My main monitors at home are two 30" ACDs and a 23" ACD. It sucks to then sit down and work in the office or elsewhere at my 17" laptop. I can't imagine having to use anything smaller. It's like having a Suburban, but having to drive to work on a Moped.
Not everybody has weak spindly schoolgirl arms. My 17" is only 6.5lbs (Powerbook) and it's barely noticible. You could probably double the weight and it would still be more than acceptable.
A lot of people actually do. Sometimes the old systems do all they really need and they have no desire to spend lots of cash upgrading hardware and operating systems just for the sake of going through the motions.
I know my local GameStop has something like 1.5ghz boxes running an earlier (6.22, maybe?) version of DOS for their tracking and accounting system. Kind of crazy, but if it works, why waste cash on something else?
I thought information wanted to be free. If it's okay for me to download music from russian sites at a nickel a track or watch movies from bit torrent trackers (and I do both of these readily and happily), who am I (and most of us) to criticise a little GPL violation here and there?
The money you pay for your gas goes to some shady people, too.
If you obtain your drug-money from an unlawful source or action, that should be (and is) punishable. So if you buy cocaine with money you obtained through robbery or extortion, you should go to prison. If you obtained it by being wealthy or selling your car, then fine.
It's stupid. And I have no sympathy for those with habits, but that doesn't mean I can't still believe in self determination and autonomy.
Now, if Google integrated their Print search with ABE, then the "buy it now" could be buying it from that rare bookseller in the middle of nowhere.
Good point.
Of course, I can't remember the last time I bought or read a real physical book. I use O'Reilly's Safari service to read everything online. Books are too damned expensive. As long as it's legitimate and everyone agrees to it, I would be happy seeing them all work together to digitize all of these books (even the rare ones) and make them available online in TXT and PDF (or.ps) for a price. Everyone gets their due payment. The only downside I could see in that is that perhaps the "rare" book is no longer so rare. Or maybe it is, since collectors are interested in the physical item and not the contents - which is all most of us need.
Then, imagine if schools got some sort of discount or total freebie on this? That would be cool. The Google sponsored system could replace libraries entirely - and authors and publishers could reap more benefits than they do with the current library system.
So like I say, I don't buy for one fucking second that all Google intends to do is innocently index books and point people to them in the physical world. That's just an "in".
Nobody said what business thinks doesn't matter (although in many respects, it doesn't). I was simply pointing out that since business isn't the only perspective in the universe, it's silly to call the "business perspective" the "balanced" one, as in the blurb for this Slashdot article. It's a little like getting Sprint's opinion on VOIP and calling that balanced.
You get tax-credits, idiot. Tax-credits that only people who squirt out children get. And don't tell me "well, it's only fair, because raising children is expensive so I deserve it!". Having a sports car is expensive, too. Just like having children, it's an option. It's not forced, required or demanded. Yet you get yours subsidized. And on top of it, the rest of us help pay for your children's education and - and who knows what else, if you can't afford your kids and stick them on the dole.
If you've got cable TV is no more FOX than radio is really all ClearChannel.
Except that radio almost is all ClearChannel (more than 50%). All of the other radio outlets/stations combined don't add up to as much as ClearChannel owns. The two main radio media networks own something like 80% of the market. That doesn't really strike me as diverse.
I know that there used to be signs on the copy machines at the central library here as much as 15 years ago that made mention of "proper copying" of copyrighted materials. Clearly, according to the library, you were not allowed to just take a book off the shelf and photocopy the whole thing.
As I pointed out before, the problem in this case is that a card catalog index is not the same thing as a full text index. One is indexing a few key items that has always been done. The other is indexing every word of every page of the entire book. That's a very different thing. If that's all they're doing, I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad idea or entirely unreasonable - but I'm not convinced that it's acceptable to do without the author or publisher's permission, either. I'm actually a bit up in the air on that one.
But mostly, I'm just not convinced that this is the limit of Google's intentions. Like I say... I see a napster-ish hue on this scene.
How is this a very worthy task? It's Froogle for books. *yawn*
Unless Google is hiding something up their sleeve, you still have to convince some random book owner on the other side of the planet to actually SELL you the book you found indexed on google. According to Google, this is great for rich and poor alike. Hardly. What good does it do you to know that there is a book with the information you want if you can't afford to buy it or convince the seller of an out of print book to part with it at a price you can afford? This is like giving a copy of Rent.net magazine to a bunch of people and saying that because the index/listings are free to view, housing is somehow affordable for rich and poor alike. Silly.
That's why I don't think we have the whole "real story" here. Great, so I can find that some place in the middle of nowhere 10,000 miles away has a copy of a book with a certain title and author that has the word "Bighorn" in it. Unless Google is going to sell me a digital copy of this or somehow let me download the contents or at least view the pages involving it, how does this help me whatsoever? Or is the idea that now I can contact the little small town historical archive that has a copy of said book and bargain with them to see if I can buy the rare book from them?
I mean . . . Honestly, without the contents - this service is useless. And if they're going to provide the contents, then they're clearly violating copyright. Unless they're going to work with the publishers (which will be hard to do if the author or publishing house no longer exist or are hard to contact) to settle payment for each piece of content sold to the user, how is this going to fly? And with publishers so against this, who really things they'll negotiate such a payment system with google?
This almost has shades of napster to it. Trying to force a hand that may or may not be reasonable and legal and justifying it with a limited scope in order to convince the distributors/providers (publishers in this case) to go along with it and work out a new distribution system in which Google is the money-making middleman. In the meantime, they've managed to get the rest of us to support them for the sake of "information wants to be free".
They've got to give us more information on what they really want to do and not so much... you know... bullshit and hyperbole.
Imagine sitting at your computer and, in less than a second, searching the full text of every book ever written . . . Imagine one giant electronic card catalog that makes all the world's books discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
I've added the emphasis to show why there is a problem for many people with this. You can't advertise it as a full text search of every book every written while justifying it by claiming it's just a card catalog. Last time I stopped in at the local library, the card catalog indexed a brief descriptive blurb, publishing date, printing, editor, publisher, author, page count and title. It did not contain the contents of said book.
The US incarcerates people largely to punish them for stuff they do to themselves. If someone is strung out on meth or heroin, they are only a problem to me if they steal something to support their habit. Considering the fact that theft is already a crime, I can't see how locking up people who are casual users and functioning addicts helps society at all.
These prison systems are getting too complex, too expensive, and are locking too many people away for "their own good".
It's essentially the Catholic Justice System. You're locked away not so much because of offenses you commit that harm other people, but for offenses that upset god and baby jesus and mother mary and all that jazz. How else do you explain laws intended to punish 18 year olds having sex with same-sex 15 year olds with 17 years in prison, but punish 18 year olds having sex with female 15 year olds with 15 months in prison? It's all about morality and just because something is considered "immoral" by many doesn't make it harmful to anyone.
retaining U.S. control of the Internet's core infrastructure
With control over infrastructure, it'll be easier to affect control over content. You know, so our morally superior country and government can wipe out all forms of violence and nudity and sex on the internet. It's so obscene and evil. But we're not as bad as the taliban, I swear. I mean... most of us aren't even brown so that makes is totally lawful/good.
If you weren't aware of the mandate, that makes you the idiot. As I mentioned, discussion of the mandate has been public knowledge for years. This is not a new event and it is not something that only the "clued in" would know about. Hell, my grandfather was asking me about the switch to digital/HDTV that he'd heard would render analog useless back in 2000, before he died. If an 85 year old carpenter picks up on that, there's no excuse for the average joe not to have known about it.
In addition, anyone who has bought a television in the last five years has probably had a discussion with a salesguy on the floor who would most likely have brought up the pending mandates and switchovers to sell you no the HDTV set (or at least the HDTV-ready set).
Again - this may not be the most broadly reported topic, but it certainly isn't hidden, either. Not only that - but Slashdot has been reporting on mandate plans/discussions/changes for five years. Where do you think they get those reports? That's right - from other news sources. The kind of news sources the average joe probably has access to. God damn, I haven't even watched TV for two of the last four years and I still couldn't escape discussions about it. C'mon . . .
Just wait until the law states that it is a violation of copyright to discuss lastnight's cable news broadcasts with your coworkers around the watercooler, because they didn't pay for it.
Still, this is television. When neighborhoods are forced to hook up to public sewer systems, the house owner is forced to pay the $15,000 to do it. The government doesn't pay it for them because "well, we're forcing you to make a change". So how the hell is television such a necessity that such must be done?
I don't care that the $3,000,000,000 is coming from the sale of the broadcast spectrum on analog. How about doing the right thing and use all of that "television generated" money and putting it into literacy programs?
Television is a luxery. Since when does the government owe me anything for a luxery - even if it's a luxery that I lost because of their legislation? And seriously - isn't that a lot of money? It seems most people have cable today. They probably pay $5 for their set top box. For an extra $5, cable companies will give you an HDTV converter in that box. Problem solved. And it didn't cost $60 per individual, either.
Slashdot Mirror
My main monitors at home are two 30" ACDs and a 23" ACD. It sucks to then sit down and work in the office or elsewhere at my 17" laptop. I can't imagine having to use anything smaller. It's like having a Suburban, but having to drive to work on a Moped.
Not everybody has weak spindly schoolgirl arms. My 17" is only 6.5lbs (Powerbook) and it's barely noticible. You could probably double the weight and it would still be more than acceptable.
Information may want to be free, but authors want to eat.
Then stop charging $20/cd and $30/dvd, so those who want to enjoy your content can still afford to eat, too.
A lot of people actually do. Sometimes the old systems do all they really need and they have no desire to spend lots of cash upgrading hardware and operating systems just for the sake of going through the motions.
I know my local GameStop has something like 1.5ghz boxes running an earlier (6.22, maybe?) version of DOS for their tracking and accounting system. Kind of crazy, but if it works, why waste cash on something else?
I thought information wanted to be free. If it's okay for me to download music from russian sites at a nickel a track or watch movies from bit torrent trackers (and I do both of these readily and happily), who am I (and most of us) to criticise a little GPL violation here and there?
The money you pay for your gas goes to some shady people, too.
If you obtain your drug-money from an unlawful source or action, that should be (and is) punishable. So if you buy cocaine with money you obtained through robbery or extortion, you should go to prison. If you obtained it by being wealthy or selling your car, then fine.
It's stupid. And I have no sympathy for those with habits, but that doesn't mean I can't still believe in self determination and autonomy.
the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some exotically dense form of matter.
Oh my god . . . It's full of politicians and pundits . . . !
Now, if Google integrated their Print search with ABE, then the "buy it now" could be buying it from that rare bookseller in the middle of nowhere.
.ps) for a price. Everyone gets their due payment. The only downside I could see in that is that perhaps the "rare" book is no longer so rare. Or maybe it is, since collectors are interested in the physical item and not the contents - which is all most of us need.
Good point.
Of course, I can't remember the last time I bought or read a real physical book. I use O'Reilly's Safari service to read everything online. Books are too damned expensive. As long as it's legitimate and everyone agrees to it, I would be happy seeing them all work together to digitize all of these books (even the rare ones) and make them available online in TXT and PDF (or
Then, imagine if schools got some sort of discount or total freebie on this? That would be cool. The Google sponsored system could replace libraries entirely - and authors and publishers could reap more benefits than they do with the current library system.
So like I say, I don't buy for one fucking second that all Google intends to do is innocently index books and point people to them in the physical world. That's just an "in".
Nobody said what business thinks doesn't matter (although in many respects, it doesn't). I was simply pointing out that since business isn't the only perspective in the universe, it's silly to call the "business perspective" the "balanced" one, as in the blurb for this Slashdot article. It's a little like getting Sprint's opinion on VOIP and calling that balanced.
You get tax-credits, idiot. Tax-credits that only people who squirt out children get. And don't tell me "well, it's only fair, because raising children is expensive so I deserve it!". Having a sports car is expensive, too. Just like having children, it's an option. It's not forced, required or demanded. Yet you get yours subsidized. And on top of it, the rest of us help pay for your children's education and - and who knows what else, if you can't afford your kids and stick them on the dole.
written from a balanced, business-oriented perspective.
Balanced.
Business-oriented.
Is that sort of like a balanced discussion of Wicca or Islam from a 700-Club perspective?
If you've got cable TV is no more FOX than radio is really all ClearChannel.
Except that radio almost is all ClearChannel (more than 50%). All of the other radio outlets/stations combined don't add up to as much as ClearChannel owns. The two main radio media networks own something like 80% of the market. That doesn't really strike me as diverse.
I know that there used to be signs on the copy machines at the central library here as much as 15 years ago that made mention of "proper copying" of copyrighted materials. Clearly, according to the library, you were not allowed to just take a book off the shelf and photocopy the whole thing.
As I pointed out before, the problem in this case is that a card catalog index is not the same thing as a full text index. One is indexing a few key items that has always been done. The other is indexing every word of every page of the entire book. That's a very different thing. If that's all they're doing, I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad idea or entirely unreasonable - but I'm not convinced that it's acceptable to do without the author or publisher's permission, either. I'm actually a bit up in the air on that one.
But mostly, I'm just not convinced that this is the limit of Google's intentions. Like I say... I see a napster-ish hue on this scene.
How is this a very worthy task? It's Froogle for books. *yawn*
Unless Google is hiding something up their sleeve, you still have to convince some random book owner on the other side of the planet to actually SELL you the book you found indexed on google. According to Google, this is great for rich and poor alike. Hardly. What good does it do you to know that there is a book with the information you want if you can't afford to buy it or convince the seller of an out of print book to part with it at a price you can afford? This is like giving a copy of Rent.net magazine to a bunch of people and saying that because the index/listings are free to view, housing is somehow affordable for rich and poor alike. Silly.
That's why I don't think we have the whole "real story" here. Great, so I can find that some place in the middle of nowhere 10,000 miles away has a copy of a book with a certain title and author that has the word "Bighorn" in it. Unless Google is going to sell me a digital copy of this or somehow let me download the contents or at least view the pages involving it, how does this help me whatsoever? Or is the idea that now I can contact the little small town historical archive that has a copy of said book and bargain with them to see if I can buy the rare book from them?
I mean . . . Honestly, without the contents - this service is useless. And if they're going to provide the contents, then they're clearly violating copyright. Unless they're going to work with the publishers (which will be hard to do if the author or publishing house no longer exist or are hard to contact) to settle payment for each piece of content sold to the user, how is this going to fly? And with publishers so against this, who really things they'll negotiate such a payment system with google?
This almost has shades of napster to it. Trying to force a hand that may or may not be reasonable and legal and justifying it with a limited scope in order to convince the distributors/providers (publishers in this case) to go along with it and work out a new distribution system in which Google is the money-making middleman. In the meantime, they've managed to get the rest of us to support them for the sake of "information wants to be free".
They've got to give us more information on what they really want to do and not so much... you know... bullshit and hyperbole.
Imagine sitting at your computer and, in less than a second, searching the full text of every book ever written . . . Imagine one giant electronic card catalog that makes all the world's books discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
I've added the emphasis to show why there is a problem for many people with this. You can't advertise it as a full text search of every book every written while justifying it by claiming it's just a card catalog. Last time I stopped in at the local library, the card catalog indexed a brief descriptive blurb, publishing date, printing, editor, publisher, author, page count and title. It did not contain the contents of said book.
I won't even get in to the Constitution.
Mr. Bush? Is that you? Ashcroct? Gonzalas? Alright, goofballs, fess up - I know it's one of you!
Your arguement is completely irrelavant. Everyone knows that the French would just give it up if forcefully asked to do so. :)
(I kid, I kid - I have nothing against anyone from any country. I swear.)
The US incarcerates people largely to punish them for stuff they do to themselves. If someone is strung out on meth or heroin, they are only a problem to me if they steal something to support their habit. Considering the fact that theft is already a crime, I can't see how locking up people who are casual users and functioning addicts helps society at all.
These prison systems are getting too complex, too expensive, and are locking too many people away for "their own good".
It's essentially the Catholic Justice System. You're locked away not so much because of offenses you commit that harm other people, but for offenses that upset god and baby jesus and mother mary and all that jazz. How else do you explain laws intended to punish 18 year olds having sex with same-sex 15 year olds with 17 years in prison, but punish 18 year olds having sex with female 15 year olds with 15 months in prison? It's all about morality and just because something is considered "immoral" by many doesn't make it harmful to anyone.
On the bright side, they'll be getting their free subsidized digital television converter boxes any day now. Welcome to freedom, gentlemen!
retaining U.S. control of the Internet's core infrastructure
With control over infrastructure, it'll be easier to affect control over content. You know, so our morally superior country and government can wipe out all forms of violence and nudity and sex on the internet. It's so obscene and evil. But we're not as bad as the taliban, I swear. I mean... most of us aren't even brown so that makes is totally lawful/good.
If you weren't aware of the mandate, that makes you the idiot. As I mentioned, discussion of the mandate has been public knowledge for years. This is not a new event and it is not something that only the "clued in" would know about. Hell, my grandfather was asking me about the switch to digital/HDTV that he'd heard would render analog useless back in 2000, before he died. If an 85 year old carpenter picks up on that, there's no excuse for the average joe not to have known about it.
In addition, anyone who has bought a television in the last five years has probably had a discussion with a salesguy on the floor who would most likely have brought up the pending mandates and switchovers to sell you no the HDTV set (or at least the HDTV-ready set).
Again - this may not be the most broadly reported topic, but it certainly isn't hidden, either. Not only that - but Slashdot has been reporting on mandate plans/discussions/changes for five years. Where do you think they get those reports? That's right - from other news sources. The kind of news sources the average joe probably has access to. God damn, I haven't even watched TV for two of the last four years and I still couldn't escape discussions about it. C'mon . . .
Just wait until the law states that it is a violation of copyright to discuss lastnight's cable news broadcasts with your coworkers around the watercooler, because they didn't pay for it.
Still, this is television. When neighborhoods are forced to hook up to public sewer systems, the house owner is forced to pay the $15,000 to do it. The government doesn't pay it for them because "well, we're forcing you to make a change". So how the hell is television such a necessity that such must be done?
I don't care that the $3,000,000,000 is coming from the sale of the broadcast spectrum on analog. How about doing the right thing and use all of that "television generated" money and putting it into literacy programs?
Television is a luxery. Since when does the government owe me anything for a luxery - even if it's a luxery that I lost because of their legislation? And seriously - isn't that a lot of money? It seems most people have cable today. They probably pay $5 for their set top box. For an extra $5, cable companies will give you an HDTV converter in that box. Problem solved. And it didn't cost $60 per individual, either.
Awww. That's so cute! You think you're free! ;)