Posts by cordwainer 1

Re: As far as I am concerned - Copyright is not the primary issue here...

The graduates in question obviously POSED for the photographer - they didn't just happen to wander in front of a backdrop with a bear on it, then get hypnotized into freezing and smiling while someone with a camera snapped a formal photograph.

When a graduate chooses to pose for a formal photo such as this, the graduate is informed, PRIOR to the photo being taken, that the photos will be available for PURCHASE, if desired.

Everyone seems to be assuming copyright is the primary issue here. It's not.

The issue is breach of contract and theft of services.

The student agreed to the conditions under which the photo was taken, meaning acceptance of the photographer's terms for acquiring a copy.

Therefore the student breached the contract by attempting to acquire the results of the agreed-upon service without paying, i.e, through theft.

Students are not required to buy the photos, but they agree explicitly they will pay for any copies acquired. Students are NOT, by the way, usually required to pose. However, even if they are, the student is not required to purchase the results, which they may or may not like. School photos work the same way - no up-front cost, payment only for desired numbers of copies. The only difference is photographers now provide "digital contact sheets".

Again: this is out-and-out theft and breaking of a legal and binding promise. The subject of these photos is not in any way the copyright holder, and has no right to any copies whatsoever without payment.

Re: German Boffin?

"Do you buy a Titzling or do you buy a Brassiere?"

Re: Not sure this is cloud

The primary reason is greed (though "customer contempt" is, yes, a subset thereof).

re: I only read the summary

I only read the Condensed summary.

mturk maybe?

or a similar infinite-number-of-monkeys "service"?

Re: Logic doesn't enter into it

I wish I could give this a hundred upvotes. And unless you have any objection, I'm going to e-mail a copy to Microsoft :-)

Re: Minor correction

Think of Target as equivalent to Walmart - except with a smaller selection of the same cheap merchandise, and most of it priced 30% to 60% higher than Walmart. Amazing what a slick advertising campaign can do.

Re: in a free market there's no such thing as a skills shortage

. . .the third digit of the account code results in special processing ever third tuesday is lodged firmly in the heads of the support staff and nowhere else.

This is, indeed, the biggest problem I've encountered in a 30-year career. Worse, no matter how many times someone fails or forgets to tell a new IT hire some crucial detail, almost never is that detail added to internal documentation or training materials (assuming either even exists).

In my admittedly very personal opinion, and recognizing there are numerous exceptions:

It's a scathing indictment of the IT industry that with all the amazing developments on the "T" side, we fail so miserably at communicating the most basic "I", both to each other and the end users we support.

We can not blame non-IT management or budget cuts alone for IT professionals' continued problems communicating effectively with each other, nor repeated failures to document critical processes and procedures, then actually follow them.

I hesitate even to comment on the extent to which egos and territorialism have contributed to these problems. However, there is no doubt certain "historical" attitudes continue to bedevil us, and negatively affect others' overall impression of IT and those who labor in the field. Sadly, in far too many cases, IT staff have only themselves to blame for the lack of cooperation and support they receive from the non-IT side.

Certainly there are times when a business must change to meet the needs of an increasingly technological world. However, IT must move away from the attitude that the "latest and greatest" is always the best, or that business "should" or "must" alter itself to fit that technology. The emphasis of IT should always be the safety, integrity, and usability of Information, without which there would be no need at all for most of our shiny Technology.

Re: I'm waiting...

Your American "friends" (look that word up, by the way, and learn what it means) are not so generally stupid they defend harassment and threats as "free speech."

We are doing our best to fight bullies here, too. We have laws against assault, which includes verbal threats. We prosecute those who make threats of bodily harm electronically as well as face to face.

We understand the distinction between the First Amendment right to, say, criticize our government without being charged with a felony, and the crime of inciting others to assassinate a politician, or threatening to do so ourselves.

A minority may not. But then, you are also, in a minority. You are prejudiced. You judge an entire country based on the words of a few, and insult an entire citizenry based on a false supposition rather than explicit actions or actual comments.

Wait elsewhere, won't you? Perhaps under that rock with the other bullies...

Realizing some may think I'm overreacting....I'm simply so tired of the kind of comment to which I'm responding. In my experience, those who accuse others of being ABOUT to do something are usually abusers. Anyone who has dealt with bullies or abusers on a regular basis recognizes pre-accusation, often based on a single past mistake, as a common weapon in the arsenal of chronic harm. To an abuser, the victim is always guilty, partly because the victim cannot ever prove perpetual innocence.

Quite easy...

If you actually know how to do an import, and perform all the steps, including the one where you view the columns, and can change the format of any or all BEFORE you click Finish. Try clicking "Next" sometime, until you run out of "Next" buttons, and read what's on the screen.

That said, however: per my longer comment, it is pretty ridiculous that Excel doesn't pop up a leading-zeroes or long-number warning when one clicks "Finish."

Not everyone is going to be intimately familiar with the data being imported. More to the point, data is not always completely clean.

There's nothing stupider than software that after this many years still fails to tag common, repeated, well-known import errors.

Re: "helplessly watching a child die"

Correct overall...but the problem is, too much of the developed world believes self-sufficiency and education are inextricably linked to industry and technology.

However, I'd probably agree with you if I knew for certain that your idea of "education" includes things such as affordable and sustainable farming and animal husbandry....or how to make a solar stove in order to cook and boil/sterilize water where no firewood is available, and certainly no kitchen facilities....or changing cultural habits for the better (to lower or eliminate disease, famine, tribal warfare, etc.) WITHOUT being required to give up valued traditions and ways of life....giving people the education and information they really need, not judging them inferior to we purportedly "civilized" folks, or being so bigoted we believe they must do things our way...and so on.

Gates pre-marriage history shows him to be a leeeeetle bit of a hypocrite, since he was well known, for a long time, as being one of the very few billionaires in the world who gave nothing to charity...did NO philantrophy whatsoever. Good for him now, but one can't help but remember that prior to Melinda, our Bill ignored the myriad articles and people who suggested he make at least a couple of charitable contributions every now and then.

Nonetheless, Gates was never so deluded he believed his "mission" was to sell DOS or Windows to every person in the world...or that it was even close to the "most important" task he needed to accomplish in his lifetime.

Whereas Zuckerberg is so immature and self-absorbed, he doesn't seem to grasp the basics of human existence. He seems not to "get" that the vast majority of human beings need food, shelter, medical care, etc. much more than they need to be on the Internet, or even own a computing device.

And if we haven't been able to solve those basics after hundreds of generations of recorded history...how hubristic must Zuck be to think getting 7+ billion people online by the end of his estimated life span is even possible?

Sadly, he's not the only person who fails at humane prioritizing. The developed nations and their middle to upper classes are increasingly out of touch with worldwide realities, including the harsh global truth that billions live in abject poverty, millions starve to death annually, and every day thousands die for lack of access to basic health care and crucial medication.

Of course, the "wealthy" nations have a lot of practice at ignoring unpleasant facts, including the unacceptably large percentages of their own population who must be numbered with the poor, hungry, and sick.

Perhaps instead of pursuing larger market share and personal profit while pretending he is attempting to benefit others, Zuck the Schmuck could spend some of his leisure time interacting with a few non-millionaires. Hang out with some minimum-wage workers, say. Or spend his next vacation volunteering and working in a culture as much unlike his own sheltered, pampered, privileged life as possible.

Maybe then he might gain some genuine perspective....adjust his priorities to be more in line with real needs....

But I won't be holding my breath.

Re: The historical accident of little-endian

Even as a non-programmer gasping for air attempting to follow these comments, I at least understand the difference between scanning that number right-to-left as opposed to left-to-right.

If one were going to approach it as a mathematical amateur - i.e., insert the commas that mark off the 1000s - one can not count off from the left three numbers at a time. One must start at the right and insert the commas every three numbers.

Yes, one can count them all, but why would one? Doing it right-to-left is how the average person would divide up the number so it made sense.

For example, it's how most non-programmers and non-mathmaticians approach a number such as 10000000. Quick, is it 1 million or 10 million? Go right-to-left 3 digits at a time, and you'll know a lot faster than if you try to approach it left-to-right

Anyway, that's what I got from the comment, and so when you write, "...that makes no sense", I have to say, "Uh, yes, it does make sense". It may not be how YOU do it, and it may not be how an "expert" does it. But it does make sense.

Re: Ah the stupid

Or the kid was smart enough to turn off the easy-to-find setting that determines whether an e-mail is sent when a Buyer is outbid...Or the kid entered 33,000 at the beginning, and the 8 bids were actually autobids, not ones he entered himself...Or the father had changed his settings so he wouldn't get a zillion e-mails at every stage of the bidding process, being an adult who is smart enough to know when the auction ends, and doesn't need constant reminders clogging up his inbox...

There are any number of reasons the Dad would have no warning. I'm more curious about why the son had access to the eBay account in the first place.....did Dad tell him the username and password? Did the son guess it?

Re: Blinded Me with Science

Or to paraphrase: "He Deafened Me With Silence"

Re: You should only apologize for behaviour you can control

I don't think there's any reason for men to apologize for automatically staring at breasts, or any other feature....as long as they are not so crass as to stare for long periods of time, or while simultaneously making crude comments. Discourtesy is never acceptable, and overt, offensive behavior IS in fact controllable, and should be apologized for. I agree, though, that male or female, no human being can help being attracted to certain visual stimuli, nor should they have to apologize for being attracted...so long as their attraction doesn't affect the object being observed.

However, men (and women, to be balanced) CAN control whether or not they program/code a breast-gazing app, considering such behavior is obviously not instinctive, or autonomic, or even learned. It was simply a stupid, ill-considered non-joke. And, sorry, but huge numbers of women ARE getting really, really weary of being treated as brainless objects and inferior human beings, and having such things shoved in their faces in public forums.

More to the point: While Batts and Boulton certainly have every right to present whatever they wish (I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech, regardless of my feelings about what's conveyed)....

Their fitness to run a startup, and wisely use investors' money, IS nonetheless a valid question if their judgment and organization skills are so poor they (1) failed to complete their alleged "initial idea" presentation in time (missed a professional deadline) and (2) decided a "last minute mock-up" of an adolescent concept was in any way an acceptable or professional substitute for a real presentation.

That behavior was, again, easily controllable. And based on their antics, I'd sure as hell want to go over their business plan with a fine tooth comb before investing in any venture they initiated.

There are boundaries between "public" and "private" - between "personal" and "professional". Those incapable of recognizing where those boundaries lie need to learn the difference, and fast. Meaning if Batts and Boulton want their startup to succeed, they need to take this particular lesson to heart.

Re: Re:80's?

In 1986, yes, you COULD have all those things. But those who did were still a tiny minority . . . and it wasn't cheap. I seem to remember one company I worked for getting a quote on an IBM PC/AT in late 1984 or early 1985 of $10,000. It had 512KB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive, and as most of you already know, those are not typos.

Your average family today owns some form of computing device. Your average family in the mid-80s was barely aware of them, if at all, despite some TV advertisements now recognized as classics. But actually owning one wasn't on most people's radar. Even small businesses were hesitant to invest in a PC, given it was, at that time, likely to be a capital investment.

Mid-1980s, at most of the temp jobs I worked, the company was still using typewriters. Granted, some of them were word-processing typewriters (a hideous combination of all the worst qualities of both technologies), but most were plain old electric typewriters jazzed up with built-in correction tape so you could at least auto-white-out a certain number of mistyped characters. Those of you who never typed a college term paper on a manual, non-correcting typewriter have no idea what a luxury that seemed at the time.

And, no, I'm not really, really old. I'm 52, and finished college while working part-time and during the summer. I did, later on, have access at home to a Commodore 128 and a PC running MS-DOS 3...an Osborne, Kaypro and, still later, a Mac SE I could use anytime at the university . . . a semester on the DEC VAX . . . and a few temp jobs where the company had invested in one or more computers (including a rather depressing couple of months cold-calling prospects in hopes they'd purchase a Wang). And, yes, I remember WordPerfect fondly, and still believe it beats the swinging hell out of Word, even without the WYSIWHG.

But a mullet? That's just scary.

Re: What! Is! This! Yahoo! Of! Which! You! Speak?!

FROM: Yahoo! Legal

RE: Misuse of Trademark Symbology; Dilution of Brand; Irreverent Punctuation

Dear Mr. Martian:

Pursuant to Article 7, Subsection XI, Subparagraph Q of the Yahoo! Press Room Style Guide, we are writing to inform you use of Yahoo!'s Trademarked exclamation point (the "Yahoosteria Ultima") is governed by U.S. Law, the Internet Highway Contract of Carriage, and international punctuative regulatory agencies.

Per the Y!.P.R.S.G., any headline, sentence, or other word group containing the Yahoo! corporate name must conform strictly to usage rules for the Y.U. itself. Specifically, ". . . neither the Y.U. nor any exclamatory indicator within [any] syntactical grouping may be preceded by a character other than the concluding alphanumeric of the immediately previous discrete word-analog character string."

Consequently, not only is your title mis-punctuated with regard to standard query construction, it is in violation of the Terms and Conditions of the Y!.P.R.S.G., to which all publicly published materials and commentary must conform.

We believe your improper ordering of punctuatorial markage, in combination with inclusion of a mark similar to the Yahoosteria Ultima which concludes our mark, in proximity to our mark, has the potential to cause confusion among consumers and our customers.

While the purpose of this letter is to make you aware of your error, please be advised any further malformation related to the Yahoo! trademark may result in legal action on our part including, but not limited to, punitive damages or remedial English classes.

Regards!

Carlton Smyth

Yahoo! Assistant! General! Counsel!

Re: Are you staring at my tail pipe?

True, attitude is the correct term...also true the line "Are you staring at my tail pipe?" did make me smile briefly. Especially since everyone knows a jet with real attitude would simply say, "Oi! 'ands off me nozzle!"

LOL, I also read that initially as if there were a comma after "animals."