I believe the word "profits" is accurate. My understanding is that it is common for unknown bands to get a 5-figure check in exchange for coming in to cut their album and that they don't earn more until they are able to earn that value for the record. On top of that, the revenues are reserved for covering all the bands that do NOT cover these costs. If there are 9 unsuccessful bands for everyone that brings in 6-figures... then the record is left paying all those other guys from the revenues and they need to wait until there are profits to pay the band who hit it big.
IANAM-AID-HARD (I am not a musician and I don't have a record deal) so don't hold me to this.
Re:I think someone has a sig relevant to this news
on
The 700MHz Question
·
· Score: 1
Well, communism is commerce. The two words have the same origin. It provides benefits of collaboration amongst countrymen than capitalism doesn't. Not to say that competition is a bad thing. All things being equal, more innovation comes from competition then collaboration. That said... eventually everything worth innovating will be completely innovated competition will fail. When that happens, it will become important for the government to control the commerce.
So yeah, this has always been a sig that has made me smile.
This is a stupid argument that I see used over and over whenever there is discussion about open and closed software. Of course businesses want to make money... they need to pay themselves. They benefit if they are profitable.
What the "dream world" mentality glazes over is that all companies are fundamentally composes of by businessmen, engineers, scientists, and even lawyers who all need to look after themselves. Can Nokia employees be better able to take care of themselves if their technology was open or closed? Market share, I predict, would increase. Quality would increase.
The doomsday scenario that a business will give up its profits by promoting Open Source is a fallacy. The article even alludes to Apple's embrace of Open Source (albeit BSD-based unhappy sharing Open Source) to develop OS X. I don't know the details of what Kernel and drivers are in OS X, but I am fairly confident that they didn't originate in Apple.
So, throw away your "dream world" argument. You are living in a dream world if you think Openness *isn't* viable.
You forgot taxes ($300-500 a month), telephone+cable+internet service ($100-200 a month), clothes ($50 per month per person), car/transportation costs ($100-300 per commuter). Also, is savings a consideration? I've been told saving $200 should be a goal.
Considering the things you mentioned... food is a requirement ($100-150 per month per person). Gadgets, extra stuff for the kids, and repairs on the house are really impossible to estimate.
Now... if $2300 is the baseline for all this... Following the "cheap" estimates from above... 300+100+(3*50)+(2*200)+200+(3*100)=$1,450. This leaves a lower-middle class living standard for a family with one kid, with enough left over for annual unexpected costs.
Following the "expensive" estimates from above (which are by no means "high-end" upper-middle class estimates)... 500+200+(4*50)+(2*300)+200+(4*150)=$2300.
Bang! You've got two kids, but no money to repair the house.
Also, it occurs to me that even with the extra considerations, things like heat/electricity and health case were not accounted for. So, YES... for the class of citizens who are buying a home with a mortgage of $200+k... $60k is lower-middle class.
Next up, Zero-click shopping by using MOUSE_OVERs.
Brilliant! After that... retrieve Billing information from cookies on the users system which were established by other eCommerce vendors and use that information to trigger a sale then the user simple LOADS a page with something you are selling. The "View/Buy" system will make millions!
Changing viewpoints isn't such a bad thing when new information concludes that your current viewpoint is wrong. What really bothers me is how the current American administration marches forward with their "principles" despite a vast quantity of evidence that suggests they are wrong.
That's corruption without a lack of a spine... and it is even more dangerous.
There is possibly quite a bit more 100 million video game systems out there. Yet if video games turned people violent, then there's be at least 1-20 million murders a year related to video games, providing that is 1-20% conversion rate. yet the fact is that quite possibly 0.00004% video gamers turn criminally violent.
There are over 17,000,000 registered gun users in the USA alone, yet we dont have murder numbers that even come close to that. 99.99901% of gun crime is done by Illegaly obtained fire arms. I've known many gamers who play violent games and own real guns. Yet somehow they have failed to kill anyone.
You can speculate and throw around ideas all you want, but when you turn you thoughts into numbers you need to provide at least some kind of citation. A simple Wikipedia source (which in itself references other sources) shines some light on the subject... but what I really want to know is where you got the "99.99901%". For intents and purposes... that data translates to 1 death from firearms out of every 10,000 deaths from firearms is caused by a "legally obtained" gun.
I doubt this is true, and cite the WV tragedy where ~30 people unfortunately lost there lives from a gun which their fellow student obtained through legal means (as reported by the media). To balance your claim, some 290,000 "illegally obtained" cases must exist during this calendar year... and in my years I've never seen data to support that.
Real value is power--the ability to control other people (aka labor). Whether the medium is gold coins or paper money or tootsie pops, what you are trading when you exchange money is labor.
What about Soma? Now, who wants to go on a vacation?
Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
Unless you are some kind of superstar, chances are you don't get a "contract". Employment is more of a 'gentlemen's agreement' and so when the bigger more powerful gentleman (the Company) decides to break their agreement, there isn't much for the lowly employee (You) to do but look for a new job and hope for better results.
Meanwhile, more people in similar situations fill the void left by you in the (bad) Company and the cycle spirals downward and out of control until simply having a stable job (even if the conditions suck) is a reality.
There are a few good companies out there (I actually earn OT, but just regular time and not time and a half)... so best of luck to you.
I blame my generation (baby boomers) for the expectation of 50-60 hour weeks in IT. Screw that.
I blame your generation for a lot more than long hours in IT, but thanks for recognizing that the overall mentality of boomers lacks the "quality of life" balance that you talked about in your own post.
And also thank you for being an educated bus driver. Where I'm from in the NYC Metro area... bus drivers routinely cut off other motorists and generally cause a big distraction on the road. What's worse... because of the nature of the NYC Metro area busses are frequently empty half the time depending on which side of rush hour it is. If they had put a little bit of thought into it, I may even be able to use public transportation to effectively get around the area.
By the way... because of boomers, *my* generation is scheduled to pay into Social Security for the next 40 years and then retire right as the money runs out. When you figure out a good way for me to fund your retirement and sock away enough funds for myself... let me know.
I'm in the same boat you are, where I prefer open source but will admit that MSO has some advantages. I've never experienced loss or slowness during operation of OO Writer. I do note that on a Windows platform, that OO Writer takes longer to startup than MS Word. I believe the reason for this is optimizing code that MS has inserted because they are the Gods of their proprietary software and this gives them to right. Similarly, OO Writer starts up faster on a Linux platform than MS Word.
See that, now? It is a joke and is also pointing out a HUGE flaw with MS software. It can only generally be expected to run on (supported) versions of Windows. Sure, in the past there was a Mac port of MSO... but quite frankly the whole "single environment" situation makes it 3-times easier to write the code.
Also, since you mentioned that you are a creative person, take a look at my manuscript that is linked in my sig. It was written entirely with OO Writer... just so you know that I have some experience on the platform (though the difference _may_ be that the OS which I used was Fedora Core 4 and later Fedora 6).
People should listen to the legitimate requests of law enforcement officers without question--such as "Put down the knife and step away from the baby!" In case you haven't seen the actual incident (no knife, no baby) there are some YouTube videos linked in an earlier submission.
I would also argue that "Stop talking and step away from the microphone" is NOT a legitimate request. Not in a free society as long as the person at the microphone is not trying to incite a mob, at least.
Can anyone out there make a convincing case that Calc or Gnumeric are just as good as Excel, even for advanced users? I've tried to do complicated stuff in Calc, but never for too long -- it just gets painful.
You lose. You answered the wrong question. You receive +0 points.
Here's a somewhat trivial thing that I found Calc did right, that Excel fudged up. I could copy from a table online and paste it into Calc in spreadsheet form. In Excel, it refused to go in despite various "Paste Special" attempts. I'm not going to say that this always fails in Excel - but during the specific instance I had last week - I was utterly stunned when (a) Excel didn't get it, then (b) Calc got it on the first try.
For me, this is a reason that OO.o needs to be installed because sometimes it is invaluable to throw some data in and analyze it by running some formulas on it. At the same time, Excel is useful because of its macros. I wish it weren't so useful. I would rather see things implemented as LAMP Web Applications with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface... but it is much cheaper for a company to hire an intern to produce an "Excel Productivity Application" and the end result is the same - data gets inputted and stored or sent to where it needs to go.
Of the various OO software, though, Impress (Presentation Software) is the piece that is the least mature. In 1.1, it was unusable. By version 2.x, it is much nicer. In fairness, anytime you create a presentation from scratch, unless it is really simple, you end up spending *some* time tweaking the formatting options no matter which tool you use, though.
Given the context of the article, which had a heavy slant towards Orwellian sensationalism, and the statements that were made about "mind-reading"... your scientific analysis over the possibilities of telepathy are a bit misplaced.
I forget exact examples from 1984, but for the most part children were indoctrinated to tattle on their parents when they complained about things in private, then 2+2=5. There was no mind-reading (if I recall correctly) but just the constant fear that you can't trust anybody.
Ultimately, the device which is the subject of this article will be no more helpful than a lie-detector test. The end result is that you'll have a metric that might suggest that somebody is excited. So calm down with your sensible, scientific ranting... or else they will find you!
Railroads and electricity made much bigger changes in people's lives.
A worthy point.
Most of the communication things you can do today, you could do in 1950, but more expensively.
The operator who patched your phone call through in 1950 loved spending 40 hours a week handling calls. And the people running the infrastructure for the telegraph industry were every bit as proficient as the TCP/IP protocol. And let's not forget to appreciate the abilities of the men and women at the US Post Office who could sort a hundred thousand parcels a day, comparable to the millions of packages handled daily by FedEx and UPS.
My point is that things are much more efficient even though the same basic structure exists.
Your point about expense, on the other hand, should be taken up with the government. But for their efforts, they broke up AT&T in 1984 without which (I would argue) you wouldn't have cell phones. They also funded the basic research that lead to the global interconnected network of computer systems.
All-in-all, I would say that the way you dismiss recent developments in communication is naive... unless you fundamental belief is that we are better off living within 50 miles of where we were born (which is a very feudal and sheltered belief)... and I don't think that's what you were trying to say.
I can't use GPL'd code in any of my commercial products, so I many times have to implement something myself even though a GPL'd implementation exists.
The reason that you need to rewrite code previously written in GPL is because of the nature of the license. Everybody will have to rewrite everything (or license it) because BSD doesn't support sharing - and so the library of shared sources that are available under BSD is not nearly as large as what is available under GPL.
As you point out, this is a boon for you and me as Software Engineers... but economically the amount of rework that is needed is absurdly inefficient.
As an engineer, I'd rather improve and give back somebodies code rather than simply re-coding it (and possibly missing important corner cases). As an economist, I realize that part of the core business for Software Engineers is doing things over and over again (just like plumbers, electricians, lawyers, farmers, and doctors).
At the end of the day... the war between the public good and the commercial good is an interesting one.
One particular user of the internet didn't get the 13 million e-mail quota that they mentioned. After only ONE e-mail, his service was degraded significantly...
I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
Just to clarify, copyleft ("SA" in CC terms) does not prevent commercial use at all. The problem here is the noncommercial ("NC") clause, which is something completely different.
In software terms, Share-Alike is in the spirit of the GPL and leaving off that clause is in the spirit of BSD. Commercial vs. Non-commercial, on the other hand, is very unique in that even GPL never makes any attempt to stop organizations from using the product to earn profits (as long as they continue to share and play by the rules of GPL).
Thus, the NC clause is very restrictive because the authors retain the sole right to profit from the product and (when used with the GPL-like Share-Alike clause) unanimous consent is needed to approve a re-license.
What would be superior, in my opinion, would be a method for author's to be able to generate just (as in "justice") compensation based on the value of the work they produce so the users can pay fairly and authors can continue to build value in the works they have created (or create new works)... but the world is not just and distributors have always created an unfair balance between authors and their audience.
This is the problem here... the cost of running the servers (the method of distribution) pushes the content into the hands of a Commercial entity.
I recall that his comments on/. two weeks ago said that he really enjoyed seeing his work on VH-1. Plus, isn't it the spirit of/. to promote Openness and that *includes* letting Viacom and TimeWarner use the works we've created.
Now... if only they'd open up and let us do the same with the work they produce (or at the very least openly distribute their work on BitTorrent).
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the word "profits" is accurate. My understanding is that it is common for unknown bands to get a 5-figure check in exchange for coming in to cut their album and that they don't earn more until they are able to earn that value for the record. On top of that, the revenues are reserved for covering all the bands that do NOT cover these costs. If there are 9 unsuccessful bands for everyone that brings in 6-figures... then the record is left paying all those other guys from the revenues and they need to wait until there are profits to pay the band who hit it big.
IANAM-AID-HARD (I am not a musician and I don't have a record deal) so don't hold me to this.
Well, communism is commerce. The two words have the same origin. It provides benefits of collaboration amongst countrymen than capitalism doesn't. Not to say that competition is a bad thing. All things being equal, more innovation comes from competition then collaboration. That said... eventually everything worth innovating will be completely innovated competition will fail. When that happens, it will become important for the government to control the commerce.
So yeah, this has always been a sig that has made me smile.
This is a stupid argument that I see used over and over whenever there is discussion about open and closed software. Of course businesses want to make money... they need to pay themselves. They benefit if they are profitable.
What the "dream world" mentality glazes over is that all companies are fundamentally composes of by businessmen, engineers, scientists, and even lawyers who all need to look after themselves. Can Nokia employees be better able to take care of themselves if their technology was open or closed? Market share, I predict, would increase. Quality would increase.
The doomsday scenario that a business will give up its profits by promoting Open Source is a fallacy. The article even alludes to Apple's embrace of Open Source (albeit BSD-based unhappy sharing Open Source) to develop OS X. I don't know the details of what Kernel and drivers are in OS X, but I am fairly confident that they didn't originate in Apple.
So, throw away your "dream world" argument. You are living in a dream world if you think Openness *isn't* viable.
You forgot taxes ($300-500 a month), telephone+cable+internet service ($100-200 a month), clothes ($50 per month per person), car/transportation costs ($100-300 per commuter). Also, is savings a consideration? I've been told saving $200 should be a goal.
Considering the things you mentioned... food is a requirement ($100-150 per month per person). Gadgets, extra stuff for the kids, and repairs on the house are really impossible to estimate.
Now... if $2300 is the baseline for all this... Following the "cheap" estimates from above... 300+100+(3*50)+(2*200)+200+(3*100)=$1,450. This leaves a lower-middle class living standard for a family with one kid, with enough left over for annual unexpected costs.
Following the "expensive" estimates from above (which are by no means "high-end" upper-middle class estimates)... 500+200+(4*50)+(2*300)+200+(4*150)=$2300.
Bang! You've got two kids, but no money to repair the house.
Also, it occurs to me that even with the extra considerations, things like heat/electricity and health case were not accounted for. So, YES... for the class of citizens who are buying a home with a mortgage of $200+k... $60k is lower-middle class.
Yeah... the answer is 100,000. Right?
Brilliant! After that... retrieve Billing information from cookies on the users system which were established by other eCommerce vendors and use that information to trigger a sale then the user simple LOADS a page with something you are selling. The "View/Buy" system will make millions!
Good start... but you forget a few....
5. Mandatory tax breaks for men ages 18-35.
6. Make it illegal to broadcast advertisements which are objectionable (that is, where law #2 is broken).
7. Euthanasia for rebels who object to any of these laws.
Changing viewpoints isn't such a bad thing when new information concludes that your current viewpoint is wrong. What really bothers me is how the current American administration marches forward with their "principles" despite a vast quantity of evidence that suggests they are wrong.
That's corruption without a lack of a spine... and it is even more dangerous.
You can speculate and throw around ideas all you want, but when you turn you thoughts into numbers you need to provide at least some kind of citation. A simple Wikipedia source (which in itself references other sources) shines some light on the subject... but what I really want to know is where you got the "99.99901%". For intents and purposes... that data translates to 1 death from firearms out of every 10,000 deaths from firearms is caused by a "legally obtained" gun.
I doubt this is true, and cite the WV tragedy where ~30 people unfortunately lost there lives from a gun which their fellow student obtained through legal means (as reported by the media). To balance your claim, some 290,000 "illegally obtained" cases must exist during this calendar year... and in my years I've never seen data to support that.
What about Soma? Now, who wants to go on a vacation?
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/quotes
Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
Funniest thing I've read all day... and you say that this occupation actually earns enough money to buy boats and mansions? Where can I sign up?
Unless you are some kind of superstar, chances are you don't get a "contract". Employment is more of a 'gentlemen's agreement' and so when the bigger more powerful gentleman (the Company) decides to break their agreement, there isn't much for the lowly employee (You) to do but look for a new job and hope for better results.
Meanwhile, more people in similar situations fill the void left by you in the (bad) Company and the cycle spirals downward and out of control until simply having a stable job (even if the conditions suck) is a reality.
There are a few good companies out there (I actually earn OT, but just regular time and not time and a half)... so best of luck to you.
I blame your generation for a lot more than long hours in IT, but thanks for recognizing that the overall mentality of boomers lacks the "quality of life" balance that you talked about in your own post.
And also thank you for being an educated bus driver. Where I'm from in the NYC Metro area... bus drivers routinely cut off other motorists and generally cause a big distraction on the road. What's worse... because of the nature of the NYC Metro area busses are frequently empty half the time depending on which side of rush hour it is. If they had put a little bit of thought into it, I may even be able to use public transportation to effectively get around the area.
By the way... because of boomers, *my* generation is scheduled to pay into Social Security for the next 40 years and then retire right as the money runs out. When you figure out a good way for me to fund your retirement and sock away enough funds for myself... let me know.
I'm in the same boat you are, where I prefer open source but will admit that MSO has some advantages. I've never experienced loss or slowness during operation of OO Writer. I do note that on a Windows platform, that OO Writer takes longer to startup than MS Word. I believe the reason for this is optimizing code that MS has inserted because they are the Gods of their proprietary software and this gives them to right. Similarly, OO Writer starts up faster on a Linux platform than MS Word.
See that, now? It is a joke and is also pointing out a HUGE flaw with MS software. It can only generally be expected to run on (supported) versions of Windows. Sure, in the past there was a Mac port of MSO... but quite frankly the whole "single environment" situation makes it 3-times easier to write the code.
Also, since you mentioned that you are a creative person, take a look at my manuscript that is linked in my sig. It was written entirely with OO Writer... just so you know that I have some experience on the platform (though the difference _may_ be that the OS which I used was Fedora Core 4 and later Fedora 6).
I would also argue that "Stop talking and step away from the microphone" is NOT a legitimate request. Not in a free society as long as the person at the microphone is not trying to incite a mob, at least.
You lose. You answered the wrong question. You receive +0 points.
Here's a somewhat trivial thing that I found Calc did right, that Excel fudged up. I could copy from a table online and paste it into Calc in spreadsheet form. In Excel, it refused to go in despite various "Paste Special" attempts. I'm not going to say that this always fails in Excel - but during the specific instance I had last week - I was utterly stunned when (a) Excel didn't get it, then (b) Calc got it on the first try.
For me, this is a reason that OO.o needs to be installed because sometimes it is invaluable to throw some data in and analyze it by running some formulas on it. At the same time, Excel is useful because of its macros. I wish it weren't so useful. I would rather see things implemented as LAMP Web Applications with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface... but it is much cheaper for a company to hire an intern to produce an "Excel Productivity Application" and the end result is the same - data gets inputted and stored or sent to where it needs to go.
Of the various OO software, though, Impress (Presentation Software) is the piece that is the least mature. In 1.1, it was unusable. By version 2.x, it is much nicer. In fairness, anytime you create a presentation from scratch, unless it is really simple, you end up spending *some* time tweaking the formatting options no matter which tool you use, though.
Given the context of the article, which had a heavy slant towards Orwellian sensationalism, and the statements that were made about "mind-reading"... your scientific analysis over the possibilities of telepathy are a bit misplaced.
I forget exact examples from 1984, but for the most part children were indoctrinated to tattle on their parents when they complained about things in private, then 2+2=5. There was no mind-reading (if I recall correctly) but just the constant fear that you can't trust anybody.
Ultimately, the device which is the subject of this article will be no more helpful than a lie-detector test. The end result is that you'll have a metric that might suggest that somebody is excited. So calm down with your sensible, scientific ranting... or else they will find you!
A worthy point.
Most of the communication things you can do today, you could do in 1950, but more expensively.The operator who patched your phone call through in 1950 loved spending 40 hours a week handling calls. And the people running the infrastructure for the telegraph industry were every bit as proficient as the TCP/IP protocol. And let's not forget to appreciate the abilities of the men and women at the US Post Office who could sort a hundred thousand parcels a day, comparable to the millions of packages handled daily by FedEx and UPS.
My point is that things are much more efficient even though the same basic structure exists.
Your point about expense, on the other hand, should be taken up with the government. But for their efforts, they broke up AT&T in 1984 without which (I would argue) you wouldn't have cell phones. They also funded the basic research that lead to the global interconnected network of computer systems.
All-in-all, I would say that the way you dismiss recent developments in communication is naive... unless you fundamental belief is that we are better off living within 50 miles of where we were born (which is a very feudal and sheltered belief)... and I don't think that's what you were trying to say.
The reason that you need to rewrite code previously written in GPL is because of the nature of the license. Everybody will have to rewrite everything (or license it) because BSD doesn't support sharing - and so the library of shared sources that are available under BSD is not nearly as large as what is available under GPL.
As you point out, this is a boon for you and me as Software Engineers... but economically the amount of rework that is needed is absurdly inefficient.
As an engineer, I'd rather improve and give back somebodies code rather than simply re-coding it (and possibly missing important corner cases). As an economist, I realize that part of the core business for Software Engineers is doing things over and over again (just like plumbers, electricians, lawyers, farmers, and doctors).
At the end of the day... the war between the public good and the commercial good is an interesting one.
One particular user of the internet didn't get the 13 million e-mail quota that they mentioned. After only ONE e-mail, his service was degraded significantly...
I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.-Senator Ted Stevens. :)
In software terms, Share-Alike is in the spirit of the GPL and leaving off that clause is in the spirit of BSD. Commercial vs. Non-commercial, on the other hand, is very unique in that even GPL never makes any attempt to stop organizations from using the product to earn profits (as long as they continue to share and play by the rules of GPL).
Thus, the NC clause is very restrictive because the authors retain the sole right to profit from the product and (when used with the GPL-like Share-Alike clause) unanimous consent is needed to approve a re-license.
What would be superior, in my opinion, would be a method for author's to be able to generate just (as in "justice") compensation based on the value of the work they produce so the users can pay fairly and authors can continue to build value in the works they have created (or create new works)... but the world is not just and distributors have always created an unfair balance between authors and their audience.
This is the problem here... the cost of running the servers (the method of distribution) pushes the content into the hands of a Commercial entity.
I recall that his comments on /. two weeks ago said that he really enjoyed seeing his work on VH-1. Plus, isn't it the spirit of /. to promote Openness and that *includes* letting Viacom and TimeWarner use the works we've created.
Now... if only they'd open up and let us do the same with the work they produce (or at the very least openly distribute their work on BitTorrent).
Such wishful thinking...
Don't show up! WooHoo!