Standard practice in architectural contracts is for architects to retain copyright of their drawings; what the client purchases is the right to employ those drawings for their intended use only, typically a one-off building. (Although this is sometimes confusing because the drawings also constitute the bulk of the contract between client and contractor to which the architect is not a party.
As with software development the task is often to complex for a single individual to develop, so teams are employed but the project architect or architect of record retain copyright.
You're implicitly arguing that software development be professionalized. An interesting proposal; not sure that I have feelings one way or another at the moment.
What you describe is more problematic than you think. The introduction of both air conditioning and electric lighting allowed architects to abandon or ignore fundamental issues of light and air in their work. In all likelihood, the house you live in was design with the assumption that you would use air conditioning during the summer months. Have you ever looked at vernacular building practices in hot climates? Ceilings are often over-height, there is frequently a large thermal mass component, there are usually few openings on the west elevation, and so on.
Air conditioning fosters laziness in architects; had your home been designed knowing air condition would not be used, the result would be radically different. Indeed, it would be more comfortable. Cars are effectively the same: cheap energy results in lazy designers.
I should add that none of this is meant to imply a regressive approach to building and city making, as the new urbanists frequently advocate to our peril. Indeed, the very best modern and contemporary architecture endeavour s to incorporate such issues.
How valuable is your data to google? I know they try, and they even do a pretty dammed good job, but at the end of the day, you aren't even really their customer -- you are their product.
Incredibly valuable: Their model assumes an ability to datamine user accounts and assign advertising accordingly. Users and user data aren't products, they're resources.
More generally, Google doesn't make products - even though some of the services it provides appear as such. Products are wealth, and Google only generates money - different than wealth. This is a fundamental mischaracterization in the contemporary economics advocated by business schools.
Linux doesn't purport to be a consumer product. Windows is difficult and intimidating to many. The easy factor is important for people like my mother who just wants to surf the web, use email, manage photographs, and use a word processor. But the easy factor is even more important to people like me: capable of slogging through the mess of an operating system, but uninterested and without the time to do so.
You can; there's nothing in a re-imagining that changes anything about the original, and no one is forcing anyone to trundle off to the new movie.
I do think, however, that it's important to be wary of willful nostalgia: don't make the original into something it wasn't. (Star Wars comes to mind: an important movie that was - let's be honest - in spite of its cultural resonance, mediocre at best.)
Fair enough. However, at best we can only say that it is not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition. Since we can only evaluate based on observed levels of consumption, we might more fairly say that the practice of agriculture allowed humans to increase their consumption. Think about it: 50,000 years ago the tribes that survived were the ones who horded resources for themselves - primarily because if they never quite knew when or how their next meal was coming. It was always better to eat first and store it in your body where it a) couldn't be stollen, and b) wouldn't turn rancid. The introduction of agriculture and (semi-)reliable stores of food, and more recently mass amounts of foods low in nutrient value, coupled with the instinct to eat fast and large has led in part to the midwestern belly so lamented in public health circles. (Along with, of course, an increasingly sedintary lifestyle.)
All this is related more generally to the consumption of goods generally, the acquisition of material wealth being derivative of a survival instinct: men 'need' fast cars and loud stereos to impress women so that they can mate. They 'need' patio sets so as to warm their dens and provide a comfortable environment for their offspring.
Or maybe they don't. Who knows, and who am I to say? I only meant to suggest that people remain more fundamentally primal than we like to admit, that civilization is but a thin veneer, and that you can see the cracks - in this case the wanton degredation of the environment - quite easily.
I was in New York over the weekend, and walking to a friend's office in Chinatown he speculated that part of the reason the community there litters so freely might be because only just a few hundred years ago any and all litter there would have been organic, and therefore not such a problem. I would add, that the issue of scale also seems critical: the Island of Manhattan could probably absorb the refuse of a large Chinese village without much trouble, but there are 11,000,000 (?) people living on Manhattan, and how many more working and visiting there during the day?
Agreed: hyper-consumption is the western world's biggest problem. However, evolution has preferenced the survival of the tribal and the gluttonous. Good luck undoing 1,000,000 years of that.
"Education increases in value as more people have it."
You've got to be kidding me. More people finish high school now than 50 years ago, and as a consequence a high school diploma is now insufficient in the job market. One can easily see a similar trend occuring at the undergraduate level: BAs and BScs are a dime a dozen now, and the only way to signal to the market that your skill set has value is to pursue more education.
Without exception, the more common a resource, the lower its value.
I love my 15" PowerBook, and most of my architecture buddies love theirs, but the G4 PowerBooks are anything but durable. You can't even safely open the screen from one side: you have to be careful, lest you rip the whole thing off - as I once saw an (admittedly retarded) IT guy do at school once. My girlfriend's is falling apart, and the casing is pealing off mine.
I think they run as better machines, and are certainly more suited to the way I work, but durable? I don't think so.
I've often wondered if a child's tendancy to play in the dirt, to make mudpies, and to eat them isn't the result of an evolutionary process; that children who do play in the dirt prove more likely to survive infections, colds, flus, and the like.
That it is perfectly healthy to do so, and in fact: productive.
Tangentially related: The Vatican's recent exclusion of 'non-practicing homosexuals' from the priesthood amounts to a tacit acknowledgement that homosexuality is not a matter of lifestyle choice, but rather a genetic or in-born phenomenon.
The movie studios do not have to go through a middleman (video store), and neither do we, and we get the movie for about the same price. Everyone wins.
Except for the pimply faced 15 year-old... "Sir? Sir! You forgot your Twizlers!"
But what you want and what a company want are two entirely different things. If they can force you to purchace a product with needless functionality, they can make more money at the point of purchase, on upgrades, and the potential for (I'm sorry to use the word) synergies.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. An under-used word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misandry
Can you post the link where you read that?
Standard practice in architectural contracts is for architects to retain copyright of their drawings; what the client purchases is the right to employ those drawings for their intended use only, typically a one-off building. (Although this is sometimes confusing because the drawings also constitute the bulk of the contract between client and contractor to which the architect is not a party.
As with software development the task is often to complex for a single individual to develop, so teams are employed but the project architect or architect of record retain copyright.
You're implicitly arguing that software development be professionalized. An interesting proposal; not sure that I have feelings one way or another at the moment.
What you describe is more problematic than you think. The introduction of both air conditioning and electric lighting allowed architects to abandon or ignore fundamental issues of light and air in their work. In all likelihood, the house you live in was design with the assumption that you would use air conditioning during the summer months. Have you ever looked at vernacular building practices in hot climates? Ceilings are often over-height, there is frequently a large thermal mass component, there are usually few openings on the west elevation, and so on.
Air conditioning fosters laziness in architects; had your home been designed knowing air condition would not be used, the result would be radically different. Indeed, it would be more comfortable. Cars are effectively the same: cheap energy results in lazy designers.
I should add that none of this is meant to imply a regressive approach to building and city making, as the new urbanists frequently advocate to our peril. Indeed, the very best modern and contemporary architecture endeavour s to incorporate such issues.
I don't recall a whole lot of freely breeding with me.
I can't say I'm sold on this.
Really? Even from the trailer, the acting strikes me as less wooden...
How valuable is your data to google? I know they try, and they even do a pretty dammed good job, but at the end of the day, you aren't even really their customer -- you are their product.
Incredibly valuable: Their model assumes an ability to datamine user accounts and assign advertising accordingly. Users and user data aren't products, they're resources.
More generally, Google doesn't make products - even though some of the services it provides appear as such. Products are wealth, and Google only generates money - different than wealth. This is a fundamental mischaracterization in the contemporary economics advocated by business schools.
I recall an opposing study while ago: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/30/health/m ain1458679.shtml. Can't remember where I saw the original.
Linux doesn't purport to be a consumer product. Windows is difficult and intimidating to many. The easy factor is important for people like my mother who just wants to surf the web, use email, manage photographs, and use a word processor. But the easy factor is even more important to people like me: capable of slogging through the mess of an operating system, but uninterested and without the time to do so.
They'd need to either use a different cast (which would suck)
Of course. Clearly it didn't work for Battlestar Galactica.
I heard that NASA had introduced a new training simulator: http://www.springfrog.com/games/asteroids/.
I guess the real question is whether or not this counts as a weapon in space.
You can; there's nothing in a re-imagining that changes anything about the original, and no one is forcing anyone to trundle off to the new movie.
I do think, however, that it's important to be wary of willful nostalgia: don't make the original into something it wasn't. (Star Wars comes to mind: an important movie that was - let's be honest - in spite of its cultural resonance, mediocre at best.)
Fair enough. However, at best we can only say that it is not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition. Since we can only evaluate based on observed levels of consumption, we might more fairly say that the practice of agriculture allowed humans to increase their consumption. Think about it: 50,000 years ago the tribes that survived were the ones who horded resources for themselves - primarily because if they never quite knew when or how their next meal was coming. It was always better to eat first and store it in your body where it a) couldn't be stollen, and b) wouldn't turn rancid. The introduction of agriculture and (semi-)reliable stores of food, and more recently mass amounts of foods low in nutrient value, coupled with the instinct to eat fast and large has led in part to the midwestern belly so lamented in public health circles. (Along with, of course, an increasingly sedintary lifestyle.)
All this is related more generally to the consumption of goods generally, the acquisition of material wealth being derivative of a survival instinct: men 'need' fast cars and loud stereos to impress women so that they can mate. They 'need' patio sets so as to warm their dens and provide a comfortable environment for their offspring.
Or maybe they don't. Who knows, and who am I to say? I only meant to suggest that people remain more fundamentally primal than we like to admit, that civilization is but a thin veneer, and that you can see the cracks - in this case the wanton degredation of the environment - quite easily.
I was in New York over the weekend, and walking to a friend's office in Chinatown he speculated that part of the reason the community there litters so freely might be because only just a few hundred years ago any and all litter there would have been organic, and therefore not such a problem. I would add, that the issue of scale also seems critical: the Island of Manhattan could probably absorb the refuse of a large Chinese village without much trouble, but there are 11,000,000 (?) people living on Manhattan, and how many more working and visiting there during the day?
Agreed: hyper-consumption is the western world's biggest problem. However, evolution has preferenced the survival of the tribal and the gluttonous. Good luck undoing 1,000,000 years of that.
I have been using them for years and they keep getting more expensive
Stop bidding.
We started importing cameras to Canada last week. Sorry. Next week cable TV for our igloos!
I was being facetious.
It doesn't really matter: no one in China can read Slashdot, so they'll never know.
"Education increases in value as more people have it."
You've got to be kidding me. More people finish high school now than 50 years ago, and as a consequence a high school diploma is now insufficient in the job market. One can easily see a similar trend occuring at the undergraduate level: BAs and BScs are a dime a dozen now, and the only way to signal to the market that your skill set has value is to pursue more education.
Without exception, the more common a resource, the lower its value.
I love my 15" PowerBook, and most of my architecture buddies love theirs, but the G4 PowerBooks are anything but durable. You can't even safely open the screen from one side: you have to be careful, lest you rip the whole thing off - as I once saw an (admittedly retarded) IT guy do at school once. My girlfriend's is falling apart, and the casing is pealing off mine. I think they run as better machines, and are certainly more suited to the way I work, but durable? I don't think so.
I've often wondered if a child's tendancy to play in the dirt, to make mudpies, and to eat them isn't the result of an evolutionary process; that children who do play in the dirt prove more likely to survive infections, colds, flus, and the like. That it is perfectly healthy to do so, and in fact: productive.
Because that 4th dimension give you the time to take that square peg over to the belt sander and trim her down.
Tangentially related: The Vatican's recent exclusion of 'non-practicing homosexuals' from the priesthood amounts to a tacit acknowledgement that homosexuality is not a matter of lifestyle choice, but rather a genetic or in-born phenomenon.
The movie studios do not have to go through a middleman (video store), and neither do we, and we get the movie for about the same price. Everyone wins.
Except for the pimply faced 15 year-old... "Sir? Sir! You forgot your Twizlers!"
But what you want and what a company want are two entirely different things. If they can force you to purchace a product with needless functionality, they can make more money at the point of purchase, on upgrades, and the potential for (I'm sorry to use the word) synergies.