Mighty Buzzard's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the short-and-sweet dept
It's been a heck of a busy month or two for copyright. We've had SOPA and PIPA. We've had the organization of a grassroots campaign against them. We had a significant number of serious heavyweights of the Internet join in. And now we have nations around Europe bailing on ACTA over protests of their citizens.
My question is, why? Why do we have to see stories like this:
Over 70 different groups, including many who were central to the January 18th online protests against SOPA, have put together a letter asking Congress to put a halt to any attempts to further expand intellectual property laws.
The movie industry has one main lobby that they can put all their weight behind. So does the recording industry. Why don't we have one?
And why are these yahoos still supporting bills that they know are poison? I thought they were supposed to be realizing that it wasn't Google lobbying that stopped SOPA/PIPA.
Anyway, those aren't necessarily my favorite Techdirt stories of the week but they are the ones that made me think the most. I consider that a bigger win than a good chuckle or a burn on Righthaven.
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For chemists, electronics engineers, and medical careers I agree. These are proper science and engineering fields and should remain as they are, more or less.
Things that are not proper science or the application of it though? They're better taught in trade schools or learned on the job. Spending years and thousands of dollars on a degree for them is foolish beyond belief and does no good for anyone except the universities.
The humanities? They're another discussion entirely; a fair number of their degrees have no career path whatsoever outside teaching them to the next batch of students.
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Oh but it is. The only thing a college gives you in the way of information that the great, wide Internet doesn't is a piece of paper.
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Easy, yes. Intelligent, no. You might just as well weed them out by eye color for most jobs.
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Some do but quite a lot of them pay better than you'd think. Plumber, electrician, and HVAC guys all make a hell of a lot more than I did at my first sysadmin job, as do most union jobs. For that matter, sysadmin isn't really helped by having a degree beyond basic coding ability and that can be picked up for free online.
Most business positions have no need of what they had to learn for a business degree. Accountants and lawyers being pretty much the only exception.
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College is also entirely unnecessary for the vast majority of jobs. If you want a better baseline education, improve K-12 education and leave college for those it will actually benefit.
Re: $3K used to be what a college degree cost...
I'm hoping it keeps on inflating and the government tries to keep pace. Healthcare alone is taking too long to throw us into a proper depression.
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What the shit?
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"...everybody in the car so come on let's ride, to the liquor store around the corner."
Sage advice in these times.
Re: Re: May be record time for a Techdirt anomaly fizzling.
He doesn't hate it. He absolutely luuuurves it. Trolls need an audience for their hobby or it's just them pointlessly being a dick all by themselves.
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They would have already had that rude awakening if it weren't for this one holdup. We can't agree which of the bastards will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re: Re: Common MMO problem...
By the time their software goes out of copyright, everyone who even remembers that it existed will be long dead.
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Convince her the Congressional Way, pay her.
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I'd say closer to 50 years. I don't think they're efficient enough to do it in 20.
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Eh, I'm not particularly upset by this request. With a colo server or two, it's quite possible to commit any number of crimes within the borders of a nation that you've never been to physically and have no one acting as a representative in.
Good on Dotcom for finding the loophole but, last I checked, we were big on paying attention to unintended consequences around here and leaving the law as it stands has plenty of them.
There are plenty of unintended consequences to be had to saying all US laws apply to any company with any hardware located in the US too though. This mess needs some very careful wording to straighten out.
(untitled comment)
Yesterday via Twitter:
@NathanFillion "@PirateKnits:Captain, looking to unload illegal hats. pic.twitter.com/fR1V0wJA9b" You got a job? We'll do it. Don't much care what it is
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tl;dr Don't selv-censor because this kind of stuff should never be shown, self-censor because this is not the kind of stuff we want to be known for showing.
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I don't really give a happy damn if it entirely kills their market. That's capitalism. Provide something worth paying for or GTFO.
If they're stand-up businessmen, they'll do like you suggest and build their business around providing value on top of what's available for free. If they're douchebags, they'll try to go the legislative protection route. If they're idiots, they'll keep doing the same thing and go bankrupt.
I honestly don't care which they pick aside from the legislative protection route. If they succeed, they get fat wads of cash for being useful to society. If they fail, someone else will be happy to take our money in their place. As long as there's no protectionism going on, everyone who's not either bloody stupid or a greedy fucktard wins.
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The Xerox Star was the first personal computer released with a mouse in 81. The Apple Lisa came along in 82, I think, as the second one to include a mouse. The VIC-20 hit the shelves in 80.
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Unless you've somehow been literally getting tangled up in your mouse cable (how would you even manage that?) you're coming at it from a strictly aesthetic standpoint. Aesthetics can be nifty but they are by definition not useful.
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It's slow. It's cumbersome. It's not even on the same order of magnitude of precision as a mouse. It can't even begin to compare with the keyboard in range of input.
It's a gimmick that may prove useful in some limited ways but that's all.