* I know there were some lawsuits in Chicago about people taking pictures of the sculptures displayed in Millenium Park and the artists were getting up in arms about their 'copyrighted works' being misued. I believe that went nowhere but this being Slashdot someone will come along with more information.
Ask, and you shall receive:
My understanding is that there is no prohibition on taking photographs of copyrighted works -- whether that's architecture or sculpture -- however in order to use that image in a commercial manner, you need a release from the copyright owner. So, I can take a picture of the scupture for my scrapbook, but not for the calendar I'm selling.
Actually, the issue is slightly complicated by the fact that the item need to be more than merely incidental to the photo -- if I recall, commercial use of a photo of the Seattle Space Needle requires permission, however commercial use of a photo of the Seattle skyline (which includes the Space Needle) doesn't.
With respect to a post elsewhere in this discussion, the general rule about being free to take a picture of anyone/anything from a public place doesn't extend to Quebec (or to France) where a person's privacy right trumps your right to take a picture. Apparently, the recent court decision in Quebec which said this has put the provinces newspaper photographers into a bit of a bind.
What you want is bills that are accepted or rejected wholesale, as-is, unmodified.
The last thing you want is to make it easier for someone to add unrelated ammendments, or insert language that totally changes the meaning of the bill. Line-by-line, letter-by-letter editing would make doing this much easier, than the already easy "I submit an ammendment to prepend section 12, subsection (viii), item Q with the word 'not'".
Bills should be submitted in a take-it-or-leave it fashion. If you think you've got an improvement, submit a whole bill with that improvement and convince the original submitter to withdraw their bill.
Enough mucking around with pet causes and unassociated pork-barrelling (now, associated pork-barrelling -- that's good and all).
Anyhow, what do I know. I'm Canadian. You just go keep running your country the way you want to.
My wife's curling iron has a sticker on it: "Caution, can cause burns to eyes" or something similar.
What I can't figure out is why they decided that they had to call out the "to eyes" part. Here is this hot stick thing, which I imagine could cause burns to just about any body part it was applied to, yet for some reason they decided not to use the general "may cause burns", indead going for the specific "may cause burns to eyes".
Really, I'd like to know what lawyer decided that one was needed.
Polls on the West Coast are open 7 am - 7 pm, Mountain Time 7:30 - 7:30, Central 8:30 - 8:30, Eastern 9:30 - 9:30, Atlantic 8:30 - 8:30, Newfoundland 8:30 - 8:30.
This doesn't get them closing all at the same time, but it does reduce the closing times from a 4-1/2 hour spread to only a 3 hour spread. And most of the seats are in the Eastern time zone, so there's only a 1 hour difference between polls closing there and in the West, which is barely enough time for results to start coming back, let alone for winners to be predicted.
Obviously, this won't work as well for Hawaii, but could easily be implemented for continental US.
I'm not sure why Brokaw suggests voting over several days. I doubt this would provide any benefit, especially with all the reporting of exit polls. Everyone would listen to how the (very poorly attended) voting was going on the first day, and then show up on the second en masse to counteract/reinforce the first day's results.
When I finally get around to writing my Will, it'll include something to the effect: "If my pattern of mind is beyond repair, drop my naked nutrient-rich matter into a vertical hole and plant a tree..."
Not to put too much of a damper on your plans, but your Will won't make it through all the necessary bureaucracies for several months after your death -- much too late for it to contain any useful instructions on your disposal.
I'd suggest a sticky-note on your monitor instead.
Additionally, at least when I went through the system, Ontario universities didn't look at a straight GPA. Depending on the program, they'd use the best two university-entrance-level maths, the best two university-entrance-level sciences, and the best two of the remaining university-entrance-level courses you'd taken, or something similar. So, you needed a high GPA, but it had to be in relevant courses.
Come on, let's not exagerate here. I'd say it has got to be in the top three hundred fifty, maybe top three hundred sixty. Definately no lower than the top three hundred seventy.
Because there is a photographers exception to the portion of copyright that covers architecture. Photos taken from a public place of a building that is in public view don't require any kind of permission from the building's owner to be distributed or used.
No, I don't believe there is an exception.
My understanding is that you may photograph, without permission, anything which may be seen from a public place; however, if the building has a copyrighted design, or artwork, or if the building itself is a trademarked design, you must obtain permission before distributing or using the picture commercially. There is an exception that if the building is not a main component of the image, then you don't need permission.
For example, a tourist can take a snapshot of the Seattle Space Needle; a pro would need permission to distribute that image; an image of the whole Seattle skyline would not require permission.
There's is a photojournalist exception which allows a reporter to use pictures of copyright places and of people without a release when covering a story.
Over 15 years ago, I had a summer job taking pictures of every rural building in the county for the local historical archives. Typically, I'd go up to the farm house explain what I was doing, and they'd let me wander the property. After 2-3 pics of the barn and 2-3 pics of the farm house, I'd go on to the next property. In two months of doing this, I only had a couple of people who said no; and, of those, only one who complained when I took the shots I needed from the road.
Oh, by the way, unless they have a court order, they can't take your film/memory card or camera. The police can't even demand you delete an image (well, they can demand, but you're not obligated to without an order).
A word of caution, my experience is Canadian, but most of the write-ups I've seen have been American, so don't take what I wrote for gospel. You might want to check out the photographer's bill of rights.
Stop me if I'm wrong, but the "largest enterprise customers" are end users. They are not all end users, but they are end users nonetheless.
Stop. You're wrong.
The "largest enterprise customers" are the IT departments, CIOs and CFOs of the largest companies.
A significant group of end users are the "largest enterprise customers" companies' employees.
Don't make the mistake of assuming that the wants of those two groups are the same.
Actually, the companies we think of as "the largest enterprise customers" (Fortune 500, etc.) aren't even Microsoft's customers. Microsoft's customers are the OEMs (as we all remember from the antitrust case).
Microsoft only cares about the end user's needs as far as the OS can be sold to OEMs, who can sell it to corporate IT, who can put it on their employees desks without a rebellion.
The reason people "don't buy" Macs is the same reason people "don't buy" BMW cars. There are cheaper alternatives
If people didn't by BMWs for the same reason as Macs, then BMWs wouldn't take the same gas as the other 90% of cars, would have problems driving on non-BMW roadways, won't fit into the company car park, wouldn't be allowed on the road rally until 6 months after race day, and getting spare parts would be a real pain in the ass. Oh, yeah, and they're more expensive.
Uhuh, it's exactly the same situation.
While price is no doubt a factor for some, the fact that it isn't what's used at work or school, the fact that games are limited, the fact that I need to worry about compatibility (which is completely different from whether there are any actual compatibility issues), and so on, are what's holding more people back.
If I was told I could have this $500 Dell or a $800 Mac, I'd take the Mac. But that's not the choice. The choice is I could have this $500 Dell, or a $800 Mac which may or may not be at all familiar to me, may or may not run half the software I'm interested in, etc.
The only way Apple can change this is to (a) come up with some killer features that Windows doesn't have (and I mean really outstanding, not like widgets, not things that MS can copy in their next OS), or (b) to build up their percent user base (which they need (a) to do).
Until I'm working on a Mac at work, I'm not getting one at home.
My present solution is for my secretary to manage my calendar with korganizer -- I then just overwrite my calendar on my mac laptop (ical works fine with the korganizer files). But it would be nice to not have to call her up and say "please put ____ on my calendar." I'd rather just do it and have the calendars sync up.
"I call up my secretary" says the guy surfing Slashdot.
Perhaps your problem could be solved by not spending your time reading Slashdot. Then you'd have enough time to do all those little things your secretary does, like maintain your calendar. Suddenly, I imagine the whole problem of syncing would go away.
See, this works out well all around -- you solve your syncing problem and you save your employer the expense of some syncing program, the expense of a useless secretary, and you get a big bonus because your employer is astonished at your improved productivity. Well, almost all around -- there's probably an out of work secretary who's now going to hunt me down.
Oh, for those wondering, yes, I am posting from work; yes, I recognize the irony. But I don't have a secretary, so all's good.
Well, you see, under fair-use, they intended to only quote a portion, but none of:
"The baby's",
"The baby's blood",
"The baby's blood type?", or
"The baby's blood type? Human",
convey the brilliance which exists in the flow and structure of the whole story.
Also, they considered just quoting "The", but were afraid you'd confuse it an exceprt from another story by another author.
I suppose the closest you'd get, would be to quote "The baby...Human, mostly.", but that kinda ruins it by giving the ending away.
I'm up in the air about making it the parents' fault.
On the other hand, I strongly disagree with the idea that "Allowing access to the Internet, unsupervised and without restraint poses an obvious and unreasonable danger that such children would utilize the Internet for illicit purposes"
It would be a really great defense if the parents could show that they monitored their children's activities at home, and the myspace page was made from school. Then the assistant-principal would have to sue herself.
How many people read that and said "Hmmm, Interesting. Learn something every day."? How many people read that and said "What's the poster been smoking?"
Personally, I did both (and I still have no idea whether the poster is full of it or not). Isn't it interesting to see what we accept as fact? Dress up the most ridiculous sounding claims with an authoratitive voice, and suddenly it's no one stops to ask if it's true or not. What makes us accept some statements and reject others? I have no knowledge of the parent poster, or about circumpolar shipping, and thus no way of evaluating the claims. How do we evaluate some posters or websites as more trustworthy than others?
Actually, doing some research I've now figured out that not only are the nuclear river icebreakers sitting in Murmansk collecting rust, but I understand they are full of WMDs too.
What I mean is that the thought of each candidate printing up ballots makes me think of ballot stuffing in some banana republic.
When your party does reach 1%, the state will print and distribute to all election places default ballots with your partys name. The party will still have to print its own ballots with names on it in order to have person elections (most want this), but at least every election place will have ballots to use, no matter how far away in nowhere.
Hmmm, interesting system.
Here in Canada, only the election commision prints ballots. The ballots contain the names (and party affiliation) of all candidates running in the constituency (district), and voters indicate their preference by marking the ballot.
I assume the Swedish 1% rule is to maintain some control over the number of people running. We accomplish the same by charging a deposit to each candidate. The deposit is a significant, but not ridiculous amount of money (a few thousand dollars, IIRC), and should be easily met by anyone running a serious campaign. If you obtain a certain number of votes (along the lines of a single digit percent of the votes), you get the deposit back.
I forget the definition used for official political party or the minimum number of votes needed, but official political parties also get funding based on the percent of the popular vote in the previous election.
missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots
You know, in most countries, the electoral/political system is set up specifically to avoid candidates printing their own ballots. Apparently in Sweden they actually encourage it.
I think Diebold is missing out on a significant market opportunity here.
Coalitions are rarely formed with a single vote majority
In my experience, "coalitions" are rarely formed with a single anything - that's what makes them a coalition.
Further, and it may be different in Sweden, but majority parties seldom form coalitions: they already have enough seats (ie. a majority) to carry their agenda through.
Lets pretend that each viewer of a show (eye-ball-hour?) is worth a dollar to the broadcaster. The viewer is given the option of watching the show with commercials, for which the broadcaster gets payment from the advertisers, or watching the show without commercials, for which the view forks over that dollar.
Seems like a decent compromise to me (although I'd argue that the $1/hour rate is probably too high -- that would likely double my monthly cable bill).
Thinking on this further, it seems to me that we already have this system in place - if you consider that broadcast, cable, pay TV, PBS, and pay-per-view are all points on the advertiser-supported/viewer-supported continuum. If you notice that film X is going to be shown on your pay-per-view movie channel and on your local network affiliate, you get weigh the cost of PPV against the annoyance of advertising. (Naturally, it isn't a simple choice, 'cause you also have to factor in how the network is going to edit the film, bleep it out, what time it airs at, etc.)
I can't believe I'm actually supporting "big media's" business model, but it does seem sensible when you look at it from this direction. Come on Slashdot, I must be wrong. What am I missing?
Technology has given the customers (yes, customers, we're not the slack-jawed guaranteed-market CONSUMERS they think and wish we are) the ability to modify things to our tastes.
Just so we're clear here: As far as broadcasting is concerned, the "entire media industry's" customer is the advertiser, not you. You are the customer's customer, and are only of interest in as much as the more of you the media industry can attract, the more attractive the product is to their customer.
Modifying things "to your tastes" is not in the interest of the customer.
stream everything from central servers, and make it available through a range of wireless integrated devices. This is obviously serious future tech, but the potential exists already, so it's not farfetched.
hmm, wireless signals from a central station... this has possibilities. We could even call it something retro, like, hmmm, I don't know, Radio?
What's with eliminating the standard menus that every other Windows program uses?
Oh, they're eliminating those too.
Have you seen Windows Messenger Live Beta? Or Windows Media Player 10? They are moving towards having the three or four most important actions in the tool bar (like "Change the color scheme of this window" or "Get your own space on Spaces"), and everything else is accessed from a "menu" button hidden up there with minimize, and close.
Personally, I'm mixed on this idea: I hate having to try to find the menu, and wonder where in there they have hidden what I want to do. On the other hand, I've noticed that the stripped down versions of IE, Word, etc. on my PDA have only a small number of menu items, and it's really nice not having all that extra crap.
Reading over what I just wrote, I had a thought: maybe I hate the new candy look and hiding the standard menus. I also hate product bloat. There, that's better, when I put it that way, MS can't do anything right.
Slashdot Mirror
Ask, and you shall receive:
My understanding is that there is no prohibition on taking photographs of copyrighted works -- whether that's architecture or sculpture -- however in order to use that image in a commercial manner, you need a release from the copyright owner. So, I can take a picture of the scupture for my scrapbook, but not for the calendar I'm selling.
Actually, the issue is slightly complicated by the fact that the item need to be more than merely incidental to the photo -- if I recall, commercial use of a photo of the Seattle Space Needle requires permission, however commercial use of a photo of the Seattle skyline (which includes the Space Needle) doesn't.
With respect to a post elsewhere in this discussion, the general rule about being free to take a picture of anyone/anything from a public place doesn't extend to Quebec (or to France) where a person's privacy right trumps your right to take a picture. Apparently, the recent court decision in Quebec which said this has put the provinces newspaper photographers into a bit of a bind.
E.
Good god, no you don't.
What you want is bills that are accepted or rejected wholesale, as-is, unmodified.
The last thing you want is to make it easier for someone to add unrelated ammendments, or insert language that totally changes the meaning of the bill. Line-by-line, letter-by-letter editing would make doing this much easier, than the already easy "I submit an ammendment to prepend section 12, subsection (viii), item Q with the word 'not'".
Bills should be submitted in a take-it-or-leave it fashion. If you think you've got an improvement, submit a whole bill with that improvement and convince the original submitter to withdraw their bill.
Enough mucking around with pet causes and unassociated pork-barrelling (now, associated pork-barrelling -- that's good and all).
Anyhow, what do I know. I'm Canadian. You just go keep running your country the way you want to.
E.
My wife's curling iron has a sticker on it: "Caution, can cause burns to eyes" or something similar.
What I can't figure out is why they decided that they had to call out the "to eyes" part. Here is this hot stick thing, which I imagine could cause burns to just about any body part it was applied to, yet for some reason they decided not to use the general "may cause burns", indead going for the specific "may cause burns to eyes".
Really, I'd like to know what lawyer decided that one was needed.
E.
Canada has implemented a variation of this.
Polls on the West Coast are open 7 am - 7 pm, Mountain Time 7:30 - 7:30, Central 8:30 - 8:30, Eastern 9:30 - 9:30, Atlantic 8:30 - 8:30, Newfoundland 8:30 - 8:30.
This doesn't get them closing all at the same time, but it does reduce the closing times from a 4-1/2 hour spread to only a 3 hour spread. And most of the seats are in the Eastern time zone, so there's only a 1 hour difference between polls closing there and in the West, which is barely enough time for results to start coming back, let alone for winners to be predicted.
Obviously, this won't work as well for Hawaii, but could easily be implemented for continental US.
I'm not sure why Brokaw suggests voting over several days. I doubt this would provide any benefit, especially with all the reporting of exit polls. Everyone would listen to how the (very poorly attended) voting was going on the first day, and then show up on the second en masse to counteract/reinforce the first day's results.
(See http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?section=gen&do cument=ec90815&dir=bkg&lang=e&textonly=false for details.)
E.
Not to put too much of a damper on your plans, but your Will won't make it through all the necessary bureaucracies for several months after your death -- much too late for it to contain any useful instructions on your disposal.
I'd suggest a sticky-note on your monitor instead.
E.
Additionally, at least when I went through the system, Ontario universities didn't look at a straight GPA. Depending on the program, they'd use the best two university-entrance-level maths, the best two university-entrance-level sciences, and the best two of the remaining university-entrance-level courses you'd taken, or something similar. So, you needed a high GPA, but it had to be in relevant courses.
E.
I'd say credit goes to BBN.
No, I don't believe there is an exception.
My understanding is that you may photograph, without permission, anything which may be seen from a public place; however, if the building has a copyrighted design, or artwork, or if the building itself is a trademarked design, you must obtain permission before distributing or using the picture commercially. There is an exception that if the building is not a main component of the image, then you don't need permission.
For example, a tourist can take a snapshot of the Seattle Space Needle; a pro would need permission to distribute that image; an image of the whole Seattle skyline would not require permission.
There's is a photojournalist exception which allows a reporter to use pictures of copyright places and of people without a release when covering a story.
Over 15 years ago, I had a summer job taking pictures of every rural building in the county for the local historical archives. Typically, I'd go up to the farm house explain what I was doing, and they'd let me wander the property. After 2-3 pics of the barn and 2-3 pics of the farm house, I'd go on to the next property. In two months of doing this, I only had a couple of people who said no; and, of those, only one who complained when I took the shots I needed from the road.
Oh, by the way, unless they have a court order, they can't take your film/memory card or camera. The police can't even demand you delete an image (well, they can demand, but you're not obligated to without an order).
A word of caution, my experience is Canadian, but most of the write-ups I've seen have been American, so don't take what I wrote for gospel. You might want to check out the photographer's bill of rights.
E.
Stop. You're wrong.
The "largest enterprise customers" are the IT departments, CIOs and CFOs of the largest companies.
A significant group of end users are the "largest enterprise customers" companies' employees.
Don't make the mistake of assuming that the wants of those two groups are the same.
Actually, the companies we think of as "the largest enterprise customers" (Fortune 500, etc.) aren't even Microsoft's customers. Microsoft's customers are the OEMs (as we all remember from the antitrust case).
Microsoft only cares about the end user's needs as far as the OS can be sold to OEMs, who can sell it to corporate IT, who can put it on their employees desks without a rebellion.
E.Oh, I got it, a lense is reflective, but a lens is refractive.
E.
If people didn't by BMWs for the same reason as Macs, then BMWs wouldn't take the same gas as the other 90% of cars, would have problems driving on non-BMW roadways, won't fit into the company car park, wouldn't be allowed on the road rally until 6 months after race day, and getting spare parts would be a real pain in the ass. Oh, yeah, and they're more expensive.
Uhuh, it's exactly the same situation.
While price is no doubt a factor for some, the fact that it isn't what's used at work or school, the fact that games are limited, the fact that I need to worry about compatibility (which is completely different from whether there are any actual compatibility issues), and so on, are what's holding more people back.
If I was told I could have this $500 Dell or a $800 Mac, I'd take the Mac. But that's not the choice. The choice is I could have this $500 Dell, or a $800 Mac which may or may not be at all familiar to me, may or may not run half the software I'm interested in, etc.
The only way Apple can change this is to (a) come up with some killer features that Windows doesn't have (and I mean really outstanding, not like widgets, not things that MS can copy in their next OS), or (b) to build up their percent user base (which they need (a) to do).
Until I'm working on a Mac at work, I'm not getting one at home.
E.
"I call up my secretary" says the guy surfing Slashdot.
Perhaps your problem could be solved by not spending your time reading Slashdot. Then you'd have enough time to do all those little things your secretary does, like maintain your calendar. Suddenly, I imagine the whole problem of syncing would go away.
See, this works out well all around -- you solve your syncing problem and you save your employer the expense of some syncing program, the expense of a useless secretary, and you get a big bonus because your employer is astonished at your improved productivity. Well, almost all around -- there's probably an out of work secretary who's now going to hunt me down.
Oh, for those wondering, yes, I am posting from work; yes, I recognize the irony. But I don't have a secretary, so all's good.
"The baby's",
"The baby's blood",
"The baby's blood type?", or
"The baby's blood type? Human",
convey the brilliance which exists in the flow and structure of the whole story.
Also, they considered just quoting "The", but were afraid you'd confuse it an exceprt from another story by another author.
I suppose the closest you'd get, would be to quote "The baby...Human, mostly.", but that kinda ruins it by giving the ending away.
E.
Nope. I got "Intel's Tentacle Vision".
Either way, gives new meaning to "pervasive computing". (Or is that "invasive"?)
E.
Isn't Slashdot wonderful?
How many people read that and said "Hmmm, Interesting. Learn something every day."? How many people read that and said "What's the poster been smoking?"
Personally, I did both (and I still have no idea whether the poster is full of it or not). Isn't it interesting to see what we accept as fact? Dress up the most ridiculous sounding claims with an authoratitive voice, and suddenly it's no one stops to ask if it's true or not. What makes us accept some statements and reject others? I have no knowledge of the parent poster, or about circumpolar shipping, and thus no way of evaluating the claims. How do we evaluate some posters or websites as more trustworthy than others?
Actually, doing some research I've now figured out that not only are the nuclear river icebreakers sitting in Murmansk collecting rust, but I understand they are full of WMDs too.
What? Don't beleive me? Why not?
E.
Hmmm, interesting system.
Here in Canada, only the election commision prints ballots. The ballots contain the names (and party affiliation) of all candidates running in the constituency (district), and voters indicate their preference by marking the ballot.
I assume the Swedish 1% rule is to maintain some control over the number of people running. We accomplish the same by charging a deposit to each candidate. The deposit is a significant, but not ridiculous amount of money (a few thousand dollars, IIRC), and should be easily met by anyone running a serious campaign. If you obtain a certain number of votes (along the lines of a single digit percent of the votes), you get the deposit back.
I forget the definition used for official political party or the minimum number of votes needed, but official political parties also get funding based on the percent of the popular vote in the previous election.
E.
You know, in most countries, the electoral/political system is set up specifically to avoid candidates printing their own ballots. Apparently in Sweden they actually encourage it.
I think Diebold is missing out on a significant market opportunity here.
E.
In my experience, "coalitions" are rarely formed with a single anything - that's what makes them a coalition.
Further, and it may be different in Sweden, but majority parties seldom form coalitions: they already have enough seats (ie. a majority) to carry their agenda through.
Sorry, couldn't let it by.
E.
Lets pretend that each viewer of a show (eye-ball-hour?) is worth a dollar to the broadcaster. The viewer is given the option of watching the show with commercials, for which the broadcaster gets payment from the advertisers, or watching the show without commercials, for which the view forks over that dollar.
Seems like a decent compromise to me (although I'd argue that the $1/hour rate is probably too high -- that would likely double my monthly cable bill).
Thinking on this further, it seems to me that we already have this system in place - if you consider that broadcast, cable, pay TV, PBS, and pay-per-view are all points on the advertiser-supported/viewer-supported continuum. If you notice that film X is going to be shown on your pay-per-view movie channel and on your local network affiliate, you get weigh the cost of PPV against the annoyance of advertising. (Naturally, it isn't a simple choice, 'cause you also have to factor in how the network is going to edit the film, bleep it out, what time it airs at, etc.)
I can't believe I'm actually supporting "big media's" business model, but it does seem sensible when you look at it from this direction. Come on Slashdot, I must be wrong. What am I missing?
E.
Just so we're clear here: As far as broadcasting is concerned, the "entire media industry's" customer is the advertiser, not you. You are the customer's customer, and are only of interest in as much as the more of you the media industry can attract, the more attractive the product is to their customer.
Modifying things "to your tastes" is not in the interest of the customer.
E.
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooo.
E.
hmm, wireless signals from a central station... this has possibilities. We could even call it something retro, like, hmmm, I don't know, Radio?
E.
Oh, they're eliminating those too.
Have you seen Windows Messenger Live Beta? Or Windows Media Player 10? They are moving towards having the three or four most important actions in the tool bar (like "Change the color scheme of this window" or "Get your own space on Spaces"), and everything else is accessed from a "menu" button hidden up there with minimize, and close.
Personally, I'm mixed on this idea: I hate having to try to find the menu, and wonder where in there they have hidden what I want to do. On the other hand, I've noticed that the stripped down versions of IE, Word, etc. on my PDA have only a small number of menu items, and it's really nice not having all that extra crap.
Reading over what I just wrote, I had a thought: maybe I hate the new candy look and hiding the standard menus. I also hate product bloat. There, that's better, when I put it that way, MS can't do anything right.
E.