Before you publish the results, make sure to find out which vendor the CIO prefers so that the benchmark winner will match the vendor that the CIO picks anyway!:-)
I once worked with a fellow who worked long hours, including weekends, just of his own volition. Once, his management demanded that he come in and work on a Saturday. From that day forward, he only worked overtime when demanded by his management. Belligerent obedience. When asking for more pay, he was told "we pay average", so he replied "then I will give you average work". Belligerent obedience.
I'm not sure I'd suggest being that extreme, but you should consider why are you funding your employer's business operations by using your own equipment? Use their equipment, adhere to their policies and procedures. After all, I assume you are an employee, so you can only loose by trying to fight them. If it really bothers you, start looking for a better job.
The RIAA's boilerplate says "detected an individual", but they never have any evidence identifying a specific person. Same thing happened here. My condolences to Ms. Lindor for the hell she was put through by the RIAA. Too bad she can't get attorneys fees from the b*stards!
There was no evidence given that any uploading took place, except to the unlicensed private investigator.
"A distribution license costs tens of thousands of dollars" - RIAA offered no evidence of that amount, and even if true, such licenses are for all songs, not one song.
Apple's example is revenue sharing, not individual song licensing. Do you think that radio stations pay tens of thousands of dollars for each song played over the air (which are distributed to millions of people), or tens of thousands for an unlimited song performance license?
The RIAA has no evidence of "uploading", except to their unlicensed private investigators. If there was any such evidence, then those folks should/would be parties to the suit.
To be compensatory implies somehow equal to the damage caused, which is not the situation in the Tenenbaum case (over 32,000 times the wholesale price per song). If the 5th amendment limits "excessive" punishment by the government, then the government can't make laws that effect excessive punishment by legislating statutory damages to civil courts, in which the defendant has far fewer legal protections than in criminal courts. That is, if it's unconstitutional for the government to do it to you, then it's unconstitutional for the government to enact a statute letting the RIAA do it to you. Even ignoring the 5th amendment, such excessive verdicts are inconsistent with established common law precedent. Remember, the purpose of the civil court system is to find equitable remedies for wrongs. I would add that even if the statutory damages in copyright are not intended to be punitive, in reality they are punitive.
The summary was entirely factual, and didn't contain any "anti-RIAA propaganda". Your quote was for a reader comment, not from the original summary.
Read the Starr vs Sony decision linked in the summary and you'll discover that the appeals judges found the evidence is strong that RIAA members have been colluding using illegal (under antitrust law) methods such as price fixing. E.g., they ask why RIAA members raised the wholesale price from $0.65/song to $0.70/song while the second largest distributor of music, eMusic, was wholesaling at $0.25/song. In the stereotypical "normal free market", competition as well as decreased production costs would lead to lower prices.
Yahoo does support POP3 if you use Yahoo Mail Plus. If you Google it you can find some hacks to do IMAP as well even with the free version. I use both Yahoo Mail Plus (great web interface, spam filters and no adds injected into your emails, but has a small yearly cost) and gmail (free, and better if you use an external mail client). They both have their uses.
Take the Discrete Math stuff first since you are just beginning to learn Computer Science and it will fit better with those courses. You should then take Numerical Analysis to totally break your concepts that computers are precise. Finally, take the classical Calculus & Differential Equations track just so you can take Partial Differential Equations, at which point the math will start becoming useful for real world Engineering problems.
If you "dump cellular all together" then why would you need a handset?
The best thing to do is to dump cellular all together. You save enough money each year that you can buy a new hand set every year if you want with your savings.
Boss' perception of unproductivity or poor quality
on
Music While Programming?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The big issue here is the boss' PERCEPTION that developers are not producing at a level he expects or that the code being produced is crappy. The music edict is just a proxy for his real concern. It is critical for you to make sure the boss doesn't have this perception about YOU specifically. If so, you need to either find a way to change the boss' perception of you, or find another job. Most likely the boss' perception is general, and is not based on any real metrics of productivity or quality. What might help is suggesting to the boss how to collect such metrics, and more importantly how to present to his management that his team is very productive and has the highest quality work. It's very likely that the boss is being pressured by his management, so giving him the tools to fight back will help your teams' chance of avoiding the next round of layoffs. This is good for everyone: the boss gets credit, you are adding value, and everyone is aligned with the company's goals.
I do feel sorry for the homeless man for being the target of the ruthless RIAA, and am disappointed with the judge for allowing the RIAA's behaviour.
At the same time, I hope this man will fight the RIAA and tie up their legal resources. It's not likely that the RIAA would be able to collect any judgement against a homeless man, and they might run up huge legal fees if the man fights the suit. That would be money they couldn't use to sue other innocent people.
Of course, if any legal precedents are made due to such a case, it could harm the other innocent RIAA targets. At least I can hope that the RIAA's empire collapses long before that.
Remember that you are innocent in the eyes of the law until you are proven guilty. Have you been convicted? These cases are in civil court, where matters are decided "by a preponderance of the evidence" (i.e., defendants must prove innocence as much as the plaintiffs must prove guilt). The "innocent until proven guilty" and "conviction" applies in criminal court.
A better alternative is to reform recording contracts. The artists generally make very little out of their own works because of the often one-sided recording contracts, as well as by the non-transparency of the accounting for costs, revenues, and royalty payments.
IMHO, the measure proposed by the article won't work because in the end it will only hurt the artists. The artists make money because the corporations buy their product (the copyright on their music, distribution rights, etc.), promote it, and distribute it. If the corporations are limited as the article suggests, then the artist's product is devalued. As reprehensible as the RIAA's conduct is, they still take a risk in signing unknown artists and must invest in the artist even though it may not produce any profit. Without that investment, some artists would never be able to publish their own works. The article's approach seems to me to be analogous to "helping" migrant farm workers by closing down all farms.
"Punative legislation" is rarely good, just see the statutory damages section of the copyright act as an example. Artists have traditionally been at a disadvantage when signing their recording contracts. The playing field needs to be leveled for their sake. Terms of recording contracts should be reformed to make it win-win. Part of that should be ensuring that all relevant operations of the RIAA member companies should be open and transparent to the artists.
Of course, our best hope is the Internet, where the cost structure makes it easier for artists to promote themselves and do away with the RIAA completely. While listeners have widely adopted Internet distribution, the artists themselves have been slow to adopt it. Perhaps part of recording contract reform would be to give liberal terms to artists for any kind of internet distribution.
BTW, if I would set my bittorrent client to stop seeding when the ratio reaches 99%, so there would be evidence on my machine that I never could have distributed even 1 (full)copy? That could hardly be named 'making available', no? Excellent point!! How would you define a "copyrighted work" for the purposes of a lawsuit when bittorrent allows partial pieces to be transferred? I'm sure the RIAA would interpret it as a transfer, even if it wasn't 100%. I think that was Don Music's (the GP's) point in his post when he said:
The problem is that RIAA is exploiting the anachronism of our current copyright laws. The laws truly do need to be re-written to incorporate creative works that are not strictly analog and paper-based, and that should be the goal. It's as if we're in the wild wild west. The RIAA is the rich banker that is cheating the poor farmers out of their land in order to gain the mineral rights just before a big gold rush. The government is the sheriff that is in the pocket of the banker. People like NewYorkCountyLawyer are the "pale rider" that is helping the farmers fight back.
It's interesting how congress has passed laws to protect the big players such as ISPs, consumer electronics manufacturers & distributors, libraries & government (i.e. itself) and the RIAA, but has done nothing top help the average person protect themselves from the RIAA.
Thanks for the compliment!!! I guess all of those years of watching Perry Mason reruns really paid off!!! Or else maybe it was staying in a Holiday Inn Express last night!!!:-)
...the problem is not that the RIAA is re-writing the copyright laws... I beg to differ. Here's just one example. The RIAA insists that "making available" is the same as copyright infringement. But take a look at Title 17 USC 106(3) which defines the exclusive distribution right as "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". This is the statute that the RIAA uses to sue, that is, they claim their exclusive distribution right granted by this statue is being infringed. But note, this statute clearly indicates a "sale or other transfer of ownership", and courts have consistently ruled that this means an actual transfer must take place to be considered infringement. The RIAA was successful in getting the judge in the Capitol v. Thomas case to instruct the jury that "The act of making copyrighted sound recordings
available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer
network, without license from the copyright owners,
violates the copyright owners' exclusive right of
distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has
been shown.". So it may be true that the RIAA is not literally rewriting copyright law (they have lobbyists that do that), but they sure are trying to rewrite copyright law by establishing precedents via cases against those who can't afford to defend themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Before you publish the results, make sure to find out which vendor the CIO prefers so that the benchmark winner will match the vendor that the CIO picks anyway! :-)
I once worked with a fellow who worked long hours, including weekends, just of his own volition. Once, his management demanded that he come in and work on a Saturday. From that day forward, he only worked overtime when demanded by his management. Belligerent obedience. When asking for more pay, he was told "we pay average", so he replied "then I will give you average work". Belligerent obedience.
I'm not sure I'd suggest being that extreme, but you should consider why are you funding your employer's business operations by using your own equipment? Use their equipment, adhere to their policies and procedures. After all, I assume you are an employee, so you can only loose by trying to fight them. If it really bothers you, start looking for a better job.
Cool hack! I dub thee "hackeroid"! :-)
Couldn't they just have modded them "-1 Troll"? :-)
Spider-man? I'm more looking forward to spider pig!
Don't forget your towel!
The RIAA's boilerplate says "detected an individual", but they never have any evidence identifying a specific person. Same thing happened here. My condolences to Ms. Lindor for the hell she was put through by the RIAA. Too bad she can't get attorneys fees from the b*stards!
'After man-years of exhaustive testing...'
There was no evidence given that any uploading took place, except to the unlicensed private investigator.
"A distribution license costs tens of thousands of dollars" - RIAA offered no evidence of that amount, and even if true, such licenses are for all songs, not one song.
Apple's example is revenue sharing, not individual song licensing. Do you think that radio stations pay tens of thousands of dollars for each song played over the air (which are distributed to millions of people), or tens of thousands for an unlimited song performance license?
The RIAA has no evidence of "uploading", except to their unlicensed private investigators. If there was any such evidence, then those folks should/would be parties to the suit.
So from the DOJ perspective: all laws are equal, but some laws are more equal than others... :-)
To be compensatory implies somehow equal to the damage caused, which is not the situation in the Tenenbaum case (over 32,000 times the wholesale price per song). If the 5th amendment limits "excessive" punishment by the government, then the government can't make laws that effect excessive punishment by legislating statutory damages to civil courts, in which the defendant has far fewer legal protections than in criminal courts. That is, if it's unconstitutional for the government to do it to you, then it's unconstitutional for the government to enact a statute letting the RIAA do it to you. Even ignoring the 5th amendment, such excessive verdicts are inconsistent with established common law precedent. Remember, the purpose of the civil court system is to find equitable remedies for wrongs. I would add that even if the statutory damages in copyright are not intended to be punitive, in reality they are punitive.
The summary was entirely factual, and didn't contain any "anti-RIAA propaganda". Your quote was for a reader comment, not from the original summary.
Read the Starr vs Sony decision linked in the summary and you'll discover that the appeals judges found the evidence is strong that RIAA members have been colluding using illegal (under antitrust law) methods such as price fixing. E.g., they ask why RIAA members raised the wholesale price from $0.65/song to $0.70/song while the second largest distributor of music, eMusic, was wholesaling at $0.25/song. In the stereotypical "normal free market", competition as well as decreased production costs would lead to lower prices.
Yahoo does support POP3 if you use Yahoo Mail Plus. If you Google it you can find some hacks to do IMAP as well even with the free version. I use both Yahoo Mail Plus (great web interface, spam filters and no adds injected into your emails, but has a small yearly cost) and gmail (free, and better if you use an external mail client). They both have their uses.
Take the Discrete Math stuff first since you are just beginning to learn Computer Science and it will fit better with those courses. You should then take Numerical Analysis to totally break your concepts that computers are precise. Finally, take the classical Calculus & Differential Equations track just so you can take Partial Differential Equations, at which point the math will start becoming useful for real world Engineering problems.
The best thing to do is to dump cellular all together. You save enough money each year that you can buy a new hand set every year if you want with your savings.
The big issue here is the boss' PERCEPTION that developers are not producing at a level he expects or that the code being produced is crappy. The music edict is just a proxy for his real concern. It is critical for you to make sure the boss doesn't have this perception about YOU specifically. If so, you need to either find a way to change the boss' perception of you, or find another job. Most likely the boss' perception is general, and is not based on any real metrics of productivity or quality. What might help is suggesting to the boss how to collect such metrics, and more importantly how to present to his management that his team is very productive and has the highest quality work. It's very likely that the boss is being pressured by his management, so giving him the tools to fight back will help your teams' chance of avoiding the next round of layoffs. This is good for everyone: the boss gets credit, you are adding value, and everyone is aligned with the company's goals.
Why don't the MPAA/RIAA (MAFIAA) get the same treatment as this lawyer? Of course, this is a rhetorical question...
I do feel sorry for the homeless man for being the target of the ruthless RIAA, and am disappointed with the judge for allowing the RIAA's behaviour.
At the same time, I hope this man will fight the RIAA and tie up their legal resources. It's not likely that the RIAA would be able to collect any judgement against a homeless man, and they might run up huge legal fees if the man fights the suit. That would be money they couldn't use to sue other innocent people.
Of course, if any legal precedents are made due to such a case, it could harm the other innocent RIAA targets. At least I can hope that the RIAA's empire collapses long before that.
Regards,
Art
Regards,
Art
Is Microsoft funding the RIAA as well? :-)
Regards,
Art
A better alternative is to reform recording contracts. The artists generally make very little out of their own works because of the often one-sided recording contracts, as well as by the non-transparency of the accounting for costs, revenues, and royalty payments.
IMHO, the measure proposed by the article won't work because in the end it will only hurt the artists. The artists make money because the corporations buy their product (the copyright on their music, distribution rights, etc.), promote it, and distribute it. If the corporations are limited as the article suggests, then the artist's product is devalued. As reprehensible as the RIAA's conduct is, they still take a risk in signing unknown artists and must invest in the artist even though it may not produce any profit. Without that investment, some artists would never be able to publish their own works. The article's approach seems to me to be analogous to "helping" migrant farm workers by closing down all farms.
"Punative legislation" is rarely good, just see the statutory damages section of the copyright act as an example. Artists have traditionally been at a disadvantage when signing their recording contracts. The playing field needs to be leveled for their sake. Terms of recording contracts should be reformed to make it win-win. Part of that should be ensuring that all relevant operations of the RIAA member companies should be open and transparent to the artists.
Of course, our best hope is the Internet, where the cost structure makes it easier for artists to promote themselves and do away with the RIAA completely. While listeners have widely adopted Internet distribution, the artists themselves have been slow to adopt it. Perhaps part of recording contract reform would be to give liberal terms to artists for any kind of internet distribution.
Regards,
Art
It's interesting how congress has passed laws to protect the big players such as ISPs, consumer electronics manufacturers & distributors, libraries & government (i.e. itself) and the RIAA, but has done nothing top help the average person protect themselves from the RIAA.
Regards,
Art
Thanks for the compliment!!! I guess all of those years of watching Perry Mason reruns really paid off!!! Or else maybe it was staying in a Holiday Inn Express last night!!! :-)
Regards,
Art
...the problem is not that the RIAA is re-writing the copyright laws... I beg to differ. Here's just one example. The RIAA insists that "making available" is the same as copyright infringement. But take a look at Title 17 USC 106(3) which defines the exclusive distribution right as "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". This is the statute that the RIAA uses to sue, that is, they claim their exclusive distribution right granted by this statue is being infringed. But note, this statute clearly indicates a "sale or other transfer of ownership", and courts have consistently ruled that this means an actual transfer must take place to be considered infringement. The RIAA was successful in getting the judge in the Capitol v. Thomas case to instruct the jury that "The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners' exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.". So it may be true that the RIAA is not literally rewriting copyright law (they have lobbyists that do that), but they sure are trying to rewrite copyright law by establishing precedents via cases against those who can't afford to defend themselves.Regards,
Art (IANAL)