I can think of no good reason to require paying interns. As an intern you gain a valuable entry in your resume which will often far outweigh the minimum wage you would otherwise receive. (I say entry in your resume, because getting coffee at a prestigious firm is good for your resume even if it's not much use as training) The expected value of an intern is likely to be very low because interns usually have very little to show that they will be useful to the company. As a result, it makes little sense to pay them anything at all. Of course, if you are a big firm with a big HR department, you can actually do good screening on the interns you take and therefore afford to pay them. I think this is a law that definitely needs changing. Unpaid internships are the way in the job market for many people and I'm not sure they would thank anyone who took their internship away.
I think DAs who prosecute those cases need to ask themselves some important questions. If the goal of child-porn laws is the protect children from sexual abuse (a laudable goal I support) then throwing kids in jail for effectively abusing themselves is counter-productive. The kids are their own victims and throwing them in jail will only make them worst-off.
Honestly, I don't understand why so many people got pissed off at Ars Technica. What they were saying was: If you block our ads we make less money and therefore have less money to pay writers to produce great content. They didn't say that ad blocker users were evil or thieves. (they in fact said the opposit) They just stated a simple fact: If you block their ads, they get less revenue. And personally, I think that instead of getting annoyed, people should have just said: OK, well by using an ad blocker, I reduce your revenue stream and I can live with that. They never insinuated that they might go back to using anti-ad-blocker methods. They in fact specifically said they will not. Yes, ad blockers reduce revenue for sites you like in a time when the advertising market is already depressed. If you can't live with that, turn off the ad blocker instead of shooting the messenger.
I think the whole concept that all such communication should be recorded is a poor idea. If I am bashing a political opponent in public, he might not want to talk to me officially even though coming to an understanding over some issues could be very beneficial. Cabinet meetings and such should be recorded, but doing things off the record is necessary if things are going to get done.
While I think juries without outside knowledge of the case would be significantly better, I think it is un-reasonable such people will still exist in the short term. I think that instead of trying to fight the tide, the legal system should study the impact of outside information and decide on the best way to handle it in a manner that is consistent with judicial principles. Perhaps the jury should be allowed to bring up their independent research which the parties and the court can then address according to the rules of evidence. Perhaps the jury instructions need to be revised to address independent research as something else than inexistent. I'm sure we can come up with a smart way to deal with this.
"Grading other students' work, I also learned that phonetic spelling of street lingo is a common thing for undereducated."
Well, I think the emphasis here is on "undereducated." People who go to college generally are not part of the "undereducated." I think that most people under 20 today got used to smilies and a lot of written abbreviations from the Internet and texting. Now, as Mike pointed out, a lot of these people would probably not be writing at all and so it would not make much sense to just blame the new ITs for everything. But they probably do play a negative effect on grammar.
Linking and embedding are not the same thing. I'm sorry I have to agree with that decision, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Think about the functional difference between linking and embedding: When you link, you show a little piece of text on which the user can click to go access the content somewhere else. When you embed, the content shows up immediately on your website transparently for the user. On the other hand, look at the differences between embedding and copying+including. The sole difference is that in one case, you store the content on your own server and in the other, somebody else serves the content. The difference is purely technical in nature. Now copyright attempts to create a limited monopoly on the use of content you created. Now, don't you agree that if there is harm done in copying and displaying content, there has to be harm in hot-linking? I'm not saying that there is harm done. But it's pretty clear to me that the harm in the two cases is the same.
I agree that the initial suspicion may not be overreaction. But maybe instead of calling in the bomb squad, the VP should have asked: "What is in that bottle little Timmy?" And little Timmy would go: "Nothing sir, I'm using it as part of my project in the following XYZ ways." "Do you mind if I peek in?" "No at all." [VP peeks in] "OK, cool Timmy, have a nice day..."
So when I wrote my blog post, I had not yet read the book and I can confirm that it is unlikely that the book in and of itself would have been that popular. The writing is average, but that's not the point. I am happy I got this not because I got a great work of literature. I am happy I got it, because I got a physical book written by Castle, that character from a show I love. And that is why the real book is not in competition with PDFs on The Pirate Bay.
The book is basically another episode of the show with the same characters with different names and yes, that steamy sex scene with Nikki Heat. (More than one actually) And in the typical fashion of the show, it mixes the predictable with the unexpected enough to keep you wondering who's going to end up in jail.
I think that this is prime example of the way piracy is destroying america. Scientists are not getting paid at all by their publishers which obviously means that scientists are going to start publishing less and less. We can already see it as publishing rates have declined by 25% last year alone! (Source: Stuff I just made up) Free does not work! Journals need to pay scientists to write that stuff!
Oh sure, it might work for a couple of very lucky individuals who get grants and fame and fortune, but for the average scientist, they cannot do that work without someone paying for the articles they write... Or something...
How do I sound as a copyright maximalist?
What I really want to see regulated is flash trading. That is effectively insider trading. I still don't understand how it could possibly be even considered for a split second to be legal.
High frequency trading I think is unlikely to be that big of a deal. Positions are held for a very short amount of time and so most likely it just amplifies very short-run fluctuations without contributing to medium-term prices.
"So let's see. Someone is working for the government, say the Transport Department, and comes up with (at work) a great way to save lives that works like and airbag and costs like microwave popcorn. What you are saying is that the government should have no rights to it, and this guy should be allowed to sell his idea to someone else?"
No. What I want is for his idea to be in the public domain so everyone can make their cars safer for me and the rest of then public. That is the public's best interest. It generates the most total value.
"but the public schools are in competition with private/charter schools."
No they are not. The goal of public schools is to provide the best education possible. If more schools get good lesson plans, that objective is being furthered. And that is the case whether those schools are private, chartered or public.
I don't see why anti-trust would ever apply to IP companies. I mean, all IP is effectively a government-granted monopoly on something. It would be inconsistent for the government to outlaw anti-competitive behavior in a market where it outlawed competition in the first place. If anti-trust law should kick in, in this case, it should kick in any time copyright is enforced...
Don't people pay to have their brands appear in movies? I'm quite certain that there are some pretty lucrative contracts being made to place a brand/product in a movie. I wonder if maybe we can find a company out there that paid filmmaker A to put their brand in movie A and then sued filmmaker B because they used their brand in movie B without prior authorization.
One part of me really wishes this would happen just because of how funny it would be to point it out to them. Another part of me would cry if that turned out to have occurred before.
I think it's actually a good idea... Having seen flamewars in comments, I think that if you setup a 2 day cooling period, people will move on to something else. It might not resolve the underlying issue that some people are jerks about everything (and all of us are jerks about certain things) but this is the Internet we are talking about, not the World Wide Anger Management Network.
Specifically, I read an article a couple of years back which talked about a group of German English speakers who translated and made available online the then-latest Harry Potter book within 48 hours or so of it hitting the US market. The article I read actually talked about how incredibly organized the translators were with "managers" of sorts assigned to every chapter to collate and edit the translations by participants, multiple review, specific participants being assigned the translation of invented words etc... Supposedly, after the 48 hours translation was done, they initiated a second project to do a much better translation with every page being translated by 3 people at least. Now officially, the project only distributed the result to its members, but I seriously doubt that it ended up being the case. Here is the article in french
Supposedly, the German publisher who was originally quite unhappy with the project but then changed his mind (after the group agreed not to distribute outside of itself) for unstated reasons. I think though that he should have gone further and just published the crowed-sourced translation. I mean, I don't know about the editorial process for book translations, but I doubt that they have more review and a greater attention to detail than fanatical readers...
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On the post: Court Rejects PA DAs Attempt To Charge Teens For Sexting Themselves
On the post: Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites
On the post: Where's The Line In What Sorts Of Gov't Communications Need To Be Recorded?
On the post: Why Shouldn't Jurors Be Able To Use Technology To Do More Research?
On the post: Technology Blamed For Bad Grammar Despite Total Lack Of Causal Evidence
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, I think the emphasis here is on "undereducated." People who go to college generally are not part of the "undereducated." I think that most people under 20 today got used to smilies and a lot of written abbreviations from the Internet and texting. Now, as Mike pointed out, a lot of these people would probably not be writing at all and so it would not make much sense to just blame the new ITs for everything. But they probably do play a negative effect on grammar.
On the post: Dutch Judges Plagiarize, Potentially Infringe, Blog Post In Decision About Copyright
On the post: If School Officials Got Confused By Kid's Science Project, Why Does The Kid Need Counseling?
Re: In defense of the school...
On the post: If School Officials Got Confused By Kid's Science Project, Why Does The Kid Need Counseling?
On the post: Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting Speech You Don't Like
On the post: More TV Shows Offering Reasons To Buy; Castle's Successful Character-Written Novel
The book is basically another episode of the show with the same characters with different names and yes, that steamy sex scene with Nikki Heat. (More than one actually) And in the typical fashion of the show, it mixes the predictable with the unexpected enough to keep you wondering who's going to end up in jail.
On the post: The Role Of Abundance In Innovation
Re: Re: Too big to fail
On the post: Obama Administration Considers More Public Access To Publicly Funded Research
Oh sure, it might work for a couple of very lucky individuals who get grants and fame and fortune, but for the average scientist, they cannot do that work without someone paying for the articles they write... Or something...
How do I sound as a copyright maximalist?
On the post: SEC Concerned About High Frequency Trading
High frequency trading I think is unlikely to be that big of a deal. Positions are held for a very short amount of time and so most likely it just amplifies very short-run fluctuations without contributing to medium-term prices.
On the post: School Wants To Claim Copyright Over Any Lesson Plans Created By Teachers
Re:
No. What I want is for his idea to be in the public domain so everyone can make their cars safer for me and the rest of then public. That is the public's best interest. It generates the most total value.
On the post: School Wants To Claim Copyright Over Any Lesson Plans Created By Teachers
Re:
No they are not. The goal of public schools is to provide the best education possible. If more schools get good lesson plans, that objective is being furthered. And that is the case whether those schools are private, chartered or public.
On the post: Judge Says No Antitrust Violation In Hollywood Killing RealDVD
On the post: Billboard Model Sues Filmmakers, Because Her Billboard Appears For 12 Seconds In The Movie
One part of me really wishes this would happen just because of how funny it would be to point it out to them. Another part of me would cry if that turned out to have occurred before.
On the post: Site Suspends Comments For 'Cooling Off Period'
On the post: CNN's Take On 'Book Piracy'
Here is the article in french
Supposedly, the German publisher who was originally quite unhappy with the project but then changed his mind (after the group agreed not to distribute outside of itself) for unstated reasons. I think though that he should have gone further and just published the crowed-sourced translation. I mean, I don't know about the editorial process for book translations, but I doubt that they have more review and a greater attention to detail than fanatical readers...
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