One problem is that CA state revenue is very volatile, which means you hear about us not balancing our budget when times are bad. Here's an interesting study in revenue volatility in California: http://www.lao.ca.gov/2005/rev_vol/rev_volatility_012005.pdf
Some highlights: - Tax on capital gains and stock options is very volatile and represents a large source of revenue for California (from $2b in 95 to $17b in 00 to $5b in 02) - Prop 98 guarantees a school funding level, regardless of state revenues Not mentioned, because it is talking about revenue volatility, is Prop 13, which basically prevents increases in property taxes as homes appreciate.
But the reason the numbers in California are so big is just population. 37.3m in CA, 1.3m in NH. If you look at state revenue per capita, they don't indicate anything hugely different: New Hampshire: $4324 (40th in the US), California $5067 (23rd in the US) http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/284.html
The enterprise version was rewritten from scratch in Java about 4 years ago. You can get a 15 user VMWare image version of it for free here: http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/sfee/
Just a clarification, since it doesn't address your core issue, as sf.net doesn't use the enterprise code.
In our large-scale web application, we've adopted Extreme Programming (XP) as a means of increasing product quality, and thus far it has worked very well.
Our application is just about all Java, written in a J2EE application container, and almost all of our tests are written in some form of Java as well. We use Test Driven Design to drive our API design, and end up with unit tests written with JUnit. We run these unit tests continuously, after every batch of checkins, using Cruise Control which performs an automated build.
To perform functional tests, we use JWebUnit which sits on top of HTTPUnit. The combination emulates a web browser, performing clicks and form sets against the actual server. We automate the running of these tests against an installed system, using Tinderbox, and we do this on every platform that we support (combinations of application servers, databases, and operating systems). The tinderboxes run 4 times a day, using the Cruise Control results.
It takes a lot of hardware (the tinderboxes for each platform) but the infrastructure is easy to set up with free software. The HttpUnit tests are tedious to write, mostly because they take a long time to run. Because of this, we don't consider a feature (user story in XP) complete until it has an automated HttpUnit test.
As for process, we have a small QA team that design test documents for each user story. We use those test documents to design the HttpUnit tests. Since we do this during the development stage, we involve the QA team on a daily basis.
When a user story is considered finished by the development team, the tests are reviewed by QA and the functionality is reviewed by the product manager that designed the feature. This way, we have no big surprises when everything is done, everyone can see the product progress day by day.
I won't say we ship a 100% bug free product, but our quality is through the roof compared to what it used to be, and it's actually much higher than we were even expecting.
A 1 terabyte disk will store between 100 and 200 discs. That's not a high percentage of your collection.
Pioneer has the DV F727, which holds 300 dvds and costs about $550. Sony has the VPCX875P which also holds 300 and costs under $400. I know it doesn't really answer the question, but it might solve the problem. This has got to be cheaper and easier than putting together a pc and big disk array, and it should hold more discs.
Since you mentioned bookstores, I'll name two that I like.
Strand Books in New York City is really huge, which is impressive being in the middle of of a big city. It's a used bookstore with decend prices and a gigantic selection, including old books and a nice supply of art picture books.
City Lights in San Francisco is a great bookstore with a lot of history during the Beat Poet era.
If you're heading all over, I'd recommend both, as I'd recommend both San Francisco and New York to anyone visiting the United States.
sonicblue seems to be dumping them cheap ($599 from the original price ~$3000). I picked one up, it's running Midori linux on a transmeta 400 mhz chip, has 128 megs of ram, a 5 gig disk, orinoco 802.11, USB, and IR.
You'll need a USB keyboard to do anything major on it, but it's a slick little device
You're right, that's why we have such a low number of people getting divorced in the US.
Hell, I'm not married, and I've been working for a smaller part of my life than I've been in school, but it doesn't mean I'll put blinders on and ignore what I see in people around me.
So I'll correct the statement you quoted and put a "just that it is... to some people" on the end.
Some people don't like their job, some people don't like their family life. Some people sacrifice one for satisfaction in the other, that's all I was trying to point out.
Well, I think for a lot of people, they're being loyal to the entity they've dedicated a significant portion of their life to, no different than your other examples. I'd venture to say the majority of people spend more time thinking about their jobs than they do religion, country, ethnic group or family. And the harder you work, the more time you put in, the more difficult it is to walk away from it.
So the question of "should I leave my job" is brings as much weight as "should I divorce my wife". I'm not saying it SHOULD be so, just that it is.
And I agree that you can detach yourself from your job. You can tell yourself that it's "just a job" and you can not work with friends, as you suggested. You can go a step further and not be friendly to anyone at work, in the off chance they become friends in the future.
But you risk leading miserable life. You certainly won't be happy at work... The guy "fooling himself", believing that his work makes a difference, may get a lot more out of his job, both in enjoyment and in productivity, than the guy who doesn't give a rat's ass.
Long and short of it is: do what makes you happy. If you're sitting at work and you feel that working an extra 2 hours a day is going to make the company a success, and you feel that the company being successful leads to your personal happiness, then go for it. If you're ambition is to open a restaurant and dedicate your life to making it work, go for it. Sure, it's still just a job, but you'll be a lot happier than serving bagels.
I definately agree, the site is fantastic and a great introduction to neurobiology. I wish my college neurobio professors had used a similar introduction. Presenting the material in this manner, well illustrated, was a lot more exciting than jumping in to molecular transmitters
Berkemer v. McCarty (1984) 468 US 420 allows an officer to arrest someone in order to obtain a person's identity if they refuse. But it does not make it a crime for the individual to refuse:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?cour t=US&vol=468&invol=420
Gregory S. (1980) 112 CA 3d 764, 779 refers to a "vagrancy law", Penal Code 647(e) that "imposes a duty to identify oneself when such person loiters or wanders upon the streets or from place to place without apparent reason or business, and the surrounding circumstances reasonably indicate that the public safety demands identification." but this was overturned in Kolender v. Lawson (1983) 461 U.S. 352, although it remains on the books.
Basically, unless you're on parole or in violation of a traffic code, not showing ID is not a crime... but it does give the police certain rights to make your life tough in order to determine your identity.
We were named in the lawsuit as John Doe #74, part of the list of web sites distributing the code. The letter states that were were informed prior to yesterday to remove the information. We never received such notice, in writing or email.
I will try to scan and put the images of the document up on the site as soon as our bandwidth lets up a bit.
IPO cash had nothing to do with this deal. Read the releases, it was an all stock deal.
Construction on Coldstorage was halted? What do you call sourceforge? Sourceforge was a combination of the original coldstorage ideas and a couple hundred thousand lines of development hosting code. And no Bowie, contrary to what you think, you did not invent sourceforge... you didn't even write sourceforge. And to be honest, who cares. It's there, and it benefits everyone now... if YOU were truly interested in philantropy, you wouldn't be looking to hog the credit from every project whose web page you visit.
And yes, please quit your bitching Bowie, what you gain by it is this stupid ego boost you get when people are listening to you, even when you talk about nothing.
Yes, there are two sides to every story, but isn't it time you move on from this conspiracy where everyone's out to get you?
Moderate this down, but please spend another point and moderate Bowies rants down too. They're speculative, hinting at fact with phantom documents, and are getting really old.
I worked at the Cornell university campus network department for 3 years and one of my duties was to compare our ethernet price/performance with that of other Ivy group schools (Ivy+duke,stanford,mit,caltech,u.chicago, and some others.)
At Cornell, we charged 82.50 a semester for a single unlimited access 10Base-T connection. This was probably the highest payment of any schools in the group that went straight to the network department. Most other schools charged a similar amount that was either absorbed into housing fees, student activity fees, or suplimented by other university departments.
Many schools didn't "charge" their students directly for the service and hid the cost in housing payments (not an entirely unreasonable thing to do, over 85% of the 6500 ports were subscribed to people in dorms). In all though, the costs ranged between $50 and $120 per student if you ask the net admin of those schools.
At Dartmouth though, up until recently, you were pretty much forced to use a mac, and everyone knows exactly which school you went to when you say "blitzmail" =)
You aren't setting it straight, you're setting it the way you think it should be. CSS is a copy protection scheme. Sure, you can copy the bytes of a DVD without a decoder, but they aren't useable in that fashion.
That's not true, they are 100% usesable in that fashion... they are exactly like the original is. The original post isn't setting it the way it "should be". It's fact, you can copy a DVD in usable form, playable on any "authorized" dvd player, WITHOUT DeCSS. Setting it the way it "should be" is saying that the DMCA is an intrusive law that limits the rights of consumers and nullifies liberties that we (should) have that the entertainment industry wants to regulate.
I've been using the MS Natural for a while now. It's really good at what it aims to do. The biggest features aren't really the angle of the keys, but the split down the middle and the huge wrist rest.
I've found that regardless of which keyboard you are on, having your wrists elevated helps reduce strain quite a bit.
A few words about the MS keyboard though. First, stay away from the newer version, the "elite". It's designed for a smaller footprint (which, in keyboard terms, is almost always bad). The function keys are half the height, the arrow key pad, a bit odd. I don't know if MS still makes the original version, but a few places around still sell them.
Another warning is that these keyboards are not the most durable. The key faces and wrist rest wear down and lose the textured top (becoming a slick plastic surface). Not really a big problem, but you can definately feel the difference over time.
Lastly, they keyboard uses those plastic rubber bubbles to give tactile response. This means it is quiet (a plus for some, minus for others), but it also means that you don't get a solid click when pushing the keys down.
The keysizes are all good except for the average sized enter key (a double width key) which is also not a big problem.
I just wanted to add that the community support for the DVD fiasco really has been terrific. The copyleft.net anti-DVD CCA tshirt allowed us to send a $10,000 check to the EFF.
Thank you everyone who purchased a shirt or stopped by the copyleft booth.
And like all good people in the movie business, his life is on the web.
From the imdb:
Date of birth (location) 5 December 1921, Houston, Texas, USA
Mini biography Texas born, Harvard educated, Jack Valenti has led several lives; a wartime bomber pilot, advertising agency founder, political consultant, White House Special Assistant, movie industry leader. In his current role as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti has presided over a worldwide sea change in the industry, which has radically changed the landscape of the American film and television industry here and abroad. It is Valenti's duty and challenge to lead the U.S. film and TV industry's confrontation with these global dangers and opportunities. Born in Houston, Texas, Valenti was the youngest (age 15) high school graduate in the city. He began work a a 16-year-old office boy with the Humble Oil Company (now Exxon). As a young pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II, Lieutenant Valenti flew 51 combat missions as the pilot-commander of a B-25 attack bomber with the 12th Air Force in Italy. He was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with four clusters, the Distinguished Unit Citation with one cluster, the European Theater Ribbon with four battle stars. He has a B.A. from the University of Houston (doing all his undergraduate work at night, working during the day). He graduated from Harvard with an M.B.A. In 1952, he co-founded the advertising/political consulting agency of Weekley & Valenti. In 1955 he met the man who would have the largest impact on his life, the then Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson. Valenti's agency was in charge of the press during the visit of President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson to Texas. Valenti was in the motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Within hours of the murder of John F. Kennedy, Valenti was on Air Force One flying back to Washington, the first newly hired special assistant to the new President. On June 1, 1966, Valenti resigned his White House post to become only the third man in MPAA history to become its leader. Valenti has written four books, three non-fiction, THE BITTER TASTE OF GLORY (World Publishing); A VERY HUMAN PRESIDENT (W. W. Norton Co.); SPEAK UP WITH CONFIDENCE (Wm. Morrow Co.); his newest book is a political novel, PROTECT AND DEFEND (Doubleday, 1992). He has written numerous essays for the New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Cox newspapers and other publications. France awarded him its highly prized Legion d'Honneur, the French Legion of Honor. He has been awarded his own Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He and his wife, Mary Margaret, live in Washington, though he spends half his time in Los Angeles. They have three children, Courtenay, John and Alexandra.
Actor - filmography (1980s) (1960s)
1."Vietnam: A Television History" (1985) (mini) TV Series.... Himself (aide to LBJ)
2.Rowan & Martin at the Movies (1968) (uncredited).... Himself
Notable TV guest appearances
1."Cold War" (1998) (mini) playing "Himself" in episode: "Vietnam: 1954-1968" (episode # 1.11) 12/6/1998
2."Freakazoid!" (1995) playing "Himself"(voice) in episode: "Chip, The: Part 2" (episode # 1.7) 11/11/1995
3."Freakazoid!" (1995) playing "Himself"(voice) in episode: "Chip, The: Part 1" (episode # 1.6) 11/4/1995
The deal is this... If you purchase a DVD, who has the right to tell you where and on what system you can play it? Are they allowed to say "you can only play it on a stand alone player and not on a dvd-rom" player? Or can they say "you can only play it on a pc with an intel processor and microsoft operating system"? Or can they tell you that you can play it on any system, but only if it is in your residence, and you cannot play it on a system outside your home?
Exactly where do we draw the line? Where are they allowed to tell US, the consumer, where and how we can use our personal products? Yes, they have the copyright to the material on the dvd, but so long as I use it without infringing their copyright, I should be allowed full liberty with the product. Hell, I paid for it.
Now if that means I have to write a program to allow playback in linux, because I choose not to use another operating system, then that is a right I have. If I have to write a program to increase the brightness, or to enhance the audio because I am handicapped in some way, then I should be allowed to do so.
The difference between your CD player example and this is that we OWN a DVD drive, and we OWN the dvd. We have all necessary parts to view a movie legally, minus software to play it, which was written based on the way DVD's were found to work. If the recording industry told you that you could not use xmms, playcd or gtcd or your other linux cd audio player, you would be outraged! You own a cd-rom, you own the audio cd you are trying to listen to, and you have valid software to play it.
It's a personal freedom. It's the freedom to write software that manipulates something you own in a predictable and desired way to get the intended result in a not-intended context.
Dominick
Shameless Plug For Copyleft ANTI-DVD/CSS T-Shirts. Support the EFF as $4 per shirt is donated:
No, you're right on target there. It's the greatest hipocracy on the net as I see it. A group of people holding free speech as their highest ideal but being closed minded to everyone else's opinions.
But it's not the majority that is like this. As in all cases, a vocal and noticable minority. You never notice the people that aren't behaving this way. You only see the driver that cuts you off or drives at 5 mph in the left lane, you don't notice the other guy.
I, unfortunately, can't see an easy fix for all of this. I've always tried to remind myself that not everyone is like me, in fact there are probably more people that don't feel the way I do about something than people that agree with me. If your point of view is really superior, then your argument will win on its own merit, and not because you flamed the opposition into not expressing their ideas. And if you don't have a leg to stand on besides arrogance and insult, then you should re-examine why it is you're taking that stance to begin with.
At the Cornell University ResNet project we decided on Tolkien Middle Earth characters. Ugluk and Grishnakh are our two laptops, the rest are a mix of linux, 95, 98, NT, and Mac desktops:
Ok, so based on what you said, someone 4000 years ago stumbled on a seedless grape plant and they've been taking cuttings from it ever since. And the seedless watermelon is exactly what I'm talking about if it's what you said. It's a seed that produces something that doesn't produce seeds, the same as a crop that you can't replant, which is what the original article spoke about.
Chorizo Attended high school biology Doesn't give a crap about agriculture
Slashdot Mirror
One problem is that CA state revenue is very volatile, which means you hear about us not balancing our budget when times are bad. Here's an interesting study in revenue volatility in California:
http://www.lao.ca.gov/2005/rev_vol/rev_volatility_012005.pdf
Some highlights:
- Tax on capital gains and stock options is very volatile and represents a large source of revenue for California (from $2b in 95 to $17b in 00 to $5b in 02)
- Prop 98 guarantees a school funding level, regardless of state revenues
Not mentioned, because it is talking about revenue volatility, is Prop 13, which basically prevents increases in property taxes as homes appreciate.
But the reason the numbers in California are so big is just population. 37.3m in CA, 1.3m in NH. If you look at state revenue per capita, they don't indicate anything hugely different:
New Hampshire: $4324 (40th in the US), California $5067 (23rd in the US)
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/284.html
The enterprise version was rewritten from scratch in Java about 4 years ago. You can get a 15 user VMWare image version of it for free here: http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/sfee/
Just a clarification, since it doesn't address your core issue, as sf.net doesn't use the enterprise code.
The Riya launch party is this Friday, November 18th in Atherton, CA. Details at http://ojos.wikispaces.com/Riya+Launch+Details
Our application is just about all Java, written in a J2EE application container, and almost all of our tests are written in some form of Java as well. We use Test Driven Design to drive our API design, and end up with unit tests written with JUnit. We run these unit tests continuously, after every batch of checkins, using Cruise Control which performs an automated build.
To perform functional tests, we use JWebUnit which sits on top of HTTPUnit. The combination emulates a web browser, performing clicks and form sets against the actual server. We automate the running of these tests against an installed system, using Tinderbox, and we do this on every platform that we support (combinations of application servers, databases, and operating systems). The tinderboxes run 4 times a day, using the Cruise Control results.
It takes a lot of hardware (the tinderboxes for each platform) but the infrastructure is easy to set up with free software. The HttpUnit tests are tedious to write, mostly because they take a long time to run. Because of this, we don't consider a feature (user story in XP) complete until it has an automated HttpUnit test.
As for process, we have a small QA team that design test documents for each user story. We use those test documents to design the HttpUnit tests. Since we do this during the development stage, we involve the QA team on a daily basis.
When a user story is considered finished by the development team, the tests are reviewed by QA and the functionality is reviewed by the product manager that designed the feature. This way, we have no big surprises when everything is done, everyone can see the product progress day by day.
I won't say we ship a 100% bug free product, but our quality is through the roof compared to what it used to be, and it's actually much higher than we were even expecting.
A 1 terabyte disk will store between 100 and 200 discs. That's not a high percentage of your collection.
Pioneer has the DV F727, which holds 300 dvds and costs about $550. Sony has the VPCX875P which also holds 300 and costs under $400. I know it doesn't really answer the question, but it might solve the problem. This has got to be cheaper and easier than putting together a pc and big disk array, and it should hold more discs.
Strand Books in New York City is really huge, which is impressive being in the middle of of a big city. It's a used bookstore with decend prices and a gigantic selection, including old books and a nice supply of art picture books.
City Lights in San Francisco is a great bookstore with a lot of history during the Beat Poet era.
If you're heading all over, I'd recommend both, as I'd recommend both San Francisco and New York to anyone visiting the United States.
sonicblue seems to be dumping them cheap ($599 from the original price ~$3000). I picked one up, it's running Midori linux on a transmeta 400 mhz chip, has 128 megs of ram, a 5 gig disk, orinoco 802.11, USB, and IR.
You'll need a USB keyboard to do anything major on it, but it's a slick little device
You're right, that's why we have such a low number of people getting divorced in the US. Hell, I'm not married, and I've been working for a smaller part of my life than I've been in school, but it doesn't mean I'll put blinders on and ignore what I see in people around me. So I'll correct the statement you quoted and put a "just that it is... to some people" on the end. Some people don't like their job, some people don't like their family life. Some people sacrifice one for satisfaction in the other, that's all I was trying to point out.
So the question of "should I leave my job" is brings as much weight as "should I divorce my wife". I'm not saying it SHOULD be so, just that it is.
And I agree that you can detach yourself from your job. You can tell yourself that it's "just a job" and you can not work with friends, as you suggested. You can go a step further and not be friendly to anyone at work, in the off chance they become friends in the future.
But you risk leading miserable life. You certainly won't be happy at work... The guy "fooling himself", believing that his work makes a difference, may get a lot more out of his job, both in enjoyment and in productivity, than the guy who doesn't give a rat's ass.
Long and short of it is: do what makes you happy. If you're sitting at work and you feel that working an extra 2 hours a day is going to make the company a success, and you feel that the company being successful leads to your personal happiness, then go for it. If you're ambition is to open a restaurant and dedicate your life to making it work, go for it. Sure, it's still just a job, but you'll be a lot happier than serving bagels.
I definately agree, the site is fantastic and a great introduction to neurobiology. I wish my college neurobio professors had used a similar introduction. Presenting the material in this manner, well illustrated, was a lot more exciting than jumping in to molecular transmitters
Berkemer v. McCarty (1984) 468 US 420 allows an officer to arrest someone in order to obtain a person's identity if they refuse. But it does not make it a crime for the individual to refuse:r t=US&vol=468&invol=420
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?cou
Gregory S. (1980) 112 CA 3d 764, 779 refers to a "vagrancy law", Penal Code 647(e) that "imposes a duty to identify oneself when such person loiters or wanders upon the streets or from place to place without apparent reason or business, and the surrounding circumstances reasonably indicate that the public safety demands identification." but this was overturned in Kolender v. Lawson (1983) 461 U.S. 352, although it remains on the books.
Basically, unless you're on parole or in violation of a traffic code, not showing ID is not a crime... but it does give the police certain rights to make your life tough in order to determine your identity.
I will try to scan and put the images of the document up on the site as soon as our bandwidth lets up a bit.
Dom
dom@copyleft.net
It's all hearsay, but I was told that it uses a Macromedia product with the videocard's framebuffer, not X
Construction on Coldstorage was halted? What do you call sourceforge? Sourceforge was a combination of the original coldstorage ideas and a couple hundred thousand lines of development hosting code. And no Bowie, contrary to what you think, you did not invent sourceforge... you didn't even write sourceforge. And to be honest, who cares. It's there, and it benefits everyone now... if YOU were truly interested in philantropy, you wouldn't be looking to hog the credit from every project whose web page you visit.
And yes, please quit your bitching Bowie, what you gain by it is this stupid ego boost you get when people are listening to you, even when you talk about nothing.
Yes, there are two sides to every story, but isn't it time you move on from this conspiracy where everyone's out to get you?
Moderate this down, but please spend another point and moderate Bowies rants down too. They're speculative, hinting at fact with phantom documents, and are getting really old.
I worked at the Cornell university campus network department for 3 years and one of my duties was to compare our ethernet price/performance with that of other Ivy group schools (Ivy+duke,stanford,mit,caltech,u.chicago, and some others.)
At Cornell, we charged 82.50 a semester for a single unlimited access 10Base-T connection. This was probably the highest payment of any schools in the group that went straight to the network department. Most other schools charged a similar amount that was either absorbed into housing fees, student activity fees, or suplimented by other university departments.
Many schools didn't "charge" their students directly for the service and hid the cost in housing payments (not an entirely unreasonable thing to do, over 85% of the 6500 ports were subscribed to people in dorms). In all though, the costs ranged between $50 and $120 per student if you ask the net admin of those schools.
At Dartmouth though, up until recently, you were pretty much forced to use a mac, and everyone knows exactly which school you went to when you say "blitzmail" =)
You aren't setting it straight, you're setting it the way you think it should be. CSS is a copy protection scheme. Sure, you can copy the bytes of a DVD without a decoder, but they aren't useable in that fashion.
That's not true, they are 100% usesable in that fashion... they are exactly like the original is. The original post isn't setting it the way it "should be". It's fact, you can copy a DVD in usable form, playable on any "authorized" dvd player, WITHOUT DeCSS. Setting it the way it "should be" is saying that the DMCA is an intrusive law that limits the rights of consumers and nullifies liberties that we (should) have that the entertainment industry wants to regulate.
I've found that regardless of which keyboard you are on, having your wrists elevated helps reduce strain quite a bit.
A few words about the MS keyboard though. First, stay away from the newer version, the "elite". It's designed for a smaller footprint (which, in keyboard terms, is almost always bad). The function keys are half the height, the arrow key pad, a bit odd. I don't know if MS still makes the original version, but a few places around still sell them.
Another warning is that these keyboards are not the most durable. The key faces and wrist rest wear down and lose the textured top (becoming a slick plastic surface). Not really a big problem, but you can definately feel the difference over time.
Lastly, they keyboard uses those plastic rubber bubbles to give tactile response. This means it is quiet (a plus for some, minus for others), but it also means that you don't get a solid click when pushing the keys down.
The keysizes are all good except for the average sized enter key (a double width key) which is also not a big problem.
Just thought I'd share =)
Thank you everyone who purchased a shirt or stopped by the copyleft booth.
Dom
copyleft.net
And like all good people in the movie business, his life is on the web.
.... Himself (aide to LBJ)
.... Himself
From the imdb:
Date of birth (location)
5 December 1921,
Houston, Texas, USA
Mini biography
Texas born, Harvard educated, Jack Valenti has led several lives; a wartime bomber pilot, advertising agency founder, political consultant, White House Special Assistant, movie industry leader. In his current role as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti has presided over a worldwide sea change in the industry, which has radically changed the landscape of the American film and television industry here and abroad. It is Valenti's duty and challenge to lead the U.S. film and TV industry's confrontation with these global dangers and opportunities. Born in Houston, Texas, Valenti was the youngest (age 15) high school graduate in the city. He began work a a 16-year-old office boy with the Humble Oil Company (now Exxon). As a young pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II, Lieutenant Valenti flew 51 combat missions as the pilot-commander of a B-25 attack bomber with the 12th Air Force in Italy. He was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with four clusters, the Distinguished Unit Citation with one cluster, the European Theater Ribbon with four battle stars. He has a B.A. from the University of Houston (doing all his undergraduate work at night, working during the day). He graduated from Harvard with an M.B.A. In 1952, he co-founded the advertising/political consulting agency of Weekley & Valenti. In 1955 he met the man who would have the largest impact on his life, the then Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson. Valenti's agency was in charge of the press during the visit of President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson to Texas. Valenti was in the motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Within hours of the murder of John F. Kennedy, Valenti was on Air Force One flying back to Washington, the first newly hired special assistant to the new President. On June 1, 1966, Valenti resigned his White House post to become only the third man in MPAA history to become its leader. Valenti has written four books, three non-fiction, THE BITTER TASTE OF GLORY (World Publishing); A VERY HUMAN PRESIDENT (W. W. Norton Co.); SPEAK UP WITH CONFIDENCE (Wm. Morrow Co.); his newest book is a political novel, PROTECT AND DEFEND (Doubleday, 1992). He has written numerous essays for the New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Cox newspapers and other publications. France awarded him its highly prized Legion d'Honneur, the French Legion of Honor. He has been awarded his own Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He and his wife, Mary Margaret, live in Washington, though he spends half his time in Los Angeles. They have three children, Courtenay, John and Alexandra.
Actor - filmography
(1980s) (1960s)
1."Vietnam: A Television History" (1985) (mini) TV Series
2.Rowan & Martin at the Movies (1968) (uncredited)
Notable TV guest appearances
1."Cold War" (1998) (mini) playing "Himself" in episode: "Vietnam: 1954-1968" (episode # 1.11) 12/6/1998
2."Freakazoid!" (1995) playing "Himself"(voice) in episode: "Chip, The: Part 2" (episode # 1.7) 11/11/1995
3."Freakazoid!" (1995) playing "Himself"(voice) in episode: "Chip, The: Part 1" (episode # 1.6) 11/4/1995
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Chorizo
Exactly where do we draw the line? Where are they allowed to tell US, the consumer, where and how we can use our personal products? Yes, they have the copyright to the material on the dvd, but so long as I use it without infringing their copyright, I should be allowed full liberty with the product. Hell, I paid for it.
Now if that means I have to write a program to allow playback in linux, because I choose not to use another operating system, then that is a right I have. If I have to write a program to increase the brightness, or to enhance the audio because I am handicapped in some way, then I should be allowed to do so.
The difference between your CD player example and this is that we OWN a DVD drive, and we OWN the dvd. We have all necessary parts to view a movie legally, minus software to play it, which was written based on the way DVD's were found to work. If the recording industry told you that you could not use xmms, playcd or gtcd or your other linux cd audio player, you would be outraged! You own a cd-rom, you own the audio cd you are trying to listen to, and you have valid software to play it.
It's a personal freedom. It's the freedom to write software that manipulates something you own in a predictable and desired way to get the intended result in a not-intended context.
Dominick
Shameless Plug For Copyleft ANTI-DVD/CSS T-Shirts. Support the EFF as $4 per shirt is donated:
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But it's not the majority that is like this. As in all cases, a vocal and noticable minority. You never notice the people that aren't behaving this way. You only see the driver that cuts you off or drives at 5 mph in the left lane, you don't notice the other guy.
I, unfortunately, can't see an easy fix for all of this. I've always tried to remind myself that not everyone is like me, in fact there are probably more people that don't feel the way I do about something than people that agree with me. If your point of view is really superior, then your argument will win on its own merit, and not because you flamed the opposition into not expressing their ideas. And if you don't have a leg to stand on besides arrogance and insult, then you should re-examine why it is you're taking that stance to begin with.
Clothing's cool... Buying geek clothing from Copyleft donates money to various free software groups.
Besides, the FSCK! shirt is cool.
And right now they're running a contest to win a free trip to The Bazaar (the convention in December in NYC).
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Chorizo
Chorizo
Chorizo
Attended high school biology
Doesn't give a crap about agriculture