They don't. In modern Britain, the highest earners are people like football players (and their wives), reality TV 'stars', pop stars, etc. If you want to work hard and go to university, you'll be rewarded with thousands of pounds in debt (which you'll probably be paying off when you're 50) and the chance to dive into an economy which is falling headfirst into the toilet. Schools should cut their losses and just teach soccer skills and beauty techniques.
I mean, what's the right thing for Google to do here? For one, a ton of people are unhappy in the first place about their imagery appearing on Maps. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Secondly, it's their data, they can do whatever the hell they want with it, surely? They're under no obligation to provide us with an uncensored view of the entire world. If you can't walk into a place as a pedestrian without official documentation etc, then you probably don't need to see it in detail from the air either.
When I saw "goes after" in the headline, I assumed it meant they hired the guy after realising he was better than their in-house programmers. How naive and foolish of me.
Dammit, Gibson. When I saw the headline I thought it would be because the Guitar Hero controllers look like Gibsons (SGs and Les Pauls, specifically). What damage is GH doing to Gibson besides increasing interest in learning to play a real guitar?
It would have been nice if the dude who uncovered this had emailed those concerned to let them know their accounts have been potentially violated. I use Gmail for 2 primary addresses and would like to know if my name was amongst the 1700 there. Deleting them all was good work but informing them too would have been nice (and probably not too hard).
At my university (Leeds, UK) staff at the English department actually gave us a lecture about research and citation outlining not using Wikipedia. I agree with the earlier poster who suggests that staff are biased in portraying professional academia as the only way to learn, but in spite of this, I often check out the wiki pages on my subjects as a way into them. While I'd never cite it on a paper (partly because of the attached stigma and partly because I'm usually not keen on citing web pages in the first place), I frequently use links found on wiki pages to more authorative documents which I can then refer to. I think this article misses the point of wiki: it's not supposed to be a fountain of knowledge, just as an encyclopedia is not. It's meant to act as an introduction to a complicated and in-depth topic which can provide a useful overview, examination of the key issues, and tips for where to look next. In that respect, it does its job well.
Yep, totally. Movies don't really faze me (except maybe the old Dead movies), but hours of Resident Evil on my Gamecube left me a nervous young man, haha. It's really atmospheric and the music and tension is as scary as the zombies-through-the-window shockers.
The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.
To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.
I watched Deja Vu a few weeks back (not by choice) and was astounded by the flagrant middle finger shown to anyone with a basic knowledge of science and computing. For those who haven't seen it, the main premise of the movie is that the government somehow has access to live, real-time hi-res video footage of anyone, anywhere. It started out realistically enough where we had a Google Earth-esque zoom from space into a city, but then the view turned to street level, then went through a window, into a house, inside a bathroom etc. This was explained as 'satellites'. I almost couldn't continue watching just because of the leap of imagination required to believe this.
My younger sister (16) who watched it with me and has no interest in science didn't see what was wrong and had no problem watching the movie. I guess for most kids out there they've become desensitized to technology and science in movies and when it defies the laws of physics, it just goes over their heads since that's what they see in the movies. Whether they can separate fact from fiction though is still to be observed.
Yeah. My friend was trying to link me to someone's Facebook profile and we both got frustrated as he insisted he'd sent me the link and I could not see it. We had to resort to email. And the girl wasn't even that hot.
Stories like this always bring up the same tired arguments. In the one corner you have the OSS zealots who are championing Open Office et al, while on the other side of the ring we have the blunt 'real worldists' who point out that professionally, nobody uses Open Office anyway.
The problem here is, I haven't seen a convincing argument as to why schools should start using Open Office/your choice of OSS Office suite.
Sure, it's free. But most places have an IT budget. They can afford to spend money on this stuff. Please imagine trying to explain to a non-tech savvy headteacher why you think he should switch from MS Office. The best you can get is "It has all the same features as Word". So? This guy will be inundated with complaints from parents asking why their kids are being taught this crazy mumbo jumbo. They're getting their kids IT lessons; they expect to hear familiar terms like Microsoft, Office, etc etc.
I'm not saying we should pander to people's closemindedness. But we can't try to advocate open source all the time, because as far as I can tell, Office, and Word in particular, is considered one of the few areas where Microsoft have got it right. Let's not give up the fight, but there are reasons why every business uses the Office suite and why most people won't be persuaded to change.
How many of these buyers are likely to drift back to XP - and can you really believe that the numbers will be statistically significant?
Exactly. The kind of people who actually know how to remove an OS and install a new one aren't the ones likely to be purchasing Vista in the first place.
I'm not complaining that the company does what they say they'll do, I'm complaining that this is the major form of diseminating music. It doesn't have to be this way.
As for the "without starting their own business" part - watch this space. Dischord Records and other remarkable DIY indie labels are inspiring me to take music back to what it should be about: people making it and people listening to it. Getting paid is fine, but let's pay the people who are putting their hearts and souls into this stuff.
People have figured out chords to songs from the radio for decades. Is playing the song for a friend, or teaching them the chords, a violation of copyright?
I play in a few bands and recently checked out a book from 2000 called "The Band's Guide to Getting a Record Deal". In the book it explained a lot of the stuff that comes between me writing a song in my bedroom, and you listening to it on a nicely packaged CD. It's a hell of a lot more complicated (and bullshit-loaded) process than you'd imagine.
The middlemen between the record label and the general public (as I understand it) are publishers. They earn a large cut of the royalties/the band's wages for their role, which isn't either a) creative (like the band) or b) directly marketing the result (like the label). As far as I can tell, they simply license the use of the song for sale on the medium in question (CD, iTunes, etc). There's a caveat though: the definition of 'song'. The song they they own the publishing rights to isn't just that individual recording you did of it. It's that specific combination of chords and lyrics, that melody, that drumbeat. It's a very specific ownership. This rule means that many bands have recorded an album for a label, decided they don't like the label and want out, and have been held to ransom by said label, because the band no longer own their own songs. They can't go somewhere else and re-record them because that would violate their publishing. All the label has to do is wait, and the band will agree to any terms. This is absolutely disgusting to me as a musician and makes me feel nauseous just thinking about it.
In this situation then, we can see why the RIAA have a case. This guy is using their published material for his own ends (apparently). Of course we know that he's just trying to teach people a fun instrument and not trying to deprive artists (most of the smaller ones don't have guitar chord books available anyway). The RIAA are not representing the interests of the artists in these cases, and I am one hundred per cent certain that almost every band you could care to ask wouldn't give two shits about this. This commercial rape and insult to creative people needs to end soon because the 'industry' of music is stifling what little creativity we have left.
Could it not simply be that they're not keeping it under wraps to avoid sneaky webmasters manipulating their sites, but to prevent competitors gaining an edge?
"Most computer laymen, even those aware of open source software, often don't have any idea how to go about looking for it, but would use it if it were easier to access."
Forgive my cynicism, but I can hardly see instructing my mother or younger sisters like this as being easier to access:
"Okay, load up a terminal window." "What?" "Click Start > Run > and type 'cmd'." "OK, now what?" "Type apt-get install open-office -s -d -565" "What was after the second dash? Look, can't I just use Word?"... continue ad infinitum
Yeah, me neither. When I mention them in conversation (usually to illustrate how bad the wireless/DRM thing is) I have to follow it with "it's Microsoft's iPod".
"(and I yearn for a day when browsers can reliably print what's on the screen, instead of cutting it off at the margin because some designer doesn't understand layout!)"
This is so unfair. Are you a webdesigner? Are you even a designer at all? If you've ever done both print design and web design, you will appreciate how much more challenging web design is. Imagine designing for a completely unique for every viewer canvas, rather than, say, 10,000 identical copies of a newspaper or print ad. You have to allow for every possible screen resolution, browser platform, colour depth, operating system, javascript status, flash version, etc etc etc, and now you're insulting us because on top of that we "don't understand layout" because we can't make it print prettily as well? Thanks a bunch.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't. In modern Britain, the highest earners are people like football players (and their wives), reality TV 'stars', pop stars, etc. If you want to work hard and go to university, you'll be rewarded with thousands of pounds in debt (which you'll probably be paying off when you're 50) and the chance to dive into an economy which is falling headfirst into the toilet. Schools should cut their losses and just teach soccer skills and beauty techniques.
I mean, what's the right thing for Google to do here? For one, a ton of people are unhappy in the first place about their imagery appearing on Maps. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Secondly, it's their data, they can do whatever the hell they want with it, surely? They're under no obligation to provide us with an uncensored view of the entire world. If you can't walk into a place as a pedestrian without official documentation etc, then you probably don't need to see it in detail from the air either.
It's sad, no longer will we be impressed by creative TLD usage like del.icio.us, when every Average Joe can register www.average.joe
Boy, is the parent gonna be embarrassed when he realises that!
"Pirate schools"?! Do you go to HAAAAARRRRRRRRvard?
When I saw "goes after" in the headline, I assumed it meant they hired the guy after realising he was better than their in-house programmers. How naive and foolish of me.
God forbid Google thinks of its userbase rather than its advertisers for once.
Dammit, Gibson. When I saw the headline I thought it would be because the Guitar Hero controllers look like Gibsons (SGs and Les Pauls, specifically). What damage is GH doing to Gibson besides increasing interest in learning to play a real guitar?
Yeah, I've read the summary, but who's to say the other 1700 people did?
It would have been nice if the dude who uncovered this had emailed those concerned to let them know their accounts have been potentially violated. I use Gmail for 2 primary addresses and would like to know if my name was amongst the 1700 there. Deleting them all was good work but informing them too would have been nice (and probably not too hard).
At my university (Leeds, UK) staff at the English department actually gave us a lecture about research and citation outlining not using Wikipedia. I agree with the earlier poster who suggests that staff are biased in portraying professional academia as the only way to learn, but in spite of this, I often check out the wiki pages on my subjects as a way into them. While I'd never cite it on a paper (partly because of the attached stigma and partly because I'm usually not keen on citing web pages in the first place), I frequently use links found on wiki pages to more authorative documents which I can then refer to. I think this article misses the point of wiki: it's not supposed to be a fountain of knowledge, just as an encyclopedia is not. It's meant to act as an introduction to a complicated and in-depth topic which can provide a useful overview, examination of the key issues, and tips for where to look next. In that respect, it does its job well.
No love for Mute City on Super Smash Bros? Made me burn it to a CD to jam along with on guitar.
Yep, totally. Movies don't really faze me (except maybe the old Dead movies), but hours of Resident Evil on my Gamecube left me a nervous young man, haha. It's really atmospheric and the music and tension is as scary as the zombies-through-the-window shockers.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&art
FTA:
Some of these might come in useful.
I watched Deja Vu a few weeks back (not by choice) and was astounded by the flagrant middle finger shown to anyone with a basic knowledge of science and computing. For those who haven't seen it, the main premise of the movie is that the government somehow has access to live, real-time hi-res video footage of anyone, anywhere. It started out realistically enough where we had a Google Earth-esque zoom from space into a city, but then the view turned to street level, then went through a window, into a house, inside a bathroom etc. This was explained as 'satellites'. I almost couldn't continue watching just because of the leap of imagination required to believe this.
My younger sister (16) who watched it with me and has no interest in science didn't see what was wrong and had no problem watching the movie. I guess for most kids out there they've become desensitized to technology and science in movies and when it defies the laws of physics, it just goes over their heads since that's what they see in the movies. Whether they can separate fact from fiction though is still to be observed.
Yeah. My friend was trying to link me to someone's Facebook profile and we both got frustrated as he insisted he'd sent me the link and I could not see it. We had to resort to email. And the girl wasn't even that hot.
Stories like this always bring up the same tired arguments. In the one corner you have the OSS zealots who are championing Open Office et al, while on the other side of the ring we have the blunt 'real worldists' who point out that professionally, nobody uses Open Office anyway.
The problem here is, I haven't seen a convincing argument as to why schools should start using Open Office/your choice of OSS Office suite.
Sure, it's free. But most places have an IT budget. They can afford to spend money on this stuff. Please imagine trying to explain to a non-tech savvy headteacher why you think he should switch from MS Office. The best you can get is "It has all the same features as Word". So? This guy will be inundated with complaints from parents asking why their kids are being taught this crazy mumbo jumbo. They're getting their kids IT lessons; they expect to hear familiar terms like Microsoft, Office, etc etc.
I'm not saying we should pander to people's closemindedness. But we can't try to advocate open source all the time, because as far as I can tell, Office, and Word in particular, is considered one of the few areas where Microsoft have got it right. Let's not give up the fight, but there are reasons why every business uses the Office suite and why most people won't be persuaded to change.
Exactly. The kind of people who actually know how to remove an OS and install a new one aren't the ones likely to be purchasing Vista in the first place.
I'm not complaining that the company does what they say they'll do, I'm complaining that this is the major form of diseminating music. It doesn't have to be this way.
As for the "without starting their own business" part - watch this space. Dischord Records and other remarkable DIY indie labels are inspiring me to take music back to what it should be about: people making it and people listening to it. Getting paid is fine, but let's pay the people who are putting their hearts and souls into this stuff.
I play in a few bands and recently checked out a book from 2000 called "The Band's Guide to Getting a Record Deal". In the book it explained a lot of the stuff that comes between me writing a song in my bedroom, and you listening to it on a nicely packaged CD. It's a hell of a lot more complicated (and bullshit-loaded) process than you'd imagine.
The middlemen between the record label and the general public (as I understand it) are publishers. They earn a large cut of the royalties/the band's wages for their role, which isn't either a) creative (like the band) or b) directly marketing the result (like the label). As far as I can tell, they simply license the use of the song for sale on the medium in question (CD, iTunes, etc). There's a caveat though: the definition of 'song'. The song they they own the publishing rights to isn't just that individual recording you did of it. It's that specific combination of chords and lyrics, that melody, that drumbeat. It's a very specific ownership. This rule means that many bands have recorded an album for a label, decided they don't like the label and want out, and have been held to ransom by said label, because the band no longer own their own songs. They can't go somewhere else and re-record them because that would violate their publishing. All the label has to do is wait, and the band will agree to any terms. This is absolutely disgusting to me as a musician and makes me feel nauseous just thinking about it.
In this situation then, we can see why the RIAA have a case. This guy is using their published material for his own ends (apparently). Of course we know that he's just trying to teach people a fun instrument and not trying to deprive artists (most of the smaller ones don't have guitar chord books available anyway). The RIAA are not representing the interests of the artists in these cases, and I am one hundred per cent certain that almost every band you could care to ask wouldn't give two shits about this. This commercial rape and insult to creative people needs to end soon because the 'industry' of music is stifling what little creativity we have left.
Could it not simply be that they're not keeping it under wraps to avoid sneaky webmasters manipulating their sites, but to prevent competitors gaining an edge?
Ah. That sounds like an improvement, then. Nice work!
Forgive my cynicism, but I can hardly see instructing my mother or younger sisters like this as being easier to access:
"Okay, load up a terminal window."
"What?"
"Click Start > Run > and type 'cmd'."
"OK, now what?"
"Type apt-get install open-office -s -d -565"
"What was after the second dash? Look, can't I just use Word?"
Yeah, me neither. When I mention them in conversation (usually to illustrate how bad the wireless/DRM thing is) I have to follow it with "it's Microsoft's iPod".
This is so unfair. Are you a webdesigner? Are you even a designer at all? If you've ever done both print design and web design, you will appreciate how much more challenging web design is. Imagine designing for a completely unique for every viewer canvas, rather than, say, 10,000 identical copies of a newspaper or print ad. You have to allow for every possible screen resolution, browser platform, colour depth, operating system, javascript status, flash version, etc etc etc, and now you're insulting us because on top of that we "don't understand layout" because we can't make it print prettily as well? Thanks a bunch.