Weird Al said that he did not understand the reason that the contract was written to get him less money from online sales. He did not say he did not understand the contract, but rather the reasoning for it.
In his words:
This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure.
Even if you drink the EULA kool-aid, you own a license. That license can be assessed a value, upon which a tax can be based. That's easy to formulate.
It becomes murkier in the case of software for which you pay yearly. Your value in the software is very limited. Is the producer of the software then holding the asset? Should that be taxable? If the producer has taxable value in this case, then doesn't it have infinite taxable value, based on its infinite supply of licenses that it could sell?
Perhaps even more interestingly, what about software which comes with a system but which is not used? Are you responsible for recognizing the value of that asset as well? Presuming that OSS is recognized as having zero taxable value (which would seem to be the logical thing to do), this might increase the sales of OSS-based systems, so that the owner is responsible only for the software they purchase for the system, instead of every piece of software the OEM bundled.
Very often, people asking me for technical help have problems that refuse to manifest themselves when I am present. My wife calls this my "aura".
The component responsible for this behavior is called the "Authority Detection Module" (ADM). Standard equipment from almost every electronics manufacturer, the ADM detects the proximity of someone who knows how the device should behave so that the device can revise its behave appropriately.
Unfortunately, the ADMs installed in young children are not nearly as high quality as those used by electronics manufacturers and have a tendancy to malfunction.
I do not have a good explanation for coding errors that do not cause any problems but, once found, could never have worked and, oddly, don't, even in old compiles that used to be fine. I suspect quantum mechanics is involved.
The only reason to install DC wiring would be to reduce conversion losses by all the small transformers and power supplies
The motivation, at least for me, would be to reduce the wall warts. If it makes things more efficient, all the better, but that's not my concern at all. In the area of my desk, I have ten AC/DC converters: network switch, printer, camera charger, wireless basestation, cable modem, telephone, telephone adapter (VoIP), PDA charger, laptop charger, and USB hub. That number of convertors takes up space, and not in a nice, compactable way. I would much rather they ran on a standard voltage and could all be attached to a single transformer. Not only would it make my cabling neater and smaller, it would eliminate the dead/missing (mostly missing) transformer problem.
It would require designing electronic equipment a standard voltage and a standard set of connectors.
While it may be that the principal really told them to not discuss their schedule on their blogs, the article says:
Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.
The reason given was to "protect students" because blogs are "fertile ground for sexual predators". However, it's unclear why it's the school's responsibility to protect the students from their actions while off school property. You could give saftey reason for enforcing a "no walking outside" rule as well.
You can also compete in online contests such as USA Computer Olympiad (operated in the USA, but open to everyone), or a quick google search will yield more.
Democrats do not, as a rule, go around claiming that large budgets (with the taxes to pay for it) and a weak federal government are terrible in all cases.
In contrast, the Republicans claim that large budgets and strong federal governments are bad, bad, badity, bad. Then, when they have majorities, they proceed to produce large budgets (and cut taxes anyway) and strengthen the federal government.
If the Republicans demonstrated that they believed what they preach, they would have more of my respect. As it is, they appear hypocrites to me.
I agree that the report is most likely funded by telcos, and thus biased. JupiterResearch did not reveal the funding source.
That said, the whole idea of the report was to look at existing municipal "WiFi" projects. From TFA:
The report examines at the character of current projects across the U.S., estimates the associated costs, and identifies the benefit opportunities.
Benefits are difficult to quantify, especially given that some (most?) projects are not fully deployed. Almost none would be five years old to have the full benefit, even if the benefit was really measurable.
If the military should exist and should recruit, what is the problem with the military using the same techniques that every private organization from CocaCola to MoveON uses?
CocaCola does not have a federal law requiring* schools to turn-over records to them for marketing.
CocaCola does not have a federal law requiring* schools to allow marketers on premise.
CocaCola is selling a product, not a job that is effectively a lifestyle.
CocaCola is designing broadcast material, not sending out recruiters to individuals.
CocaCola is not the government. This has many implications, including that CocaCola is unlikely to arrest me based on the information, if , say, learning Middle-East History is later decided to be un-American.
CocaCola is a private company, in which I do not personally own shares. In as much as it makes sense, I own shares in the United States Government as a citizen and tax payer.
That said, who says I'm happy with the level of database aggregation being done by private organizations?
* Technically, the law is that schools cannot get federal money if they do not turn-over the information. This is a sham, similar to many other de-facto laws to avoid the fact that the federal government would likely fall afoul of the Constitution if they tried to make it a proper law. I would love to see a court case finding that these rules are, in fact, de-facto laws and, as such, are unconstitutional.
Privacy wise, what's the difference between people watching you do something live in the street, or on a tape from a CCTV camera?
Searchability. I do not worry that the people will remember in 2 years, while the camera can. Thus, if open-source advocates have been labeled "terrorists", the people will not recall that I was wearing a shirt with Tux on it two years ago, but the police can do an image search on all their cameras for Tux to imprison all the "OSS terrorists" (more timely is searching for pro-Muslim speech/shirts).
The problem with Computer Science education is that, in general, it does not teach what employers want or need.
Computer Science (the "science" of computation) is, at its core, mathematics. The fact that it has an instantiation in hardware or software is not particularly relevant. It is about algorithms and the analysis there-of.
That's all fine and good, but not relevant to most of the tasks employers want. You need to work with specific technology, coordinate with multiple other people, communicate with the customer (whoever specifies the requirements), perform first-level quality assurance (unit testing, et al.), design interdependent systems, and encode processes in a computer language. Computer science does not address any of these. You might, occasionally, need to analyze or design an algorithm, but that can be very rare.
What they want are software engineers. Since that's what many call their programmers, they seem to know it at some level. However, high school students still are primarily getting computer science degrees.
There appears to be some problem where some city names are never shown. I could not, for example, get Socorro, NM to show up on the map. But, if you searched for it, it showed the detail of the city, including labelling its airport (such as it is).
Lacks a scale as far as I can tell too. Overall, good, but while the user interface is better than MapQuest (faint praise indeed), it could be better (like allowing me to see the entire address I type in). On the other hand, no UI is perfect.
Google does not own the trademark Louis Vuitton and therefore cannot legally sell the rights to it, which is what they were doing.
I disagree with your interpretation of Google's actions. I think it is unarguable that Google is selling space to display when someone searches for Louis Vuitton.
A better analogy would be if (to use the Geico/State Farm analogy) an independent insurance agent was paid to mention State Farm as an alternative to Geico when people asked for Geico. The agent would still give the person Geico and it would be clear that State Farm was paying them for the placement: "Yes, Geico would be $120/mo. State Farm pays me to also mention that they also sell insurance, if you'd like to check with them".
I view Google as an agent attempting to return pointers to information relavent to a query. They are not "selling the trademark", but rather selling placement when asked about a trademark. However, that distintion does not necessarily make it legal.
Google is sensitive to legal issues. For example, there's no paid advertisement on Google News or Google Images (that I've seen, at least).
Which gets us to the meta-hack: take the typewriter box back to OfficeMax with a bag of potting soil, and complain that the soil was in the box.
The return system would not be difficult to game at small scales, if you were untrustworthy. It's unfortunate, but true.
The truly unfortunate fact is that a small set of people can game the system so much that companies are disuaded from offering returns, except as required by law, and making them as painful as possible. This has already happened, to a large extent, with data copies (software, music, and movies).
In case you are not kidding or trolling, I believe the poster is referring to the local machine (the user' machine), not the Microsoft Passport server. If the server is meant, I agree that he needs a reference to make that claim.
I find it amusing is that Joan of Arcadia got a "yellow" rating. Despite that, it is (according to PTC), a better show that 7th Heaven and American Idol, despite the fact that they got "green" ratings.
If you are going to do ratings, at least be consistent.
Companies have a long history of building a good reputation, and then abusing that reputation when they focus on profit rather than consumers. I'm already annoyed by paid ads that cause the menus to constantly change. Learning the shortcuts has reduced my annoyance, but only because I use the menus less.
Particularly with a company like TiVo, I have to ask: what causes costs to rise? They have more subscribers, sure. Presumably that should decrease the cost per subscriber. The move to network-based downloads should help you greatly as well, since phone connections are more expensive.
They are nowhere close to saturated, so growth should still be possible. They are facing competition from cable and satellite DVRs, so they need to focus on being better or cheaper. Decreasing the customer experience may help with cheaper, but the article talked about not increasing the monthly fee, not reducing it.
I purchased my first TiVo recently, and love the skip button. It has greatly increased my enjoyment watching television, to the point that I do not believe that I do not watch television without it. However, I decided to get the monthly subscription from TiVo, because I'm not sure they will exist in two years, much less that their service will remain desireable. If I drop TiVo, I'm likely to drop cable as well. It would be too painful to go back to watching television with all those commercials.
If they cared about consumers, there would be a way to turn off the paid placements. If all these people love these placements, why would they turn them off? (Maybe there is a way -- if so, correct me so I will be able to better enjoy my TiVo)
TCP assumes all packet losses are due to congestion. This is not always true. For example, a wireless connection can have loss due to interference instead of congestion. Although I have not looked at this in quite a while, it was considered a known issue that decreased TCP performance over wireless. This is exactly the sort of setting where an ECCs would be able to greatly increase local performance without adversely affecting global performance.
Avoiding congestion while maintaining performance is a hard problem. Fortunately, you degrade your own performance if you create congestion and congestion often occurs on the edge. We would really like to avoid the tragedy of the commons with congestion and the Internet. If we cannot, the Internet may truly collapse by 2006.
I disagree with your example, but I do agree with your point.
NASA spinoffs:
Enriched baby food
Scratch-resistent lenses
Solar energy
Radiation insulation
Programmable pacemaker
Voice controlled wheelchair
Solving the problem of human flight is a goal requiring innovative solutions. As such, new things will be developed that we did not even consider looking for. The advantages of space travel go far beyond the science gathered by the flight itself.
In the early 1940's, Swiss inventor George de Mestral went on a walk with his dog... Upon his return home, he noticed that his dog's coat and his pants were covered with cockleburrs. His inventor's curiosity led him to study the burrs under a microscope, where he discovered their natural hook-like shape.
Generally, the reason for these upgrades is to simplify support. If you've got Win2k, Win98, WinNT, and WinXP around, you have to know the oddities of each (and track patches, etc.). If you have WinXP everywhere, then there's only one platform to worry about. Admins can test a new program on a single machine and be fairly confident that if it works there, it'll work everywhere.
I keep my cobra repellant on at all times while at home in New England. My friends may make fun of me, but how many times have I been bitten by a cobra? "None," that's right. The cobra repellant must be worth every friend the odor has driven away.
no terrorist attack != administration is protecting the country. How many have been prevented? How many were prevented under Clinton (hint: think about New Years in 2000)? It's nearly impossible to evaluate the effectiviness over a short time span, as telling whether or not a terroristic act would have occurred is usually not possible. Even assuming the administration had such evidence, the administration called wolf on Iraq's weapons, so they're a little short on credibility.
Personally, I believe Bush's foreign policies have increased the level of hate against America, thus making terrorism more likely than before. We're much more likely to deter terrorism by good policy than by additional surveillance. You'll always have people who hate America, but why give them additional reasons to? That's easier said than done, of course, but when your policies upset most of the world (Iraq war), you could have done better.
At the price of gasoline these days, your motorcycle needs some serious upgrades. You're spending $1,300+ in gasoline per mile. Take a day off, and the money saved in your commute should be able to buy you a much better bike.
Slashdot Mirror
It becomes murkier in the case of software for which you pay yearly. Your value in the software is very limited. Is the producer of the software then holding the asset? Should that be taxable? If the producer has taxable value in this case, then doesn't it have infinite taxable value, based on its infinite supply of licenses that it could sell?
Perhaps even more interestingly, what about software which comes with a system but which is not used? Are you responsible for recognizing the value of that asset as well? Presuming that OSS is recognized as having zero taxable value (which would seem to be the logical thing to do), this might increase the sales of OSS-based systems, so that the owner is responsible only for the software they purchase for the system, instead of every piece of software the OEM bundled.
The component responsible for this behavior is called the "Authority Detection Module" (ADM). Standard equipment from almost every electronics manufacturer, the ADM detects the proximity of someone who knows how the device should behave so that the device can revise its behave appropriately.
Unfortunately, the ADMs installed in young children are not nearly as high quality as those used by electronics manufacturers and have a tendancy to malfunction.
I do not have a good explanation for coding errors that do not cause any problems but, once found, could never have worked and, oddly, don't, even in old compiles that used to be fine. I suspect quantum mechanics is involved.
The motivation, at least for me, would be to reduce the wall warts. If it makes things more efficient, all the better, but that's not my concern at all. In the area of my desk, I have ten AC/DC converters: network switch, printer, camera charger, wireless basestation, cable modem, telephone, telephone adapter (VoIP), PDA charger, laptop charger, and USB hub. That number of convertors takes up space, and not in a nice, compactable way. I would much rather they ran on a standard voltage and could all be attached to a single transformer. Not only would it make my cabling neater and smaller, it would eliminate the dead/missing (mostly missing) transformer problem.
It would require designing electronic equipment a standard voltage and a standard set of connectors.
The reason given was to "protect students" because blogs are "fertile ground for sexual predators". However, it's unclear why it's the school's responsibility to protect the students from their actions while off school property. You could give saftey reason for enforcing a "no walking outside" rule as well.
Could become a representative for Great Britian to the International Olympiad of Informatics next summer, to be held in Mexico.
If you're in northern Ireland, you'd compete in the Irish Schools' Programming Competition.
You can also compete in online contests such as USA Computer Olympiad (operated in the USA, but open to everyone), or a quick google search will yield more.
In contrast, the Republicans claim that large budgets and strong federal governments are bad, bad, badity, bad. Then, when they have majorities, they proceed to produce large budgets (and cut taxes anyway) and strengthen the federal government.
If the Republicans demonstrated that they believed what they preach, they would have more of my respect. As it is, they appear hypocrites to me.
That said, the whole idea of the report was to look at existing municipal "WiFi" projects. From TFA:
Benefits are difficult to quantify, especially given that some (most?) projects are not fully deployed. Almost none would be five years old to have the full benefit, even if the benefit was really measurable.- CocaCola does not have a federal law requiring* schools to turn-over records to them for marketing.
- CocaCola does not have a federal law requiring* schools to allow marketers on premise.
- CocaCola is selling a product, not a job that is effectively a lifestyle.
- CocaCola is designing broadcast material, not sending out recruiters to individuals.
- CocaCola is not the government. This has many implications, including that CocaCola is unlikely to arrest me based on the information, if , say, learning Middle-East History is later decided to be un-American.
- CocaCola is a private company, in which I do not personally own shares. In as much as it makes sense, I own shares in the United States Government as a citizen and tax payer.
That said, who says I'm happy with the level of database aggregation being done by private organizations?* Technically, the law is that schools cannot get federal money if they do not turn-over the information. This is a sham, similar to many other de-facto laws to avoid the fact that the federal government would likely fall afoul of the Constitution if they tried to make it a proper law. I would love to see a court case finding that these rules are, in fact, de-facto laws and, as such, are unconstitutional.
Searchability. I do not worry that the people will remember in 2 years, while the camera can. Thus, if open-source advocates have been labeled "terrorists", the people will not recall that I was wearing a shirt with Tux on it two years ago, but the police can do an image search on all their cameras for Tux to imprison all the "OSS terrorists" (more timely is searching for pro-Muslim speech/shirts).
Bumper sticker seen recently that I enjoyed: "I love my country but fear my government".
The articles ignores more than half of the wiretaps issued, because they were issued under FISA. Those wiretaps are much more alarming to me.
Computer Science (the "science" of computation) is, at its core, mathematics. The fact that it has an instantiation in hardware or software is not particularly relevant. It is about algorithms and the analysis there-of.
That's all fine and good, but not relevant to most of the tasks employers want. You need to work with specific technology, coordinate with multiple other people, communicate with the customer (whoever specifies the requirements), perform first-level quality assurance (unit testing, et al.), design interdependent systems, and encode processes in a computer language. Computer science does not address any of these. You might, occasionally, need to analyze or design an algorithm, but that can be very rare.
What they want are software engineers. Since that's what many call their programmers, they seem to know it at some level. However, high school students still are primarily getting computer science degrees.
Lacks a scale as far as I can tell too. Overall, good, but while the user interface is better than MapQuest (faint praise indeed), it could be better (like allowing me to see the entire address I type in). On the other hand, no UI is perfect.
I disagree with your interpretation of Google's actions. I think it is unarguable that Google is selling space to display when someone searches for Louis Vuitton.
A better analogy would be if (to use the Geico/State Farm analogy) an independent insurance agent was paid to mention State Farm as an alternative to Geico when people asked for Geico. The agent would still give the person Geico and it would be clear that State Farm was paying them for the placement: "Yes, Geico would be $120/mo. State Farm pays me to also mention that they also sell insurance, if you'd like to check with them".
I view Google as an agent attempting to return pointers to information relavent to a query. They are not "selling the trademark", but rather selling placement when asked about a trademark. However, that distintion does not necessarily make it legal.
Google is sensitive to legal issues. For example, there's no paid advertisement on Google News or Google Images (that I've seen, at least).
The return system would not be difficult to game at small scales, if you were untrustworthy. It's unfortunate, but true. The truly unfortunate fact is that a small set of people can game the system so much that companies are disuaded from offering returns, except as required by law, and making them as painful as possible. This has already happened, to a large extent, with data copies (software, music, and movies).
In case you are not kidding or trolling, I believe the poster is referring to the local machine (the user' machine), not the Microsoft Passport server. If the server is meant, I agree that he needs a reference to make that claim.
If you are going to do ratings, at least be consistent.
Particularly with a company like TiVo, I have to ask: what causes costs to rise? They have more subscribers, sure. Presumably that should decrease the cost per subscriber. The move to network-based downloads should help you greatly as well, since phone connections are more expensive.
They are nowhere close to saturated, so growth should still be possible. They are facing competition from cable and satellite DVRs, so they need to focus on being better or cheaper. Decreasing the customer experience may help with cheaper, but the article talked about not increasing the monthly fee, not reducing it.
I purchased my first TiVo recently, and love the skip button. It has greatly increased my enjoyment watching television, to the point that I do not believe that I do not watch television without it. However, I decided to get the monthly subscription from TiVo, because I'm not sure they will exist in two years, much less that their service will remain desireable. If I drop TiVo, I'm likely to drop cable as well. It would be too painful to go back to watching television with all those commercials.
If they cared about consumers, there would be a way to turn off the paid placements. If all these people love these placements, why would they turn them off? (Maybe there is a way -- if so, correct me so I will be able to better enjoy my TiVo)
Avoiding congestion while maintaining performance is a hard problem. Fortunately, you degrade your own performance if you create congestion and congestion often occurs on the edge. We would really like to avoid the tragedy of the commons with congestion and the Internet. If we cannot, the Internet may truly collapse by 2006.
- Enriched baby food
- Scratch-resistent lenses
- Solar energy
- Radiation insulation
- Programmable pacemaker
- Voice controlled wheelchair
Solving the problem of human flight is a goal requiring innovative solutions. As such, new things will be developed that we did not even consider looking for. The advantages of space travel go far beyond the science gathered by the flight itself.Generally, the reason for these upgrades is to simplify support. If you've got Win2k, Win98, WinNT, and WinXP around, you have to know the oddities of each (and track patches, etc.). If you have WinXP everywhere, then there's only one platform to worry about. Admins can test a new program on a single machine and be fairly confident that if it works there, it'll work everywhere.
I keep my cobra repellant on at all times while at home in New England. My friends may make fun of me, but how many times have I been bitten by a cobra? "None," that's right. The cobra repellant must be worth every friend the odor has driven away.
no terrorist attack != administration is protecting the country. How many have been prevented? How many were prevented under Clinton (hint: think about New Years in 2000)? It's nearly impossible to evaluate the effectiviness over a short time span, as telling whether or not a terroristic act would have occurred is usually not possible. Even assuming the administration had such evidence, the administration called wolf on Iraq's weapons, so they're a little short on credibility.
Personally, I believe Bush's foreign policies have increased the level of hate against America, thus making terrorism more likely than before. We're much more likely to deter terrorism by good policy than by additional surveillance. You'll always have people who hate America, but why give them additional reasons to? That's easier said than done, of course, but when your policies upset most of the world (Iraq war), you could have done better.
At the price of gasoline these days, your motorcycle needs some serious upgrades. You're spending $1,300+ in gasoline per mile. Take a day off, and the money saved in your commute should be able to buy you a much better bike.