Comment Re:News For Nerds (Score 1) 194
The message they are sending is political, not that the direction is coming from the government.
People get paid because someone is making money.
If your mother is so talented yet she feels that she is financially unappreciated, she has a choice of working in a private school, isn't that so?
In fact if her talents are in high DEMAND then she can tutor people for much MORE money than she'd be making in a school, and eventually with that money that she could save, she could open her own private school, why not?
Then explain firefighters, police, armed forces - even road crews are more for the benefit of the public at large - and not once person / company who is invested in the project. Even if his mother does have a choice to go to a private school, that DOESN'T solve the overall problem of providing education to the public (maybe that is what you are against)
The real problem is you don't seem to accept the difference between public and private work roles
Education, like the other roles mentioned above, benefit the whole, and making the best out of the public system should be the goal, unless your answer is that only the privileged have access to quality education (not a false dichotomy either)
There are already tons of posts saying either "document it" or "find another job". Here's what I recommend. 1. Take a software inventory. Figure out what is installed where, and which license codes/CD keys are being used. 2. Pull records. We get a lot of our PCs pre-loaded with MS apps and Acrobat. Those OEM installs stay with the machines, though many places try to move them forward from machine to machine (thus creating the impression that "we must have bought it sometime"). 3. Check online sites, like Microsoft's eOpen site, or contact specific vendors (e.g., call Autodesk or your VAR) and ask them to send you a summary of your current licenses. 4. Document your level of usage against your level of compliance. Include all costs for becoming compliant. Be sure to include one time costs (e.g., buying additional seats) and any recurring costs (e.g., maintenance, back maintenance, reinstatement fees). 5. Educate management that software is licensed, not purchased. 6. Include information regarding the legal liability related to pirated software. Include references to any cases you can find, including actual fines, as well as potential fines (caps). Note the reputational risk to the company as well. 7. Prepare a plan for bringing the company into compliance. Include possible stop-gap measures and alternatives (e.g., limiting the number of users with a specific pieces of software, buying one additional license per year, using OpenOffice). 8. Compile everything into a well-documented report/memo (depending on your company's preferred style), and be sure to present it personally (don't just email it off). Offer to meet at another time, if necessary, but you must make it clear how important this is. Offer to meet with the entire management team. Communicate, communicate, communicate. 9. Let management know you don't plan on blowing the whistle (they'll surely say "nobody knows, so we're fine"), but make them aware that any disgruntled employee could make a call in to the piracy hotline. If you have the intestinal fortitude to do so, you could even make it clear (if it reflects your beliefs) that you value your integrity and that you cannot, in good conscience, help the company steal software/violate contract terms. Of course, that means you need to be ready to put up or shut up. All that being well and good, you can take some practical steps to start getting things into compliance going forward:
Good points, making a comment so I have a reference to go back
Is there anyone who honestly thinks there's something immoral about people paying specifically for what resources they actually consume, whether it's electricity, medical services, or Internet bandwidth?
You can't consume bandwidth, its a fixed amount. That is what people are confusing here. If an ISP wants to charge based on usage, that is fine, but it seems very likely they will charge on speed and usage, which is not fine. The major telecoms have been given billions in tax benefits and grants to build communications infrastructure and now they want to double dip. That is what is immoral about these ideals, not the concept of metered usage itself. If an ISP wants to sell data by the byte, they better well be providing a fixed bandwidth with an SLA, and not a burst able bandwidth model, or else they are once again double dipping.
'The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution, but it has not made content free.
No, but you do have a forrest of ads on the website - and much less distribution costs.
Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites,' Murdoch said."
I would hope any change in required subscriptions would eliminate any ads, but just like the promise of cable - I fear not.
I have no doubt that the porn they were distributing could well have been "degrading" women by portraying them in a "vile and depraved manner", as for the "most imaginable" part, I'm sure my imagination is a little better than yours Mary Beth, being that many pornographic movies serve exactly that purpose.. but last I looked that was still protected speech.. thus my shock at the finding.
You must not have looked very recently - protected speech does not include anything that falls under a Chaplinksy test(Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568) and while erotic content does not nessessarly fall under that list, obscene material does - and that is what the federal law is dealing with "obscene erotic content"
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
