It secures for unlimited times to parties other than authors, like publishers and agencies, exclusive rights.
This is brilliently stated. The problem is the publishers! But it takes two to tango and so there is an indirect problem with authors who deal with publishers who claim exclusive rights!
But authors who refuse to deal with publishers have other problems: collecting revenue and distribution their work. Control of distribution in the face of collecting revenue is a lesser problem... but this article basically says that publishers no longer have control over their distributions, so we can concentrate of the central issues of revenue and distribution.
After putting some thought into these two problems, there is one solution I that I have put forward which is the method that I intend to use to publish my own work. The solution is actually a compromise of control that is called Open Publication.
===
Did anybody else think that this article was a parody of RIAA and MPAA? When I googled for "SIIA" I was shocked to find a professional looking site, styled after the RIAA-litigation-happy-lawyer-story-page.
I pay Ameritrade to operate servers and software that handles my trades, and the administrative overhead that goes along with it. They have some brick and mortar operations (because of their acquisition of TD Waterhouse) which add to that overhead, but costs have gone down since they move went through.
When I execute my trades... it is a fixed cost that has already been paid for to run the systems that transfer money and the shares of stock into my account. With stock brokers, the costs are variable and I pay per hour to support the activities that a broker needs to go through to make my trade. He uses shrouded knowledge of the inner workings of the system to manage my money the way I tell him (or her) to. That sounds like a middle-man.
Yes... Ameritrade is in the middle of the transaction that I make when I buy or sell stock, but there is not a "man" in the middle. It is all electronic and automatic. Automation is a great thing. Automation will drive innovation and anybody who doesn't understand the risks that Software can be used to Automate their job is foolish. Middle-"men" are the prime target for automation because they are no value (or minimal value) added.
If you build a system that Automates real estate brokers out of existence for everybody but the super-rich (who can afford it anyway).... you would become a very, very rich man. To a certain extent, Craigslist, Zillow, and Trulia HELP this process because they offer more transparency to buyers. But brokers are not dumb and these services are often flooded by adverts from the brokers themselves... so truly removing them from the equation is actually a monumental task.
I was in the market to buy a property (condo/house/co-op) about a year ago and I actually did do much of the legwork myself. I worked to understand the process. I figured out what would need to have been done to go through with all the "terrible paperwork" and ultimately, because I understood the market, I decided that ownership was the wrong move for me last year. In the meantime... the market is tanking and I can laugh because there are significant long term factors which will ensure that the market continues to tank for the next 5 to 7 years. All because I actually took the time to understand things, I saved myself from making a terrible decision.
It is generally agreed that buying a house is "the most important financial move you will make during your life", so I would argue that it is worth 5-10 hours a week for 3 or 4 months in your life to research and understand the process. If more people put in that much due diligence, it would be much easier to find information for Local/State/Federal regulations because more information would be freely circulated instead of being guarded by the self-interested brokers who need the details to be shrouded so that can keep on keeping on.
Re: Investing
As for Ameritrade, I am a satisfied customer of their services. They have very nicely built an affordable service that lets me connect directly with sellers (or buyers), for a reasonable transaction fee. The removal of brokers from stock trading that they help enable pleases me greatly.
I disagree with you about brokers. They are middlemen and they exist only to serve themselves. The world needs less self serving middlemen. If only everybody else knew the very basic amount of information that allows many middlemen to earn their living, I feel we would all be better off...
Now concerning the topic of this article which has nothing to do with dentists or brokers... have you seen Transformers? If this movie didn't put the mythology of the "Computer Hacker" back ten years, I don't know what would.
Re:This is relatively benign ...
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 1
what's privacy in the face of financial incentives?
You would give up your privacy if you could save a buck? Wow... just wow. I guess the next thing that you'll tell me is that 2+2 equals 5 and that you are on the fast track for a promotion to an easier job where you'll have to work less hours and get paid more. Sounds like an exciting opportunity...
*This* is exactly the reason why the story (rightfully) got the 1984 tag.
VMware doesn't (as far as I understand it, anyway) use Linux "in their product" by the usual sense of "in".
My understanding is that the accusation is that if you compare the differences in some version of the Linux Kernel found on kernel.org with the vmkernel that you would find significant portions that match.
Now, because VMware is Closed Source, it is impossible to run this comparison. You would need a copy of the vmkernel source and the comparison from kernel.org to prove anything... but if VMware is infringing then by the clauses in the GPL they would have to license the vmkernel under the GPL - which would hurt their business, but be a good thing for Open Source.
I thought by simply making the claim that you are using truthiness and faith in your argument that it meant you *were* thinking logically...
How can an opposing pundent argue with somebody who is being truthy? Is saying you are using truthiness a great argument, or is it the greatest argument?
I thought Microsoft's business model was "Partner with Innovative Companies, and Profit from their Destruction"?
Isn't that where MS-DOS came from?
God, I hope MS-Linux isn't around the corner... (not that there isn't anything that is stopping them from producing their own distribution and selling support (a la RHEL) because of the freedoms that are in the GPL, but they'd find some way to make it "less free".:(
You, sir, are on to something. If only we could cause a cluster of Windows Servers to overheat and burn a couple of people. A woman got a couple of hundred thousand dollars for burning herself with McDonald's coffee... With litagation we can shakedown the entire MS monopoly.:)
Assuming you aren't trolling... I was referring to recent conversations with people who wanted "Photoshop" and wouldn't give a second thought to the comparable "Graphical Image Manipulation Program" that doesn't have the $500 price tag.
If somebody can't afford "Photoshop", the option they choose shouldn't be to run an unlicensed copy of it by using a cracked version that they downloaded through BitTorrent. The option they choose should be "run something they can afford".
Returning to the topic of the article... a Ph.D who proposes a Spam Advertising Campaign as a way to run a business is not technically suggesting something that is illegal/immoral/without precedent. However, where the line is crossed is the fact that spammers don't own (notice I didn't say "Pwn") the computers that are being used to send the spam. If they did (which assumes internet security were actually robust and users could actually use operating systems that protected them from infection) then spamming would cost a lot more... you'd see a lot less of it... and it would be better targeted (instead of hoping for 0.001% hit rates).
I hope your friend's Ph.D isn't in a computer science related field. It seems logical that an acceptance of this would infect the rest of the world, though. Many businesses have enjoyed moderate success by sending out "mass-mail" through the USPS for years.
In regards to your other point...
Spamming has become so standard and everyday that people don't even give it a second look now and just consider it an annoyance at worst.
I have found it increasingly annoying dealing with people who run pirated software because "they couldn't afford to pay for it". This "don't give it a second thought" mentality is, IMHO, something that should be reversed. Just because technology enables somebody to do something... it doesn't mean they should.
I actually have the patent for "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer". Please cease and desist discussion on the topic or I will have to sue you.
Now, you can license the qualities for a "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer"... but it will cost you.:)
(See, the patent system is working perfectly fine)
I agree that "creative documentation" has its place as a teaching tool for people who are looking to get started in a particular new technology. A lack of documentation is a barrier for any new user who wants to "dig into" the code.
It is a very narrow-minded view that thinks documentation should list the error messages that the code throws when problems occur and provide easily Google-able codes to search for an answer. A lot of the time, even this fails because (and I'm looking at Oracle here) the most frequently thrown errors are "Catch-all" statements that something outside the software in question is screwed up.
All of the women around me are the "intelligent, strong, independent women" that feminists talk about. Growing up around them, and then being exposed to almost nothing but "normal women" at a liberal arts college made me realize that the personality difference is hard-wired.
Well, while attending a geeky technical institute I can say that many women fit the "intelligent/strong" description and many others fit the "emotional/catty" description.
At my job, most of the women are top-notch and very professional. They read more tabloid/entertainment news in a day than I do in a month... but who cares? They get their job done and they do a damned good job at it.
I'm not really sure how my job could have filtered out the "emotional/catty" women, but maybe the truth is that there are still a lot of organizations that offer the "wrong environment" so that "intelligent/strong" women who know better find jobs elsewhere....
Don't forget about the "investment" in the upgraded system. If shit hits the fan in 6 month, the PHB can whine that they spent his annual budget on the.NET upgrade and that he would rather spend NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET fixing the problems with the current system than take the risk of switching to uncharted territory.
No... the biggest disadvantage of OSS is "the learning curve" and a team that has gotten past that WILL BE more productive than a team who are relying of proprietary systems. The main reason? Team A who requires licenses for proprietary software needs to allocate x% of there annual budget for software and thus, has x% less every year for hardware upgrades. Team B meanwhile has a budget that can be spent upgrading the hardware servers, workstations, and networks. Also, VI/emacs is a much more powerful environment to program in than Visual Studio. Quite frankly, I'm surprised we've never seen an iteration of Clippy in VS, "Oh, it looks like you are trying to define a new class, would you like me to insert a default constructor?":)
If the big technology deals really are being made on the golf course, don't you think Red Hat would be just as capable of wining and dining your executive board?
Maybe what the FSF needs to do is start buying golf courses. I can imagine a scheduling system that let's anybody who wants to enjoy fair use of the course and a volunteer staff of the clubs members who can maintain the landscaping during the days they don't play. As a not-for-profit, wouldn't taxes on the land be waived by the state? This way, businessmen can truly bring a sense of openness and community to the golf course to get some good Linux deals made. Also, it would be fun to see your boss wearing a suit and tie and riding a John Deere lawnmower back-and-forth trimming the fairway on the back nine.:)
Does the SWORD do any of that? They sure look like RC mini-tanks to me.
I didn't RTFA, but if the "Robots" that they are talking about are Tanks with cameras and RC control, I would have the same complaint.
The fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are incredibly interesting areas of science that have huge potential for raising our standards of living by eliminating dangerous/unhealthy jobs (mining operations, landfill operations, anything that deals with toxic chemicals) and providing aid for the medical community (diagnosis, treatment of patients).
If the military wants to insist that remotely controlled "Unmanned Vehicles" are "Robots" in order to create a diluted euphemism so they can more easily pass their budgets through Congress, then I object. Despite this, without real "autonomous" robots, it is ultimately a good thing to let machines replace humans on the battlefield. It saves lives... and nobody would object to that.
Remote Controlled does not a Robot make. You are insulting a huge class of Computer Engineers who work towards developing sensors and processing algorithms/abilities so that machines can operate without human intervention.
The Veterans Educational Assistance Program (VEAP) is available if you first entered active duty between January 1, 1977 and June 30, 1985 and you elected to make contributions from your military pay to participate in this education benefit program.
I guess we are from different generations, but face similar struggles. Your trouble seems to have been getting into college and paying your way through. Today, credit mechanisms (Sallie Mae, CitiBank, AES, Stafford, Perkins, and Xpress Loan Service) have made this a lot easier.
My trouble is facing $50k in loans and gaining true independence from my parents, after receving the education. The good news is that the figureheads in Congress are aware that there are talented, but financially disadvantaged individuals who are faced with a new challenge of starting a post-college life.
Thank you for following up with a more detailed explanation of a situation that I hadn't considered. However, think about how your kids and their coisens are going to get through school when their time comes. By signing up for ROTC (and promising 2 or 3 years to serving Uncle Sam) or by taking out debt? Would you have them trade going to a more easily accessible "State School" or getting (IMHO) a better education at a top "Private School"? These are all tough choices... but with a little help from Congrees, I think it will get better for future generations.
I said nothing about that poor, just about the post-graduate expectations comparing two different classes of students.
Besides, the poor need not worry about paying for college, sir. Many talented youth from poor families receive fully compensated educations (at least where I got my degree, some 2-3% students that I knew about were in a program that gave them a free ride because of the low economic standing of their parents).
Regardless of economic background, considering anybody who will leave school with debt... students graduating with a liberal arts education will have a harder time entering a career path that allows them to pay back their loans. Enty level engineering jobs pay well, but entry level liberal arts jobs do not.
See the article I linked to... if the rules it describes applied to me currently, I would feel significantly better about my lot in life and my economic future. As it stands, I feel like I kinda got screwed by the increased rate of tuition increases in this 21st century and a host of other economic situations that makes life harder for children of the 80's then for anybody born even slightly earlier (but we grew up with pirated music, so I guess that balances out the monumentally higher costs of living).
Holy crow. When I was in high school... I learned to video edit on an Analog setup that had sound and basic video effects (star wipe, anybody?). We had two "Local News Quality" cameras and a nice lighting setting in the media studio/classroom. For filming outside of the room, we had 4 or 5 handheld Sony VCR camcorders. This easily served the needs of 3 or 4 classes of 10 kids during each semester. We popped one or two "source" VHS tapes into the editting board, and then cut the scenes onto a third "final" tape.
That was in 1999, and less than a decade later, kids are using Final Cut? What a waste.
By the way, in case you doubt the ability of learning with "old fashioned" systems... check out my recent collection of videos done with editting software that is far inferior than Final Cut. In my opinion, the only reasons for using FC or Avid is if you are actually doing professional video that is meant for broadcast (or if you are in a college degree which aims to teach this). Simple high school learning? Stick to the basics...
This is a logical and agreeable surcharge. It should cost more to learn engineering than art. When you graduate, you will get a well-paying ($40k-60k) job with a degree in engineering. Liberal artists, while I can't speak directly for their ilk, get measurably less ($30k-40k).
What I don't agree with is saddling ANYBODY with the amount of debt that many graduating these days have. When I completed my undergraduate degree, I had as much debt as my annual salary. After Uncle Sam takes his 1/3 and costs of living eat up an additional statistically significant percent, the time to pay back $50k becomes an incredible burden for the current crop of graduating engineers.
While there is some hope for students entering school in the next 4 or 5 years, my overall impression is that anybody who had to stretch themselves (i.e. mommy and daddy couldn't lay down what was left after educational grants were provided) to go through a top (private) engineering program was screwing themselves financially for a number of years in the future.
They added the "Collaboration" options so you have to turn off "Track Changes" every time your goddamned co-workers who don't know any better send you a document (though, it could just be a default setting for Office to flip on track changes every time you try to open the damned thing to to work -- I would need to see the source code to figure out how it actually works =P).
They added the feature to wipe out "Normal Settings" whenever you get a new installation of their garbage-ware (i.e. setting up the toolbars that have the buttons you actually use).
For as long as I can remember, Outlook 2000 had a specific interface to switch between (a) Plain Text, (b) Rich Text, and (c) HTML Format. I had a recent upgrade to Outlook 2003 and they changed that. Had to spend a good half-hour searching to locate that gem... so I could switch out of default mode (a) into a mode that would allow me to insert Hyperlinks (though it baffles me that they turn-off the ability of the program to understand \\servername\directory and http://www.sitename.com/ as paths that should be linked).:(
In the same vane as the addition of "Track Changes", they capture innumerable versions of the document in a "Hidden" format, so we see stories on hear linking to CIA documents released with Classified sections "not quite deleted"... though accidental political transparency actually is a feature.:)
You also must be aware that Congress includes both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and that my original post did clearly say "Congress"...
I do appreciate the unattributed italicized quotation, though. You could work for the Associated Press with that type of unintelligent reporting.
Slashdot Mirror
This is brilliently stated. The problem is the publishers! But it takes two to tango and so there is an indirect problem with authors who deal with publishers who claim exclusive rights!
But authors who refuse to deal with publishers have other problems: collecting revenue and distribution their work. Control of distribution in the face of collecting revenue is a lesser problem... but this article basically says that publishers no longer have control over their distributions, so we can concentrate of the central issues of revenue and distribution.
After putting some thought into these two problems, there is one solution I that I have put forward which is the method that I intend to use to publish my own work. The solution is actually a compromise of control that is called Open Publication.
===
Did anybody else think that this article was a parody of RIAA and MPAA? When I googled for "SIIA" I was shocked to find a professional looking site, styled after the RIAA-litigation-happy-lawyer-story-page.
I pay Ameritrade to operate servers and software that handles my trades, and the administrative overhead that goes along with it. They have some brick and mortar operations (because of their acquisition of TD Waterhouse) which add to that overhead, but costs have gone down since they move went through.
When I execute my trades... it is a fixed cost that has already been paid for to run the systems that transfer money and the shares of stock into my account. With stock brokers, the costs are variable and I pay per hour to support the activities that a broker needs to go through to make my trade. He uses shrouded knowledge of the inner workings of the system to manage my money the way I tell him (or her) to. That sounds like a middle-man.
Yes... Ameritrade is in the middle of the transaction that I make when I buy or sell stock, but there is not a "man" in the middle. It is all electronic and automatic. Automation is a great thing. Automation will drive innovation and anybody who doesn't understand the risks that Software can be used to Automate their job is foolish. Middle-"men" are the prime target for automation because they are no value (or minimal value) added.
If you build a system that Automates real estate brokers out of existence for everybody but the super-rich (who can afford it anyway).... you would become a very, very rich man. To a certain extent, Craigslist, Zillow, and Trulia HELP this process because they offer more transparency to buyers. But brokers are not dumb and these services are often flooded by adverts from the brokers themselves... so truly removing them from the equation is actually a monumental task.
Re: Buying a house
I was in the market to buy a property (condo/house/co-op) about a year ago and I actually did do much of the legwork myself. I worked to understand the process. I figured out what would need to have been done to go through with all the "terrible paperwork" and ultimately, because I understood the market, I decided that ownership was the wrong move for me last year. In the meantime... the market is tanking and I can laugh because there are significant long term factors which will ensure that the market continues to tank for the next 5 to 7 years. All because I actually took the time to understand things, I saved myself from making a terrible decision.
It is generally agreed that buying a house is "the most important financial move you will make during your life", so I would argue that it is worth 5-10 hours a week for 3 or 4 months in your life to research and understand the process. If more people put in that much due diligence, it would be much easier to find information for Local/State/Federal regulations because more information would be freely circulated instead of being guarded by the self-interested brokers who need the details to be shrouded so that can keep on keeping on.
Re: Investing
As for Ameritrade, I am a satisfied customer of their services. They have very nicely built an affordable service that lets me connect directly with sellers (or buyers), for a reasonable transaction fee. The removal of brokers from stock trading that they help enable pleases me greatly.
I disagree with you about brokers. They are middlemen and they exist only to serve themselves. The world needs less self serving middlemen. If only everybody else knew the very basic amount of information that allows many middlemen to earn their living, I feel we would all be better off...
Now concerning the topic of this article which has nothing to do with dentists or brokers... have you seen Transformers? If this movie didn't put the mythology of the "Computer Hacker" back ten years, I don't know what would.
You would give up your privacy if you could save a buck? Wow... just wow. I guess the next thing that you'll tell me is that 2+2 equals 5 and that you are on the fast track for a promotion to an easier job where you'll have to work less hours and get paid more. Sounds like an exciting opportunity...
*This* is exactly the reason why the story (rightfully) got the 1984 tag.
My understanding is that the accusation is that if you compare the differences in some version of the Linux Kernel found on kernel.org with the vmkernel that you would find significant portions that match.
Now, because VMware is Closed Source, it is impossible to run this comparison. You would need a copy of the vmkernel source and the comparison from kernel.org to prove anything... but if VMware is infringing then by the clauses in the GPL they would have to license the vmkernel under the GPL - which would hurt their business, but be a good thing for Open Source.
I thought by simply making the claim that you are using truthiness and faith in your argument that it meant you *were* thinking logically...
How can an opposing pundent argue with somebody who is being truthy? Is saying you are using truthiness a great argument, or is it the greatest argument?
I thought Microsoft's business model was "Partner with Innovative Companies, and Profit from their Destruction"?
Isn't that where MS-DOS came from?
God, I hope MS-Linux isn't around the corner... (not that there isn't anything that is stopping them from producing their own distribution and selling support (a la RHEL) because of the freedoms that are in the GPL, but they'd find some way to make it "less free". :(
You, sir, are on to something. If only we could cause a cluster of Windows Servers to overheat and burn a couple of people. A woman got a couple of hundred thousand dollars for burning herself with McDonald's coffee... With litagation we can shakedown the entire MS monopoly. :)
Assuming you aren't trolling... I was referring to recent conversations with people who wanted "Photoshop" and wouldn't give a second thought to the comparable "Graphical Image Manipulation Program" that doesn't have the $500 price tag.
If somebody can't afford "Photoshop", the option they choose shouldn't be to run an unlicensed copy of it by using a cracked version that they downloaded through BitTorrent. The option they choose should be "run something they can afford".
Returning to the topic of the article... a Ph.D who proposes a Spam Advertising Campaign as a way to run a business is not technically suggesting something that is illegal/immoral/without precedent. However, where the line is crossed is the fact that spammers don't own (notice I didn't say "Pwn") the computers that are being used to send the spam. If they did (which assumes internet security were actually robust and users could actually use operating systems that protected them from infection) then spamming would cost a lot more... you'd see a lot less of it... and it would be better targeted (instead of hoping for 0.001% hit rates).
I hope your friend's Ph.D isn't in a computer science related field. It seems logical that an acceptance of this would infect the rest of the world, though. Many businesses have enjoyed moderate success by sending out "mass-mail" through the USPS for years.
In regards to your other point...
Spamming has become so standard and everyday that people don't even give it a second look now and just consider it an annoyance at worst.I have found it increasingly annoying dealing with people who run pirated software because "they couldn't afford to pay for it". This "don't give it a second thought" mentality is, IMHO, something that should be reversed. Just because technology enables somebody to do something... it doesn't mean they should.
I actually have the patent for "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer". Please cease and desist discussion on the topic or I will have to sue you.
Now, you can license the qualities for a "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer"... but it will cost you. :)
(See, the patent system is working perfectly fine)
I agree that "creative documentation" has its place as a teaching tool for people who are looking to get started in a particular new technology. A lack of documentation is a barrier for any new user who wants to "dig into" the code.
It is a very narrow-minded view that thinks documentation should list the error messages that the code throws when problems occur and provide easily Google-able codes to search for an answer. A lot of the time, even this fails because (and I'm looking at Oracle here) the most frequently thrown errors are "Catch-all" statements that something outside the software in question is screwed up.
Well, while attending a geeky technical institute I can say that many women fit the "intelligent/strong" description and many others fit the "emotional/catty" description.
At my job, most of the women are top-notch and very professional. They read more tabloid/entertainment news in a day than I do in a month... but who cares? They get their job done and they do a damned good job at it.
I'm not really sure how my job could have filtered out the "emotional/catty" women, but maybe the truth is that there are still a lot of organizations that offer the "wrong environment" so that "intelligent/strong" women who know better find jobs elsewhere....
I wish you weren't joking....
Don't forget about the "investment" in the upgraded system. If shit hits the fan in 6 month, the PHB can whine that they spent his annual budget on the .NET upgrade and that he would rather spend NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET fixing the problems with the current system than take the risk of switching to uncharted territory.
No... the biggest disadvantage of OSS is "the learning curve" and a team that has gotten past that WILL BE more productive than a team who are relying of proprietary systems. The main reason? Team A who requires licenses for proprietary software needs to allocate x% of there annual budget for software and thus, has x% less every year for hardware upgrades. Team B meanwhile has a budget that can be spent upgrading the hardware servers, workstations, and networks. Also, VI/emacs is a much more powerful environment to program in than Visual Studio. Quite frankly, I'm surprised we've never seen an iteration of Clippy in VS, "Oh, it looks like you are trying to define a new class, would you like me to insert a default constructor?" :)
If the big technology deals really are being made on the golf course, don't you think Red Hat would be just as capable of wining and dining your executive board?
Maybe not though, since I count four or five Golf Clubs within 15 minutes of Microsoft's Headquarters.
Maybe what the FSF needs to do is start buying golf courses. I can imagine a scheduling system that let's anybody who wants to enjoy fair use of the course and a volunteer staff of the clubs members who can maintain the landscaping during the days they don't play. As a not-for-profit, wouldn't taxes on the land be waived by the state? This way, businessmen can truly bring a sense of openness and community to the golf course to get some good Linux deals made. Also, it would be fun to see your boss wearing a suit and tie and riding a John Deere lawnmower back-and-forth trimming the fairway on the back nine. :)
I didn't RTFA, but if the "Robots" that they are talking about are Tanks with cameras and RC control, I would have the same complaint.
The fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are incredibly interesting areas of science that have huge potential for raising our standards of living by eliminating dangerous/unhealthy jobs (mining operations, landfill operations, anything that deals with toxic chemicals) and providing aid for the medical community (diagnosis, treatment of patients).
If the military wants to insist that remotely controlled "Unmanned Vehicles" are "Robots" in order to create a diluted euphemism so they can more easily pass their budgets through Congress, then I object. Despite this, without real "autonomous" robots, it is ultimately a good thing to let machines replace humans on the battlefield. It saves lives... and nobody would object to that.
Remote Controlled does not a Robot make. You are insulting a huge class of Computer Engineers who work towards developing sensors and processing algorithms/abilities so that machines can operate without human intervention.
I guess we are from different generations, but face similar struggles. Your trouble seems to have been getting into college and paying your way through. Today, credit mechanisms (Sallie Mae, CitiBank, AES, Stafford, Perkins, and Xpress Loan Service) have made this a lot easier.
My trouble is facing $50k in loans and gaining true independence from my parents, after receving the education. The good news is that the figureheads in Congress are aware that there are talented, but financially disadvantaged individuals who are faced with a new challenge of starting a post-college life.
Thank you for following up with a more detailed explanation of a situation that I hadn't considered. However, think about how your kids and their coisens are going to get through school when their time comes. By signing up for ROTC (and promising 2 or 3 years to serving Uncle Sam) or by taking out debt? Would you have them trade going to a more easily accessible "State School" or getting (IMHO) a better education at a top "Private School"? These are all tough choices... but with a little help from Congrees, I think it will get better for future generations.
I said nothing about that poor, just about the post-graduate expectations comparing two different classes of students.
Besides, the poor need not worry about paying for college, sir. Many talented youth from poor families receive fully compensated educations (at least where I got my degree, some 2-3% students that I knew about were in a program that gave them a free ride because of the low economic standing of their parents).
Regardless of economic background, considering anybody who will leave school with debt... students graduating with a liberal arts education will have a harder time entering a career path that allows them to pay back their loans. Enty level engineering jobs pay well, but entry level liberal arts jobs do not.
See the article I linked to... if the rules it describes applied to me currently, I would feel significantly better about my lot in life and my economic future. As it stands, I feel like I kinda got screwed by the increased rate of tuition increases in this 21st century and a host of other economic situations that makes life harder for children of the 80's then for anybody born even slightly earlier (but we grew up with pirated music, so I guess that balances out the monumentally higher costs of living).
Final Cut?!?!?
Holy crow. When I was in high school... I learned to video edit on an Analog setup that had sound and basic video effects (star wipe, anybody?). We had two "Local News Quality" cameras and a nice lighting setting in the media studio/classroom. For filming outside of the room, we had 4 or 5 handheld Sony VCR camcorders. This easily served the needs of 3 or 4 classes of 10 kids during each semester. We popped one or two "source" VHS tapes into the editting board, and then cut the scenes onto a third "final" tape.
That was in 1999, and less than a decade later, kids are using Final Cut? What a waste.
By the way, in case you doubt the ability of learning with "old fashioned" systems... check out my recent collection of videos done with editting software that is far inferior than Final Cut. In my opinion, the only reasons for using FC or Avid is if you are actually doing professional video that is meant for broadcast (or if you are in a college degree which aims to teach this). Simple high school learning? Stick to the basics...
This is a logical and agreeable surcharge. It should cost more to learn engineering than art. When you graduate, you will get a well-paying ($40k-60k) job with a degree in engineering. Liberal artists, while I can't speak directly for their ilk, get measurably less ($30k-40k).
What I don't agree with is saddling ANYBODY with the amount of debt that many graduating these days have. When I completed my undergraduate degree, I had as much debt as my annual salary. After Uncle Sam takes his 1/3 and costs of living eat up an additional statistically significant percent, the time to pay back $50k becomes an incredible burden for the current crop of graduating engineers.
While there is some hope for students entering school in the next 4 or 5 years, my overall impression is that anybody who had to stretch themselves (i.e. mommy and daddy couldn't lay down what was left after educational grants were provided) to go through a top (private) engineering program was screwing themselves financially for a number of years in the future.
They added the "Collaboration" options so you have to turn off "Track Changes" every time your goddamned co-workers who don't know any better send you a document (though, it could just be a default setting for Office to flip on track changes every time you try to open the damned thing to to work -- I would need to see the source code to figure out how it actually works =P).
They added the feature to wipe out "Normal Settings" whenever you get a new installation of their garbage-ware (i.e. setting up the toolbars that have the buttons you actually use).
For as long as I can remember, Outlook 2000 had a specific interface to switch between (a) Plain Text, (b) Rich Text, and (c) HTML Format. I had a recent upgrade to Outlook 2003 and they changed that. Had to spend a good half-hour searching to locate that gem... so I could switch out of default mode (a) into a mode that would allow me to insert Hyperlinks (though it baffles me that they turn-off the ability of the program to understand \\servername\directory and http://www.sitename.com/ as paths that should be linked). :(
In the same vane as the addition of "Track Changes", they capture innumerable versions of the document in a "Hidden" format, so we see stories on hear linking to CIA documents released with Classified sections "not quite deleted"... though accidental political transparency actually is a feature. :)
SarifDragon, you are right and wrong.
You also must be aware that Congress includes both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and that my original post did clearly say "Congress"...
I do appreciate the unattributed italicized quotation, though. You could work for the Associated Press with that type of unintelligent reporting.