish what they do. Replace "Napster = P2P" with the definitions that a lot of people use, at least as far as their understanding or apathy will let them define such things, and you get "copyright infringing illegal thing = copyright infringing illegal thing". There are hours of expletive-laced debate behind that definition, I think, because a lot of/.ers don't agree with it (and for the record, neither do I), at least not completely, but I've seen and heard a great deal of this kind of sentiment coming across the wires lately. I'd even go so far as to guess that it wouldn't take much research to come up with a published article or three where the author has at least intimated ideas like this.
To the dark powers of FUD-osity, Napster is P2P is Linux is the Free Software Movement is a communist is a typical/. poster. As long as something can be called into question and made to look "bad", anything else that you want to look bad can be associated with it regardless of those annoying "facts" that so many of the weaker minded fools tend to rely on.
Yay for the parent post. Much more polite, many fewer expletives than I'd have used, but yeah, what he said.
Now, can someone explain just why SunComm thought it was a good idea to threaten litigation, but then back off, effectively publicizing the Shift thing even more for the two people who hadn't heard about it already? What kind of battle cry is "hey, we're taking you to court because you proved we're incompetent tools...oh, wait, we meant all of that except for the court thing!"? I don't care quite enough to check their stock price today or to find out if there are other money-makers for the SunComm people, but if this is the way they do business and this is a good example of the research & testing they do before deploying their products and strategies, I've got a $20 here that says I'll be able to line my hamster cage with SunComm stock before too long.
I couldn't comment on the original article yesterday evening because it made me almost physically ill. It's just a matter of time before something gives one way or the other, and to be honest I can't wait.
Is this this is "An systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies and the University of Utah". 2/3 of the organizations involved in the study have a vested interest in proving that a multi-monitor setup is more productive, gives you better skin, or whatever. I can see the board meeting now. "Hey Frank, I've figured out how we can just about double our sales in the business sector..."
That being said, I'll be using this article in a pitch to the wife to let me invest in some more "productivity enhancing" tools.
Or did anybody else think that the headline could have been lifted from the Onion? Granted, it probably would have read something like "China Begins Plans Oct. 8 for Manned Space Flight on Oct. 15"...I can see some quotes from the article now.
When asked about the shortened timetable, a spokesman for the Chinese space program replied "Yeah, we're pretty sure that it'll only take about a week to get the materials together, train the crew, and whatever else. I mean, sure we've estimated some insane number of man-hours to put this thing together, but just look at the number of men we've got available! We're guessing that a whole week is going to leave us with plenty of time left over for this 'testing' and 'safety evaluation' stuff we keep hearing so much about."
In all seriousness, I've seen a post or two about the fear level associated with a country that has nukes suddenly developing spaceflight, and thought to myself "gee, what if every interested country around the world could participate in a collaborative effort to further the space exploration/colonization efforts that we've so far been working on alone, and we never had to worry about who might nuke who or whose foreign policy didn't want the other guys playing in his sandbox? We'd probably learn a lot more working together and sharing the knowledge we have, wouldn't that be cool?". Then I got really sad, because I know how realistic that kind of thing is.
This is unconstitutional in that it makes a distinction between speech for profit and speech with other agendas
Well, I'll agree completely that it's somewhat iffy to distinguish between for-profit and other varieties of speech and/or contact, but I'm trying hard to think of something in the constitution that makes it bad. Can someone help me out here?
Something else- how is it that speech for profit different from political speech? Call me cynical, but political speech is generally along the lines of "elect me/support my issue so that I can push my own agenda and get money(yay money!), while using this issue/my new office to do really cool things (like get more money for me and my friends)", isn't it?
The way I look at it, the DNC list is an extension of something we've taken for granted as a society for quite a while: the restraining order. Think of an individual who follows you around all the time, calls you at odd hours, and always makes a point of interrupting your meals. This jerk frequently organizes his buddies into a phone posse to call you and harass you as well, probably because he's a nut. He says that it's his right to free speech, or because he loves you, or because he's really God, but in the end he's just a jerk who forces unwanted contact on you. At some point, this behavior will reach the point where you're able to get a court order to tell him what you've probably been saying all along- "Leave me alone". Until recently, there's been nothing that I'm aware of to provide this same protection against companies, which are after all just entities made up of a bunch of people, only with a lot more money and political clout than one might expect by that definition. I can see the argument that it's bad/wrong/questionable to lump all of the telemarketers in to one universal DNC list, as there may be some companies that you might really want to hear from if only you knew they were out there (yeah, right), but desperate times and all that. Saying that it's a violation of the companies' right to free speech is like saying that I have the right to call some guy I don't even know to explain my latest crackpot theory on the meaning of life...and believe me, you don't want me to have that "right" after a little Guinness and a really bad day.
From the article:"People are not file sharing to do their homework."
Um...granted, I never attended college in Florida, let alone this particular school, but back in my day, CS majors had some pretty serious file-sharing going on for various collaborative projects, grabbing example programs and other random crap that the profs would want us to take a look at, etc. I guess that geeks aren't "people" by the school's logic, since people aren't file-sharing to do their homework, but that shouldn't be news to anyone here I guess.
I can understand schools wanting their bandwidth protected from those evil people who want to do more than e-mail their friends "hey, U want to go 4 beers tonite?" with campus network access, but call a spade a spade, please. If your main argument is that people can share files over a network, and some of those shared files might be copyright-infringing evil things, people can just as easily respond with the argument that people can share files over the network, and some of those files might be academic in nature and important to their primary function as students. "If you don't like it, go somewhere else because we're dirty bureaucratic bandwidth whores" is a perfectly valid argument, but say that. None of this "it's for the children!" or "it's for cuz we can't get sued this way, Vern!" That's just...wrong.
Not entirely sure that I believe this point of view completely myself, but there seem to be a deluge of "good for the school, yay for the new University overlords!" posts, and that makes me feel sad and lonely.
Before we see the Blue Shorts of Death?
Will we have to drop our pants to "reboot"?
I can see a lot of potential here if the technology gets far enough...instead of a wrist-mounted little GPS device that shows "you are here" info, you might have the length of an entire shirt-sleeve for a display. Maybe Big Brother can implement some sort of forced personal information display so that wi-fi sensors in the shirt respond to remote commands issued by police to display your name, address, etc. across the front or back of your shirt. Heck, they could just forget that and track you using the homing signal in your cyber-undies.
And, of course, the obvious: the day somebody ports an emulator or three to ThreadIX, the Clothing Operating System of the Future, "pocket pool" will take on a whole new meaning.
Double ditto for me, and why Word stinks
on
OpenOffice.org Hits 1.1
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've already pretty much thrown MS Office to the curb. Right now, I have to do a lot of Access VBA stuff and have had to develop bits and pieces for other Office apps, so I can't purge it completely from my life, but when I'm actually using a word processor or a spreadsheet application, it's OOo. I switched a couple of months ago and have never regretted it. One example of why? 3-page report, saved as a Word doc: 24.1 K. Same report, saved as SXW: 12.0K. Minor savings with the hideous HD resources I have, yes, and I can't prove that it's an across-the-board guarantee of 50% smaller files, but...wow. Just wow.
Except for a company I worked with briefly called Modis, all of the headhunters/recruiters/nutjobs I've encountered have sucked, a lot. In the case of Modis, they tracked me down to fill a brief (3 month) contract that needed to be filled immediately, let me know exactly what the position was, and negotiated an absurd rate that I got paid on a weekly basis. To give the best possible picture of the others, consider the following true stories:
Recruiter calls, grills me for a couple of minutes about what I know, what my background is, etc. Asks "Do you have Java?" (sure, in the cabinet over the sink. It's Starbucks Holiday Blend...) I tell her that while I'd worked with Java for centuries in college, I have very little real-world experience. Stupid? Yes. Honest? You betcha. I'm not interested in doing Java dev anyway at this point, and definitely not enough to artificially inflate my credentials. I get a phone interview (read: screening) with the employer a bit later, and when they ask me about my Java skills, I give the same answer I gave to the headhunter. In a language that can only be called English by a very generous five-year-old, the interviewer mumbles something about needing 5+ years of experience as a senior-level programmer on J2EE projects and hangs up on me.
Another time, I get a call from a very excitable young lady who is particularly interested in all of my database experience. "Have you done any database development with X, Y, or Z?", she asks. I respond with examples of projects I've worked on in teams or on my own, things I've had to build, modify, and destroy using my amazing superhero powers, and the fact that I once experimented with DB2 in college. Between my brief explanation of things that I've worked on and a quick read through my resume, I assume that she can see that I've got experience with X, Y, Z, and A-F as well. She says "Yes, but have you done any development??"...then talks to the client, who doesn't even want to do a pre-screening phone thingy with me because they need someone who's got database development experience.
If Ren says "we were deceived", then Stimpy can just say "We sure were, Ren!", and... wait, somebody's already done that one.
Where does accountability for gross incompetence come into the equation though? Since IANAL, I can't begin to address this in a legal sense, but if I tell you "kicking your little brother's head in will make him smarter and transform him into Megatron" (which has a lot more backing it than SCO's claims, from what I hear), then you do it and he dies, obviously I'm a bad person for filling your mind with utter lies. When do you become liable, though? You either have to be lying when you say that you didn't expect the kid to die, or a complete idiot to have believed me. Well, Ren is kicking their kid brother (by telling investors that SCO is a good investment option, really!) and when the kid (the investor collective) dies a horrible death, it seems like the same thing to me.
If they honestly say that they were deceived, they're much too dim to be in business. If they can't say that honestly, they're crooks. Would you like to be a thief or a mouth-breathing moron today, sir?
No, no, no! They don't have to "make up" a shred of evidence, you insensitive clod! Bear with me as I walk you through the intensive fact-finding process that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that 2.6 does, in fact, have more proprietary SCO stuff in it than any *nix ever has before! Watch as the scene unfolds...
DARL: So, um, hey. It looks like there's this new "too-pointe-six colonel" out on the market from those Lenn-ucks people. We own all that too, right?
SUIT: Well, sir, it's like this. Do you remember how the 2.4 kernel had all of those lines of code in them that are ours, even though they showed up in textbooks before most of our stuff existed?
DARL: Sure, but how does that help us with this new thing?
SUIT: Think about it. Most operating systems, according to my extensive research during years of never having looked at a computer before, contain the same code that they always did, plus a couple of lines of new comments and an extra variable or two that shows how much you're able to charge users for the new features. Just think about the Windows 95 and 98 thing. Perfect example there.
DARL: But...my mansion only has 93 windows. Where is this heading?
SUIT: *blinks* Errr...yeah. Well, it's all the same code, and even those sneaky Linux commies try to pull a fast one on us and put one of those different codes in there, we can always assert our ownership of these "opened sources" files that I just printed out. I asked this guy, you know, and he said that all of these sources are what's in Linux, and since I printed it on paper and stuff, I figure it must be a textbook. Since we own all the words that show up in textbooks, and this has a lot of words, I think we've found ourselves a new angle here.
DARL: Smithers, cry havoc and let slip the Lenn-ucks colonel lawsuit monkeys once more!
"When put into a Macintosh (news - web sites) or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, and an interactive menu pops up with several links, including one to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive."
So, I supposedly have free reign to play this disc in any "standard" CD player at no risk to life or limb, though I'd like to know who decides what a standard player is (is my 8-year-old stereo system standard? what about my portable CD player that also reads & plays MP3s? brand new Sony UltraCost 3000? off-brand POS that some kid just bought for $10?) and would love to see the reports in a week or two that substantiate these claims. I'd be willing to bet that the disc will "regrettably not function in some audio equipment that does not meet industry standards" (that's shamelessly plagarized, or at least paraphrased from a press release that the suits haven't yet written, mark my words). But, I digress...
The disc installs software on your machine, forces you to use Windows Media for your computerized listening pleasure, and automatically loads menus that I can promise you little Billy trying to listen to the only worthwhile track on the disc doesn't want to mess with. If more of these things are going to be released, will it be one installation per CD, one standard installation that will cover any disc you'll ever buy forever and ever, or (more likely, I think) one proprietary installed load of crudware per recording company? Don't get me wrong, I've never heard of this guy and BMG has just about guaranteed that I'll never get around to hearing any of his music, so the disc in and of itself doesn't get my shorts in a twist. If it "succeeds", though, and spawns more like it, my only recourse is to hope and pray that such CDs are limited to RIAA-produced stuff since my purchases for the longest time haven't included any of their packaged poo.
Slashdot Mirror
then running a W3C CSS and HTML validator and having everything check out 100 percent....why does the site now look so shitty?
Um. Maybe you haven't noticed, but MS in general and IE in particular have a long history of
<South Park Voice>"I am above the law!"</South Park Voice>
kinds of behavior. Need I remind everyone of the Opera "bug" in displaying the MSN homepage that was "fixed" by causing Opera to self-identify as IE? I mean, I'm in full support of you and people like you designing things to be 100% W3C-compliant, but anyone who really expects that 100% W3C site to also be 100% IE-complaint, well...this reminds me of a (supposedly Indian) proverb I once heard. "Women want hot ice". It doesn't say great things about the gender, but my point here is that you've got your W3C (ice) on one hand, and it's supposed to work with IE (hot). Answer? No.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca...
*wild-eyed gentleman in khakis and funny hat creeps through the underbrush*
*whispering* Now, we're about to see the rare American FUD-monkey! It seldom shows its face down under, but it's very dangerous when unprovoked and somehow convinced that it owns, well...everything.
*DARL hops out from behind a bush* Crikey! That'll take your arm clean off!! *he shoots a tranquilizer dart at the DARL*
*high pitched shrieking ensues. the call of the DARL sounds remarkably like the words "pump-and-dump" repeated over and over*
internet users watch less television, read more books and engage in more social activities.
Next week, we'll hear that it's recently been discovered that internet users simply lie for the purposes of polls and statistics more than non-users do, and those that don't lie outright simply know how to crack the World Internet Project's records and alter their annual reports to be more favorable to the 'net-bound...
Three words, my friends. Three words.
The Incredible Hulk
And therefore, if Chewbacca does not make sense, you must acquit. The defense rests. Good day to you.
"A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature," Langley said. "Today he's Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he's Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he's something else. These people change their identity all the time. A picture's worth a thousand words."
"These people"?? If questioned, I'd bet money that Mr. Langley would argue that he's talking about "these [dirty communist CD pirates]", but that quote could easily be read as "these [Hispanic people]".
That's suspiciously akin to what it might look like if the US law enforcement community as a whole started to look more carefully at people of Arab descent every time a security check at an airport was called for, for instance...
Oh, wait, at least that's the actual US law enforcement, whether or not I agree with it. We're talking about the "music police" here. Can we at least use the Chewbacca Defense against this kind of FUD?
I'm sure there are actual professional types who do this sort of thing for a living, but if it were me trying to get a rough guesstimate of the risk or damage involved in a crash like that...
For starters, I'd figure the % of time that each employee, on average, spends using a PC for an important work-related task. Multiply that % by the average hourly wage of each employee, and figure that [average wage] * [hours of downtime] * [percentage of time spent using computer]= total loss. Then figure out what it costs to run that research project that requires functioning PCs for a day. Every day it's down, you've effectively lost that day's productivity. Add to that the estimated number and duration of support calls that your tech staff usually fields from students in the event of a crash ("No, the network is down. No, it won't be up in time for you to get back on KaZaa and ICQ before tonight's kegger."), then bill that at the tech staff's average rate. For lost student productivity, I have no idea...something silly like $1 per hour per student just so you can quantify the loss? But yeah, that would quickly become a large number.
But your corporate masters have already told you that a Windows environment is better, so why do you even begin to question the holy edict? TK-421, why aren't you at your post?
I'm sorry, if my teammates are groping, I'm quitting.
/. crew access to the website I will register shortly after the teammate groping begins.
I am one of two males on a team of over a dozen. The other male is my boss, generally thought of as "the boss" rather than as a teammate, and my cow-orkers are pretty much all in the "hi I'm fresh out of college and my name is Bambi wanna see my old sorority house photos?" stage. Don't tell my boss this, but if my teammates are groping, I'll stay on and work more or less for free.
For a reasonable $699 license fee, I'll generously give the whole
If the phone connection were clean enough to trick people (not end-lusers, mind you, real people like /.ers) into thinking that they were on the line with someone in the US. When I call my weird uncle up in Alaska, the connection always sounds like he's picked up in the middle of a grizzly attack and we frequently talk over one another because the sound doesn't hit his ear as soon as it leaves my mouth. I make very few overseas calls, but I can only imagine that it gets worse from there, especially if the call centers get the same quality of equipment that they do staffing.
Just me, though.
RE: call centers and scripts-
Don't know if you're lumping all technical support people into that group of "call centers", but my first job out of college was in tech support (and branched out into implementation and development within a year, but I digress), and we actually supported the people who called in. Yes, we had "trees" and top 10 lists to refer to, nifty little reports that we printed out from our tracking database telling us that 98% of the calls in X category were fixed by telling the user to pick the mouse up off of the floor, but we weren't forced to follow any sort of script or format beyond what common sense dictated. We weren't a huge freakin' cube farm, either, so if it's that kind of call center you're talking about it lets me out.
So now we're going to be complaining about the Blue Sound of Death? What would that even sound like? Is it anything like one hand clapping?
Now we're in for it. I can imagine the DRM attached to an MSN music service would the most restrictive yet, allowing only one copy of each file downloaded on one PC, ever. The real run happens when the clueless user installs the latest security patch, only to find that none of their music works, and reads the fine print to discover that a PC is defined as "the unique collection of hardware, software, and specific Windows version that exists at the time of each music download". Don't like it? Well, if you had never stolen that music and put J.Lo out on the streets, this never would have happened, Bobby. Now, pony up for another copy of that track and we'll call it even, and might not even send Lars and Mungo to your house for a visit...say, would you like to buy a Longhorn upgrade?
I found this on The RIAA's website, an article I skimmed while looking for their take on these "facts" as reported by CNN. At the bottom of the article, I saw the following (emphasis is mine):
The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA(R) members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.
The Anti-Piracy division of the RIAA investigates the illegal production and distribution of sound recordings that cost the music industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year domestically. Consumers, retailers and replicators can report suspected music piracy to the RIAA by dialing a toll-free hotline, 1.800.BAD.BEAT, or sending email to badbeat@riaa.com or cdreward@riaa.com.
Dear RIAA,
YOU FAIL IT!
Love,
Everybody
Well, I can imagine that it would be fine to use "like Frontpage" in the context of "this app with run, look, feel, behave, and function nothing like Frontpage".
I highly recommend using "like Frontpage" all over the place if he's using it that way.
Okay, which of you bastards wrote this article? I know it was a Slashdotter. Here's my proof.
Now contrast this with an open source business model:
1. Modify an open source software package to fit a niche market
2. Sell installations, manuals, customization service, and support to that market
3. Profit!
Seriously, isn't there some sort of recourse for the VARs to get access to the servers/backup media/whatever from the Appgen people, no matter which creditor ends up owning the machines and such? Presumably, the source code was promised to the VARs in an agreement that existed before the bills and the disappearance of the company, so there's some provision for a first-come, first-serve sort of situation, especially since the creditors can go ahead and take posession of the machines and/or physical media once the VARs have copies of the source to distribute, right? I have a hard time believing that once the company is gone no one is responsible for an agreement like this. I-ANAL, though....
I've heard this comparison a couple of times before and it is just wrong.
/.ers don't agree with it (and for the record, neither do I), at least not completely, but I've seen and heard a great deal of this kind of sentiment coming across the wires lately. I'd even go so far as to guess that it wouldn't take much research to come up with a published article or three where the author has at least intimated ideas like this.
/. poster. As long as something can be called into question and made to look "bad", anything else that you want to look bad can be associated with it regardless of those annoying "facts" that so many of the weaker minded fools tend to rely on.
I've heard the same "Napster = P2P" argument myself, and what you have to consider is that it doesn't seem to matter to non-geeks how Napster, KaZaa, or whatever accomplish what they do. Replace "Napster = P2P" with the definitions that a lot of people use, at least as far as their understanding or apathy will let them define such things, and you get "copyright infringing illegal thing = copyright infringing illegal thing".
There are hours of expletive-laced debate behind that definition, I think, because a lot of
To the dark powers of FUD-osity, Napster is P2P is Linux is the Free Software Movement is a communist is a typical
I do so hate having to correct you people.
Yay for the parent post. Much more polite, many fewer expletives than I'd have used, but yeah, what he said.
Now, can someone explain just why SunComm thought it was a good idea to threaten litigation, but then back off, effectively publicizing the Shift thing even more for the two people who hadn't heard about it already? What kind of battle cry is "hey, we're taking you to court because you proved we're incompetent tools...oh, wait, we meant all of that except for the court thing!"? I don't care quite enough to check their stock price today or to find out if there are other money-makers for the SunComm people, but if this is the way they do business and this is a good example of the research & testing they do before deploying their products and strategies, I've got a $20 here that says I'll be able to line my hamster cage with SunComm stock before too long.
I couldn't comment on the original article yesterday evening because it made me almost physically ill. It's just a matter of time before something gives one way or the other, and to be honest I can't wait.
With this ClueBat, I dub thee Luser.
Is this this is "An systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies and the University of Utah". 2/3 of the organizations involved in the study have a vested interest in proving that a multi-monitor setup is more productive, gives you better skin, or whatever. I can see the board meeting now. "Hey Frank, I've figured out how we can just about double our sales in the business sector..."
That being said, I'll be using this article in a pitch to the wife to let me invest in some more "productivity enhancing" tools.
Or did anybody else think that the headline could have been lifted from the Onion? Granted, it probably would have read something like "China Begins Plans Oct. 8 for Manned Space Flight on Oct. 15"...I can see some quotes from the article now.
When asked about the shortened timetable, a spokesman for the Chinese space program replied "Yeah, we're pretty sure that it'll only take about a week to get the materials together, train the crew, and whatever else. I mean, sure we've estimated some insane number of man-hours to put this thing together, but just look at the number of men we've got available! We're guessing that a whole week is going to leave us with plenty of time left over for this 'testing' and 'safety evaluation' stuff we keep hearing so much about."
In all seriousness, I've seen a post or two about the fear level associated with a country that has nukes suddenly developing spaceflight, and thought to myself "gee, what if every interested country around the world could participate in a collaborative effort to further the space exploration/colonization efforts that we've so far been working on alone, and we never had to worry about who might nuke who or whose foreign policy didn't want the other guys playing in his sandbox? We'd probably learn a lot more working together and sharing the knowledge we have, wouldn't that be cool?". Then I got really sad, because I know how realistic that kind of thing is.
This is unconstitutional in that it makes a distinction between speech for profit and speech with other agendas
Well, I'll agree completely that it's somewhat iffy to distinguish between for-profit and other varieties of speech and/or contact, but I'm trying hard to think of something in the constitution that makes it bad. Can someone help me out here?
Something else- how is it that speech for profit different from political speech? Call me cynical, but political speech is generally along the lines of "elect me/support my issue so that I can push my own agenda and get money(yay money!), while using this issue/my new office to do really cool things (like get more money for me and my friends)", isn't it?
The way I look at it, the DNC list is an extension of something we've taken for granted as a society for quite a while: the restraining order. Think of an individual who follows you around all the time, calls you at odd hours, and always makes a point of interrupting your meals. This jerk frequently organizes his buddies into a phone posse to call you and harass you as well, probably because he's a nut. He says that it's his right to free speech, or because he loves you, or because he's really God, but in the end he's just a jerk who forces unwanted contact on you. At some point, this behavior will reach the point where you're able to get a court order to tell him what you've probably been saying all along- "Leave me alone". Until recently, there's been nothing that I'm aware of to provide this same protection against companies, which are after all just entities made up of a bunch of people, only with a lot more money and political clout than one might expect by that definition. I can see the argument that it's bad/wrong/questionable to lump all of the telemarketers in to one universal DNC list, as there may be some companies that you might really want to hear from if only you knew they were out there (yeah, right), but desperate times and all that. Saying that it's a violation of the companies' right to free speech is like saying that I have the right to call some guy I don't even know to explain my latest crackpot theory on the meaning of life...and believe me, you don't want me to have that "right" after a little Guinness and a really bad day.
From the article:"People are not file sharing to do their homework."
Um...granted, I never attended college in Florida, let alone this particular school, but back in my day, CS majors had some pretty serious file-sharing going on for various collaborative projects, grabbing example programs and other random crap that the profs would want us to take a look at, etc. I guess that geeks aren't "people" by the school's logic, since people aren't file-sharing to do their homework, but that shouldn't be news to anyone here I guess.
I can understand schools wanting their bandwidth protected from those evil people who want to do more than e-mail their friends "hey, U want to go 4 beers tonite?" with campus network access, but call a spade a spade, please. If your main argument is that people can share files over a network, and some of those shared files might be copyright-infringing evil things, people can just as easily respond with the argument that people can share files over the network, and some of those files might be academic in nature and important to their primary function as students. "If you don't like it, go somewhere else because we're dirty bureaucratic bandwidth whores" is a perfectly valid argument, but say that. None of this "it's for the children!" or "it's for cuz we can't get sued this way, Vern!" That's just...wrong.
Not entirely sure that I believe this point of view completely myself, but there seem to be a deluge of "good for the school, yay for the new University overlords!" posts, and that makes me feel sad and lonely.
"People are not file sharing to do their homework."
Um...granted,
Before we see the Blue Shorts of Death? Will we have to drop our pants to "reboot"?
I can see a lot of potential here if the technology gets far enough...instead of a wrist-mounted little GPS device that shows "you are here" info, you might have the length of an entire shirt-sleeve for a display. Maybe Big Brother can implement some sort of forced personal information display so that wi-fi sensors in the shirt respond to remote commands issued by police to display your name, address, etc. across the front or back of your shirt. Heck, they could just forget that and track you using the homing signal in your cyber-undies.
And, of course, the obvious: the day somebody ports an emulator or three to ThreadIX, the Clothing Operating System of the Future, "pocket pool" will take on a whole new meaning.
I've already pretty much thrown MS Office to the curb. Right now, I have to do a lot of Access VBA stuff and have had to develop bits and pieces for other Office apps, so I can't purge it completely from my life, but when I'm actually using a word processor or a spreadsheet application, it's OOo. I switched a couple of months ago and have never regretted it. One example of why? 3-page report, saved as a Word doc: 24.1 K. Same report, saved as SXW: 12.0K. Minor savings with the hideous HD resources I have, yes, and I can't prove that it's an across-the-board guarantee of 50% smaller files, but...wow. Just wow.
Recruiter calls, grills me for a couple of minutes about what I know, what my background is, etc. Asks "Do you have Java?" (sure, in the cabinet over the sink. It's Starbucks Holiday Blend...) I tell her that while I'd worked with Java for centuries in college, I have very little real-world experience. Stupid? Yes. Honest? You betcha. I'm not interested in doing Java dev anyway at this point, and definitely not enough to artificially inflate my credentials. I get a phone interview (read: screening) with the employer a bit later, and when they ask me about my Java skills, I give the same answer I gave to the headhunter. In a language that can only be called English by a very generous five-year-old, the interviewer mumbles something about needing 5+ years of experience as a senior-level programmer on J2EE projects and hangs up on me.
Mouth-breathers, the lot of 'em.Another time, I get a call from a very excitable young lady who is particularly interested in all of my database experience. "Have you done any database development with X, Y, or Z?", she asks. I respond with examples of projects I've worked on in teams or on my own, things I've had to build, modify, and destroy using my amazing superhero powers, and the fact that I once experimented with DB2 in college. Between my brief explanation of things that I've worked on and a quick read through my resume, I assume that she can see that I've got experience with X, Y, Z, and A-F as well. She says "Yes, but have you done any development??"...then talks to the client, who doesn't even want to do a pre-screening phone thingy with me because they need someone who's got database development experience.
If Ren says "we were deceived", then Stimpy can just say "We sure were, Ren!", and... wait, somebody's already done that one.
Where does accountability for gross incompetence come into the equation though? Since IANAL, I can't begin to address this in a legal sense, but if I tell you "kicking your little brother's head in will make him smarter and transform him into Megatron" (which has a lot more backing it than SCO's claims, from what I hear), then you do it and he dies, obviously I'm a bad person for filling your mind with utter lies. When do you become liable, though? You either have to be lying when you say that you didn't expect the kid to die, or a complete idiot to have believed me. Well, Ren is kicking their kid brother (by telling investors that SCO is a good investment option, really!) and when the kid (the investor collective) dies a horrible death, it seems like the same thing to me.
If they honestly say that they were deceived, they're much too dim to be in business. If they can't say that honestly, they're crooks. Would you like to be a thief or a mouth-breathing moron today, sir?
DARL: So, um, hey. It looks like there's this new "too-pointe-six colonel" out on the market from those Lenn-ucks people. We own all that too, right?
SUIT: Well, sir, it's like this. Do you remember how the 2.4 kernel had all of those lines of code in them that are ours, even though they showed up in textbooks before most of our stuff existed?
DARL: Sure, but how does that help us with this new thing?
SUIT: Think about it. Most operating systems, according to my extensive research during years of never having looked at a computer before, contain the same code that they always did, plus a couple of lines of new comments and an extra variable or two that shows how much you're able to charge users for the new features. Just think about the Windows 95 and 98 thing. Perfect example there.
DARL: But...my mansion only has 93 windows. Where is this heading?
SUIT: *blinks* Errr...yeah. Well, it's all the same code, and even those sneaky Linux commies try to pull a fast one on us and put one of those different codes in there, we can always assert our ownership of these "opened sources" files that I just printed out. I asked this guy, you know, and he said that all of these sources are what's in Linux, and since I printed it on paper and stuff, I figure it must be a textbook. Since we own all the words that show up in textbooks, and this has a lot of words, I think we've found ourselves a new angle here.
DARL: Smithers, cry havoc and let slip the Lenn-ucks colonel lawsuit monkeys once more!
I do so hate having to correct you people. *sigh*
"When put into a Macintosh (news - web sites) or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, and an interactive menu pops up with several links, including one to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive."
So, I supposedly have free reign to play this disc in any "standard" CD player at no risk to life or limb, though I'd like to know who decides what a standard player is (is my 8-year-old stereo system standard? what about my portable CD player that also reads & plays MP3s? brand new Sony UltraCost 3000? off-brand POS that some kid just bought for $10?) and would love to see the reports in a week or two that substantiate these claims. I'd be willing to bet that the disc will "regrettably not function in some audio equipment that does not meet industry standards" (that's shamelessly plagarized, or at least paraphrased from a press release that the suits haven't yet written, mark my words). But, I digress...
The disc installs software on your machine, forces you to use Windows Media for your computerized listening pleasure, and automatically loads menus that I can promise you little Billy trying to listen to the only worthwhile track on the disc doesn't want to mess with. If more of these things are going to be released, will it be one installation per CD, one standard installation that will cover any disc you'll ever buy forever and ever, or (more likely, I think) one proprietary installed load of crudware per recording company? Don't get me wrong, I've never heard of this guy and BMG has just about guaranteed that I'll never get around to hearing any of his music, so the disc in and of itself doesn't get my shorts in a twist. If it "succeeds", though, and spawns more like it, my only recourse is to hope and pray that such CDs are limited to RIAA-produced stuff since my purchases for the longest time haven't included any of their packaged poo.