The "people involved in the endeavor" are the instructors, the researchers and of course the students. We are in the best position to keep the administration of a University honest.
Speaking as someone who has served both sides as a member of the faculty as well as the administration, I can, again, categorically deny that the faculty, researchers and students even care about this sort of thing. Students just want a degree, not to keep the administration honest, they will keep writing cheques for four years if it means it earns them a piece of paper to hang on their wall. Faculty and research staff only care about... surprise!, Money! So long as they get the research grant, their contracts are extended or enrollment is high enough to ensure their courses are filled and their jobs secure are they happy. I will re-iterate, Universities, at all levels, with all members, have always been about money. However, I will concede one point to you that there are a few individuals in the Administration or Faculty or Staff that do, genuinely, care about education, but they are amoung the minority. That, in my opinion, is the reason why there have been the problems of Digital Diploma Mills. As a whole, Faculty, Staff and the Administration at schools care so much about money and so little about students, more and more students are becoming willing to give money to these Diploma Mills for a degree, even if it is an invalid one, because the value of a real University education has degraded so much in the minds of the students there is little value in spending so much money for so long when you can spend so little and get a virtual degree so quickly.
Actually, I work for a University in the administration, and as much as you'd like to think that once-upon-a-time higher education was all about the ideals of making education available to all at a reasonable cost are completely false. Universities are all about making money, always have been. They are a huge investment of time and money on both ends. How they make money has changed over the years, long ago they were funded more by private donations, (ie many Universities such as Princeton were founded by rich families) but today, due to politics and economical reasons, they have to rely more upon sports, government, and students to foot the bill then they did in the past. Just because they do not have an IPO or a CEO or a board doesnt mean they dont care about money in the exact same way, they just gave those terms different names such as enrollment, President and Senate.
Actually, the US is only about 20% of RIMs maketshare, a lot of it is in fact European. Someone once told me the brilliant idea that RIM should just not sell in the States. Then, since the company with the patent in America is only a litigous corporation and never actually developed anything, there would be no RIM-like devices in the States and everyone else in the world would be able to get their email instantly. Besides, there are whole corporations and groups in the States (notably the US Senate) who rely on the Blackberry so much, they'd probably do all they can to get things altered in America pretty damn quick.
If I am not mistaken (and I frequently am) the patent at the centre of this is about how the Blackberry uses the cellphone network to access mail, etc. Although a Blackberry uses the cell phone system to check email constantly, it uses a different communication protocol than what a regular cell phone does, and accesses a different type of communication system from that point on. It is somewhere in between there where the patent at issue rests. Someone, somewhere, at some time dreamed this idea up in the States, got a patent for it (although they never actually made anything) and then formed a company whose sole purpose was litigate to generate revenue, meanwhile, in Canada at roughly a the same time, RIM developed this into a working idea first, then started patenting it.
I can see this quickly becoming twisted in the media into some sort of foreign-influence topic in the States. But perhaps this may set a precident with all the U.S. patent foolishness as of late; countries can weigh in and seek litigation to try to overturn the patent fights going on in America. Instead of bitching about the system, they can actually work it to the advantages of everyone, American citizens and foreign interests. Screw the special-interest groups, and let citizens and their governments speak and be heard!
You do make an excellent point, specifically about handguns being useless, especially in the context of what the constitution had intended, but it is a right nonetheless, and all rights need firm protection otherwise we risk going down a slippery slope into a corporate-run totalitarian state. P2P is freedom of expression through improved communication, people use it for many legitimate purposes, as well as some not-so-legitimate ones. Instead of litigating solutions to the problem, there must be a better way.
Perhaps if it was actually "news for nerds" coming out of wired, but it isn't, its nothing more than sexed-up pseudo-science for mainstream consumption, its hardly nerd-worthy.
I swear, wired's popularity has gone done just because of the fact they started up sex-based topics with a "specialized" (notably female) reporter recently and that every article they put online somehow gets frontpaged on/. Is it just me, or does it smell like some people in their office keep submitting articles until they are frontpaged? Enough already. We all know where wired is, let us surf their site if we want, they must have pagevisit advertizing.
seems to be the simplest answer to me, something like a bottle rocket could make a flash like that when it explodes and a tiny, almost indistinguishable cloud of smoke as a tail. I am surprised such a hoopla is being made over this, when there are so many possible explanations for the phenomena pictured.
...get laid by someone else, as opposed to by yourself!
Re:So why the US don't follow Canada's steps...
on
NYT on EA Games
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I am calling Shannanigans!
YOU do not suffer for OUR gains. Maybe if you were talking about Canada suffering for US gains...
In Canada, the government funds so much of the drug companies' R&D the government basically owns their asses. Long time ago, the Canadian government did this amazing study that discovered that $1 spent on R&D would generate $4 in profit in the future, or another way of looking at it in the case of the drug companies, $4 savings in the future for every $1 spent on drug R&D due to the drugs helping ease the strain of our socialist health care system.
Remember, its YOUR country that was seriously considering buying up OUR drugs. The durg companies here have R&D paid for, which they don't in America, which translates into Americans paying more $$$ for their drugs because they are paying for the research as well as the manufacturing. In Canada, our drugs or so cheap because our tax dollars pay for the R&D.
Your analogy was horrible, you seem to think Canadians mooch off the US for cheap drugs, when we don't, you guys want to mooch off us, and that a parrallel can be drawn to the programming industry. Thing is, Canada has a vibrant programming industry here, and these wonderful regulations called LABOUR LAWS that keep the working man working only 48 hours a week MAX.
So shut up with your apparently "altruistic" motives for even being a neighbour to Canada. We do more than fine without you trying to drag our reputation through the mud with your own.
Some people... say enough things enough times loud enough and people will start to believe you
You do make some very valid points, but I'd argue its society's duty to treat valued professions in which there are ridiculous working hours better than they currently do. Surgeons should be like the rest of us with 40 hour work weeks. Not enough surgeons? Make medical school more accessible and inviting to those who want to become/have the necessary skill to become surgeons, reduced or government paid tuition, benefits, perks, whatever. Also, get more surgeons out of the usually unnecessary field of plastic surgury and doing surgury more important and of more value to society as a whole.
Regardless of how much you love your job, 85 hour work weeks are wrong. To quote Tyler Durden, you are not your job. You should have a well-balanced life of work, diet, family, exercise, friends, etc. Skew one of those areas too heavily and all of the others suffer. Then the skewed one starts to suffer as a result.
As for the developing countries having workers work those same, heavy hours, I dont think I need to go into a tirade as to how that is wrong, what with our own north american greed, consumerism, capitalism, globalism and other isms.
For everyone out there who says "tough, deal with it" obviously is one of those people who is being abused by their employer but is too scared to admit it. There are labour laws, guidelines and regulations that make 85 hour-weeks illegal (assuming the annonymous story is true, of course). Most people are too scared to take on their employer becuase their employer is their livelihood, but that does not give an employer the right to treat their employees like crap. Here in Canada, Ontario specifically, you can go file a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, which has offices in almost every major city. If your employer takes action against you for even talking to the Ministry of labour, threatens to take action, or tries to get you to sign a contract that it is forbidden to talk to the Ministry of Labour, not only is it illegal, but it gives both you and the government the right to sue. The Ministry of Labour is even allowed to prosecute and fine employers itself, the judges and courts are theirs, the fines are what they decide are appropriate. I am sure similar laws exist out there in just about every other Country/Province/State, it is just a matter of investigating it yourself and having the courage to talk to them. Sure, you MAY get fired, but your employer WILL get fined by the government, the government then signs off on any wrongful dismissal suit you file, and trust me, they then keep a careful eye on that employer to make sure they NEVER treat future employees like that again.
My little brother has gone through this process twice, all he did was speak out against dangerous and illegal working conditions for summer jobs. Both times he was fired, both times he went to the Ministry of Labour, both time the employer was fine 10k, charged with various labour crimes, and in the end, he received settlements worth more than what he would have made working the whole summer. And guess what, both times, he got ALL his money before the summer was out. Assert your rights, you'll be surprised just how many you have.
...I went to highschool with him! Damn this angers me, the guy was such a moron in school! Anyone looking to pull an Alan Rawlsky with this family? I am willing to help!
where your computer fires smells out at you! I bet the smells would come from a unit you get free when you purchase a system, only to discover the refill cartridges cost half of what the dispensing unit costs retail. Then, when you start buying refill kits you can use at home, the company installs a microchip preventing you from manually refilling the unit. what an age we could live in!
... during the HP meetings. I can think of so many reasons to dump Napster in favour of Apple, such as: DRM, WMA, and cross-platform compatibility issues. All of these are, of course, aside from the fiscal reasons to favour Apple. From my/. perspective, I wonder which technical reasons, if any, came into play.
...not to sound like michael moore, but this corporate crime thing really bothers me. this settlement adds up to a drop in the bucket for the recording companies. if corporations are allowed to be treated like individuals, so that no individual within the company is ever held responsible, then we should be able to punish corporations like individuals. legally control their business practises... freeze wages, firing, and take a percentage of their profits.
glasses and eyesight used to be one of those really crazy scientific endeavours. how many of use have had huge, unwieldy glasses when we were younger, and trips to the optometrist were like going to some strange laboratory? things like this are fantastic, simplifying the field and making it more accessible to all. i heard about another system developed that can diagnose stimatism by analyzing the red-eye in a photograph. these kinds of scientific endeavours inspire others!
The last paragraph was the most interesting one to myself:
Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI's cyberdivision, said the unit, created 18 months ago in large part to help hunt perpetrators of digital copyright infringement, will continue to get significant funding from the bureau. Monroe said preventing and prosecuting cybercrimes is now the FBI's No. 3 priority, behind anti-terrorism efforts and counterintelligence operations.
The FBI's nubmer 3 priority! Piracy is ahead of domestic security, corporate crime, drug enforcement (etcetera ad nauseum)...
imagination is more important than knowledge, but it is the imagination of the person who actually was capable of making their dream a reality who deserves credit rather than the one who just dreams the dream, then tosses the idea to the side.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking as someone who has served both sides as a member of the faculty as well as the administration, I can, again, categorically deny that the faculty, researchers and students even care about this sort of thing. Students just want a degree, not to keep the administration honest, they will keep writing cheques for four years if it means it earns them a piece of paper to hang on their wall. Faculty and research staff only care about... surprise!, Money! So long as they get the research grant, their contracts are extended or enrollment is high enough to ensure their courses are filled and their jobs secure are they happy. I will re-iterate, Universities, at all levels, with all members, have always been about money. However, I will concede one point to you that there are a few individuals in the Administration or Faculty or Staff that do, genuinely, care about education, but they are amoung the minority. That, in my opinion, is the reason why there have been the problems of Digital Diploma Mills. As a whole, Faculty, Staff and the Administration at schools care so much about money and so little about students, more and more students are becoming willing to give money to these Diploma Mills for a degree, even if it is an invalid one, because the value of a real University education has degraded so much in the minds of the students there is little value in spending so much money for so long when you can spend so little and get a virtual degree so quickly.
Actually, I work for a University in the administration, and as much as you'd like to think that once-upon-a-time higher education was all about the ideals of making education available to all at a reasonable cost are completely false. Universities are all about making money, always have been. They are a huge investment of time and money on both ends. How they make money has changed over the years, long ago they were funded more by private donations, (ie many Universities such as Princeton were founded by rich families) but today, due to politics and economical reasons, they have to rely more upon sports, government, and students to foot the bill then they did in the past. Just because they do not have an IPO or a CEO or a board doesnt mean they dont care about money in the exact same way, they just gave those terms different names such as enrollment, President and Senate.
Actually, the US is only about 20% of RIMs maketshare, a lot of it is in fact European. Someone once told me the brilliant idea that RIM should just not sell in the States. Then, since the company with the patent in America is only a litigous corporation and never actually developed anything, there would be no RIM-like devices in the States and everyone else in the world would be able to get their email instantly. Besides, there are whole corporations and groups in the States (notably the US Senate) who rely on the Blackberry so much, they'd probably do all they can to get things altered in America pretty damn quick.
If I am not mistaken (and I frequently am) the patent at the centre of this is about how the Blackberry uses the cellphone network to access mail, etc. Although a Blackberry uses the cell phone system to check email constantly, it uses a different communication protocol than what a regular cell phone does, and accesses a different type of communication system from that point on. It is somewhere in between there where the patent at issue rests. Someone, somewhere, at some time dreamed this idea up in the States, got a patent for it (although they never actually made anything) and then formed a company whose sole purpose was litigate to generate revenue, meanwhile, in Canada at roughly a the same time, RIM developed this into a working idea first, then started patenting it.
I can see this quickly becoming twisted in the media into some sort of foreign-influence topic in the States. But perhaps this may set a precident with all the U.S. patent foolishness as of late; countries can weigh in and seek litigation to try to overturn the patent fights going on in America. Instead of bitching about the system, they can actually work it to the advantages of everyone, American citizens and foreign interests. Screw the special-interest groups, and let citizens and their governments speak and be heard!
You do make an excellent point, specifically about handguns being useless, especially in the context of what the constitution had intended, but it is a right nonetheless, and all rights need firm protection otherwise we risk going down a slippery slope into a corporate-run totalitarian state. P2P is freedom of expression through improved communication, people use it for many legitimate purposes, as well as some not-so-legitimate ones. Instead of litigating solutions to the problem, there must be a better way.
Guns can be used to do illegal things (kill people, rob them)
P2P can be used to do legal things (share open-source software)
Guns can be used to do legal things (hunt)
And now...
P2P software manufacturers are liable if someone uses their product to do something illegal?
Gun manufacturers are liable if someone uses their product to do something illegal?
How about drawing an analogy from this line...
Guns don't kill people, people kill people
Perhaps if it was actually "news for nerds" coming out of wired, but it isn't, its nothing more than sexed-up pseudo-science for mainstream consumption, its hardly nerd-worthy.
I swear, wired's popularity has gone done just because of the fact they started up sex-based topics with a "specialized" (notably female) reporter recently and that every article they put online somehow gets frontpaged on /. Is it just me, or does it smell like some people in their office keep submitting articles until they are frontpaged? Enough already. We all know where wired is, let us surf their site if we want, they must have pagevisit advertizing.
seems to be the simplest answer to me, something like a bottle rocket could make a flash like that when it explodes and a tiny, almost indistinguishable cloud of smoke as a tail. I am surprised such a hoopla is being made over this, when there are so many possible explanations for the phenomena pictured.
...get laid by someone else, as opposed to by yourself!
I am calling Shannanigans!
YOU do not suffer for OUR gains. Maybe if you were talking about Canada suffering for US gains...
In Canada, the government funds so much of the drug companies' R&D the government basically owns their asses. Long time ago, the Canadian government did this amazing study that discovered that $1 spent on R&D would generate $4 in profit in the future, or another way of looking at it in the case of the drug companies, $4 savings in the future for every $1 spent on drug R&D due to the drugs helping ease the strain of our socialist health care system.
Remember, its YOUR country that was seriously considering buying up OUR drugs. The durg companies here have R&D paid for, which they don't in America, which translates into Americans paying more $$$ for their drugs because they are paying for the research as well as the manufacturing. In Canada, our drugs or so cheap because our tax dollars pay for the R&D.
Your analogy was horrible, you seem to think Canadians mooch off the US for cheap drugs, when we don't, you guys want to mooch off us, and that a parrallel can be drawn to the programming industry. Thing is, Canada has a vibrant programming industry here, and these wonderful regulations called LABOUR LAWS that keep the working man working only 48 hours a week MAX.
So shut up with your apparently "altruistic" motives for even being a neighbour to Canada. We do more than fine without you trying to drag our reputation through the mud with your own.
Some people... say enough things enough times loud enough and people will start to believe you
Which one of your comics is your personal favourite?
Regardless of how much you love your job, 85 hour work weeks are wrong. To quote Tyler Durden, you are not your job. You should have a well-balanced life of work, diet, family, exercise, friends, etc. Skew one of those areas too heavily and all of the others suffer. Then the skewed one starts to suffer as a result.
As for the developing countries having workers work those same, heavy hours, I dont think I need to go into a tirade as to how that is wrong, what with our own north american greed, consumerism, capitalism, globalism and other isms.
For everyone out there who says "tough, deal with it" obviously is one of those people who is being abused by their employer but is too scared to admit it. There are labour laws, guidelines and regulations that make 85 hour-weeks illegal (assuming the annonymous story is true, of course). Most people are too scared to take on their employer becuase their employer is their livelihood, but that does not give an employer the right to treat their employees like crap. Here in Canada, Ontario specifically, you can go file a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, which has offices in almost every major city. If your employer takes action against you for even talking to the Ministry of labour, threatens to take action, or tries to get you to sign a contract that it is forbidden to talk to the Ministry of Labour, not only is it illegal, but it gives both you and the government the right to sue. The Ministry of Labour is even allowed to prosecute and fine employers itself, the judges and courts are theirs, the fines are what they decide are appropriate. I am sure similar laws exist out there in just about every other Country/Province/State, it is just a matter of investigating it yourself and having the courage to talk to them. Sure, you MAY get fired, but your employer WILL get fined by the government, the government then signs off on any wrongful dismissal suit you file, and trust me, they then keep a careful eye on that employer to make sure they NEVER treat future employees like that again.
My little brother has gone through this process twice, all he did was speak out against dangerous and illegal working conditions for summer jobs. Both times he was fired, both times he went to the Ministry of Labour, both time the employer was fine 10k, charged with various labour crimes, and in the end, he received settlements worth more than what he would have made working the whole summer. And guess what, both times, he got ALL his money before the summer was out.
Assert your rights, you'll be surprised just how many you have.
yes
...I went to highschool with him! Damn this angers me, the guy was such a moron in school! Anyone looking to pull an Alan Rawlsky with this family? I am willing to help!
where your computer fires smells out at you! I bet the smells would come from a unit you get free when you purchase a system, only to discover the refill cartridges cost half of what the dispensing unit costs retail. Then, when you start buying refill kits you can use at home, the company installs a microchip preventing you from manually refilling the unit. what an age we could live in!
... during the HP meetings. I can think of so many reasons to dump Napster in favour of Apple, such as: DRM, WMA, and cross-platform compatibility issues. All of these are, of course, aside from the fiscal reasons to favour Apple. From my /. perspective, I wonder which technical reasons, if any, came into play.
we could re-name the title of this story to something like:
SCO's lawyers take break from hell to perform pro-bono work for Infinium
...not to sound like michael moore, but this corporate crime thing really bothers me. this settlement adds up to a drop in the bucket for the recording companies. if corporations are allowed to be treated like individuals, so that no individual within the company is ever held responsible, then we should be able to punish corporations like individuals. legally control their business practises... freeze wages, firing, and take a percentage of their profits.
glasses and eyesight used to be one of those really crazy scientific endeavours. how many of use have had huge, unwieldy glasses when we were younger, and trips to the optometrist were like going to some strange laboratory? things like this are fantastic, simplifying the field and making it more accessible to all. i heard about another system developed that can diagnose stimatism by analyzing the red-eye in a photograph. these kinds of scientific endeavours inspire others!
Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI's cyberdivision, said the unit, created 18 months ago in large part to help hunt perpetrators of digital copyright infringement, will continue to get significant funding from the bureau. Monroe said preventing and prosecuting cybercrimes is now the FBI's No. 3 priority, behind anti-terrorism efforts and counterintelligence operations.
The FBI's nubmer 3 priority! Piracy is ahead of domestic security, corporate crime, drug enforcement (etcetera ad nauseum)...Let's not forget Penny-Arcade's favourite piece of vapourware!
imagination is more important than knowledge, but it is the imagination of the person who actually was capable of making their dream a reality who deserves credit rather than the one who just dreams the dream, then tosses the idea to the side.