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Comment Re:Is the settlement open for all ? (Score 5, Insightful) 89

As others have mentioned, there is no need for precedent because once the plaintiff actually started reading the laws, there wasn't much legal ambiguity- Liberation Music was wrong and Lessig was right. I think he got the upper hand here. From TFA:

In winning this tussle, Lessig was also able to score a larger victory for his cause. Liberation Music agreed to adopt new policies around issuing takedown notices. The label has promised to work with Lessig to improve its YouTube and copyright policies to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Being in the right is never enough to avoid being sued or legally threatened, but at least this settlement is an attempt to fix that problem in the context of YouTube. Oh- and all the settlement cash is going to the EFF.

Comment Better chances if you do not have one? (Score 2, Interesting) 343

As a one-time worker bee who is now a part of senior management (with an MPA and not an MBA, although they are pretty similar) I understand what he is saying but I disagree that people should have a better chance of being hired because they have the three letters next to their name.

I hire for open reqs based on the PERSON and their SKILLSET, not the degree they may or may not hold. You know, the way it should be. What Musk is promoting through another one of his ridiculous soundbites is that we should pay more attention to degrees (good or bad) than the skills someone brings along with them.

Musk can be absolutely brilliant and incredibly and insanely stupid all at the same time.

Comment Re:The reason is private insurance (Score 3, Insightful) 786

No, the problem is that the public sector does not operate anything at all like the private sector all the while trying to emulate it under the overhead and red tape that comes along with requiring the public's input.

In addition to the issues seen with how the public sector operates, we have the requirement of outsourcing to the private sector to do the bulk of work through private/public partnerships which the public sector cannot and will not effectively manage,

The competing interests of these partnerships leans heavily on the private sector to make loads of money while the public sector expects them to operate within the bounds of the red tape the private sector is not accustomed or willing to accept as part of their business model.

If the government took this upon themselves to do anything in its entirety, it would likely be done slowly but correctly. Unfortunately, we end up with the result we did: a quickly cobbled together, expensive, and poorly implemented product which would never have seen the light of day in the private sector.

This happens ALL THE TIME with public/private partnerships. Take a look at the website redesign for the City of Apple Valley, Minnesota which was originally budgeted at $76,000 but later reduced to a much more reasonable, although still incredibly expensive $30,000. The resulting site is basically unusable, slow, horrendous to update, and slightly more useless than its predecessor (lipstick on a pig).

Comment Re:Red state (Score 4, Interesting) 470

I'd love to see the Tesla sales numbers from Austin vs the rest of the state. Austin residents have long been at odds w/the rest of the state and their politics and as such I have a feeling we'd see a pretty high correlation with Austin vs Tesla ownership when compared w/the rest of the state.

Comment Re:Programmer Troubles (Score 4, Interesting) 473

I once had a non-technical manager and she told me what I did was simply "magic" to her and others and while she knew the results provided weren't as simple as it seemed to them, others in the organization felt it was.

It's a very difficult concept for non-technical people to understand and part of the life of any developer to deal with. It's the same thing many developers feel about management and administration and we all need to share in the responsibility of not assuming it's easy and/or "magic".

Comment Innovation DOES Destroy Jobs (Score 1) 754

...but it also spurs further consumerism which creates jobs that should (in theory) replace those that were lost.

However, there are still two losers when this happens:

1. unskilled or moderately-skilled workers

        The new jobs created require more education and specialized skills than the ones that were eliminated. This is resulting in a wealth gap, which will further exacerbate things by reducing the size of the consumer class that creates those jobs in the first place.

2. the environment

        Oftentimes, efficiency gains come at the cost of increased energy requirements. Consumerism brought on by technological advances is almost always centered on goods rather than services, which increases overall demand for natural resources. Say what you will about the out-of-control health care spending in the U.S., but it is an exception to this trend in that it is service-centered consumerism.

Comment Re:I get to bust this one out again. (Score 4, Interesting) 209

I have repeatedly requested camera views from publicly owned but privately operated buses in the southern suburbs of the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area.

These cameras exist both inside and outside of the buses but whenever an issue arises which negatively impact the bus drivers or the system itself, the camera feeds are unavailable, usually due to some sort of unknown malfunction: http://www.lazylightning.org/bus-2-0-directs-mvta-driver-onto-dirt-shoulder

However, when they are not at fault, the videos are available to me right away and without question: http://www.lazylightning.org/mvta-rider-alleges-racism-over-bus-incident

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