my only claim is that using the iTunes program itself to manage my music and sync it with my iPod is a lot better than drag-and-dropping files onto a music player that's just a glorified USB mass storage device
Yes, I can definitely see that iTunes's interface would be so much more convenient than dragging and dropping manually. Since of course iTunes is the only program out there that can handle syncing between devices.
It's so much more convenient to have to install iTunes on your computer rather than have it immediately recognize the player with no installation required.
It's so much more convenient to use a program and a player that have built-in functions to prevent you from transfering the music from the player onto a computer rather than just from the computer to the player (in the event that, perhaps, you have a massive computer problem forcing you to whipe your harddrive, or in the oh so unlikely event that you have more than one computer).
It's so much more convenient to have a player that can only store certain types of media.
I'm so convinced, I think I'll be returning my glorified USB mass storage device back to the manufacturer.
When you call a company for customer service you should be able to get someone able to bend the rules if circumstances warrant. The "paid parrots" of Indian call centers can't do that.
That doesn't have to do with the work going to India. That has to do with the "front line" of call centers being given little education and no latitude because they are not considered decision-makers, independent of what country they are working from. They're given a box (I'd call it a computer but that would be insulting to computers) where they can select the caller's problem from a number of pre-set problems, and the box can then call up the possible available solutions. Anything beyond those solutions has to go to a higher-up, someone who gets paid more money to be able to make the harder decisions, to fudge the rules for someone. But if they allowed any old "foot soldier" to go bending the rules whenever they felt like it, they could reach a situation that is unworkable either because they'd make poor choices when attempting to bend the rules because of a lack of and appropriate level of education, or they'd have to be paid more because their job required more thinking and adaptability rather than just being a "paid parrot."
Have you ever dealt with a customer service centre which has been outsourced to India?
Yes, and just because the work has been moved to India does not mean the work is done poorly. The major disadvantage to outsourcing to a foreign country comes from language/accent/communication issues. I have definitely had times where I had trouble communicating with a person in customer service because of that. However, if that hurdle can be overcome through education or through selectively hiring foreigners who have made an effort to learn English and learn it well, outsourcing can be a boost to customer service even from the consumer point of view. Support lines can be open 24/7 rather than the standard 9am-5pm Mon-Fri. More customer service personnel can be hired for the same cost, meaning shorter waits to speak to a live person. So if done right, outsourcing can save the company money and boost people's sense of customer service.
I use it and like it, but 2MB of RAM is a joke. RTVscan uses 22.5MB, DefWatch uses 1.2MB, VPTray uses 3.8MB, and the update program uses 5MB, at least on mine.
Actually, a under this system it appears that a company could release a spyware-filled torrent client, and as long as they don't call it BitTorrent in any way (Let's call it "Really Awesome Torrent Client"), they are safe from prosecution related to the BitTorrent Trademark.
That's fine. Make the license charge $1.00 for all perpetuity for anybody who qualifies for a license. The point of the program is to not give licenses to people that they don't want to have 'em -- the aforementioned spyware/adware cretins. It's not about extorting these people because they do bad things... it's about witholding permission in the first place.
But if there's a situation where a small malware-free torrent program uses the BitTorrent name and doesn't or won't submit for the license or pay the fee, then BitTorrent has to make a choice whether or not to sue them. If they choose not to sue them because their product does not have malware in it and therefore is not the intended target, then BitTorrent runs the risk of opening the door for other program makers saying "But they don't enforce it universally, so that invalidates the trademark."
Allen wrench, brassiere, escalator, heroin, laundromat, and linoleum are examples of former trademarks that can no longer be exclusively used by any one party.
And yet there are still a significant number of trademarked names that are both commonly used as if they were generic terms *and* are easily enforcable as well as identified with the original companies that trademarked them.
One test is this. If you can collect a jury of 12 individuals who are all familiar with the term and also all unaware that the word is a trademark, it's unlikely that any party would prevail if they were to attempt to enforce their exclusive rights to the term.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the average jury selected for a BitTorrent case, less than half of the people in the jury have even heard the name, let alone know what it is.
A secondary aspect of the current BitTorrent legal efforts might be to prevent BT from falling into the realm of Xerox, Hoover, and Kleenex: brand names that have been co-opted into common/generic usage.
I don't see what one has to do with the other.
First, if you think Xerox, Hoover, Kleenex, and Band-Aid aren't trademarked, you're deluded, and that certainly hasn't stopped their names from becoming common usage.
Second, BitTorrent has already gone that way, and I think it's gotten to the point where you can't put that genie back in the bottle, not that anyone would even want to.
Third, trademarking something doesn't suddenly mean that you're gonna get sued if you refer to a torrent program as a BitTorrent client in your daily speech. It means that random torrent program #4546 will have a harder time officially referring to itself as a BitTorrent client. But the users can call it whatever they want.
I don't think you guys are being fair to the OP. Being in a job you need but don't like can be very draining in time, physical energy, emotional energy, etc. While it may appear to the casual viewer that he has time to job hunt (time spent posting on slashdot, for example), the amount of energy required to post on slashdot can hardly be compared to the amount of energy needed to update a resume/cover letter, search for jobs, apply for jobs, arrange a schedule of interviews, etc: one act is a form of relaxation, the others are not.
And AIDS is a symptom, not a disease in itself. Anything that hinders the immune system could cause it, from genetics to radiation to malnutrition. That HIV is not the only possible cause of such symptoms does not prove that it is not a cause for them.
True, AIDS is not a disease in itself. And there are other immunodeficiency conditions out there. But those other conditions have their own names (or if they haven't been discovered already, will have their own names). AIDS is specifically the name to describe the immunodeficiency condition caused by having HIV. Just because two conditions have similary symptoms and appearances does not mean that they are "the same" if it is known that they have two separate and distinct causes. The causes are just as important as the effects.
It could well be that HIV is an opportunistic infection that happens when some unknown virus causes AIDS. Or that HIV works in tandem with another virus to cause AIDS.
Actually, it's the other way around. "Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (or acronym AIDS or Aids), is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)"
HIV is the infection, and is generally asymptomatic. AIDS is what happens when the HIV damage is so bad that you start to get symptoms. The way that one AIDS case manifests can be very different from another because basically what happens is the AIDS sufferer's immune system is so damaged that opportunistic infections start to take over, infections that someone with a healthy immune system can combat, often with little or no symptoms.
Sure, but that it irrlevant, it doesn't change the fact that the humanities is the easiest path to a degree, the path of least resistance. The CS degree still has a year or two of Calculus to weed people out. You might go CS for money, but you generally don't go CS to get a degree in "something".
Only in your opinion. There are of course people out there who find it much easier to deal with numbers, code, and computers than to deal with words, paragraphs, people, etc. It's entirely dependent on where your strengths and weaknesses lie.
I don't think it is inaccurate to state that many humanities majors are there because they need a degree in something to begin some white collar career path.
Just as it could be said that many CS majors entered their field because they were simply following the money.
I recall a seminar on careers for history and poly sci majors. It started out by telling the attendees that they were not going to get jobs in their "field", they were going to get management jobs in banks, large corporations, etc. I think this supports my argument that many poly sci majors are there because they need a degree in "something"
I don't disagree with this. The humanities are fields where many people do not end up working directly in that field. But that doesn't mean that what they are doing is worthless. They are learning writing and analytical skills (theoretically) that will enhance their job performance and their personal marketability independent of what career they eventually choose. Those in the humanities have a wider range of eventual careers to choose from, IMO, than CS majors. Of course there are always freeloaders, but every field of study has those.
and poly sci is one of the easier ones to attain.
I can't say because I didn't take poly sci, but I'm not sure that's fair.
Now using some of my senior poly sci classmates as examples I often found that their arguments were shallow and/or regurgitations of the professor or of the popular press. Not a lot of critical thinking.
But that's not to say that the field is the reason for that. That's like saying CS is easy because so many people breeze through it by "outsourcing."
..a computer programmer actually produces something useful, whereas alot of other majors (political science, business, communications - looking at you here) are full of people shoveling bullshit in the form of shifting paradigms for strategized markitecture. It does an extreme disservice to the human race to reward ignorance and apathy, yet we as a nation do it every single day and we are going to pay sooner than later.
I could say the exact same thing, but change "computer programmer" to "humanities majors" and your so called "other majors" with "computer programmers." There are a lot of writers out there that change the course of history with their words (not code), and there are a lot of computer programmers out there that produce crappy, holey, useless, insecure programs. As for "ignorance and apathy," your implication that those in the humanities have cornered the market on it and that computer science is free of it is bogus. Just look at the title of this/. article! Now that's apathy.
I realize there's been some CS bashing in this thread and you're probably feeling defensive, but I'm offended by your characterization of the humanities. There are more than a few CS majors that couldn't write an analytical paper to save their life. There is skill in reading a book critically, researching a subject thoroughly, coming up with your own unique perspective on the subject, and writing a 10 (or 25, or 50) page paper that puts forth your perspective in a way that is logical, understandable, and complete. And there are many jobs out there that value good writing skills more than they value whether you know C# or not, because if you're a good writer and researcher, it almost doesn't matter what the subject is.
A recent survey by the Sci-Fi channel discovered that an increasing number of women could be included in the ranks of a new demographic it nick-named "New Geek". The research revealed that a third of the UK's total 6.9 million geeks were actually female. "Whereas once geeks were seen as solitary, embarrassing and uncool, the statistics show that New Geek is chic, popular and hugely influential," the researchers claimed.
So, it's now more common and more cool to be a geek simply because there are more *women* getting into technology.... As a woman, I find that characterization stupid.
I agree that there should be no lip service to plagiarism, but I somewhat disagree that journalism classes should be any different from, any other classes, especially those where people are studying to become publishers of any sort (science, history, sociology, and the like). Yes, journalists are a bit more public than esoteric history writers, and are more likely to influence the average person on a daily or regulary basis (people who are arguably more vulnerable than scholars to plagiarism because they may not have the skills or resources necessary to evaluate a source for its accuracy or bias), but that doesn't make journalists more above reproach than any other publisher.
These problems are all solved through basic citation, because it gives the reader both some basic information on where to go to confirm the thing being cited, and it gives the reader a chance to evaluate the legitimacy of the source.
If you cite a website properly, you include the Accessed Date. That means that if the information gets changed, you acknowlege the fact that it could have been one thing at the Accessed Date but another thing today.
Also, anyone looking at the citation of Wikipedia can say to themselves "Hey, wikipedia is contributed to by many people very freely, and may not be as great a source of information as a peer reviewed piece of work. Therefore I will give less weight to any arguments made based entirely around a citation from wikipedia, without any other sources to back it up." At this point it doesn't really matter whether you know or not that they piece that was taken from wikipedia was posted by user123 as opposed to user456.
As for encyclopedias having only a "weak copyright," I haven't heard that before. I do know that citing encyclopedias compared to citing peer reviewed articles or books written on the subject is poor form. You're better off using the encyclopedia to gain your own personal familiarity with a subject but not cite it or quote it in any way.
As for whether wikipedia should be held to the same standard, I think that they should, but perhaps in a way that acknowledges their method of having users contribute. If a passage in wikipedia is found to be plagiarized, then it should either be removed or properly cited. If possible, the user should be warned of this, and if necessary restricted from adding future content.
I do agree with you that plagiarism is not just about lifting other people's work. It's perfectly acceptable to quote verbatim what someone else wrote, as long as you properly cite it and don't pass it off as your own.
Slashdot Mirror
"Everyone needs to buy a new computer that comes pre-installed with Windows Vista. OEM. With no adequate recovery disks."
my only claim is that using the iTunes program itself to manage my music and sync it with my iPod is a lot better than drag-and-dropping files onto a music player that's just a glorified USB mass storage device
Yes, I can definitely see that iTunes's interface would be so much more convenient than dragging and dropping manually. Since of course iTunes is the only program out there that can handle syncing between devices.
It's so much more convenient to have to install iTunes on your computer rather than have it immediately recognize the player with no installation required.
It's so much more convenient to use a program and a player that have built-in functions to prevent you from transfering the music from the player onto a computer rather than just from the computer to the player (in the event that, perhaps, you have a massive computer problem forcing you to whipe your harddrive, or in the oh so unlikely event that you have more than one computer).
It's so much more convenient to have a player that can only store certain types of media.
I'm so convinced, I think I'll be returning my glorified USB mass storage device back to the manufacturer.
n/t
When you call a company for customer service you should be able to get someone able to bend the rules if circumstances warrant. The "paid parrots" of Indian call centers can't do that.
That doesn't have to do with the work going to India. That has to do with the "front line" of call centers being given little education and no latitude because they are not considered decision-makers, independent of what country they are working from. They're given a box (I'd call it a computer but that would be insulting to computers) where they can select the caller's problem from a number of pre-set problems, and the box can then call up the possible available solutions. Anything beyond those solutions has to go to a higher-up, someone who gets paid more money to be able to make the harder decisions, to fudge the rules for someone. But if they allowed any old "foot soldier" to go bending the rules whenever they felt like it, they could reach a situation that is unworkable either because they'd make poor choices when attempting to bend the rules because of a lack of and appropriate level of education, or they'd have to be paid more because their job required more thinking and adaptability rather than just being a "paid parrot."
Have you ever dealt with a customer service centre which has been outsourced to India?
Yes, and just because the work has been moved to India does not mean the work is done poorly. The major disadvantage to outsourcing to a foreign country comes from language/accent/communication issues. I have definitely had times where I had trouble communicating with a person in customer service because of that. However, if that hurdle can be overcome through education or through selectively hiring foreigners who have made an effort to learn English and learn it well, outsourcing can be a boost to customer service even from the consumer point of view. Support lines can be open 24/7 rather than the standard 9am-5pm Mon-Fri. More customer service personnel can be hired for the same cost, meaning shorter waits to speak to a live person. So if done right, outsourcing can save the company money and boost people's sense of customer service.
AltaVista is much harder to type...
I guess you never heard of www.av.com
Which would make the Z5 our last best hope for peace? That's a pretty big burden to place on a lil ol' mp3 player.
And while I'm here, let me say MOD PARENT UP FOR BABYLON 5 REFERENCE! Do it for G'Kar
I use it and like it, but 2MB of RAM is a joke. RTVscan uses 22.5MB, DefWatch uses 1.2MB, VPTray uses 3.8MB, and the update program uses 5MB, at least on mine.
Actually, a under this system it appears that a company could release a spyware-filled torrent client, and as long as they don't call it BitTorrent in any way (Let's call it "Really Awesome Torrent Client"), they are safe from prosecution related to the BitTorrent Trademark.
That's fine. Make the license charge $1.00 for all perpetuity for anybody who qualifies for a license. The point of the program is to not give licenses to people that they don't want to have 'em -- the aforementioned spyware/adware cretins. It's not about extorting these people because they do bad things... it's about witholding permission in the first place.
But if there's a situation where a small malware-free torrent program uses the BitTorrent name and doesn't or won't submit for the license or pay the fee, then BitTorrent has to make a choice whether or not to sue them. If they choose not to sue them because their product does not have malware in it and therefore is not the intended target, then BitTorrent runs the risk of opening the door for other program makers saying "But they don't enforce it universally, so that invalidates the trademark."
Allen wrench, brassiere, escalator, heroin, laundromat, and linoleum are examples of former trademarks that can no longer be exclusively used by any one party.
And yet there are still a significant number of trademarked names that are both commonly used as if they were generic terms *and* are easily enforcable as well as identified with the original companies that trademarked them.
One test is this. If you can collect a jury of 12 individuals who are all familiar with the term and also all unaware that the word is a trademark, it's unlikely that any party would prevail if they were to attempt to enforce their exclusive rights to the term.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the average jury selected for a BitTorrent case, less than half of the people in the jury have even heard the name, let alone know what it is.
A secondary aspect of the current BitTorrent legal efforts might be to prevent BT from falling into the realm of Xerox, Hoover, and Kleenex: brand names that have been co-opted into common/generic usage.
I don't see what one has to do with the other.
First, if you think Xerox, Hoover, Kleenex, and Band-Aid aren't trademarked, you're deluded, and that certainly hasn't stopped their names from becoming common usage.
Second, BitTorrent has already gone that way, and I think it's gotten to the point where you can't put that genie back in the bottle, not that anyone would even want to.
Third, trademarking something doesn't suddenly mean that you're gonna get sued if you refer to a torrent program as a BitTorrent client in your daily speech. It means that random torrent program #4546 will have a harder time officially referring to itself as a BitTorrent client. But the users can call it whatever they want.
Coming from Washington State, I *know* we have a ton more words for rain than many places elsewhere in the United States. ;-)
The OP says he's non-exempt. So unless he's mistaken, that would mean he does get overtime and is paid for every hour he works.
I don't think you guys are being fair to the OP. Being in a job you need but don't like can be very draining in time, physical energy, emotional energy, etc. While it may appear to the casual viewer that he has time to job hunt (time spent posting on slashdot, for example), the amount of energy required to post on slashdot can hardly be compared to the amount of energy needed to update a resume/cover letter, search for jobs, apply for jobs, arrange a schedule of interviews, etc: one act is a form of relaxation, the others are not.
And AIDS is a symptom, not a disease in itself. Anything that hinders the immune system could cause it, from genetics to radiation to malnutrition. That HIV is not the only possible cause of such symptoms does not prove that it is not a cause for them.
True, AIDS is not a disease in itself. And there are other immunodeficiency conditions out there. But those other conditions have their own names (or if they haven't been discovered already, will have their own names). AIDS is specifically the name to describe the immunodeficiency condition caused by having HIV. Just because two conditions have similary symptoms and appearances does not mean that they are "the same" if it is known that they have two separate and distinct causes. The causes are just as important as the effects.
It could well be that HIV is an opportunistic infection that happens when some unknown virus causes AIDS. Or that HIV works in tandem with another virus to cause AIDS.
Actually, it's the other way around. "Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (or acronym AIDS or Aids), is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aids
HIV is the infection, and is generally asymptomatic. AIDS is what happens when the HIV damage is so bad that you start to get symptoms. The way that one AIDS case manifests can be very different from another because basically what happens is the AIDS sufferer's immune system is so damaged that opportunistic infections start to take over, infections that someone with a healthy immune system can combat, often with little or no symptoms.
Sure, but that it irrlevant, it doesn't change the fact that the humanities is the easiest path to a degree, the path of least resistance. The CS degree still has a year or two of Calculus to weed people out. You might go CS for money, but you generally don't go CS to get a degree in "something".
Only in your opinion. There are of course people out there who find it much easier to deal with numbers, code, and computers than to deal with words, paragraphs, people, etc. It's entirely dependent on where your strengths and weaknesses lie.
Just as it could be said that many CS majors entered their field because they were simply following the money.
I don't disagree with this. The humanities are fields where many people do not end up working directly in that field. But that doesn't mean that what they are doing is worthless. They are learning writing and analytical skills (theoretically) that will enhance their job performance and their personal marketability independent of what career they eventually choose. Those in the humanities have a wider range of eventual careers to choose from, IMO, than CS majors. Of course there are always freeloaders, but every field of study has those.
I can't say because I didn't take poly sci, but I'm not sure that's fair.
But that's not to say that the field is the reason for that. That's like saying CS is easy because so many people breeze through it by "outsourcing."
..a computer programmer actually produces something useful, whereas alot of other majors (political science, business, communications - looking at you here) are full of people shoveling bullshit in the form of shifting paradigms for strategized markitecture. It does an extreme disservice to the human race to reward ignorance and apathy, yet we as a nation do it every single day and we are going to pay sooner than later.
/. article! Now that's apathy.
I could say the exact same thing, but change "computer programmer" to "humanities majors" and your so called "other majors" with "computer programmers." There are a lot of writers out there that change the course of history with their words (not code), and there are a lot of computer programmers out there that produce crappy, holey, useless, insecure programs. As for "ignorance and apathy," your implication that those in the humanities have cornered the market on it and that computer science is free of it is bogus. Just look at the title of this
I realize there's been some CS bashing in this thread and you're probably feeling defensive, but I'm offended by your characterization of the humanities. There are more than a few CS majors that couldn't write an analytical paper to save their life. There is skill in reading a book critically, researching a subject thoroughly, coming up with your own unique perspective on the subject, and writing a 10 (or 25, or 50) page paper that puts forth your perspective in a way that is logical, understandable, and complete. And there are many jobs out there that value good writing skills more than they value whether you know C# or not, because if you're a good writer and researcher, it almost doesn't matter what the subject is.
A recent survey by the Sci-Fi channel discovered that an increasing number of women could be included in the ranks of a new demographic it nick-named "New Geek". The research revealed that a third of the UK's total 6.9 million geeks were actually female. "Whereas once geeks were seen as solitary, embarrassing and uncool, the statistics show that New Geek is chic, popular and hugely influential," the researchers claimed.
So, it's now more common and more cool to be a geek simply because there are more *women* getting into technology.... As a woman, I find that characterization stupid.
Devastating plague, anyone?
I agree that there should be no lip service to plagiarism, but I somewhat disagree that journalism classes should be any different from, any other classes, especially those where people are studying to become publishers of any sort (science, history, sociology, and the like). Yes, journalists are a bit more public than esoteric history writers, and are more likely to influence the average person on a daily or regulary basis (people who are arguably more vulnerable than scholars to plagiarism because they may not have the skills or resources necessary to evaluate a source for its accuracy or bias), but that doesn't make journalists more above reproach than any other publisher.
These problems are all solved through basic citation, because it gives the reader both some basic information on where to go to confirm the thing being cited, and it gives the reader a chance to evaluate the legitimacy of the source.
If you cite a website properly, you include the Accessed Date. That means that if the information gets changed, you acknowlege the fact that it could have been one thing at the Accessed Date but another thing today.
Also, anyone looking at the citation of Wikipedia can say to themselves "Hey, wikipedia is contributed to by many people very freely, and may not be as great a source of information as a peer reviewed piece of work. Therefore I will give less weight to any arguments made based entirely around a citation from wikipedia, without any other sources to back it up." At this point it doesn't really matter whether you know or not that they piece that was taken from wikipedia was posted by user123 as opposed to user456.
As for encyclopedias having only a "weak copyright," I haven't heard that before. I do know that citing encyclopedias compared to citing peer reviewed articles or books written on the subject is poor form. You're better off using the encyclopedia to gain your own personal familiarity with a subject but not cite it or quote it in any way.
As for whether wikipedia should be held to the same standard, I think that they should, but perhaps in a way that acknowledges their method of having users contribute. If a passage in wikipedia is found to be plagiarized, then it should either be removed or properly cited. If possible, the user should be warned of this, and if necessary restricted from adding future content.
I do agree with you that plagiarism is not just about lifting other people's work. It's perfectly acceptable to quote verbatim what someone else wrote, as long as you properly cite it and don't pass it off as your own.