>Nope only half right you can only say what you want but they wont listen.
Both of the complaints I made to TSA where acted on promptly, and in a satisfying manner:
1. The conveyor belt damaged my property. I was given a form on the spot, and the person in charged recognized the fact that I was in a hurry to catch my plane and made sure I had what I needed to make my claim. The claim took a couple of weeks to process, but I was fully reimbursed for my property without question.
2. I made a complaint about the way one of the screeners handled the contents of my camera bag, and about a comment the screener made about my huge amount of batteries. (I'm a semi-pro photographer and on this trip I was going directly to a field assignment). Anyway my complaint was taken very seriously, the person responsible was immediately taken off the line, the person in charge asked me to stay long enough to show them where my complaint began on the tape, and I was allowed to go catch my plane.
I realize the TSA screener job, for most people in it, is the first job out of high school, GED more likely, or vocational rehab. But in any situation where you ask for a supervisor, you find you there *is* one, because *not* having a supervisor around, supervising, represents a bigger problem than any complaint a passenger could have. You'll also find they are well trained, career people. At least, I have found this, to my surprise.
As was Orwell, who was satirizing his contemporary view of British society and government by framing it into a dystopian futuristic novel. But the situation that provoked him to write 1984 was his Labour party job that required him to participate in blacklisting people suspected of being communists. It turns out the real "Big Brother" actually *was* watching his every move and keeping detailed records, and that he really did have to write blatant fabrications on behalf of the government.
Keep in mind while reading 1984.... Orwell (Blair) was an informant for the government, exposing dangerous communists like Charlie Chaplin and John Steinbeck.
>I am so sick of being forced to commute along this predetermined, crowded and narrow little route along with >hundreds of thousands of others every day.
You could move so that you work someplace reasonably near where you live. I put a dollar value (tens of thousands a year) on that, plus the commute time.
>You can do that, and I suggest that you do, but they will just use it against us by saying that the decline in sales proves that people are >pirating.
1. When a music publisher claims this loss to their shareholders in a direct, sworn statement, or claims the loss for tax or insurance purposes, I will accept the argument.
2. If they try to use it against *me*, I have documentary evidence that I could bring to a courtroom, that shows the rise and decline in my professional music collecting activity over the past 38 years.
>and when i cook myself dinner i'm part of the hospitality industry, right?
Not unless you have company.
By making our own music, we are part of the process of lowering the barriers to entry into production and distribution. That, not "downloading", is what has them so frightened.
"The reason this is news worthy is it appears to be more of a willful act to block prosecution, where as the ones over in Nigeria (although probably not China) are more a case of the local infrastructure and police not being capable of tracking these people."
You have a Cold War propaganda perspective on the functionality of the Russian government.
I have never, ever had a console system, although I did once borrow an Atari Pong for a while in 76.
I have always had at least one mechanical pinball machine, though. And the bar table Galaga, naturally.
Console games have never held the least interest for me. I was always painfully aware that, even though they *could*, they intentionally chose not to make the console games equivalent to the arcade games, back when people still played arcade games like mad for 25 and 50 cents a pop.
So until MAME made it possible to strictly reproduce the arcade games from the early 80s, I never gave a damn about any console machine I ever saw.
>Yes, yes, I know. It's not a dedicated gaming system like a true "console" is, but you will be hard-pressed to >find people who used it for more than a gaming system.
On one hand, I don't know more than one person who didn't play games on their C64, but on the other hand, everybody I knew with a C64 used it primarily for music applications. I even had a MIDI controller device (still have, and it still works, and I still occasionally introduce SID sounds into my compositions.)
>The principle behind what he says is correct. There is an attitude that because people can do things that they > should do them and that by downloading music etc illegally for free that they are sticking it to the man.
They don't really care that you are downloading, or really even that there is a whole huge culture based on copyright infringement. What they are really upset about is the fact that YOU can produce music and distribute it with little or no investment, and reach a wide audience faster than any normal industry production can do.
For 5 or 10 grand you can treat a room and turn it into a decent recording space. For another 5 or 10 you can put together a recording, mixing, and mastering system that in skilled enough hands give results that are equivalent to any professional production system. You can do it for a lot less, but even if you spend this much, it represents an astonishingly low barrier to entry into music production and distribution.
It's not that you might be able to get a torrent for Rattle and Hum -- it actually benefits them that the material is distributed with no cost --
But the fact that your band, or you the solo artist, has a way to put together a production quality piece of work, and worse, that you can distribute it potentially to millions of people with little or no cost, really scares them.
They may control the radio access, and they may control access to the music store also, but you can skip all that and still reach hundreds, thousands, even millions of people without becoming indebted (financially or socially) to anyone you don't choose. And you don't have to deal with the hierarchy and rigamarole involved in production either... arguing with A&R people... paying specialists because of union rules... getting mechanical licenses... having a project canned because some exec changed his mind... It's crazy how much artificial complexity exists in music production.
And now, "all of a sudden", a competent enough artist can skip it *ALL*. It is no easier and no harder to be successful... but the RISKS have sunk thru the floor... And THAT is what mainstream production guys like Paul are upset about... their entire business model is based on the creation of risk and then using those risk factors as a motivating tool for the artists, who they then control.
Think about it... U2 have a spokesman who probably feels entitled to spout off a bunch of nonsense that could harm U2's reputation... and apparently they don't have control over him.
If I had a thousandth the money Bono has, you can bet your life that I would not have employees out there making speeches like this unless I've approved every word. But then, *I* would never have any person who considers himself in a superior position to me, business-wise.
U2's manager indeed. I'm sure his decisions are law until *anybody* disagrees:-)
Users have a legally defensible expectation of service as defined in any contract they have entered into.
They are "absolutely entitled" to very little, such as to be free from discrimination on race or gender for example.
If you have a contract that says your email will be backed up, and failure to do so on the provider's part entitles you to $X in compensation, then you have a defensible position from which to seek damages.
Of course the user agreement with Charter has no such clause, right?
Only problem I have with this. If you tie a "charitable" contribution into a requirement that the beneficiary uses your product, you should get ZERO consideration for it at tax time. It must not be both a charitable contribution and a marketing or sales campaign. Choose one or the other.
The compromise between the need for isolation and the need for ventilation has got to be a nightmare on the sea. I don't see much of a consumer market for computer gear that's hardened for marine use. Am sure the Navy has their milspec for this kind of stuff. Bet it calls for frequent prevmaint replacement too.
>Actually, you "copyright' your material because you have no choice.
Yeah. I understand the legal, tech, and ethical issues pretty well. My problem is the big fat brush that people use to paint the word "copyright", even going as far as to play "law enforcer" or something, without the slightest clue what they are doing. And worse, some of these people are *professionals* who should know better.
I've studied law and worked for decades in the entertainment and publishing industries, along with being a contributor to GPL projects.
I find it very hard to explain to people (even those who should be able to understand) that I copyright my material *because* I want to distribute it free of charge.
The way I see copyright being handled, sometimes amounts to a barrier to entry for people who just want to distribute their work. I really hate seeing disclaimers like "Copyrighted material may not be hosted on this service" or similarly meaningless things. People refuse to understand the distinctions between "rights" and "license", and they also tend to have no ability to comprehend the fact that the rights of an individual are at least as strong as those of a media corporation, or that there are people who are perfectly willing to distribute their creative works for free but do not wish to give up their own rights in order to do so.
And this problem manifests in just "singer-songwriter" stuff. Never mind trying to explain the GPL.
>What happens when I display a fear microexpression when I'm asked if I have any bomb?
Well, I can tell you, when they ask you if you know how to *make* a bomb, and you say "I am a physics professor. I'm sure I know how to make a bomb," the searching and questioning intensifies. So you have to either lie to the police, or deal with the consequences of honest answers.
Slashdot Mirror
>Nope only half right you can only say what you want but they wont listen.
Both of the complaints I made to TSA where acted on promptly, and in a satisfying manner:
1. The conveyor belt damaged my property. I was given a form on the spot, and the person in charged recognized the fact that I was in a hurry to catch my plane and made sure I had what I needed to make my claim. The claim took a couple of weeks to process, but I was fully reimbursed for my property without question.
2. I made a complaint about the way one of the screeners handled the contents of my camera bag, and about a comment the screener made about my huge amount of batteries. (I'm a semi-pro photographer and on this trip I was going directly to a field assignment). Anyway my complaint was taken very seriously, the person responsible was immediately taken off the line, the person in charge asked me to stay long enough to show them where my complaint began on the tape, and I was allowed to go catch my plane.
I realize the TSA screener job, for most people in it, is the first job out of high school, GED more likely, or vocational rehab. But in any situation where you ask for a supervisor, you find you there *is* one, because *not* having a supervisor around, supervising, represents a bigger problem than any complaint a passenger could have. You'll also find they are well trained, career people. At least, I have found this, to my surprise.
>Big Brother was British.
As was Orwell, who was satirizing his contemporary view of British society and government by framing it into a dystopian futuristic novel. But the situation that provoked him to write 1984 was his Labour party job that required him to participate in blacklisting people suspected of being communists. It turns out the real "Big Brother" actually *was* watching his every move and keeping detailed records, and that he really did have to write blatant fabrications on behalf of the government.
Keep in mind while reading 1984.... Orwell (Blair) was an informant for the government, exposing dangerous communists like Charlie Chaplin and John Steinbeck.
>>>You can only store so much energy in a package that is liftable by a human being.
>>Show me in your physics book where it says there is an upper bound on the amount of energy you can put into a
>>system.
>E = mc^2
And the maximum mass liftable by a human being is? (Are we limiting this to the average adult, on Earth?)
You claim that memory protection isn't possible in a monolithic kernel?
>You can only store so much energy in a package that is liftable by a human being.
Show me in your physics book where it says there is an upper bound on the amount of energy you can put into a system.
>I am so sick of being forced to commute along this predetermined, crowded and narrow little route along with
>hundreds of thousands of others every day.
You could move so that you work someplace reasonably near where you live. I put a dollar value (tens of thousands a year) on that, plus the commute time.
>You can do that, and I suggest that you do, but they will just use it against us by saying that the decline in sales proves that people are >pirating.
1. When a music publisher claims this loss to their shareholders in a direct, sworn statement, or claims the loss for tax or insurance purposes, I will accept the argument.
2. If they try to use it against *me*, I have documentary evidence that I could bring to a courtroom, that shows the rise and decline in my professional music collecting activity over the past 38 years.
>and when i cook myself dinner i'm part of the hospitality industry, right?
Not unless you have company.
By making our own music, we are part of the process of lowering the barriers to entry into production and distribution. That, not "downloading", is what has them so frightened.
"The reason this is news worthy is it appears to be more of a willful act to block prosecution, where as the ones over in Nigeria (although probably not China) are more a case of the local infrastructure and police not being capable of tracking these people."
You have a Cold War propaganda perspective on the functionality of the Russian government.
I have never, ever had a console system, although I did once borrow an Atari Pong for a while in 76.
I have always had at least one mechanical pinball machine, though. And the bar table Galaga, naturally.
Console games have never held the least interest for me. I was always painfully aware that, even though they *could*, they intentionally chose not to make the console games equivalent to the arcade games, back when people still played arcade games like mad for 25 and 50 cents a pop.
So until MAME made it possible to strictly reproduce the arcade games from the early 80s, I never gave a damn about any console machine I ever saw.
That said, I did enjoy playing Zelda.
>Yes, yes, I know. It's not a dedicated gaming system like a true "console" is, but you will be hard-pressed to
>find people who used it for more than a gaming system.
On one hand, I don't know more than one person who didn't play games on their C64, but on the other hand,
everybody I knew with a C64 used it primarily for music applications. I even had a MIDI controller device (still have, and it still works, and I still occasionally introduce SID sounds into my compositions.)
>The principle behind what he says is correct. There is an attitude that because people can do things that they
> should do them and that by downloading music etc illegally for free that they are sticking it to the man.
They don't really care that you are downloading, or really even that there is a whole huge culture based on copyright infringement. What they are really upset about is the fact that YOU can produce music and distribute it with little or no investment, and reach a wide audience faster than any normal industry production can do.
For 5 or 10 grand you can treat a room and turn it into a decent recording space. For another 5 or 10 you can put together a recording, mixing, and mastering system that in skilled enough hands give results that are equivalent to any professional production system. You can do it for a lot less, but even if you spend this much, it represents an astonishingly low barrier to entry into music production and distribution.
It's not that you might be able to get a torrent for Rattle and Hum -- it actually benefits them that the material is distributed with no cost --
But the fact that your band, or you the solo artist, has a way to put together a production quality piece of work, and worse, that you can distribute it potentially to millions of people with little or no cost, really scares them.
They may control the radio access, and they may control access to the music store also, but you can skip all that and still reach hundreds, thousands, even millions of people without becoming indebted (financially or socially) to anyone you don't choose. And you don't have to deal with the hierarchy and rigamarole involved in production either
And now, "all of a sudden", a competent enough artist can skip it *ALL*. It is no easier and no harder to be successful
Think about it
If I had a thousandth the money Bono has, you can bet your life that I would not have employees out there making speeches like this unless I've approved every word. But then, *I* would never have any person who considers himself in a superior position to me, business-wise.
U2's manager indeed. I'm sure his decisions are law until *anybody* disagrees
You can't because, when you do your independent production, whether you say so or not, you are *part* of the industry, even redefining it.
>50% of what you learned here will likely be outdated within 2 years of graduation.
That's very optimistic. More that this is obsolete in the time it takes to develop lesson plans, get textbooks approved, etc.
>Users are absolutely entitled to...
Users have a legally defensible expectation of service as defined in any contract they have entered into.
They are "absolutely entitled" to very little, such as to be free from discrimination on race or gender for example.
If you have a contract that says your email will be backed up, and failure to do so on the provider's part entitles you to $X in compensation, then you have a defensible position from which to seek damages.
Of course the user agreement with Charter has no such clause, right?
Only problem I have with this. If you tie a "charitable" contribution into a requirement that the beneficiary uses your product, you should get ZERO consideration for it at tax time. It must not be both a charitable contribution and a marketing or sales campaign. Choose one or the other.
The compromise between the need for isolation and the need for ventilation has got to be a nightmare on the sea.
I don't see much of a consumer market for computer gear that's hardened for marine use.
Am sure the Navy has their milspec for this kind of stuff. Bet it calls for frequent prevmaint replacement too.
Explain it to your MD in terms of HIPAA and the risk that "spyware" poses to his license to practice medicine.
In fact, it is a crime NOT to have this talk with him or her.
>Actually, you "copyright' your material because you have no choice.
Yeah. I understand the legal, tech, and ethical issues pretty well.
My problem is the big fat brush that people use to paint the word "copyright", even going as far as to play "law enforcer" or something, without the slightest clue what they are doing. And worse, some of these people are *professionals* who should know better.
I've studied law and worked for decades in the entertainment and publishing industries, along with being a contributor to GPL projects.
>All they will do is ban material that the big players (read: RIAA MPAA) want stopped.
I seek to end this status quo with an equal protection argument.
So he's guilty, right? He actually *did* it? No "innocent guy going to prison" story here?
I find it very hard to explain to people (even those who should be able to understand) that I copyright my material *because* I want to distribute it free of charge.
The way I see copyright being handled, sometimes amounts to a barrier to entry for people who just want to distribute their work. I really hate seeing disclaimers like "Copyrighted material may not be hosted on this service" or similarly meaningless things. People refuse to understand the distinctions between "rights" and "license", and they also tend to have no ability to comprehend the fact that the rights of an individual are at least as strong as those of a media corporation, or that there are people who are perfectly willing to distribute their creative works for free but do not wish to give up their own rights in order to do so.
And this problem manifests in just "singer-songwriter" stuff. Never mind trying to explain the GPL.
>What happens when I display a fear microexpression when I'm asked if I have any bomb?
Well, I can tell you, when they ask you if you know how to *make* a bomb, and you say "I am a physics professor. I'm sure I know how to make a bomb," the searching and questioning intensifies. So you have to either lie to the police, or deal with the consequences of honest answers.
Okay, so what if I consider "being jewish" to be "weird" as you say?
What am I, as an employer, entitled to do about that?
Let's go there. Straight to the root of the problem. You don't get to decide what is "weird" and what is "acceptable to a public face".
No matter how badly you want that to be your decision, it's not, and it never will be.
>The crime is contract breach.
Come to the table with that signed contract and the consideration that was negotiated for it, and you won't get laughed out of the room.