In the 1800's, before recording and broadcast media, it was actually far more likely for a musician to find work than today.
Ballet and theatre companies did not use recordings, they used orchestras. Dance halls and nightclubs did not have jukeboxes and DJ's, they had bands.
Even playing music on a street corner, which will most likely get you arrested today, was perfectly legal.
To the remaining points, the audio production industry does create artificial barriers to entry into markets, but copyright control does not have that much to do with it.
I would jump on this distribution if it supported both my soundcard (ICE1712/Envy24) [very important] and my video (Radeon 8500) [X11 AND console fb].
Yes of course I could install Alsa for the sound support, and yes of course Radeons are supported in the XFree 4.2.0, but it would not be any more (or less) convenient with "Libranet" than with stock Debian.
Before you criticize my choice of sound card, bear in mind that the Delta/Midiman cards are just about the ONLY serious choice for a pro card that works under linux. Perhaps there have been some 24/96 products released lately, but that would be big news to me.
Alas, the 2.5.33 kernel is almost the only thing needed, but, the Radeon framebuffer stuff is broken now. Maybe next week?
Back in the vinyl days, I could differentiate between many of my own records without seeing the label. Certainly not universally or to a gameshow scale, but well enough. Often with Atlantic label they look the same, and I would tend to look at the track lengths. Come to think of it, isn't track length how CDDB works?
It appears to me that there are an assload of kids who were born in the 1980s and that cities and suburbs that were quite spacious in my memory are now very crowded.
Salvage 1 carried my first exposure to the concept of connecting to a computer remotely, and that had a dramatic effect on my perceptions, and directly contributed to my bbs-a-holic nature!
The crew needs a "computer" but can't afford one, not laying around in the junkyard of course, so they "steal" a computer. Dammit, even then, the idea of connecting remotely to a university computer center was automatically regarded as a crime.
They couldn't have had one of the characters be a teacher or grad student and just have access to computers without resorting to clandestine means, NOooooo. Had to be a criminal act, since everbody knows that computers are only for the government, or banks, or whatever. !@#$%.
California inmates took TWA reservations. The only reason there was a scandal is that they continued to work during a TWA strike.
People in some kinds of "correctional" situations *SHOULD* be able to work. Regular jobs, not "making license plates, cleaning up roadsides" sort of make-work, but real paying jobs. Why not?
I once had a guy work for me who was on a work-release program. In the mornings, he left the jail, went to work. In the evening, he went back to jail. By doing this, he was not only earning a little money, but he was able to shorten his sentence.
I'm tired of hearing about how prison labor (PAID prison labor, mind you) is some sort of problem in and of itself. There is a problem with a privatizes prison system that enjoys a profit incentive for incarcerating increasing numbers of nonviolent offenders on simple drug possession laws, particularly when the majority of the "drugs" in play happen to be the most harmless ones.
You gave other reasons, but, speaking as someone who was there at the time, I feel compelled to point out that this was *THE* reason.
Beta cost a *LOT* more. VHS recorders went from almost affordable to essential very, very quickly. Beta was always expensive, and only really made sense if you were into buying a camera.
It looked to me as if Sony bet the farm on the idea that people would be into making their own movies, that replacing super-8 was the killer app. But the real killer app was taping tv shows. Home video was secondary, and super8 was already dead because it was starting to cost too much. The last 8mm film I made cost $2.75 PER MINUTE to process, in 1977, and about that much to buy the film. 20 minutes was considered a lengthy home movie. But the whome home movie fad had pretty much faded away before vcr's hit the scene. It was taping movies off cable, and also movie rentals, that drove the sales of the VCR.
And the customers in the electronics stores had a choice. And they bought the one that was cheaper.
NO! But he needs to think of something realistic to transition to! Schoolboy romantic notions of "fireman, cop, astronaut" are out of the question by now!
And this article is about someone who was precisely in that frame.
I won't even address the rest of your points, because you have assumed wrongly that I am younger than the person in the article.
Certainly there are people in the subject's age bracket who could do well as an occupational athlete, but not him.
The misunderstanding of the original article was that the job is for a federal police officer who happens to be skilled in computer network security. *NOT* vice versa.
You tried to use my comments as a bully pulpit to rail against everything from immigration to social programs, and that was inappropriate.
To me, the biggest indicator of stupidity is when people think it's somehow appropriate or nice to have the monotonic rendition of a mozart aria or bach partita as their ringer. As if that makes them sophisticated somehow. It literally makes me want to kill the owner of the phone.
Except for an emergency (as defined in the State Codes, e.g., you'd be prepared to explain the nature of your emergency to a cop and a judge), using a portable phone while operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway constitutes a moving violation.
Exceptions could be provided for licensed amateur radio operators, service personnel, security guards, etc.
Violators to be fined heavily -- as a moving violation. One that raises your insurance rates, carries substantial fines, and can cause you to forfeit your license to drive AND your cell phone after multiple violations.
Let's make it worthwhile: a $500-1000 fine for the first offense, which will generally be waived AFTER a court appearence, on the condition that the violator will sit through an uncomfortable class or do some service work.
I'm totally 100% serious here. You can still squawk on the phone while driving if you have an emergency (what the LAW says is an emergency, not necessarily what YOU say), and you can still get a special license that will allow you to do it after passing some tests that show you're capable...
But the routine, always-on nature of the doofuses out there who *are* contributing to highway problems has got to stop.
You want to hear my views on road rage, and my ideas of how to stop the trend?
It shows a specific bias to say that those investigations were stupid.
In some ways, it's better that stupid laws are aggressively enforced. Otherwise they are ignored, instead of repealed.
If *every* petty copyright infringer had a risk of doing time, a REAL risk with a REAL expectation of prosecution, how long do you think something like the DMCA would stay on the books?
I'm not convinced these agents were stupid at all. On the other hand, your beef is with the Justice department, not the FBI. It is not at all clear that in Dmitry's case, the police had any choice but to make the arrest.
"Even a total moron (who has an advanced degree in astrophysics, wa-hey!) can run an app in debug mode until he gets it working."
Uh, there's some sarcasm there, right?
An *undergrad* in astrophysics requires the same 3 semesters of calculus as any other Physics, or Chemistry, right? Anybody who can pull that off is immune from EVER being called a moron.
" The FBI is shooting themselves in the foot by having overly demanding entrance requirements. "
You are assuming that their requirements are creating a dearth of recruits or a surplus of jobs. Probably, even with these requirements, they are swamped with applicants, who are COMPETING for the jobs.
>>I'd think the "college degree" required bit >>would be a bigger limiting factor.
Not really. Universities churn them out by the thousands, every year. And many of them are quite buff, physically, emotionally, mentally.
When we read stories like this article, and hear about some overwieght, aging geek who got the wild hair to go into law enforcement when it suddenly appeared lucrative, and was rejected, we are supposed to sympathize. Perhaps we should, somewhat, but we must also consider that despite the requirements, and no matter what hype you hear to the contrary, most Federal agencies are having no problems whatsoever finding qualified applicants. There are a lot of people out there entering the workforce. It appears to me that there was a little babyboom in the more-is-more 1980s, and those kids are coming of age. I wish there was a way to get credible census information in this kind of detail, but I'll bet $1 that there are more 18-25 year olds today than there have ever been in history.
In the case of the Federal law enforcement agencies, they usually have enough applicants just from former MP's, who have degrees, are physically fit, and have records that show distinguished military service.
The "average geek" will refuse to believe that a business major or enlisted soldier could be as effective in computer security, network administration, or programming than he, but it is merely a perception based on prejudice, and not necessarily based in reality.
I'm not even sure the "typical geek" would survive at all in a regimented, authoritarian work enviromnent. Quasi-military police work?
The story sensationalizes the "overweight" factor, but I believe strongly that the man being over 35 and just now wanting to go into law enforcement is a bigger red flag. You really should start that career at 20. Perhaps at 18, beginning either with a few years of military service or majoring in criminal justice or political science. When it's time to retire from police work, you'll probably have a law degree to fall back on!
But don't wait until you're almost 40, already burnt out, and THEN decide you want this type of career -- and if you do, don't try to blame not getting the job on your weight. There are a large number of factors working against this individual; the weight thing is just one; more of a symptom of the whole.
"I could never understand the LONG lists of available files which are not usable. "
Are you talking about the people who post their playlists on a website, which is what you find when searching for a song title, but has the files themselves elsewhere?
"so far" only in Japan might mean "never" in the USA. I wonder why there aren't numerous outlets for graymarket items like this. There is *LOTS* of electronic stuff in Japan that we don't see in the US. But it's not actually *illegal* to import, so why is it so hard to get something like this?
I personally would like to be able to acquire the SCMS-free minidics and DAT's that they get over there (but not here).
Re:The word is treason
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
"If I were in the media and decided to say. I don't support Bush going to war in Iraq because..."
But the current media does have a fair amount of balance on this subject. If the fact that most of the allies of the US don't support attacking Iraq were being suppressed, I'd understand this point of view; but even the most conservative, hawkish media outlets have not failed to provide this information.
There are plenty of areas where your naieve assessment does not fit. I have worked in several of them.
The most serious one was a situation where the users of the computer system were attorneys who communicated with all sorts of people on regulatory compliance, and health/safety matters.
It turns out that the privilege of confidentiality between an attorney and a client trumps pretty much any other consideration *even* if the correspondence is internal. Even an *accidental* exposure of certain types of data can cause serious problems.
There are lots of other similar circumstances for other professions as well. Financial professionals often need privacy of documents and data, even to the point where it is very important to hide that data from other employees in the same firm. Some service-oriented businesses have clients who are competitors of one another. It is extremely important to keep insulation between their affairs, because even accidents or honest mistakes can lead to litigation or embarrassment.
This has little to do with "Hotmail" but everything to do with the need for privacy for individuals.
All this discussion reeks of very short memories. It was only a decade ago, or less, that you were just as likely for your phone company to imply that you were some kind of deviant for having a modem, especially if you wanted to use that modem for *inbound* service. The smallest BBS ran the risk of being pegged for "commercial" phone lines, on the whim of the telco. You'd have to think of ways to describe your line noise without explaining that you had a modem. Which was widely considered a very weird thing to have.
It has NOT been a long time since then, until today, when every joe, jon, and jeremy has some kind of internet service (albeit mostly dialup), but the MIRACLE that there is high speed wire AT ALL to ANY residential areas is not something we should be taking for granted.
When I started my "internet experience", 9600 baud wire to the home would have been $300/year, the best I could get. Maybe a little better with my university connections, but not much.
Today I pay $100/mo to my ISP (for a routed block of IP's, so I can run my own DNS and services on a 1.5 megabit bidirectional DSL line), and I guess about $60/mo to my telco, for their extortionate price on the nothing that they actually do once the line was punched down. But you know what? I consider it a friggin MIRACLE that I can get that service AT ALL, for ANY price.
The message I get from the discussion is that people are upset that they can't get the service I get, and pay dearly for, at a price more like $30 bucks a month or something. To me the most significant thing about the situation is that I CAN'T MOVE, because I can't get a definite answer about whether I'll get this same DSL capability at a new address until AFTER I MOVE THERE. To me, that's a bigger issue, and amounts to a far larger cost (opportunity cost) than the price of the service.
It's not that some people have and some people don't, but that you can't even find out in advance where you need to be if you want to be one of the people who have!
Slashdot Mirror
In the 1800's, before recording and broadcast media,
it was actually far more likely for a musician to
find work than today.
Ballet and theatre companies did not use recordings,
they used orchestras. Dance halls and nightclubs
did not have jukeboxes and DJ's, they had bands.
Even playing music on a street corner, which will
most likely get you arrested today, was perfectly legal.
To the remaining points, the audio production industry does
create artificial barriers to entry into markets, but copyright control
does not have that much to do with it.
I would jump on this distribution if it supported both my soundcard (ICE1712/Envy24) [very important] and my video (Radeon 8500) [X11
AND console fb].
Yes of course I could install Alsa for the sound support, and yes of course Radeons are supported in the XFree 4.2.0, but it would not be any more (or less) convenient with "Libranet" than with stock Debian.
Before you criticize my choice of sound card, bear in mind that the Delta/Midiman cards are just about the ONLY serious choice for a pro card that works under linux. Perhaps there have been some 24/96 products released lately, but that would be big news to me.
Alas, the 2.5.33 kernel is almost the only thing needed, but, the Radeon framebuffer stuff is broken now. Maybe next week?
You want us to look elsewhere besides the RIAA
for reasons that there are arbitrary and steep
barriers to entry into music markets?
That just sounds like the story of the drunk who
blames his hangover on everything but the drinking.
Back in the vinyl days, I could differentiate
between many of my own records without seeing
the label. Certainly not universally or to
a gameshow scale, but well enough. Often with
Atlantic label they look the same, and I would
tend to look at the track lengths. Come to
think of it, isn't track length how CDDB works?
It appears to me that there are an assload of
kids who were born in the 1980s and that cities and suburbs that were quite spacious in my memory are now very crowded.
That's just how it looks to me.
Salvage 1 carried my first exposure to the
concept of connecting to a computer remotely,
and that had a dramatic effect on my perceptions, and directly contributed to my bbs-a-holic nature!
The crew needs a "computer" but can't afford one,
not laying around in the junkyard of course, so they "steal" a computer. Dammit, even then, the idea of connecting remotely to a university computer center was automatically regarded as a crime.
They couldn't have had one of the characters be a teacher or grad student and just have access to computers without resorting to clandestine means, NOooooo. Had to be a criminal act, since everbody knows that computers are only for the government, or banks, or whatever. !@#$%.
You still send them money every month, don't you?
California inmates took TWA reservations.
The only reason there was a scandal is that
they continued to work during a TWA strike.
People in some kinds of "correctional" situations
*SHOULD* be able to work. Regular jobs, not
"making license plates, cleaning up roadsides" sort of make-work, but real paying jobs. Why not?
I once had a guy work for me who was on a work-release program. In the mornings, he left the jail, went to work. In the evening, he went back to jail. By doing this, he was not only earning a little money, but he was able to shorten his sentence.
I'm tired of hearing about how prison labor (PAID prison labor, mind you) is some sort of problem in and of itself. There is a problem with a privatizes prison system that enjoys a profit incentive for incarcerating increasing numbers of nonviolent offenders on simple drug possession laws, particularly when the majority of the "drugs" in play happen to be the most harmless ones.
That's a different horse to whip.
You don't work in a law office or a state legislature, do you?
If not, then you probably don't realize that
WordPerfect is still in widespread use.
Educate yourself a bit:
Floating Point Tutorial
Even Microsoft can help.
"Betamax VCRs cost more."
You gave other reasons, but, speaking as someone
who was there at the time, I feel compelled to
point out that this was *THE* reason.
Beta cost a *LOT* more. VHS recorders went from
almost affordable to essential very, very quickly.
Beta was always expensive, and only really made sense if you were into buying a camera.
It looked to me as if Sony bet the farm on the idea that people would be into making their own movies, that replacing super-8 was the killer app. But the real killer app was taping tv shows. Home video was secondary, and super8 was
already dead because it was starting to cost too
much. The last 8mm film I made cost $2.75 PER MINUTE to process, in 1977, and about that much to buy the film. 20 minutes was considered a lengthy home movie. But the whome home movie fad had pretty much faded away before vcr's hit the scene. It was taping movies off cable, and also movie rentals, that drove the sales of the VCR.
And the customers in the electronics stores had a choice. And they bought the one that was cheaper.
How would it be to have a free press but with no type? The film version of Fahrenheit 451 shows
books with drawings but no words...
NO! But he needs to think of something realistic
to transition to! Schoolboy romantic notions of
"fireman, cop, astronaut" are out of the question
by now!
And this article is about someone who was precisely in that frame.
I won't even address the rest of your points, because you have assumed wrongly that I am younger than the person in the article.
Certainly there are people in the subject's age bracket who could do well as an occupational athlete, but not him.
The misunderstanding of the original article was that the job is for a federal police officer who happens to be skilled in computer network security. *NOT* vice versa.
You tried to use my comments as a bully pulpit to rail against everything from immigration to social programs, and that was inappropriate.
To me, the biggest indicator of stupidity is
when people think it's somehow appropriate or
nice to have the monotonic rendition of a mozart
aria or bach partita as their ringer. As if that
makes them sophisticated somehow. It literally
makes me want to kill the owner of the phone.
Except for an emergency (as defined in the State Codes,
e.g., you'd be prepared to explain the nature of your emergency to
a cop and a judge), using a portable phone while operating
a motor vehicle on a public roadway constitutes a moving violation.
Exceptions could be provided for licensed amateur radio
operators, service personnel, security guards, etc.
Violators to be fined heavily -- as a moving violation.
One that raises your insurance rates, carries substantial fines,
and can cause you to forfeit your license to drive
AND your cell phone after multiple violations.
Let's make it worthwhile: a $500-1000 fine for the
first offense, which will generally be waived AFTER a
court appearence, on the condition that the violator will sit
through an uncomfortable class or do some service work.
I'm totally 100% serious here. You can still squawk on the
phone while driving if you have an emergency (what the
LAW says is an emergency, not necessarily what YOU say),
and you can still get a special license that will allow you
to do it after passing some tests that show you're capable...
But the routine, always-on nature of the doofuses out there
who *are* contributing to highway problems has got to stop.
You want to hear my views on road rage, and my
ideas of how to stop the trend?
It shows a specific bias to say that those investigations were stupid.
In some ways, it's better that stupid laws are aggressively enforced. Otherwise they are ignored, instead of repealed.
If *every* petty copyright infringer had a risk
of doing time, a REAL risk with a REAL expectation of prosecution, how long do you think something like the DMCA would stay on the books?
I'm not convinced these agents were stupid at all.
On the other hand, your beef is with the Justice department, not the FBI. It is not at all clear that in Dmitry's case, the police had any choice but to make the arrest.
"1. Have you used marijuana at all within the last three years? - NO
2. Have you used marijuana more than a total of 15 times in your life? - No"
What if the applicant lived in Holland for a while?
"Even a total moron (who has an advanced degree in astrophysics, wa-hey!) can run an app in debug mode until he gets it working."
Uh, there's some sarcasm there, right?
An *undergrad* in astrophysics requires the same
3 semesters of calculus as any other Physics, or Chemistry, right? Anybody who can pull that off is immune from EVER being called a moron.
" The FBI is shooting themselves in the foot by having overly demanding entrance requirements. "
You are assuming that their requirements are creating a dearth of recruits or a surplus of jobs. Probably, even with these requirements, they are swamped with applicants, who are COMPETING for the jobs.
>>I'd think the "college degree" required bit
>>would be a bigger limiting factor.
Not really. Universities churn them out by the thousands, every year. And many of them are quite buff, physically, emotionally, mentally.
When we read stories like this article, and hear about some overwieght, aging geek who got the wild
hair to go into law enforcement when it suddenly appeared lucrative, and was rejected, we are supposed to sympathize. Perhaps we should, somewhat, but we must also consider that despite the requirements, and no matter what hype you hear to the contrary, most Federal agencies are having no problems whatsoever finding qualified applicants. There are a lot of people out there entering the workforce. It appears to me that there was a little babyboom in the more-is-more 1980s, and those kids are coming of age. I wish there was a way to get credible census information in this kind of detail, but I'll bet $1 that there are more 18-25 year olds today than there have ever been in history.
In the case of the Federal law enforcement agencies, they usually have enough applicants just from former MP's, who have degrees, are physically fit, and have records that show distinguished military service.
The "average geek" will refuse to believe that a business major or enlisted soldier could be as effective in computer security, network administration, or programming than he, but it is merely a perception based on prejudice, and not necessarily based in reality.
I'm not even sure the "typical geek" would survive at all in a regimented, authoritarian work enviromnent. Quasi-military police work?
The story sensationalizes the "overweight" factor, but I believe strongly that the man being over 35 and just now wanting to go into law enforcement is a bigger red flag. You really should start that career at 20. Perhaps at 18, beginning either with a few years of military service or majoring in criminal justice or political science. When it's time to retire from police work, you'll probably have a law degree to fall back on!
But don't wait until you're almost 40, already burnt out, and THEN decide you want this type of career -- and if you do, don't try to blame not getting the job on your weight. There are a large number of factors working against this individual; the weight thing is just one; more of a symptom of the whole.
"I could never understand the LONG lists of
available files which are not usable. "
Are you talking about the people who post their playlists on a website, which is what you find when searching for a song title, but has the files themselves elsewhere?
"so far" only in Japan might mean "never" in the
USA. I wonder why there aren't numerous outlets
for graymarket items like this. There is *LOTS* of electronic stuff in Japan that we don't see in the US. But it's not actually *illegal* to import, so why is it so hard to get something like this?
I personally would like to be able to acquire the SCMS-free minidics and DAT's that they get over there (but not here).
"If I were in the media and decided to say. I don't support Bush going to war in Iraq because..."
But the current media does have a fair amount of balance on this subject. If the fact that most of the allies of the US don't support attacking Iraq were being suppressed, I'd understand this point of view; but even the most conservative, hawkish media outlets have not failed to provide this information.
There are plenty of areas where your naieve assessment does not fit. I have worked in several of them.
The most serious one was a situation where the users of the computer system were attorneys who communicated with all sorts of people on regulatory compliance, and health/safety matters.
It turns out that the privilege of confidentiality between an attorney and a client trumps pretty much any other consideration *even* if the correspondence is internal. Even an *accidental* exposure of certain types of data can cause serious problems.
There are lots of other similar circumstances for other professions as well. Financial professionals often need privacy of documents and data, even to the point where it is very important to hide that data from other employees in the same firm. Some service-oriented businesses have clients who are competitors of one another. It is extremely important to keep insulation between their affairs, because even accidents or honest mistakes can lead to litigation or embarrassment.
This has little to do with "Hotmail" but everything to do with the need for privacy for individuals.
All this discussion reeks of very short memories.
It was only a decade ago, or less, that you were
just as likely for your phone company to imply that you were some kind of deviant for having a
modem, especially if you wanted to use that modem
for *inbound* service. The smallest BBS ran the
risk of being pegged for "commercial" phone lines, on the whim of the telco. You'd have to think of ways to describe your line noise without explaining that you had a modem. Which was widely considered a very weird thing to have.
It has NOT been a long time since then, until today, when every joe, jon, and jeremy has some kind of internet service (albeit mostly dialup), but the MIRACLE that there is high speed wire AT ALL to ANY residential areas is not something we should be taking for granted.
When I started my "internet experience", 9600 baud wire to the home would have been $300/year, the best I could get. Maybe a little better with my university connections, but not much.
Today I pay $100/mo to my ISP (for a routed block of IP's, so I can run my own DNS and services on a 1.5 megabit bidirectional DSL line), and I guess about $60/mo to my telco, for their extortionate price on the nothing that they actually do once the line was punched down. But you know what? I consider it a friggin MIRACLE that I can get that service AT ALL, for ANY price.
The message I get from the discussion is that people are upset that they can't get the service I get, and pay dearly for, at a price more like $30 bucks a month or something. To me the most significant thing about the situation is that I CAN'T MOVE, because I can't get a definite answer about whether I'll get this same DSL capability at a new address until AFTER I MOVE THERE.
To me, that's a bigger issue, and amounts to a far larger cost (opportunity cost) than the price of the service.
It's not that some people have and some people don't, but that you can't even find out in advance where you need to be if you want to be one of the people who have!