We appeared to do well enough without copyrights for the majority of human history.
While agree with the general thrust of your statement, this is definitely a different situation. Michelangelo didn't have to contend with bots that would walk into his studio and instantly make 50,000 exact copies of everything he had sitting there.
I voted on a Diebold machine in Atlanta this morning. I figure it's going to be a long day -- long about the third race I pressed the button for my candidate and a candidate about six inches away lit up. I was able to correct it, but it happened about three more times before I got to the end of the ballot.
Usually it's the machine that does the punching. When the machine is full of confetti, it doesn't punch well -- the same problem affects 3-hole punches. So there.
It's called photogrammetry, and Microsoft did not come up with it, though they will no doubt be filing all sorts of horseshit patents pretty soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry
Fortunately, we have more than just anectdotal reports to lean on. I highly recommend Mark Crispin Miller's review of the studies that were done of the 2004 Ohio election from Harpers (http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html). The conclusion of most of these was that Kerry probably won Ohio by a fair margin, but due to deliberate attempts to voter supression, incidents of touch-machines flipping mountains of votes to Bush or simply adding non-existent votes to the Bush column, and boxes of paper ballots mysteriously disappearing, he was denied a good many votes that should have gone to him.
These are facts, and you don't need to break out the tinfoil in order to apprehend them. Now, as to whether these efforts were the work of individuals or were coordinated by the likes of Karl Rove -- that's where documentation doesn't exist. But one way or another, it was a fraud, and there's no reason to assume it won't happen again. The pity is that, aside from a bit of idle discussion here and a on a few other websites, nothing will come of it.
As to your assertion that these incidents are getting too much attention, that's just dead wrong. The study done of Florida in the wake of the 2000 election was buried in the Times, as were the studies of Ohio in 2004. This very article is a good example of the problem -- it was printed in the *UK* for God's sake. Check Google News for "Florida" and you'll notice our story is the sixth one listed, after stuff about crocodiles and football. How's that for interest from the U.S. media? And not one paper picks up the Register's story. Is that what you call overreporting?
You've got it totally backward: HTML is the kludge. And what we're seeing now is what happens when a kludge also happens to be useful. It's like VHS versus Beta, except in this case Beta came out later and can't make headway because of entrenched interests.
I do all my work in XHTML and CSS, as does my shop. Once you've switched over and become competent with it, you'll wonder what took you so long.
Conversely, people who haven't been to school often fail to understand its benefits, which, as often as not, are not necessarily financial. Moreover, one person's success does not make a given path the smooth one. Fact is, and I'm sure you're aware of this, most dropouts do miserably.
Ah, you kids and your new-fangled technology. Don't you know that if you use ajax the terrorists win? Look, the Internet was built for Gopher, so you can take all this web trash and flush it.
Actually, the disconnected line to the house *was* their problem. Their line, their splitter. The fact that I took it on myself to solve it doesn't mean that it wasn't their responsibility.
In any case, your question is utterly obtuse. I pay these people a lot of money for service, and I don't appreciate being lied to. You frame it like customer service is a huge drag on their business, but as someone who runs a small design shop, I can tell you that customer service *is* your business no matter what line of work you're in. Unless you happen to be a monopoly, apparently.
To clarify the situation for your benefit: I never insisted anything, and I'm willing to give even their scripted solutions the benefit of a doubt. I called, asked what was up, and got this bullshit response. I wouldn't have called except that neighborhood outages are so frequent (in my area there is typically two or three short outages every afternoon -- a neighbor an I have compared notes on these) that it is hard not to make assumptions. But the call jockey never even suggested resetting my equipment (which I'd already tried once in any case -- their outages tend to futz up my router).
This isn't news to me. On no fewer than three separate occasions in about four years with Comcast, I have had service outages long enough to cause me to brave their call center. Here's the record on this:
1) Called and was told they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." The next day it was still out. While heading out to the car I noticed that the line to the house had become disconnected. I got a ladder, plugged it back in, and it worked fine.
2) Called and was told, again, they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." Called again when service was still out the next day. Was told they would send a person out -- this entailed a ten day wait. When the service guy arrived, he told me that the line splitter on the street was not only corroded but had been installed backward. Not sure how that's possible, but there it is.
3) Called and was told, yet again, they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." Ten minutes later I reset all my equipment and everything worked fine.
Fact is, "work in my area" is apparently a lie common to call center vermin. And Comcast doesn't care that they do this. Lovely.
I agree with you, but I should point out that electronic voting machines *with* printers attached would be a recipe for a disastrous election day. Look: I've been doing graphic design for eight years, and I have difficulty keeping the ink tanks loaded and avoiding paper jams with my printer. So multiply that by tens of thousands, and throw in a bunch of quasi-trained senior citizen poll workers. Good luck.
There is a certain level of bad spelling and grammar at which criticism lends the critic mere normality, and not holiness. Pointing out an incorrect usage of the word "presently" is holier-than-thou. Pointing out the difference between "bare" and "bear" is our solemn duty as thinking humans.
Actually, none of the 9/11 hijackers were poor either.
The leaders were of middle-class background and educated, but the rest were, if not poor, most certainly rootless, jobless, poorly educated, desocialized individuals. The extreme social situations of the middle east lend a lot of muscle power to the wealthier, educated ideologues.
A key passage: I am aware of the mitigating factors -- hell, I just enumerated them -- but complaining that Prototype "breaks" your ability to use Array as a hash is like complaining that Prototype "breaks" your ability to use String as a hash. It is not Prototype's fault that JavaScript does not deter this improper use, and it certainly does not mean that Prototype does not "play well with others." You are free to reject Prototype and keep using Array improperly, but then you give up your right to bitch and moan.
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We appeared to do well enough without copyrights for the majority of human history.
While agree with the general thrust of your statement, this is definitely a different situation. Michelangelo didn't have to contend with bots that would walk into his studio and instantly make 50,000 exact copies of everything he had sitting there.
I voted on a Diebold machine in Atlanta this morning. I figure it's going to be a long day -- long about the third race I pressed the button for my candidate and a candidate about six inches away lit up. I was able to correct it, but it happened about three more times before I got to the end of the ballot.
Usually it's the machine that does the punching. When the machine is full of confetti, it doesn't punch well -- the same problem affects 3-hole punches. So there.
It's called photogrammetry, and Microsoft did not come up with it, though they will no doubt be filing all sorts of horseshit patents pretty soon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry
Fortunately, we have more than just anectdotal reports to lean on. I highly recommend Mark Crispin Miller's review of the studies that were done of the 2004 Ohio election from Harpers (http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html). The conclusion of most of these was that Kerry probably won Ohio by a fair margin, but due to deliberate attempts to voter supression, incidents of touch-machines flipping mountains of votes to Bush or simply adding non-existent votes to the Bush column, and boxes of paper ballots mysteriously disappearing, he was denied a good many votes that should have gone to him.
These are facts, and you don't need to break out the tinfoil in order to apprehend them. Now, as to whether these efforts were the work of individuals or were coordinated by the likes of Karl Rove -- that's where documentation doesn't exist. But one way or another, it was a fraud, and there's no reason to assume it won't happen again. The pity is that, aside from a bit of idle discussion here and a on a few other websites, nothing will come of it.
As to your assertion that these incidents are getting too much attention, that's just dead wrong. The study done of Florida in the wake of the 2000 election was buried in the Times, as were the studies of Ohio in 2004. This very article is a good example of the problem -- it was printed in the *UK* for God's sake. Check Google News for "Florida" and you'll notice our story is the sixth one listed, after stuff about crocodiles and football. How's that for interest from the U.S. media? And not one paper picks up the Register's story. Is that what you call overreporting?
You've got it totally backward: HTML is the kludge. And what we're seeing now is what happens when a kludge also happens to be useful. It's like VHS versus Beta, except in this case Beta came out later and can't make headway because of entrenched interests.
I do all my work in XHTML and CSS, as does my shop. Once you've switched over and become competent with it, you'll wonder what took you so long.
Conversely, people who haven't been to school often fail to understand its benefits, which, as often as not, are not necessarily financial. Moreover, one person's success does not make a given path the smooth one. Fact is, and I'm sure you're aware of this, most dropouts do miserably.
Ah, you kids and your new-fangled technology. Don't you know that if you use ajax the terrorists win? Look, the Internet was built for Gopher, so you can take all this web trash and flush it.
Actually, the disconnected line to the house *was* their problem. Their line, their splitter. The fact that I took it on myself to solve it doesn't mean that it wasn't their responsibility.
In any case, your question is utterly obtuse. I pay these people a lot of money for service, and I don't appreciate being lied to. You frame it like customer service is a huge drag on their business, but as someone who runs a small design shop, I can tell you that customer service *is* your business no matter what line of work you're in. Unless you happen to be a monopoly, apparently.
To clarify the situation for your benefit: I never insisted anything, and I'm willing to give even their scripted solutions the benefit of a doubt. I called, asked what was up, and got this bullshit response. I wouldn't have called except that neighborhood outages are so frequent (in my area there is typically two or three short outages every afternoon -- a neighbor an I have compared notes on these) that it is hard not to make assumptions. But the call jockey never even suggested resetting my equipment (which I'd already tried once in any case -- their outages tend to futz up my router).
This isn't news to me. On no fewer than three separate occasions in about four years with Comcast, I have had service outages long enough to cause me to brave their call center. Here's the record on this:
1) Called and was told they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." The next day it was still out. While heading out to the car I noticed that the line to the house had become disconnected. I got a ladder, plugged it back in, and it worked fine.
2) Called and was told, again, they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." Called again when service was still out the next day. Was told they would send a person out -- this entailed a ten day wait. When the service guy arrived, he told me that the line splitter on the street was not only corroded but had been installed backward. Not sure how that's possible, but there it is.
3) Called and was told, yet again, they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." Ten minutes later I reset all my equipment and everything worked fine.
Fact is, "work in my area" is apparently a lie common to call center vermin. And Comcast doesn't care that they do this. Lovely.
I agree with you, but I should point out that electronic voting machines *with* printers attached would be a recipe for a disastrous election day. Look: I've been doing graphic design for eight years, and I have difficulty keeping the ink tanks loaded and avoiding paper jams with my printer. So multiply that by tens of thousands, and throw in a bunch of quasi-trained senior citizen poll workers. Good luck.
I'd like to go on the record as preferring breasts over prostates.
Who won the AL pennant in 1941? It was good enough in WW2, it should be good enough today.
And if anyone honestly believes this will get done for $104B, I've got a cheap war in Iraq I could sell you.
Who is so lucky to have broadband alternatives? I don't. If Comcast pisses me off enough, you know what I can do? Squat.
Let's hear it for competition!
There is a certain level of bad spelling and grammar at which criticism lends the critic mere normality, and not holiness. Pointing out an incorrect usage of the word "presently" is holier-than-thou. Pointing out the difference between "bare" and "bear" is our solemn duty as thinking humans.
I think the significant factor was that they made it impossible to get rid of the integrated browser.
What's so terrible about something being arbitrary? I like arbitrary. And you suck... because your nick starts with a "t."
Actually, none of the 9/11 hijackers were poor either.
The leaders were of middle-class background and educated, but the rest were, if not poor, most certainly rootless, jobless, poorly educated, desocialized individuals. The extreme social situations of the middle east lend a lot of muscle power to the wealthier, educated ideologues.
Yeah, because Apple has a massive documented history of doing things like this, right?
The Spellchecker - Posts to note that the parent has dreamed up the worst spelling of drool ever.
I thought we were fighting them over there so we didn't have to fight them here. What ever happened to that?
The explosives would be detonated over the atlantic (to ensure maximum fatalities).
Wouldn't they maximize fatalities by detonating the explosives over cities, so people on the ground get hit by bits of falling metal, limbs, etc.
Not trying to give anyone any ideas... just saying.
The effective 'intelligence' of any organization is inversely proportional to its size.
Are you saying fat people are stupid?
I'm sure no one is reading this anymore, but here's an excellent discussion of this "issue:"
http://www.andrewdupont.net/2006/05/18/javascrip t-associative-arrays-considered-harmful/
A key passage: I am aware of the mitigating factors -- hell, I just enumerated them -- but complaining that Prototype "breaks" your ability to use Array as a hash is like complaining that Prototype "breaks" your ability to use String as a hash. It is not Prototype's fault that JavaScript does not deter this improper use, and it certainly does not mean that Prototype does not "play well with others." You are free to reject Prototype and keep using Array improperly, but then you give up your right to bitch and moan.