I carry a 100gb external USB drive and three memory sticks everywhere I go. They contain multiple diff backups, HD ghosts, etc. I'm a novelist and programmer, and my data is my livelihood.
If I had a job where they banned me from carrying my own backups around I'd have to resign, because I'm not about to leave them in my car and I'm not going to open a safety deposit box for daily switchover visits.
Surely it's up to the company to manage their hardware so that employees can't simply copy data to removable devices?
And if someone was going to do something naughty, wouldn't they just steal a motorbike capable of 300 km/h instead of a more easily identifible car? Whip off the license place and off you go.
Re the tracking: they're just giving themselves the best chance of investigating something after it actually happened. E.g. the bombings on the underground. If they had data on the movement of the bomber's vehicles (or motorbikes), they could interview everyone the bombers visited in the past year or more. Person of interest A says he doesn't know person of interest B, until the police show him vehicle movements proving his car was parked outside B's place four or five times. Then they move on to B, and gradually uncover the whole network.
If someone uses a false plate it would be discovered the first time a piccy is taken. If it's a duplicate of another vehicle's plate, both vehicles can be tracked. If the colour and/or make of the car doesn't match the rego details, they've got them.
Anyway, if my car's ever nicked I'd be more than happy to have it tracked within minutes. As the parent says, I have nothing to hide.
I had an issue: I upgraded the cpu & motherboard on my home built PC from a P4 to an Athlon64. The XP-SP2 service pack would install, then lock on the first boot with a STOP: 0x00000007E error. I'd have to ghost the partition back each time, and in the end I gave up on SP2 altogether.
I found the fix, finally, but it still seems to be a bit of a secret (Second entry from the bottom)
So, maybe others are having the same issue. It can't be that uncommon.
I have a portable hand-held TV from 1991, and the screen is about 2" diag. It's not big enough to see anything, and I used to get nauseous tryng to view TV on it. The screen is about the same as that on my current mobile, so unless they're planning to make these things about 10" wide it's not going to work for me.
I'd rather get a USB HDTV decoder and run it off the laptop. Not very portable, compared to a mobile, but watchable all the same.
Just curious here. What happens if you plug a memory stick into the net cafe PC and run linux on an emu? (I can't remember the exact name of the distro now - I've got a couple of installs around here somewhere.) If you read your email & browse the web via a home server using an ssh link - even vnc via SSH if you're on broadband. In that situation, aren't they stuffed when it comes to recording everything you're up to? And if they object to running things off memory sticks, what if you use your own laptop?
I've been using this extension for a week and I'm really happy with it. 90% of the scripts serve ads or count website visits, so who cares if they don't run? A couple of times I've had sites not work properly, but a quick click of the 'enable' option soon fixes that.
Cheers
Simon Haynes (No relation to the parent poster. At least, not to my knowledge.)
So you're concerned that people won't want to read your book because all the old books will be cheap/free and unencumbered. That's a legitimate concern.
The Gutenberg archive has 13,000 books or more available as free downloadable ebooks, and it has zip effect on new book sales. People want shiny new discoveries, not something plucked from the pages of history. Word of mouth spreads when a pivotal number of readers 'discover' the same book at the same time. Then that author's backlist starts to sell. To do that they have to be in the shops, which is a whole other story.
There's no simple solution: Currently, books are given a few weeks, a few months tops, to make their mark on the book-buying public. If they fail - and 98% do - they're sold off cheap or pulped to make room for more new books. The only authors who would object to a 20 year copyright are those who are still making decent money from their old works. That's what I meant in an earlier comment - why not allow rights holders to extend the copyright for a price? Disney, Dan Brown, JK Rowling and so on can afford the price, while most couldn't. That's actually a good thing, because it automatically forces unsuccessful books out of copyright. And if an older book becomes successful because three publishers all bring out editions, then the author might suddenly find their newer works are in demand. (Reverse backlist, if you will.)
The problem is the human mentality to hoard stuff just in case it becomes valuable 'one day'. Authors, despite rumours to the contrary, are human too.
First, I think copyright of life + 75 or + 90 or whatever is madness. The default should be something much lower, and they should just grant extensions to those who demand them... For a fee, to dissuade money-grabbing relatives of the author locking his/her words up indefinitely just in case they become valuable.
Second, there should be a distinction between free usage and profiting. If copyright expired 20 years after publication, what happens if six publishers all bring out editions of Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October? I think that's just on 20 years old now. If it were possible to share as an e-text but not profit commercially that would be fair. Otherwise you're just saying to the author that everyone bar him/her can now make money off their older work. And wouldn't that make 20-year-old books 10% more profitable to publishers than new ones? After all, they wouldn't have to pay the author. It's already hard enough for a newbie to get published.
:-) My average so far is 50 (excluding school visits where attendance is compulsory) Two events, with 100 people at the first and none at the second. The first had loads of publicity, word of mouth and excitement and the second... didn't.
It's well known that the average book signing is attended by 4 people. At $1 - $2 per copy royalty the author can just about buy themselves a cup of coffee and a muffin with the proceeds.
Authors make money by taking a small percentage from the cover price of each book sold. They can't make money from live performances (authors are usually a pretty boring bunch) and the money they DO make from selling their books isn't enough to live on in 99% of cases. Therefore they teach or lecture or work as writers-in-residence or have part- or full- time jobs, all of which means they write less than they would if they were full time writers.
Yes, I'm a published author and no, I can't see how any system other than what we have now is going to work better - or even come close. Forget about six-figure advances and 'richer than the queen' - only 2 percent of books released each year sell more than 1000 copies. 1000 copies == peanuts in royalties == don't give up the day job. The occasional mega-best-seller skews public perception so that published author equals mega wealthy. As if, and if only.
The first book in my Hal Spacejock SF/Humour series is selling well (Reached #3 on the Dymocks SF/Fantasy bestseller list), although I'm still a complete unknown and my books are only available in Australia so far. On the bright side, anything better than 1000 copies puts me in the top 2% of all published authors;-)
My phone company does that. When the operator asks me for my number I tell them I just typed it in for them. Things start to go downhill rapidly from there.
I keep thinking things have to reach a tipping point eventually, where the law is demonstrated to be such an ass that the only sane thing would be to put it down humanely.
Evidence mounts and mounts (no pun intended), but I'm still waiting patiently for the scales to tip.
Strongbad's bottom 10 is one of my favourites. After you've watched that one, hit this one for my all-time favourite. I laughed so hard watching that one I had tears running down my cheeks, and it's still funny twenty times later.
I look around my home and workplace and all I see these days is AMD. I'm responsible for purchasing in both places (and also advise many others - family, friends, school), and while 2 or 3 years ago I would always suggest intel now it's AMD for just about everything. (They do say free advice is worth what you pay for it, but I research their needs as carefully as I research my own.)
The Athlon64 chip with cool and quiet swung it for me. Very hot climate, struggling aircon and red-hot cpu do not make for a happy pc - or user.
School funding is targeted towards getting kids who are behind the average UP to the average. Kids who are ahead of the average are lucky, need no funding, can be left to their own devices. At least, that seems to be the official policy here.
Both my kids are gifted (years ahead of their reading age, maths age, spelling, etc, etc), but you don't mention it in polite company because (a) it sounds like bragging and (b) during the conversation it turns out that everyone else's kids are just as gifted. There's nothing to be gained by saying anything, and teachers just take it for pushy parent syndrome.
We learned to shut up about it when our eldest was 9 months old (she's now 11 years old.) Instead, we make sure our kids have everything at home they might need: hundreds of fiction & non-fiction books from kid to adult level, their own computers (both have websites), but most of all the love and support of their parents whatever their achievements. I'd rather my children were in a supported, caring environment and just doing ok academically than shoved off to university aged 12 with the idea that higher marks = better person.
Actually, the car reference was a joke. (As in - I'd like someone else to pay the $1450 repair bill - who can I blame for it?) It's a Subaru WRX and this is the first repair in 7 years so I'm not too fussed.
The PCs, TVs and clothes dryer control panel really DID fail, and they were all due to bad caps.
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
The other question is this: They're talking about 50% fatalities, but how many people had the symptoms and weren't sick enough to visit a doctor? If the only ones they're measuring are the ones who get it bad enough to finally drag themselves in for medical attention then the 50% is a huge exaggeration.
Then there's the chance that a hybrid capable of being transmitted human-to-human won't be as deadly.
Even so, it's still a worry. People move around the planet a hell of a lot more quickly now than they did in 1918. With a three day incubation period hardly anywhere is safe.
Slashdot Mirror
I carry a 100gb external USB drive and three memory sticks everywhere I go. They contain multiple diff backups, HD ghosts, etc. I'm a novelist and programmer, and my data is my livelihood.
If I had a job where they banned me from carrying my own backups around I'd have to resign, because I'm not about to leave them in my car and I'm not going to open a safety deposit box for daily switchover visits.
Surely it's up to the company to manage their hardware so that employees can't simply copy data to removable devices?
A very warm lap.
And if someone was going to do something naughty, wouldn't they just steal a motorbike capable of 300 km/h instead of a more easily identifible car? Whip off the license place and off you go.
Re the tracking: they're just giving themselves the best chance of investigating something after it actually happened. E.g. the bombings on the underground. If they had data on the movement of the bomber's vehicles (or motorbikes), they could interview everyone the bombers visited in the past year or more. Person of interest A says he doesn't know person of interest B, until the police show him vehicle movements proving his car was parked outside B's place four or five times. Then they move on to B, and gradually uncover the whole network.
If someone uses a false plate it would be discovered the first time a piccy is taken. If it's a duplicate of another vehicle's plate, both vehicles can be tracked. If the colour and/or make of the car doesn't match the rego details, they've got them.
Anyway, if my car's ever nicked I'd be more than happy to have it tracked within minutes. As the parent says, I have nothing to hide.
d4? Call me when they can make a d20.
they don't want it up on the big screen
Quite...
I had an issue: I upgraded the cpu & motherboard on my home built PC from a P4 to an Athlon64. The XP-SP2 service pack would install, then lock on the first boot with a STOP: 0x00000007E error. I'd have to ghost the partition back each time, and in the end I gave up on SP2 altogether.
I found the fix, finally, but it still seems to be a bit of a secret (Second entry from the bottom)
So, maybe others are having the same issue. It can't be that uncommon.
It's near the Galactic Rimmer
I have a portable hand-held TV from 1991, and the screen is about 2" diag. It's not big enough to see anything, and I used to get nauseous tryng to view TV on it. The screen is about the same as that on my current mobile, so unless they're planning to make these things about 10" wide it's not going to work for me.
I'd rather get a USB HDTV decoder and run it off the laptop. Not very portable, compared to a mobile, but watchable all the same.
Just curious here. What happens if you plug a memory stick into the net cafe PC and run linux on an emu? (I can't remember the exact name of the distro now - I've got a couple of installs around here somewhere.) If you read your email & browse the web via a home server using an ssh link - even vnc via SSH if you're on broadband. In that situation, aren't they stuffed when it comes to recording everything you're up to? And if they object to running things off memory sticks, what if you use your own laptop?
I've been using this extension for a week and I'm really happy with it. 90% of the scripts serve ads or count website visits, so who cares if they don't run? A couple of times I've had sites not work properly, but a quick click of the 'enable' option soon fixes that.
Cheers
Simon Haynes (No relation to the parent poster. At least, not to my knowledge.)
So you're concerned that people won't want to read your book because all the old books will be cheap/free and unencumbered. That's a legitimate concern.
The Gutenberg archive has 13,000 books or more available as free downloadable ebooks, and it has zip effect on new book sales. People want shiny new discoveries, not something plucked from the pages of history. Word of mouth spreads when a pivotal number of readers 'discover' the same book at the same time. Then that author's backlist starts to sell. To do that they have to be in the shops, which is a whole other story.
There's no simple solution: Currently, books are given a few weeks, a few months tops, to make their mark on the book-buying public. If they fail - and 98% do - they're sold off cheap or pulped to make room for more new books. The only authors who would object to a 20 year copyright are those who are still making decent money from their old works. That's what I meant in an earlier comment - why not allow rights holders to extend the copyright for a price? Disney, Dan Brown, JK Rowling and so on can afford the price, while most couldn't. That's actually a good thing, because it automatically forces unsuccessful books out of copyright. And if an older book becomes successful because three publishers all bring out editions, then the author might suddenly find their newer works are in demand. (Reverse backlist, if you will.)
The problem is the human mentality to hoard stuff just in case it becomes valuable 'one day'. Authors, despite rumours to the contrary, are human too.
First, I think copyright of life + 75 or + 90 or whatever is madness. The default should be something much lower, and they should just grant extensions to those who demand them... For a fee, to dissuade money-grabbing relatives of the author locking his/her words up indefinitely just in case they become valuable.
Second, there should be a distinction between free usage and profiting. If copyright expired 20 years after publication, what happens if six publishers all bring out editions of Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October? I think that's just on 20 years old now. If it were possible to share as an e-text but not profit commercially that would be fair. Otherwise you're just saying to the author that everyone bar him/her can now make money off their older work. And wouldn't that make 20-year-old books 10% more profitable to publishers than new ones? After all, they wouldn't have to pay the author. It's already hard enough for a newbie to get published.
:-) My average so far is 50 (excluding school visits where attendance is compulsory) Two events, with 100 people at the first and none at the second. The first had loads of publicity, word of mouth and excitement and the second ... didn't.
It's well known that the average book signing is attended by 4 people. At $1 - $2 per copy royalty the author can just about buy themselves a cup of coffee and a muffin with the proceeds.
;-)
Authors make money by taking a small percentage from the cover price of each book sold. They can't make money from live performances (authors are usually a pretty boring bunch) and the money they DO make from selling their books isn't enough to live on in 99% of cases. Therefore they teach or lecture or work as writers-in-residence or have part- or full- time jobs, all of which means they write less than they would if they were full time writers.
Yes, I'm a published author and no, I can't see how any system other than what we have now is going to work better - or even come close. Forget about six-figure advances and 'richer than the queen' - only 2 percent of books released each year sell more than 1000 copies. 1000 copies == peanuts in royalties == don't give up the day job. The occasional mega-best-seller skews public perception so that published author equals mega wealthy. As if, and if only.
The first book in my Hal Spacejock SF/Humour series is selling well (Reached #3 on the Dymocks SF/Fantasy bestseller list), although I'm still a complete unknown and my books are only available in Australia so far. On the bright side, anything better than 1000 copies puts me in the top 2% of all published authors
Sounds like the Rolls Canardly... It rolls down hills, but canardly get up 'em.
My phone company does that. When the operator asks me for my number I tell them I just typed it in for them. Things start to go downhill rapidly from there.
I keep thinking things have to reach a tipping point eventually, where the law is demonstrated to be such an ass that the only sane thing would be to put it down humanely.
Evidence mounts and mounts (no pun intended), but I'm still waiting patiently for the scales to tip.
Strongbad's bottom 10 is one of my favourites. After you've watched that one, hit this one for my all-time favourite. I laughed so hard watching that one I had tears running down my cheeks, and it's still funny twenty times later.
Strongbad is hilarious. Some of the pieces are laugh-out-loud funny, and it's one of the sites I recommend to people. Who then think I'm wierd...
I look around my home and workplace and all I see these days is AMD. I'm responsible for purchasing in both places (and also advise many others - family, friends, school), and while 2 or 3 years ago I would always suggest intel now it's AMD for just about everything. (They do say free advice is worth what you pay for it, but I research their needs as carefully as I research my own.)
The Athlon64 chip with cool and quiet swung it for me. Very hot climate, struggling aircon and red-hot cpu do not make for a happy pc - or user.
School funding is targeted towards getting kids who are behind the average UP to the average. Kids who are ahead of the average are lucky, need no funding, can be left to their own devices. At least, that seems to be the official policy here.
Both my kids are gifted (years ahead of their reading age, maths age, spelling, etc, etc), but you don't mention it in polite company because (a) it sounds like bragging and (b) during the conversation it turns out that everyone else's kids are just as gifted. There's nothing to be gained by saying anything, and teachers just take it for pushy parent syndrome.
We learned to shut up about it when our eldest was 9 months old (she's now 11 years old.) Instead, we make sure our kids have everything at home they might need: hundreds of fiction & non-fiction books from kid to adult level, their own computers (both have websites), but most of all the love and support of their parents whatever their achievements. I'd rather my children were in a supported, caring environment and just doing ok academically than shoved off to university aged 12 with the idea that higher marks = better person.
Same symptoms, but gaming is more expensive than a drug habit. Hmm.
At my workplace, it's "It if Runs, it's Right"
Actually, the car reference was a joke. (As in - I'd like someone else to pay the $1450 repair bill - who can I blame for it?) It's a Subaru WRX and this is the first repair in 7 years so I'm not too fussed.
The PCs, TVs and clothes dryer control panel really DID fail, and they were all due to bad caps.
The other question is this: They're talking about 50% fatalities, but how many people had the symptoms and weren't sick enough to visit a doctor? If the only ones they're measuring are the ones who get it bad enough to finally drag themselves in for medical attention then the 50% is a huge exaggeration.
Then there's the chance that a hybrid capable of being transmitted human-to-human won't be as deadly.
Even so, it's still a worry. People move around the planet a hell of a lot more quickly now than they did in 1918. With a three day incubation period hardly anywhere is safe.