Provide full quality WAVs or FLAK and I am there. Provide it at a reasonable price and they'll have 25 years worth of pent up music buying desire snatching up everything I always wanted. If they hit 50 cents a song or $5/album people will be stocking up on the full sets of all the artists they ever liked.
But until then, I'll stick to buying CDs from local & visiting bands with the occasional on-line purchase (or donation) of DRM free, full featured music.
Has anyone else noticed that he is using that clip of copyrighted characters on his website doing line dancing. How much do you want to bet he doesn't have permission from the copyright holders to show that. Also, the music he has on line, the video he has on-line and THE VIDEO HE IS SELLING all contain the song The Electric Slide which he is NOT the copyright holder for.
One quick call to the RIAA and he is done for. Fight fire with Fire.
The only sad part is that I find myself defending line-dancing of any kind.
He wants people to do The Electric Slide "correctly" aka his way, because if they don't do his copyrighted dance then he can't sue companies like Oprah, Ellen, Movies, local communities doing a dance to pay him royalty fees. This is about money. Make no mistake about it. And he is hard up for it too. He is out to claim that any line dancing done to the song "The Electric Slide" is HIS line dance. I say B.S.
Dell has been selling these for a while. At least a year ago they were selling them at prices higher than the same windows version. Somebody must of b1tched.
My apples to apples comparison for the e521 N series vs. the e521 Dimension(Windows) series is that the Windows system costs $60 more ($699 vs. $759). For the apples to apples c521 bundle, the Windows Dimension series costs $40 more ($699 vs. $739). For the e520 series, my apples to apples bundle comes out $170 more for the Windows Dimension ($679 vs. $509).
Of course you can not drop some components on some of the N series (in standard Dell variable practice) like the monitor, modem, soundcard, so if all you want to the raw computer, buying the windows system will probably be a better price. What good is dropping the OS if they are going to shove a bunch of hardware you don't need down your throat.
I had priced them out about 1.5 years ago for some toy/test boxes. For what I needed the Windows versions were a better price for the hardware. I ended up getting a cheaper box somewhere else.
Well never get anywhere until we start thinking in metric terms on a mass scale. That means initially setting up road signs to list speeds in both miles & kilometers initially. And requiring auto manufactures to include kilometers on all car's speedometers. Once the nation has slowly switched over all of it's road signs to the dual option listing we can then switch over all new road signs to Kilometers.
I call bullshit. This concept of "originality" is oversold. All of humanities advances are built on the shoulders of those who came before us. Pretty much anything you can or will come up with has been thought up by someone else before. You might tweak the idea a little, sell it a little better, put it in a prettier package, make it more efficient or less of a pain in the @ss to use. But when it comes down to it, you really haven't done anything new.
It would be more interesting to here other samples of different songs that match up with that beat. And prior songs that match up to the "copied" song. It's out there.
1. Tell them that you understand that logging calls will take away time from fixing things and solving problems, but as insane as that seems to them, management and yourself are actually willing to make that trade off. It's the cost of doing business. 2. Tell them the documentation generated by logging calls can be used to solve problems they have been b1tching about. If upper management can't see it on paper, then it never happened. Even if they do a great job, if it's not on paper, it never happened. 3. Make quantity of calls logged a metric worth 80% of their pay raise this year. Follow up with them every Friday to see how they are doing on this. It's not fair to make it 80% of their pay raise, not follow up on it, & kill their raise at the end of the year; they obviously need some encouragement & follow up to get it done. If things go well for the first couple of months, drop it to every other week. 4. Tell them they are free to bitch & whine about having to log calls as much as they want. Consider it a boot camp type of mentality. They are being asked to do something that from their perspective prevents them from getting the REAL job done. Let them blow some steam. It will make them feel better. They will eventually get over it. 5. Tell them to direct any complaints are heat they get for not being able to get things done, or done as fast as they want to you. And actually take the heat for it instead of them. They know people are going to get pissed when things aren't done johnny-on-the-spot. 6. They may get a little pissed and start logging every damn thing they do... like wiping their @ss. Let them do it for a while. Tell them that you would prefer that go to that extent vs. not doing the job at all. 7. Come up with a plan to deal with a backlog of problems if/when they can't get everything done. Do they get paid for overtime? Can you hire an additional person or contractor temporarily to keep up with demand? Or are you going to have to b1tch them out to work faster and make them feel like logging calls is counter productive? 8. So your wrote the call logging software yourself... could be good... but maybe a professional package might be faster to use. 9. Show them some appreciation for doing something that sucks. Drinks after work to b1tch about it. Grab a couple of cups of Starbucks. A couple of gift certificates for doing a good job. 10. Show positive results for the logging of calls. Maybe management has noticed that they really do need some anti-spyware software... or that Joe Schmoe keeps having problems but insists that he has to keep in installing Bonzi-buddy... maybe a recognition that you need more staff... or that they are under compensated for the work they do.
1. No perceived real viable options to the OS or Office Suite 1a. Talked with my girlfriend about using open office. She had tried it but it wasn't a realistic option when it came time to send out applications for a job. They want you to send it in a MS Word format. Everyone knows formatting counts when it comes to job interviews so using Open Office wasn't an option. 1b. Sister couldn't go for Open office either. She needed her stuff to be compatible with MS Office at work. 2. MS Certifications include clauses that state they can revoke your certifications at any time if you talk bad about them. 3. We have to patch our systems to protect ourselves from viruses, trojans & hacks, but we have little time to investigate what information MS is taking from our systems or if MS will break our computers (MS Advantage). Who knows what they will do next. 4. To reinstall an upgraded version (OS or Office) on a computer you have to install the prior version first. I want a clean install dammit! 5. You can't upgrade your OS or Office edition from a Dell (insert computer manufacture here) and install that on another computer. It's like I don't really own the OS or Office suite. 6. Friend's, relative's computer is trashed with spyware, trojans & malware. Needs to be reinstalled from scratch. But there are no discs provided to reinstall. Or if they do have the disk, I have to hunt down a serial number. And even if I have that, I have to call into the Microsoft Genuine Advantage number on a sketchy line, tell them why I am doing what I am doing and get new numbers to plug into they system to get it authorized. Why do I have to be treated like a crook? Rebuilding friend's/relatives/girlfriends computers suck as it is. 6a. And if they don't have all the materials, I can't use a different OS installation disk to install it. What do I tell the people I care about... Sorry, you will have to either go out and buy a $300 OS new... or search on line and see if the vendor of choice will send new hardware specific OS disks over a couple of weeks at a $20 charge? 7. No one ever seems to qualify for the upgrade price unless they are upgrading their 2 year old computer that will be in the trash can in a year anyway. 8. New version of Vista is designed NOT to work with media and to prevent me from using my computer to modify my purchased media the way I want to. 9. Bloat. My new hardware should be running faster... not keeping par with the resource hog of my OS & Office suite. 10. Forced click licenses. Most all of it is BS. 11. Nickel & dime - No way out licensing... New Hardware? New License. Linix? You need a CAL to connect to anything.
Note to others: Yes there are work-arounds & choices to be made. But this is just my bitch list. And these are the things we have to deal with in the real world. We can't always make altruistic no-compromise choices and still function in society.
About 8 years ago I working in a building that had a blind man (none of this legally/partially blind bs) running the convience stand. He showed me one day how he determined the value of the currency handed to him. He felt the ridges on the corners of the bills. He could also feel the patterns of the faces.
Pull out an old style $1 from your wallet. This the type of bill he was working with at the time. The black ink is slightly raised. The newer bills have slightly raised black ink too with different patterns. Run your finger nail across them to feel the ridges.
If it is easy for you to find work at similar compensation levels that do not compromise your morals there is no reason for you to continue to do this work. They are your morals and you are more than welcome to them so long as you are not forcing them on others. If you are concerned about the well being of your co-workers simply offer to help transition to the new person. Who knows, maybe other people in your company involved in the project have similar moral objections but are afraid to speak out. If leaving this place of employment is not a problem, go ahead and speak your mind in a calm, reasonable matter. But bear in mind there is not legal protection for employment based on morals when no laws matters prohibit such activities. Nor should you expect your company & coworkers to bend down to the lowest common denominator of the most stringent set of morals in the company.
However, if you don't think that you can find equitable work else where and are not willing to take a cut in pay, I strongly suggest you do what the rest of us do and play ball until such a time comes when you can afford to move on.
Notice in the message board area, you had to press [Enter] to get it to accept your text? If he is going to go click free, he might as well go [Enter] key free too. Same difference.
If a company won't send you their product to review since they are afraid you will trash it, you can always suggest to them that if their competitor has a product that sucks that just came out to send it to your for review.
"Without controlling the data source or making sure that the data is valid, one could become a victim of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). In all fairness, this may not be a problem if the sample size is large enough to overwhelm any outlying data, but I'm not sure that this project has sufficiently addressed this concern . .." -StateOfTheUnion
Part of the submission process is for you to classify your dialect. After your recordings are posted, people can rate your recordings & comment on them. I think this is a decent plan to address your concerns.
"Any way, I don't think you were being too serious with your comment, but I figured I would give my opinion on why that option would not be feasible nor even bring more favorable outcome since a lot of people are not entirely familiar with political and historical situation in the region." -Anonymous Coward
Not totally serious just because I know it would never be that simple. In any case I got some great thoughtful replys giving me a little more perspective on the regional dynamics. Of course, I still think that NK does not have a friend in the world. And I don't think a person in the world would shed a tear if their government got blasted off the face of the earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Your hard drive. DRM free. Rapidly dropping prices per GB. (Current = $109/300GB). No special hardware needed to read/write on the media.
-1 It makes me squeamish (Hey we are geeks right?)
Provide full quality WAVs or FLAK and I am there. Provide it at a reasonable price and they'll have 25 years worth of pent up music buying desire snatching up everything I always wanted. If they hit 50 cents a song or $5/album people will be stocking up on the full sets of all the artists they ever liked.
But until then, I'll stick to buying CDs from local & visiting bands with the occasional on-line purchase (or donation) of DRM free, full featured music.
If you have seen the quality of his video, you can be pretty sure he didn't worry about other details like licensing the song.
Has anyone else noticed that he is using that clip of copyrighted characters on his website doing line dancing. How much do you want to bet he doesn't have permission from the copyright holders to show that. Also, the music he has on line, the video he has on-line and THE VIDEO HE IS SELLING all contain the song The Electric Slide which he is NOT the copyright holder for.
One quick call to the RIAA and he is done for. Fight fire with Fire.
The only sad part is that I find myself defending line-dancing of any kind.
He wants people to do The Electric Slide "correctly" aka his way, because if they don't do his copyrighted dance then he can't sue companies like Oprah, Ellen, Movies, local communities doing a dance to pay him royalty fees. This is about money. Make no mistake about it. And he is hard up for it too. He is out to claim that any line dancing done to the song "The Electric Slide" is HIS line dance. I say B.S.
Dell has been selling these for a while. At least a year ago they were selling them at prices higher than the same windows version. Somebody must of b1tched.
Here are the Windows/Dimension series & price:
Dimension e521
Dimension c521
Dimension E520
My apples to apples comparison for the e521 N series vs. the e521 Dimension(Windows) series is that the Windows system costs $60 more ($699 vs. $759).
For the apples to apples c521 bundle, the Windows Dimension series costs $40 more ($699 vs. $739). For the e520 series, my apples to apples bundle comes out $170 more for the Windows Dimension ($679 vs. $509).
Of course you can not drop some components on some of the N series (in standard Dell variable practice) like the monitor, modem, soundcard, so if all you want to the raw computer, buying the windows system will probably be a better price. What good is dropping the OS if they are going to shove a bunch of hardware you don't need down your throat.
I had priced them out about 1.5 years ago for some toy/test boxes. For what I needed the Windows versions were a better price for the hardware. I ended up getting a cheaper box somewhere else.
Storage costs? $5.39 per movie at 19.6 GB/movie.
400 GB hard drive for $109.99. That's 3.6GB per dollar.
Being DRM free again? Priceless
Well never get anywhere until we start thinking in metric terms on a mass scale. That means initially setting up road signs to list speeds in both miles & kilometers initially. And requiring auto manufactures to include kilometers on all car's speedometers. Once the nation has slowly switched over all of it's road signs to the dual option listing we can then switch over all new road signs to Kilometers.
I call bullshit. This concept of "originality" is oversold. All of humanities advances are built on the shoulders of those who came before us. Pretty much anything you can or will come up with has been thought up by someone else before. You might tweak the idea a little, sell it a little better, put it in a prettier package, make it more efficient or less of a pain in the @ss to use. But when it comes down to it, you really haven't done anything new.
It would be more interesting to here other samples of different songs that match up with that beat. And prior songs that match up to the "copied" song. It's out there.
"is your objection based on principled or practical concerns?"
Both.
The first message we sent to another planet better be "Hello World."
1. Tell them that you understand that logging calls will take away time from fixing things and solving problems, but as insane as that seems to them, management and yourself are actually willing to make that trade off. It's the cost of doing business.
2. Tell them the documentation generated by logging calls can be used to solve problems they have been b1tching about. If upper management can't see it on paper, then it never happened. Even if they do a great job, if it's not on paper, it never happened.
3. Make quantity of calls logged a metric worth 80% of their pay raise this year. Follow up with them every Friday to see how they are doing on this. It's not fair to make it 80% of their pay raise, not follow up on it, & kill their raise at the end of the year; they obviously need some encouragement & follow up to get it done. If things go well for the first couple of months, drop it to every other week.
4. Tell them they are free to bitch & whine about having to log calls as much as they want. Consider it a boot camp type of mentality. They are being asked to do something that from their perspective prevents them from getting the REAL job done. Let them blow some steam. It will make them feel better. They will eventually get over it.
5. Tell them to direct any complaints are heat they get for not being able to get things done, or done as fast as they want to you. And actually take the heat for it instead of them. They know people are going to get pissed when things aren't done johnny-on-the-spot.
6. They may get a little pissed and start logging every damn thing they do... like wiping their @ss. Let them do it for a while. Tell them that you would prefer that go to that extent vs. not doing the job at all.
7. Come up with a plan to deal with a backlog of problems if/when they can't get everything done. Do they get paid for overtime? Can you hire an additional person or contractor temporarily to keep up with demand? Or are you going to have to b1tch them out to work faster and make them feel like logging calls is counter productive?
8. So your wrote the call logging software yourself... could be good... but maybe a professional package might be faster to use.
9. Show them some appreciation for doing something that sucks. Drinks after work to b1tch about it. Grab a couple of cups of Starbucks. A couple of gift certificates for doing a good job.
10. Show positive results for the logging of calls. Maybe management has noticed that they really do need some anti-spyware software... or that Joe Schmoe keeps having problems but insists that he has to keep in installing Bonzi-buddy... maybe a recognition that you need more staff... or that they are under compensated for the work they do.
Now everybody is going to get excited about things that they can control with their "Wii".
1. No perceived real viable options to the OS or Office Suite
1a. Talked with my girlfriend about using open office. She had tried it but it wasn't a realistic option when it came time to send out applications for a job. They want you to send it in a MS Word format. Everyone knows formatting counts when it comes to job interviews so using Open Office wasn't an option.
1b. Sister couldn't go for Open office either. She needed her stuff to be compatible with MS Office at work.
2. MS Certifications include clauses that state they can revoke your certifications at any time if you talk bad about them.
3. We have to patch our systems to protect ourselves from viruses, trojans & hacks, but we have little time to investigate what information MS is taking from our systems or if MS will break our computers (MS Advantage). Who knows what they will do next.
4. To reinstall an upgraded version (OS or Office) on a computer you have to install the prior version first. I want a clean install dammit!
5. You can't upgrade your OS or Office edition from a Dell (insert computer manufacture here) and install that on another computer. It's like I don't really own the OS or Office suite.
6. Friend's, relative's computer is trashed with spyware, trojans & malware. Needs to be reinstalled from scratch. But there are no discs provided to reinstall. Or if they do have the disk, I have to hunt down a serial number. And even if I have that, I have to call into the Microsoft Genuine Advantage number on a sketchy line, tell them why I am doing what I am doing and get new numbers to plug into they system to get it authorized. Why do I have to be treated like a crook? Rebuilding friend's/relatives/girlfriends computers suck as it is.
6a. And if they don't have all the materials, I can't use a different OS installation disk to install it. What do I tell the people I care about... Sorry, you will have to either go out and buy a $300 OS new... or search on line and see if the vendor of choice will send new hardware specific OS disks over a couple of weeks at a $20 charge?
7. No one ever seems to qualify for the upgrade price unless they are upgrading their 2 year old computer that will be in the trash can in a year anyway.
8. New version of Vista is designed NOT to work with media and to prevent me from using my computer to modify my purchased media the way I want to.
9. Bloat. My new hardware should be running faster... not keeping par with the resource hog of my OS & Office suite.
10. Forced click licenses. Most all of it is BS.
11. Nickel & dime - No way out licensing... New Hardware? New License. Linix? You need a CAL to connect to anything.
Note to others: Yes there are work-arounds & choices to be made. But this is just my bitch list. And these are the things we have to deal with in the real world. We can't always make altruistic no-compromise choices and still function in society.
If you don't like it all you have to do is say that a tool of this magnitude could be extremely useful for terrorists planning an attack on US soil.
Project shutdown in 5...4...3...2...
About 8 years ago I working in a building that had a blind man (none of this legally/partially blind bs) running the convience stand. He showed me one day how he determined the value of the currency handed to him. He felt the ridges on the corners of the bills. He could also feel the patterns of the faces.
Pull out an old style $1 from your wallet. This the type of bill he was working with at the time. The black ink is slightly raised. The newer bills have slightly raised black ink too with different patterns. Run your finger nail across them to feel the ridges.
If it is easy for you to find work at similar compensation levels that do not compromise your morals there is no reason for you to continue to do this work. They are your morals and you are more than welcome to them so long as you are not forcing them on others. If you are concerned about the well being of your co-workers simply offer to help transition to the new person. Who knows, maybe other people in your company involved in the project have similar moral objections but are afraid to speak out. If leaving this place of employment is not a problem, go ahead and speak your mind in a calm, reasonable matter. But bear in mind there is not legal protection for employment based on morals when no laws matters prohibit such activities. Nor should you expect your company & coworkers to bend down to the lowest common denominator of the most stringent set of morals in the company.
However, if you don't think that you can find equitable work else where and are not willing to take a cut in pay, I strongly suggest you do what the rest of us do and play ball until such a time comes when you can afford to move on.
Notice in the message board area, you had to press [Enter] to get it to accept your text? If he is going to go click free, he might as well go [Enter] key free too. Same difference.
If a company won't send you their product to review since they are afraid you will trash it, you can always suggest to them that if their competitor has a product that sucks that just came out to send it to your for review.
Your use of firefly is offensive. It's Icemaggot now.
Don't sit to close to the TV. It will make you go sterile & ruin your eyes.
"Without controlling the data source or making sure that the data is valid, one could become a victim of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). In all fairness, this may not be a problem if the sample size is large enough to overwhelm any outlying data, but I'm not sure that this project has sufficiently addressed this concern . . ." -StateOfTheUnion
Part of the submission process is for you to classify your dialect. After your recordings are posted, people can rate your recordings & comment on them. I think this is a decent plan to address your concerns.
"Any way, I don't think you were being too serious with your comment, but I figured I would give my opinion on why that option would not be feasible nor even bring more favorable outcome since a lot of people are not entirely familiar with political and historical situation in the region." -Anonymous Coward
Not totally serious just because I know it would never be that simple. In any case I got some great thoughtful replys giving me a little more perspective on the regional dynamics. Of course, I still think that NK does not have a friend in the world. And I don't think a person in the world would shed a tear if their government got blasted off the face of the earth.
Wow. For being such big a-holes they sure do put up a lot of big PDF files on their website: http://www.e360insight.com/case_history.html