The Supreme Court has stated that the single most important of the "fair use factors" is the economic impact on the copyrighted work - i.e. will the allegedly infringing work compete for marketshare?
In the case of turnitin.com the answer is "definitely not". The copy is not displayed publicly (in my understanding), it is just uploaded for comparison to other works. I can't think of any argument that this has any financial impact on the author.
But what if I want to sell my papers to other students? The fact that turnitin.com is keeping a copy of my paper is going to significantly decrease the value of my paper right? Sounds like an economic impact to me..... (Yes, playing a bit of devil's advocate...)
Think of a programmer as a being an auto mechanic. Trying to 'attract' programmers to an idea, is sort of like saying "I have this idea for a car, and I just need someone to buy it and put it together for me." A successful open-source project would be likened to the experimental 'kit' car your neighbor is always tinkering with in his garage. He probably spent 2 years working on it solo, and now its far enough along that some of his auto-mechanic friends got excited about it. They come work on it every weekend because it interests them.
Stop thinking that there are a bunch of programmers that are just out 'looking' for a project to donate time to, any more than auto mechanics spend their saturdays going door to door offering to do oil changes. Every project I have ever been involved with, and every person I've known who has worked on a project, has done so because the project was useful to them already. Open source development tends to be 'evolutionary' which is why most of the really successful projects tend to derive from an existing codebase (Think Firefox, etc...)
You mean $1199 for a base iMac with the OS, Monitor (20"), Keyboard and Mouse, and 1 year warranty?... Now granted that is more than an $700 computer built with parts off of newegg, and a pirated windows OS, but honestly, its not 1984, even apple doesn't change $4k for a base model computer.....
Apple computers cost more. If you like them, buy them. If you don't like them, don't buy them. You don't need to make up fake data to support your particular preference.....
If this release contains mainly developer tools, but the resulting applications require Snow Leopard to run, then anyone who wants to run the new applications will need to buy Snow Leopard.
This is a lot like DirectX 10 and Vista, people will buy Vista so they can run shiny new games, not because they actually care about the new UI etc....
After reading a number of posts, which as usual contain the usual mix of 'Bush is bad' or 'Kerry is a loser' etc... I am happy to see that there are a few people get the real point here.
To preface, I voted Republican via a paper ballot, but I do think this article was valuable, not so much for its content, but for demonstrating the absurdity in attempting to audit a paperless e-voting system. The real point is: we will NEVER know exactly how each vote was cast. Black boxes scare the bejeezes out of me, even when my party wins the election. Unverifiable results will ALWAYS be unverifiable, performing statistical analysis won't fix that.
As a side note, to solve this problem I think we need to be more careful when communicating with our less-tech-saavy acquaintances. Too often (always) the popular media talks refers to 'electronic voting'. The problem isn't whether the user votes with a pencil, or with a touchscreen. The problem is whether the results can be verified. I think the 'electronic voting' term confuses the issue, we need it instead talk about unverifiable voting.
Mfire advertises unlimited access, and then their user agreement states you agree to connect no more than 150 hours?!?
At least they do specify in their agreement what they provide.
P.S. Yes, they do actually cut off your access after 150 hours until the following month....
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The Supreme Court has stated that the single most important of the "fair use factors" is the economic impact on the copyrighted work - i.e. will the allegedly infringing work compete for marketshare? In the case of turnitin.com the answer is "definitely not". The copy is not displayed publicly (in my understanding), it is just uploaded for comparison to other works. I can't think of any argument that this has any financial impact on the author.
But what if I want to sell my papers to other students? The fact that turnitin.com is keeping a copy of my paper is going to significantly decrease the value of my paper right? Sounds like an economic impact to me..... (Yes, playing a bit of devil's advocate...)
Think of a programmer as a being an auto mechanic. Trying to 'attract' programmers to an idea, is sort of like saying "I have this idea for a car, and I just need someone to buy it and put it together for me." A successful open-source project would be likened to the experimental 'kit' car your neighbor is always tinkering with in his garage. He probably spent 2 years working on it solo, and now its far enough along that some of his auto-mechanic friends got excited about it. They come work on it every weekend because it interests them. Stop thinking that there are a bunch of programmers that are just out 'looking' for a project to donate time to, any more than auto mechanics spend their saturdays going door to door offering to do oil changes. Every project I have ever been involved with, and every person I've known who has worked on a project, has done so because the project was useful to them already. Open source development tends to be 'evolutionary' which is why most of the really successful projects tend to derive from an existing codebase (Think Firefox, etc...)
You mean $1199 for a base iMac with the OS, Monitor (20"), Keyboard and Mouse, and 1 year warranty? ... Now granted that is more than an $700 computer built with parts off of newegg, and a pirated windows OS, but honestly, its not 1984, even apple doesn't change $4k for a base model computer.....
Apple computers cost more. If you like them, buy them. If you don't like them, don't buy them. You don't need to make up fake data to support your particular preference.....
If this release contains mainly developer tools, but the resulting applications require Snow Leopard to run, then anyone who wants to run the new applications will need to buy Snow Leopard. This is a lot like DirectX 10 and Vista, people will buy Vista so they can run shiny new games, not because they actually care about the new UI etc....
After reading a number of posts, which as usual contain the usual mix of 'Bush is bad' or 'Kerry is a loser' etc... I am happy to see that there are a few people get the real point here. To preface, I voted Republican via a paper ballot, but I do think this article was valuable, not so much for its content, but for demonstrating the absurdity in attempting to audit a paperless e-voting system. The real point is: we will NEVER know exactly how each vote was cast. Black boxes scare the bejeezes out of me, even when my party wins the election. Unverifiable results will ALWAYS be unverifiable, performing statistical analysis won't fix that. As a side note, to solve this problem I think we need to be more careful when communicating with our less-tech-saavy acquaintances. Too often (always) the popular media talks refers to 'electronic voting'. The problem isn't whether the user votes with a pencil, or with a touchscreen. The problem is whether the results can be verified. I think the 'electronic voting' term confuses the issue, we need it instead talk about unverifiable voting.
Mfire advertises unlimited access, and then their user agreement states you agree to connect no more than 150 hours?!? At least they do specify in their agreement what they provide. P.S. Yes, they do actually cut off your access after 150 hours until the following month....