and if you don't think that corporations have stolen the public domain then you clearly are one of the ignorant.
You can't paint all corporations with the same brush, and steal from one group because of actions of another group.
Games companies generally aren't responsible for copyright extensions.
The only exception I can think of would be Disney by way of its other ventures.
But even EA and Ubisoft which are some of the more reviled games companies have never done anything to steal from the public domain that I can think of.
Neither am I, but the point still stands. Canadians don't have to worry about Mexicans, Spanish don't have to worry about Americans, etc.
And their sales are high enough to warrant tax people looking into it.
Then their revenues are enough to deal with the paperwork.
I'm countering the argument that its hard to distribute to multiple countries because you have to sell hundreds to make the paper work worth it.
The simple answer is: don't worry about the paperwork until you are making enough money for it to be worth it. If you sell 1000s to a country, THEN do the paperwork... if you sell 7, don't bother and don't worry about it.
If they snapped a photo of you while you were walking down the street, deal with it because that is a public space and anyone could have done that.
And in isolation nobody gives a shit about that photo.
Its that everything is aggregated an linked together. If my friend or my neighbor takes a photo of me walking down the street, and its uploaded to flicker as part of some random "what i saw today" album that's entirely reasonable.
If everyone in the city has their web cams pointed at the street, all the streams are submited to a central database, and facial recognition software tags each stream as I walk into and out of various feeds.
Then anyone can log into a site search my name, and watch my every movement from the minute i leave my home until I get back again.
Copying a file from one drive to another is not a performance either, neither is reading a file into system memory. Even if the drive or memory it gets sent to is half way around the world.
That is not a performance.
The performance doesn't start until the file is decoded.
If I rent a DVD, its a 2 step process. The disc is physically carried to my device at my home, the device copies the file into memory, where it is then decoded and performed. If I stream a DVD, they copy the file into my system memory over the internet saving me a trip, where it is then decoded and performed. Both are transient copies for the purpose of performance. But the transmission of the data itself isn't a performance.
Otherwise, copying a file from one folder to another would be a performance of it. And that's absurd.
Their target market is only 100 thousand people in a marketplace of over 100 million people? Sounds like a bad business decision if thats the case.
How many millions of people buy cars? Good god that's a lot!
How many millions of people buy Porsches? What? Only thousands? Uhoh...
What? They are only targeting the small niche market that wants and can afford luxury sports cars and luxury sports SUVs. Sounds like a bad business decision if that's the case.
So it's pretty easy to sell internationally with the Apple Store, but when you want to sell something on Android you have to sell at least a few dozen or even hundreds of apps per country to even break even the cost of filing the taxes in that country.
Or do what I and most businesses do... and don't worry about it until sales are high enough to warrant it.
Are you really seriously worried as a US citizen that Italy is going to send international tax lawyers to harass you over $9 in app sales to that country to collect $2.19 in taxes? Maybe they'll have you extradited?
where they don't have access to most of my information. if you don't want to use your real name then i usually don't want to have anything to do with you on a social network
Consider, for example, a World Of Warcraft player with in game friends, a guild, maybe a few RL friends who play as well... a place to post pics, talk about ones exploits, plan events and stuff... socialize... and if they play different games using the same handle, and often with the same people... whether its Halo3 or Call of Duty or Travian...
Social networks have all kinds of valid uses for people who wish to remain pseudonymous. I don't use my real name in online games and have zero interest in changing that. I have people in real life who I don't want to know who I am, and I have those I do. The one's I do I tell. The one's I don't, I don't.
For MANY people, going online is an escape from your real identity. An intelligent mature overweight pimply faced 14 year old can be taken seriously in an argument about design patterns in C#. The "hot blond 19 year old" can be in a game as a troll warrior judged on her skill and gear... not her figure. A 46 year old senior manager for Intel can engage in a political or religious debate without exposing the company to criticism and liability... or creating conflict with his superiors for being of a different political or religious position from them.
There is value in these sorts of people in these sorts of situations to socialize within the context of the pseudoname.
these days a lot of consumer routers have a "clone mac" feature, since you often have to register you mac with your ISP to get a dhcp address.
They you buy a router, and it doesn't work, because the ISP will only hand your PCs mac an address, so they came up with clone-mac, so that via the web interface to the router you can have it take the mac address of your pc, and set that as the mac address on the wan iterface of the router.
A couple years later you replace the router, and do it again.
And at the end of it all, half the devices in a household have the same MAC address on at least on of the interfaces.
"Mostly accurate" data isn't good enough for "beyond a reasonable doubt" which is the standard in a criminal prosecution, but its plenty good for pretty much anything google wants to do with it.
There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.
There's not much in my smartphone of value. Its like that on purpose. Location tracking, and so forth definitely oversteps the lines.
my grocery store which datamines my purchases,
It data mines your purchases at the store. Mine doesn't advertise to me. It doesn't follow me around. It doesn't ask for the names of my friends. If they want to know how many loaves of bread I buy in a year... in exchange for 20 cents off per loaf... I'm ok with that.
If you aren't, don't use the club card.
my state government which sells my info,
Definitely a serious issue. I've never had any trouble with that where i live, except for some commercial groups that leech matters of public record... like title transfers on property to generate their mailing lists.
and my creditors
I've never had serious issues with this either, although I limit my creditors to a select group of relatively trustworthy institutions.
In any case google and facebook have far more valuable profiles on the average person than your cell phone provider or your grocery store... so I think your absolutely wrong-headed about where the largest issues are.
Then you're not using social networking to their fullest
I'm not using them at all. I don't like their terms of service, and I don't like the companies that run them.
and not even the way most people use social networking sites like Facebook.
I'm not like most people on facebook. Can I get that on a T-shirt?
I do use online social networking for my offline friends.
I don't.
My circle of offline friends spans multiple states.
So does mine. I have a telephone. I have an email address. I have a car. Would I consider using an online social network if I didn't disagree with their terms of service? Sure I would... why not.
But I'd still want to maintain multiple separate accounts, some not under my real name.
People build relationships on social nets, often romantic relationships. At some point, maybe not initially, real names should be known.
So your arguing Google needs my real name in my profile in case I meet a girl?
So, perhaps the rule is: the deeper the level of interaction over a social net, the more important it is that pseudoanonymity be traded for confirmed identity.
Perhaps, but that's between the two people. Some people know my real name in the MMOGs I play. But it doesn't need to be in my public profile, and it doesn't need to be "verified by Facebook".
Maybe this is achievable doing something as basic as a social net allowing its users to hide their real name to specific groups of online members, basically separating friends from "friends".
That would go a long way towards allowing users better control over things.
But then, and here's my real problem... I'm not friends, or even "friends" with Google or Facebook, so -they- don't get my real name.
Re:Joe Sixpack isn't even using his 1080p right
on
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Then put it in another room or buy a proper sized set.
They don't live around the TV. They watch it, but its not the center of their universe, even when watching it.
My parents fall into this category.
I bet far more fall into "can't afford a proper sized display due to the mortgage payments on the McMansion" set then the "do more with their living room than watch TV" set. These are the same folks that drive an SUV and never leave the paved road, nor have more than 4 family members.
The mcmansion set charged a giant screen TV to their VISA and brought it home in their SUV. People who buy homes and vehicles they don't need and can't afford aren't suddenly going to buy the TV they can afford.
The people who have a smaller TV than the room dictates for optimal, placed badly, more often just don't care THAT much about tv.
But I want an online social networking website to socialize with my online friends. The people from the MMOGs I play, the people I've met on slashdot, usenet, etc.
They don't know my real name, I don't know theirs. And I have no desire to change that. But I'd consider using a social networking tool instead of a forum to stay in touch with them under that persona.
I have no interest in using an online social networking tool for my offline friends; they're my offline friends... I can keep up with them just fine offline.
Re:Joe Sixpack isn't even using his 1080p right
on
Beyond HDTV
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· Score: 1
Also 12' seems like a long way to sit from such a small set. That is what you get when you have a giant living room and then can't afford a proper sized display due to the mortgage payments on the Mansion.
No. That is what you get when you have people who don't live their lives around having an optimal viewing experience, who don't want to dedicate a whole wall to the TV, and arrange all the furniture in the living room to point at it...
Some people do more with their living room than watch TV, and the role, placement, and size of the TV reflects that.
Lol, no worries, I could have been clearer. I'm just responding because I loved the shot about verizon;... ref'ing them not being able to tell between 0.01$, 1 cent, and 0.01 cents.:p
You can have that same argument next time your pulled over...
A blood alcohol level in the same range as the CO2 concentration 0.0391 is legal most places, go over 0.08 (just a touch over double) and your facing a drunk driving conviction in most of the world.
A few hundredths of a percent can actually make a big difference sometimes.
The ozone layer at its GREATEST concentration is 2 to 8 ppm, yet its generally accepted that its a "pretty big deal"...
Patching Apache doesn't cost money, is extremely easy to do, is usually quite safe.
Time is money. Patching takes time. And "usually quite safe" is not "safe". It means once in a while the time you spend doing it balloons into a lot more time, or even worse system downtime... I've got a server that we don't do OS updates nearly as often as we should because the damned database server on it flakes out, and some of the tools don't work with new versions of Java and flake out if java updates are installed. So its up, its rock stable if we just leave it alone the way it is... so we just leave it alone.
Adding a firewall can cost as little as zero.
Only if you pay your employees / contractors etc zero.
Windows and Linux operating systems all come with reasonable firewalls that might not be as robust as a dedicated solution, but are certainly better than nothing,
I agree. But all it takes is one stupid software package... I installed a network version of some accounting program a few months ago... windows firewall blocked it. It turns out it requires some 30 or 40 exceptions to be manually added to the windows firewall on each workstation.
Turning the firewall on took 3 seconds... making the shitty accounting software work while it was on took nearly 7 hours from problem report to diagnosis to tested and resolved... and the system was down for that period.
I'm willing to bet most people using that software just turn the firewall off. That only takes 3 seconds.
I've run into other software that was similarly a PITA. And that's windows firewall which is pretty laid back... even I get tired of dealing with some of the commercial firewalls that act like A.D.D. Chihuahuas.
do you really mean that an IT professional that works for a business (whatever size) should rely on the manufacturer's or developer's technical support?
You are missing the point
Suppose you are building a PC. You head over to anandtech/hardocp/ and research components etc. You order some kit and play around. You discover that the memory you selected isn't on the compatibility list with the motherboard... what do you do...?
If your building a gaming rig for yourself... maybe you buy it anyway and see? Some guy on a blog said it worked with a firmware update and a couple bios setting tweaks.
If your ordering 12,000 units to roll out in an enterprise, you pick a memory module that's on the compatibility list. It doesn't matter in the least that some guy on a blog said it worked. You don't want to be chasing down an intermittent crash 4 months from now related to a compatibility problem between the memory and the motherboard across 12,000 units scattered over 6 states.
That's how using Apple in an enterprise has often felt... they're the "unsupported memory module". There are tips and tricks to get them to work, and Steve releases an update and it breaks, and your boned because they never officially supported what you'd done in the first place.
Why does Red Hat, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco, just to name a few, have training and certification programs? Is it for the "IT guy" to call and ask what to do?
Its so that the IT guy knows how to plan and deploy the product in a way that work. So that he knows better than to try and roll out the product in a way that isn't officially supported in the first place, so he isn't running around putting out fires when the mess he's hacked together doesn't quite work.
But, even then, I see certified professionals (SAP, Oracle, etc.) exchanging tricks and undocumented procedures all the time on the 'net. Call them "creative professionals"...
Absolutely, sometimes reality gets in the way of an ideal world, and we all end up running our systems in ways that no ever ever planned for, or run into bugs that shouldn't be there... etc.
But there is a big difference between "wanting to get Microsoft Office 95 running on Windows 7 64-bit to recover some data or some-such" and using some tips and tricks and hacks to make it work... and "planning to roll out Office 95 on Windows 7 across an entire enterprise because of those same tips and tricks..." They are worlds apart.
that it is somehow immoral to charge $8 to fetch an out-of-copyright article.
If its out of copyright, they shouldn't be the only source, and the market should rapidly come up with alternative sources that are priced at what the market will bear.
Its not inherently immoral to charge $8 for it... but it does raise eyebrows that they are ABLE to charge $8 for it. If they can't manage to "cover the costs of hosting the material and making it available and still turn a profit for less" then surely the market can find another provider who can... given that its not copy protected any more... what exactly is the obstacle?
Are they somehow inhibiting the dissemination of out-of-copyright public-domain materials to protect a monopolisitic pricing structure for those materials? That does start to sound like its moving into immoral territory.
Slashdot Mirror
and if you don't think that corporations have stolen the public domain then you clearly are one of the ignorant.
You can't paint all corporations with the same brush, and steal from one group because of actions of another group.
Games companies generally aren't responsible for copyright extensions.
The only exception I can think of would be Disney by way of its other ventures.
But even EA and Ubisoft which are some of the more reviled games companies have never done anything to steal from the public domain that I can think of.
Neither am I, but the point still stands. Canadians don't have to worry about Mexicans, Spanish don't have to worry about Americans, etc.
And their sales are high enough to warrant tax people looking into it.
Then their revenues are enough to deal with the paperwork.
I'm countering the argument that its hard to distribute to multiple countries because you have to sell hundreds to make the paper work worth it.
The simple answer is: don't worry about the paperwork until you are making enough money for it to be worth it. If you sell 1000s to a country, THEN do the paperwork... if you sell 7, don't bother and don't worry about it.
we now live in an era of a "true" free market. We get to decide whether dev/pub screwing us gets paid.
Not really a free market; since you don't have to pay for the product. You can just help yourself. And many do.
Its more of a charity.
If they snapped a photo of you while you were walking down the street, deal with it because that is a public space and anyone could have done that.
And in isolation nobody gives a shit about that photo.
Its that everything is aggregated an linked together. If my friend or my neighbor takes a photo of me walking down the street, and its uploaded to flicker as part of some random "what i saw today" album that's entirely reasonable.
If everyone in the city has their web cams pointed at the street, all the streams are submited to a central database, and facial recognition software tags each stream as I walk into and out of various feeds.
Then anyone can log into a site search my name, and watch my every movement from the minute i leave my home until I get back again.
I see a huge difference there. Do you really not?
So a DVD by itself isn't a performance
Copying a file from one drive to another is not a performance either, neither is reading a file into system memory. Even if the drive or memory it gets sent to is half way around the world.
That is not a performance.
The performance doesn't start until the file is decoded.
If I rent a DVD, its a 2 step process. The disc is physically carried to my device at my home, the device copies the file into memory, where it is then decoded and performed.
If I stream a DVD, they copy the file into my system memory over the internet saving me a trip, where it is then decoded and performed. Both are transient copies for the purpose of performance. But the transmission of the data itself isn't a performance.
Otherwise, copying a file from one folder to another would be a performance of it. And that's absurd.
Their target market is only 100 thousand people in a marketplace of over 100 million people? Sounds like a bad business decision if thats the case.
How many millions of people buy cars?
Good god that's a lot!
How many millions of people buy Porsches?
What? Only thousands? Uhoh...
What? They are only targeting the small niche market that wants and can afford luxury sports cars and luxury sports SUVs. Sounds like a bad business decision if that's the case.
They should make cars that are more like Kia.
Right?
So it's pretty easy to sell internationally with the Apple Store, but when you want to sell something on Android you have to sell at least a few dozen or even hundreds of apps per country to even break even the cost of filing the taxes in that country.
Or do what I and most businesses do... and don't worry about it until sales are high enough to warrant it.
Are you really seriously worried as a US citizen that Italy is going to send international tax lawyers to harass you over $9 in app sales to that country to collect $2.19 in taxes? Maybe they'll have you extradited?
This is much ado about nothing.
where they don't have access to most of my information. if you don't want to use your real name then i usually don't want to have anything to do with you on a social network
Consider, for example, a World Of Warcraft player with in game friends, a guild, maybe a few RL friends who play as well... a place to post pics, talk about ones exploits, plan events and stuff... socialize... and if they play different games using the same handle, and often with the same people... whether its Halo3 or Call of Duty or Travian...
Social networks have all kinds of valid uses for people who wish to remain pseudonymous. I don't use my real name in online games and have zero interest in changing that. I have people in real life who I don't want to know who I am, and I have those I do. The one's I do I tell. The one's I don't, I don't.
For MANY people, going online is an escape from your real identity. An intelligent mature overweight pimply faced 14 year old can be taken seriously in an argument about design patterns in C#. The "hot blond 19 year old" can be in a game as a troll warrior judged on her skill and gear... not her figure. A 46 year old senior manager for Intel can engage in a political or religious debate without exposing the company to criticism and liability... or creating conflict with his superiors for being of a different political or religious position from them.
There is value in these sorts of people in these sorts of situations to socialize within the context of the pseudoname.
these days a lot of consumer routers have a "clone mac" feature, since you often have to register you mac with your ISP to get a dhcp address.
They you buy a router, and it doesn't work, because the ISP will only hand your PCs mac an address, so they came up with clone-mac, so that via the web interface to the router you can have it take the mac address of your pc, and set that as the mac address on the wan iterface of the router.
A couple years later you replace the router, and do it again.
And at the end of it all, half the devices in a household have the same MAC address on at least on of the interfaces.
"Mostly accurate" data isn't good enough for "beyond a reasonable doubt" which is the standard in a criminal prosecution, but its plenty good for pretty much anything google wants to do with it.
There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.
You mean the libertarians?
For every dollar the government spends G, the GDP increases by a dollar. Government spending can't 'overtake' GDP.
Only if all the variables are positive.
Xn in particular is negative.
Instead I'd start with my smartphone,
There's not much in my smartphone of value. Its like that on purpose. Location tracking, and so forth definitely oversteps the lines.
my grocery store which datamines my purchases,
It data mines your purchases at the store. Mine doesn't advertise to me. It doesn't follow me around. It doesn't ask for the names of my friends. If they want to know how many loaves of bread I buy in a year... in exchange for 20 cents off per loaf... I'm ok with that.
If you aren't, don't use the club card.
my state government which sells my info,
Definitely a serious issue. I've never had any trouble with that where i live, except for some commercial groups that leech matters of public record... like title transfers on property to generate their mailing lists.
and my creditors
I've never had serious issues with this either, although I limit my creditors to a select group of relatively trustworthy institutions.
In any case google and facebook have far more valuable profiles on the average person than your cell phone provider or your grocery store... so I think your absolutely wrong-headed about where the largest issues are.
Then you're not using social networking to their fullest
I'm not using them at all. I don't like their terms of service, and I don't like the companies that run them.
and not even the way most people use social networking sites like Facebook.
I'm not like most people on facebook. Can I get that on a T-shirt?
I do use online social networking for my offline friends.
I don't.
My circle of offline friends spans multiple states.
So does mine. I have a telephone. I have an email address. I have a car. Would I consider using an online social network if I didn't disagree with their terms of service? Sure I would... why not.
But I'd still want to maintain multiple separate accounts, some not under my real name.
People build relationships on social nets, often romantic relationships. At some point, maybe not initially, real names should be known.
So your arguing Google needs my real name in my profile in case I meet a girl?
So, perhaps the rule is: the deeper the level of interaction over a social net, the more important it is that pseudoanonymity be traded for confirmed identity.
Perhaps, but that's between the two people. Some people know my real name in the MMOGs I play. But it doesn't need to be in my public profile, and it doesn't need to be "verified by Facebook".
Maybe this is achievable doing something as basic as a social net allowing its users to hide their real name to specific groups of online members, basically separating friends from "friends".
That would go a long way towards allowing users better control over things.
But then, and here's my real problem... I'm not friends, or even "friends" with Google or Facebook, so -they- don't get my real name.
Then put it in another room or buy a proper sized set.
They don't live around the TV. They watch it, but its not the center of their universe, even when watching it.
My parents fall into this category.
I bet far more fall into "can't afford a proper sized display due to the mortgage payments on the McMansion" set then the "do more with their living room than watch TV" set. These are the same folks that drive an SUV and never leave the paved road, nor have more than 4 family members.
The mcmansion set charged a giant screen TV to their VISA and brought it home in their SUV. People who buy homes and vehicles they don't need and can't afford aren't suddenly going to buy the TV they can afford.
The people who have a smaller TV than the room dictates for optimal, placed badly, more often just don't care THAT much about tv.
But I want an online social networking website to socialize with my online friends. The people from the MMOGs I play, the people I've met on slashdot, usenet, etc.
They don't know my real name, I don't know theirs. And I have no desire to change that. But I'd consider using a social networking tool instead of a forum to stay in touch with them under that persona.
I have no interest in using an online social networking tool for my offline friends; they're my offline friends... I can keep up with them just fine offline.
Also 12' seems like a long way to sit from such a small set. That is what you get when you have a giant living room and then can't afford a proper sized display due to the mortgage payments on the Mansion.
No. That is what you get when you have people who don't live their lives around having an optimal viewing experience, who don't want to dedicate a whole wall to the TV, and arrange all the furniture in the living room to point at it...
Some people do more with their living room than watch TV, and the role, placement, and size of the TV reflects that.
Lol, no worries, I could have been clearer. I'm just responding because I loved the shot about verizon; ... ref'ing them not being able to tell between 0.01$, 1 cent, and 0.01 cents. :p
You can have that same argument next time your pulled over...
A blood alcohol level in the same range as the CO2 concentration 0.0391 is legal most places, go over 0.08 (just a touch over double) and your facing a drunk driving conviction in most of the world.
A few hundredths of a percent can actually make a big difference sometimes.
The ozone layer at its GREATEST concentration is 2 to 8 ppm, yet its generally accepted that its a "pretty big deal"...
Duh indeed... what did they think gnutella was for except to lure children? I mean come on... its delicious ;)
Patching Apache doesn't cost money, is extremely easy to do, is usually quite safe.
Time is money. Patching takes time.
And "usually quite safe" is not "safe". It means once in a while the time you spend doing it balloons into a lot more time, or even worse system downtime... I've got a server that we don't do OS updates nearly as often as we should because the damned database server on it flakes out, and some of the tools don't work with new versions of Java and flake out if java updates are installed. So its up, its rock stable if we just leave it alone the way it is... so we just leave it alone.
Adding a firewall can cost as little as zero.
Only if you pay your employees / contractors etc zero.
Windows and Linux operating systems all come with reasonable firewalls that might not be as robust as a dedicated solution, but are certainly better than nothing,
I agree. But all it takes is one stupid software package... I installed a network version of some accounting program a few months ago... windows firewall blocked it. It turns out it requires some 30 or 40 exceptions to be manually added to the windows firewall on each workstation.
Turning the firewall on took 3 seconds... making the shitty accounting software work while it was on took nearly 7 hours from problem report to diagnosis to tested and resolved... and the system was down for that period.
I'm willing to bet most people using that software just turn the firewall off. That only takes 3 seconds.
I've run into other software that was similarly a PITA. And that's windows firewall which is pretty laid back... even I get tired of dealing with some of the commercial firewalls that act like A.D.D. Chihuahuas.
do you really mean that an IT professional that works for a business (whatever size) should rely on the manufacturer's or developer's technical support?
You are missing the point
Suppose you are building a PC. You head over to anandtech/hardocp/ and research components etc. You order some kit and play around. You discover that the memory you selected isn't on the compatibility list with the motherboard... what do you do...?
If your building a gaming rig for yourself... maybe you buy it anyway and see? Some guy on a blog said it worked with a firmware update and a couple bios setting tweaks.
If your ordering 12,000 units to roll out in an enterprise, you pick a memory module that's on the compatibility list. It doesn't matter in the least that some guy on a blog said it worked. You don't want to be chasing down an intermittent crash 4 months from now related to a compatibility problem between the memory and the motherboard across 12,000 units scattered over 6 states.
That's how using Apple in an enterprise has often felt... they're the "unsupported memory module". There are tips and tricks to get them to work, and Steve releases an update and it breaks, and your boned because they never officially supported what you'd done in the first place.
Why does Red Hat, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco, just to name a few, have training and certification programs? Is it for the "IT guy" to call and ask what to do?
Its so that the IT guy knows how to plan and deploy the product in a way that work. So that he knows better than to try and roll out the product in a way that isn't officially supported in the first place, so he isn't running around putting out fires when the mess he's hacked together doesn't quite work.
But, even then, I see certified professionals (SAP, Oracle, etc.) exchanging tricks and undocumented procedures all the time on the 'net. Call them "creative professionals"...
Absolutely, sometimes reality gets in the way of an ideal world, and we all end up running our systems in ways that no ever ever planned for, or run into bugs that shouldn't be there... etc.
But there is a big difference between "wanting to get Microsoft Office 95 running on Windows 7 64-bit to recover some data or some-such" and using some tips and tricks and hacks to make it work... and "planning to roll out Office 95 on Windows 7 across an entire enterprise because of those same tips and tricks..." They are worlds apart.
that it is somehow immoral to charge $8 to fetch an out-of-copyright article.
If its out of copyright, they shouldn't be the only source, and the market should rapidly come up with alternative sources that are priced at what the market will bear.
Its not inherently immoral to charge $8 for it... but it does raise eyebrows that they are ABLE to charge $8 for it. If they can't manage to "cover the costs of hosting the material and making it available and still turn a profit for less" then surely the market can find another provider who can... given that its not copy protected any more... what exactly is the obstacle?
Are they somehow inhibiting the dissemination of out-of-copyright public-domain materials to protect a monopolisitic pricing structure for those materials? That does start to sound like its moving into immoral territory.
please... tell me where Google has violated your privacy?
There is no "circle" for what Google is allowed to see. Google gets to see it all.
I have no desire to upload a pile of data about me into a website run by the worlds largest online advertising company.
A website which exists for the sole purpose of gathering data about me, building profiles on me, and monetizing them.
They do not share your data with advertisers or partners.
I do not want to share it with Google.
Their selling point is, basically, that they'll respect privacy and all those other things that we, the tech geeks, care about
Not quite, some of us actually care about privacy from google as well, and we still aren't racing to create google+ accounts.