In 1990 I was given an old x86 machine that ran DOS off of floppy, and then Word off of floppy. I took to that computer immediately, and 17 years later, after many different jobs, I work in IT. Without that x86, I wouldn't have pushed my parents to get me a 486 for my birthday, or tried to get a job at the college helpdesk before I arrived at college. Maybe I would have still ended up here, but I doubt it. Putting a computer in the hands of a child can be a powerful thing.
Actually, you pay $9.99 for sixteen episodes, or $1.99 per episode. Hardly full-price for a season, it's more like buying a new album every seems to be priced exactly the way they price albums, which is interesting (and shows just how artificially high the price of music is).
NTP's patents are based on work that was begun in the late 80's. While I have no love for patents, these seem valid within the context of our current patent system.
Ya know, I teach my students about evaluating sources.
TFA is from "The Nation", which has a particular slant... antiBigCorporation, TheSkyIsFallingBecauseWalMartIsTakingOver. Which has some merit, but can occasionally (and in this case definitely) be overly alarmist.
Clearly, the best way to evaluate a source is to decide what their slant is *before* reading the article. That way, you don't have to think about what you're reading.
If I was in charge of a school, and that's what you were teaching students, I'd relocate you to special ed. quickly.
There is no doubt. However, even though this *particular* statistical analysis happens to be flawed, my original point still stands..01% of the browser market is significant, because it represents between several hundred thousand and a million or more users, depending on how large the number of "users" is.
You'd be right, if we were talking about my 1990 Ford Bronco with a six-inch lift and 34" tires. I calculated *precisely* that it got 13.4mpg highway, 13.3mpg city. But Firefox vs. IE? One-tenth of a percentage point of internet users is probably somewhere between a few hundred thousand and a million internet users. That's not insignificant.
Wow mods - how can it be redundant to point out that the grandparent can't even add, but had the temerity to attempt to correct the great-grandparent? Thank god neither the editors nor the posters nor the mods can add here. Maybe we should try basic counting...
Re:This particular lawsuit (and the :-) applic.)
on
RIM - The Whole Story
·
· Score: 1
...problem is, sometimes these lawsuits are for good reasons and protect serious investments and thousands of employees.
I don't know what to think when it comes to patents. I see how they can stifle innovation in many cases. The thing is, though, that I would like something in place to protect an idea if I have one. So what if I'm not in a financial situation to implement it right now - hopefully in two or four or ten years I will be, or I could then take my patent and try to drum up some investment.
What concerns me in these patent disputes is the tech communities willingness to side with the big guy against the little guy. Are we only about protecting companies with thousands of people? You know those large companies ran over a few people/companies on the way to getting so big.
The whole thing is tricky, and I can understand the arguments on both sides. Well, except for the arguments like yours.
I'm in a situation very similar to yours - extended dates, but very similar.
I've been at my current position for a year, i'm an overworked IT Director for a small company, and I've finally decided to make the push for a new job (I've been wanting to do it for 9 months). I've basically had to shut my friends out of my life, and focus the two or three hours I have at night and grab a few hours on the weekends to put my resume together.
I went to Border's and grabbed several of their books on job hunting and took an hour to thumb through them (and I would recommend this avenue to look into career choices and guides and the like). I also found a book listing headhunting agencies nationally, and wrote down some agencies that specialized in the IT field. Last night I finally posted my resume online with a few places, applied for a few jobs, and highlighted a few others I want to apply for this weekend.
I quit graduate school two years ago because I realized, finally, that I just want to write poetry. Since there's no future in that, I have made it my goal to find a job that I don't hate, and that can stay between relatively decent hours, and that I can leave behind when I walk out the door at night. From this experience, though, I think I can say that the first thing to look at when thinking about what you want to do is to look at what you do naturally, almost instinctually. What do you use to procrastinate? Is it the type of thing you could do for work? Is there something you do that doesn't make you want to procrastinate?
I'm with you on the surf bum thing. Part of me is content to stay exactly where I am, making less than I could be but essentially unharrassed. But a bigger part of me isn't content, so I know it's time to move on. But the only way to do it is to get to a point where you say "OK, enough's enough."
Anyways, good luck with everything.
If society wants the author to share, it has to make it worth his while, or he'll simply keep it to himself and no-one will benefit under any circumstances.
Ah, but society's understanding of what is worthwhile may not be the same as the author's. Theoretically, copyright is given by the community to the author. If you offer me a job, and I don't think it pays enough, I have the right to turn it down. The author has the right not to publish. And the community has the right to tweak the laws should it decide they're not working out best for the interests of all.
The funny thing about your argument is how black & white it is. As a writer, I will often choose to post some of my content for free, and I will alternatively post other content in protected areas that only those I've approved can see. I also have a large number of works that I haven't published online at all.
If you really feel like you're getting screwed, well, you can always go to a judge and argue that your understanding of copyright is correct. And then you can hope that he or she will agree with you. Luckily for you, I'm not a judge, and you aren't in my courtroom - because I think you are flogging a dead horse. We made it a long time without copyright, and our current system is too tight, and the reins on fair use need to be loosened a bit. IMHO.
Fair use has never, to this point, included duplication and reproduction of a complete work for financial gain.
First of all, it's not exactly *duplication* that we're talking about here. And we're also not talking about actual financial gain, are we? Using those words is somewhat deceptive, because your are pushing the argument in certain directions that make this issue more black and white than it is. What do I mean?
-any financial gain that Google receives here is implicit and indirect, at best. if it was explicit or direct, there'd obviously be more of a problem
-and unless things changed from twenty minutes ago, the cache does not show an exact duplication of content. for one, it pulls images from the site, not the cache. so we're talking about text here, which may or may not show up in the same way it was designed.
***
The way I see it, there is a great murkiness around the concept of fair use. What I think of as fair use is not the same as what someone else might think, because the concept is better defined in some areas than in others, and let's face it, analogies tend to break down. Personally, I think Google's cache is an excellent example of something I think *should* be fair use. I think that copyright should be loosened, shortened, and be redefined for the internet.
just to add two more cents, this also explains why google's cache is still considered fair use even if someone takes the content down - they already gave it away for free. they can always ask google to remove it from the cache, if they accidentally posted copyrighted material that they didn't want cached or available.
Despite what has been said, your (potential) revenue loss is only one factor out of many in deciding whether a use of copyrighted material can be deemed fair use. I will happily come up with many examples if you would like.
You seem to be missing the part about "Copyright owners are, by law, deemed to consent to fair use of their works by others". You want the government to give you copyright? Then you have to abide by what the government says qualifies as fair use of your product or idea or whatever. If you disagree, you can go to court and try to change the law. Or you can give up your copyright.
Should we get into a discussion of what fair use *should* be? Personally, I think copyright restrictions are too tight, and that fair use isn't as broad as it should be. That's my opinion of the law, but not the government's. I'm hoping in the future the government changes it's position. At least this case helps to clarify a bit the previously murky aspect of how to apply fair use on the internet.
Nor have I had any issues with Windows Update on XP or Windows 2000/2003 Server or Professional. While patches may be a little lacking in expediency (sp?) it couldn't be easier to do. I love that I can have my office XP computer patch itself while my servers download but do not install patches without my explicit command. I can't imagine Windows Update - and especially automatic Windows Update being easier to use, even for non-power users.
I would argue that Windows Update is too easy to use. I have fixed too many computers that were broken by Automatic Updates (and by broken, I mean I had to do a complete reinstall from image) to think of it as anything less than dangerous. I'm an admin of a small network, and I would rather force patches after testing them out than let the 30-or-so computers here get broken by some stupid automatic update.
And no, I'm not just talking about service packs here, and I'm not just referring to one broken patch. This has happened many times with different patches (I will say I tend to install critical patches right away).
Thanks for the advice. I talked with my therapist about some of my issues today, and she agreed that a sleep clinic would be a good idea, along with drugs. Funny, it just never occurred to me that there might be something physically wrong - you'd think in 29 years I would have figured something out. Here I just thought I was lazy.:-)
I like your idea about the alarm clock too. I'll give it a shot.
Well, that's the part I don't understand. No matter when I get sleep, I'm a wreck. I convinced my current employer to let me come in at 10:30, and I'm still a wreck. If I didn't know better, I would swear I get drugged when I'm sleeping. Hmm...
So I have some questions about this. Because the article seems to make sense of something that has been a lifelong problem for me - unless I am forced (by a person or a committment, and often not even then) it is almost impossible for me to get up. This has been the case for as much of my life as I can remember, but once I've been awake for about 15 minutes, I'm OK.
This is true regardless of how much sleep I get (I can go for up to 20 hours at a time, only waking up because I start to feel guilty, but usually get around 7 hours). I've employed multiple alarm clocks of various decibels, but the problem is that first 15 minutes - my body convinced me to go back to bed.
Maybe you're right, and I'm just not getting enough SWS sleep, but I sure *feel* like there's something else up with my body. I mean, it's always like this, no matter whether I'm getting 2 or 4 or 8 or 20 hours of sleep.
that won't stop slashdot from decrying it as evil, broken, and the worst thing to happen
Well, it sucks. More and more corporations, even the good ones, are busy taking away things that some of us find pretty valuable. It's a dangerous slippery slope, and Google's entry is not a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
in the future everyone will be a nerd
In 1990 I was given an old x86 machine that ran DOS off of floppy, and then Word off of floppy. I took to that computer immediately, and 17 years later, after many different jobs, I work in IT. Without that x86, I wouldn't have pushed my parents to get me a 486 for my birthday, or tried to get a job at the college helpdesk before I arrived at college. Maybe I would have still ended up here, but I doubt it. Putting a computer in the hands of a child can be a powerful thing.
Why knock it?
Actually, you pay $9.99 for sixteen episodes, or $1.99 per episode. Hardly full-price for a season, it's more like buying a new album every seems to be priced exactly the way they price albums, which is interesting (and shows just how artificially high the price of music is).
NTP's patents are based on work that was begun in the late 80's. While I have no love for patents, these seem valid within the context of our current patent system.
so it would need to have more whiskey everyday? whoa, just what my shrink calls me, a functional alcoholic...
Some teacher...
... antiBigCorporation, TheSkyIsFallingBecauseWalMartIsTakingOver. Which has some merit, but can occasionally (and in this case definitely) be overly alarmist.
Ya know, I teach my students about evaluating sources. TFA is from "The Nation", which has a particular slant
Clearly, the best way to evaluate a source is to decide what their slant is *before* reading the article. That way, you don't have to think about what you're reading.
If I was in charge of a school, and that's what you were teaching students, I'd relocate you to special ed. quickly.
There is no doubt. However, even though this *particular* statistical analysis happens to be flawed, my original point still stands. .01% of the browser market is significant, because it represents between several hundred thousand and a million or more users, depending on how large the number of "users" is.
You're right, it's basic. But the purpose of the test sample is to predict the entire market. Congratulations on passing statistics.
You'd be right, if we were talking about my 1990 Ford Bronco with a six-inch lift and 34" tires. I calculated *precisely* that it got 13.4mpg highway, 13.3mpg city. But Firefox vs. IE? One-tenth of a percentage point of internet users is probably somewhere between a few hundred thousand and a million internet users. That's not insignificant.
Wow mods - how can it be redundant to point out that the grandparent can't even add, but had the temerity to attempt to correct the great-grandparent? Thank god neither the editors nor the posters nor the mods can add here. Maybe we should try basic counting...
...problem is, sometimes these lawsuits are for good reasons and protect serious investments and thousands of employees.
I don't know what to think when it comes to patents. I see how they can stifle innovation in many cases. The thing is, though, that I would like something in place to protect an idea if I have one. So what if I'm not in a financial situation to implement it right now - hopefully in two or four or ten years I will be, or I could then take my patent and try to drum up some investment.
What concerns me in these patent disputes is the tech communities willingness to side with the big guy against the little guy. Are we only about protecting companies with thousands of people? You know those large companies ran over a few people/companies on the way to getting so big.
The whole thing is tricky, and I can understand the arguments on both sides. Well, except for the arguments like yours.
I'm in a situation very similar to yours - extended dates, but very similar. I've been at my current position for a year, i'm an overworked IT Director for a small company, and I've finally decided to make the push for a new job (I've been wanting to do it for 9 months). I've basically had to shut my friends out of my life, and focus the two or three hours I have at night and grab a few hours on the weekends to put my resume together. I went to Border's and grabbed several of their books on job hunting and took an hour to thumb through them (and I would recommend this avenue to look into career choices and guides and the like). I also found a book listing headhunting agencies nationally, and wrote down some agencies that specialized in the IT field. Last night I finally posted my resume online with a few places, applied for a few jobs, and highlighted a few others I want to apply for this weekend. I quit graduate school two years ago because I realized, finally, that I just want to write poetry. Since there's no future in that, I have made it my goal to find a job that I don't hate, and that can stay between relatively decent hours, and that I can leave behind when I walk out the door at night. From this experience, though, I think I can say that the first thing to look at when thinking about what you want to do is to look at what you do naturally, almost instinctually. What do you use to procrastinate? Is it the type of thing you could do for work? Is there something you do that doesn't make you want to procrastinate? I'm with you on the surf bum thing. Part of me is content to stay exactly where I am, making less than I could be but essentially unharrassed. But a bigger part of me isn't content, so I know it's time to move on. But the only way to do it is to get to a point where you say "OK, enough's enough." Anyways, good luck with everything.
If society wants the author to share, it has to make it worth his while, or he'll simply keep it to himself and no-one will benefit under any circumstances.
Ah, but society's understanding of what is worthwhile may not be the same as the author's. Theoretically, copyright is given by the community to the author. If you offer me a job, and I don't think it pays enough, I have the right to turn it down. The author has the right not to publish. And the community has the right to tweak the laws should it decide they're not working out best for the interests of all.
The funny thing about your argument is how black & white it is. As a writer, I will often choose to post some of my content for free, and I will alternatively post other content in protected areas that only those I've approved can see. I also have a large number of works that I haven't published online at all.
If you really feel like you're getting screwed, well, you can always go to a judge and argue that your understanding of copyright is correct. And then you can hope that he or she will agree with you. Luckily for you, I'm not a judge, and you aren't in my courtroom - because I think you are flogging a dead horse. We made it a long time without copyright, and our current system is too tight, and the reins on fair use need to be loosened a bit. IMHO.
Fair use has never, to this point, included duplication and reproduction of a complete work for financial gain.
First of all, it's not exactly *duplication* that we're talking about here. And we're also not talking about actual financial gain, are we? Using those words is somewhat deceptive, because your are pushing the argument in certain directions that make this issue more black and white than it is. What do I mean?
-any financial gain that Google receives here is implicit and indirect, at best. if it was explicit or direct, there'd obviously be more of a problem
-and unless things changed from twenty minutes ago, the cache does not show an exact duplication of content. for one, it pulls images from the site, not the cache. so we're talking about text here, which may or may not show up in the same way it was designed.
*** The way I see it, there is a great murkiness around the concept of fair use. What I think of as fair use is not the same as what someone else might think, because the concept is better defined in some areas than in others, and let's face it, analogies tend to break down. Personally, I think Google's cache is an excellent example of something I think *should* be fair use. I think that copyright should be loosened, shortened, and be redefined for the internet.
But that's just me.
just to add two more cents, this also explains why google's cache is still considered fair use even if someone takes the content down - they already gave it away for free. they can always ask google to remove it from the cache, if they accidentally posted copyrighted material that they didn't want cached or available.
Despite what has been said, your (potential) revenue loss is only one factor out of many in deciding whether a use of copyrighted material can be deemed fair use. I will happily come up with many examples if you would like.
One quick example can be found here.
You seem to be missing the part about "Copyright owners are, by law, deemed to consent to fair use of their works by others". You want the government to give you copyright? Then you have to abide by what the government says qualifies as fair use of your product or idea or whatever. If you disagree, you can go to court and try to change the law. Or you can give up your copyright.
Should we get into a discussion of what fair use *should* be? Personally, I think copyright restrictions are too tight, and that fair use isn't as broad as it should be. That's my opinion of the law, but not the government's. I'm hoping in the future the government changes it's position. At least this case helps to clarify a bit the previously murky aspect of how to apply fair use on the internet.
Nor have I had any issues with Windows Update on XP or Windows 2000/2003 Server or Professional. While patches may be a little lacking in expediency (sp?) it couldn't be easier to do. I love that I can have my office XP computer patch itself while my servers download but do not install patches without my explicit command. I can't imagine Windows Update - and especially automatic Windows Update being easier to use, even for non-power users.
I would argue that Windows Update is too easy to use. I have fixed too many computers that were broken by Automatic Updates (and by broken, I mean I had to do a complete reinstall from image) to think of it as anything less than dangerous. I'm an admin of a small network, and I would rather force patches after testing them out than let the 30-or-so computers here get broken by some stupid automatic update.
And no, I'm not just talking about service packs here, and I'm not just referring to one broken patch. This has happened many times with different patches (I will say I tend to install critical patches right away).
Thanks for the advice. I talked with my therapist about some of my issues today, and she agreed that a sleep clinic would be a good idea, along with drugs. Funny, it just never occurred to me that there might be something physically wrong - you'd think in 29 years I would have figured something out. Here I just thought I was lazy. :-)
I like your idea about the alarm clock too. I'll give it a shot.
Well, that's the part I don't understand. No matter when I get sleep, I'm a wreck. I convinced my current employer to let me come in at 10:30, and I'm still a wreck. If I didn't know better, I would swear I get drugged when I'm sleeping. Hmm...
So I have some questions about this. Because the article seems to make sense of something that has been a lifelong problem for me - unless I am forced (by a person or a committment, and often not even then) it is almost impossible for me to get up. This has been the case for as much of my life as I can remember, but once I've been awake for about 15 minutes, I'm OK.
This is true regardless of how much sleep I get (I can go for up to 20 hours at a time, only waking up because I start to feel guilty, but usually get around 7 hours). I've employed multiple alarm clocks of various decibels, but the problem is that first 15 minutes - my body convinced me to go back to bed.
Maybe you're right, and I'm just not getting enough SWS sleep, but I sure *feel* like there's something else up with my body. I mean, it's always like this, no matter whether I'm getting 2 or 4 or 8 or 20 hours of sleep.
I just wish I could sleep, and then wake up.
There's no UFOs or magical mind control devices or whatever the conspiracy of the week is.
at least, not that you can remember...
I completely fail to understand the emphasis on speed. If the news is *hot*, post the submission when it comes in. Otherwise, post the best one.
/. front page over the last six months or so.
The mere fact that this is the policy explains a great deal of my frustration with the
that won't stop slashdot from decrying it as evil, broken, and the worst thing to happen
Well, it sucks. More and more corporations, even the good ones, are busy taking away things that some of us find pretty valuable. It's a dangerous slippery slope, and Google's entry is not a good thing.
Other things I'm guessing you wouldn't buy - condoms, flowers, jewelry, perfume, and definitely not suntan lotion. ;-)