Domain: infomotions.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to infomotions.com.
Comments · 9
-
Re:Makes sense
Thank you for the feedback, I'll definitely find more details about Gottman's work.
Let me share my findings now. There is a book called "The brain, a decoded enigma"; the author provides a model that attempts to describe the modus operandi of the brain. It is an interesting read, there are a lot of great ideas in it; and besides that, the book is available for free.
One of the things we can understand after reading this book is "what is love?". Here is an excerpt, "Love, to love"
The main model of any brain (human or animal) is the Protection and Survival
Model (PSM). If something (a person, an animal, an object, an idea...) is
included by a person in his/her PSM (as a model, of course), the relation
between that "something" and that person is a love relation. That is, e.g. a
person A includes a person B (as model) in his/her PSM. The person A will
treat person B in the same way as he/she treats his/her legs, hands, eyes etc.Here we use the convention that A indicates the person who is in love and B is
the person included in the PSM as a model.The most important love-relation seems to be between a mother and her
children.As we defined the term "love" the fact that A loves B is totally independent
on the fact that B loves A.We already described love based on PSM. There is another type of love, which
is not based on PSM. Thus, the person A makes a structure of models which
contains B in about all of them. If B disappears, the models would become
obsolete, which produces a large instability of the structure. The problem
could be solved by another "B" or by a shielding model or by suicide.Because love is based mainly on image models, about all of the written above
is true for animals too.Of course, you'll have to read the entire work in order to understand some of the terms. Overall I think that the book is a pretty good model of reality, so far I've been able to confirm its predictions on multiple occasions.
I have written some essays on the subject myself, they describe various aspects of a relationship:
- On social feedback
- Simple relationship mathematics
- Sime relationship physics
- On types of friendship
- Relationships and todo lists (this one also predicts when a relationship is likely to fail)
- Absolute and useless truth
- Select++ (if you speak Romanian - check this one out, it involves some statistics, polls and quotes from interviewed people)
-
Re:What?
It's not stealing. It's called copyright infringement.
The popular myth that copyright infringement is not theft is deeply flawed. Under the definition of theft given by US law, copyright infringement is a cut and dried case of theft of services. This has been well established by precedent in this country for more than two hundred years, when the newspapers on the American frontier tried to get by by stealing newspaper copy. When the courts ruled that illegal, the various journalist wires that sold stories began, which led to Reuters. I'm also not sure why you waste your time attempting to draw the distinction, as if one is less illegal than the other. I've only ever heard pirates pretend there was a difference, and the only reason they don't want to call it theft is that they would then have to face being thieves.
It is both a false and a useless distinction.Copyright is a granted limited monopoly by the Government of a country on copying.
No, it isn't. It hasn't been since the Berne conventions in the 1940s. Quit pretending to be a lawyer. Copyright is not a monopoly; monopoly is when, in the open market, a company manages to control 50% or more of a demographic. Since there is no open market on copywritten work, it clearly isn't a monopoly. Be sure to dust off that part of the constitution which uses the word monopoly, so that I can laugh at you for believing that the word means the same thing now as it did back then, in the eyes of the law.
Generally speaking, you should not assume that what you read on blogs is equivalent to a law degree.AFAIK the _international_ "you respect my country's copyrights and I respect yours" deal somehow became part of the WTO thingy which the US Gov agreed to.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The WTO is a transactional trade jurisprudence concerned with physical stock items, and this slashdot furor notwithstanding, the WTO has no governance over copyright. The WTO is about selling bananas, steel and blue jeans. Intellectual property is not a moment of trade unless you're selling the rights to the item. The Berne Conventions assign the United Nations as the international governor of both copyright and patent disputes. The persistant idea that anything that deals with money inbetween nations is under the WTO's purview is fundamentally wrong-headed. If it's not a physical item, the WTO has nothing to do with it.
So the way I see it if the US _allegedly_ doesn't hold up it's part of the WTO deal
You might want to look up the word "alleged," as you cannot allegedly fail to do something, by definition. An allegation is an accusation of action in court. Please stop learning your legal jargon from the eleven o'clock news, and maybe dust off a copy of Bierce's Write It Right and learn ye some proper English. Of course, someone who understands the law does need to know what an allegation is, as it's a fundamental concept in law, but somehow I doubt this will dissuade you from believing yourself an expert.
So the way I see it if the US _allegedly_ doesn't hold up it's part of the WTO deal, Antigua is well within its rights to request the WTO to "redo the deal" accordingly, which in this case could mean Antiguans get to copy stuff.
What? Did you even try to figure out if this made sense before you said it? There is no point at which Antigua gets to break UN law if the WTO finds that the United States has raised unfair barriers to commercial entry. The WTO isn't even part of the UN. It's not even on the same continent as the UN. Less than two thirds of the world are under WTO governance, yet all but six countries on Earth are signatories of the Berne Conventions. Hell, the WTO didn't even exist until 1995; Antigua signed the Berne Conventions in 1956.
"The Deal" doesn't -
Poe called. He wants his story back.
-
Re:if we had sensible...
Good luck to cutting small business expenses by shortening the intellectual property term limits. You think if patents expire in 10 years instead of 20, businesses won't be just as quick to pollute the system up that keep the just expired technologies under bay, with new patents? Instead of x amount of patents in 20 years that a small business needs to review in fear of infringement, now they have to review 2x patents in 10 years. 6 million USPTO patents in 2005? Try 12 million, in 2008. It's all about jobs, patents and intellectual property provide jobs to lawyers, programmers, and people, to keep the economy going. IP laws are meant to keep us from solutions like reinstituting telephone switchboard ladies, to give everyone something to do and be able to feed. Wouldn't you rather be a lawyer, an IP portfolio manager, a systems analyst, than a button pusher, or a switchboard operator? How do you measure the worth of your intellectual activities? I was actually offered a way to make a living, well, more like shoved down my throat, by continually rewriting software every few years, because it's job security. It's all about jobs and the economy man, because when it stops, when the last drop of oil is gone, and the quarterly growth of waste generation can't be kept up, Heaven save us all.
-
Re:Remember, if you're not part of the solution...
Gorman apparently has the more limited goal of indexing materials without providing access to them, while mocking the efforts of these other organizations to provide access.
Alas, that comment and the rest of your post is confirmation of Gorman's lament:
It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote.
His complaint, if you read his original article, is that in Google's project, only snippets of the books that match the search terms will be displayed. Users will not see the search results in the larger context, which may include many pages. He says, "Absent a lot more searching, you have no idea whether there are other references to the subject in the book, and the 'information' you have found is almost meaningless out of context." He notes that "In the Google scheme, hundreds of thousands of books in copyright will not be available to be read as a whole."
Thus his argument (very briefly summarized) is with Google's indexing scheme and the approach to knowledge that it presupposes, not with providing the books online.
When you accuse him of "mocking the efforts of these other organizations", he doesn't even mention any other organizations, let alone mock them.
Mr. Gorman, please keep in mind that when public library funding comes up for public discussion, your comments, especially given your position, are extraordinarily unhelpful.
In fact, he says:
I believe, however, that massive databases of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility based on the staggering notion that, for the first time in history, one form of communication (electronic) will supplant and obliterate all previous forms.
It is beyond premature to prepare to mourn the death of libraries and the death of the book.
He is clearly endorsing libraries and his ideas would be extraordinarily helpful.
-
Here's a Link To His Original Op-Edhttp://www.infomotions.com/serials/colldv-l/05/00
5 4.shtml/I don't really understand his concern. He writes in reference to what an average person might do after doing a google print search:
Are you going to print the book, and end up with 500 unbound sheets? Or will you request the actual book (in copyright or out) through the active and developed interlibrary lending system that supplies thousands of books daily to scholars, researchers and dilettantes worldwide? The latter involves a short wait, of course. We all know that, in Googleworld, speed is of the essence, but it is not to most scholarly research in the real world.
If speed isn't essential to scholarly research in "the real world," why won't scholars continue to use his and other librarian's services? Google Print will cater to those people who won't go to the trouble of requesting books from other libraries and would, in the absence of a service like Google Print, would otherwise miss out on the information completely instead of getting it in at least in snippets.In any case, Google's service isn't positioned as an information gathering resource anyway. It's supposed to be used to find books you might be interested in, and it works quite well at that. I've personally gone out and acquired copies of three books (at a library no less!) as a direct result of google print searches.
-
Context
I think we could use a little context here. Gorman had written an article. for the LATimes questioning the value of Google's search engine for books (as contrasted with say spending the money on a library). The position of the article is that information in context (i.e. in a book written by a researcher) is worth far less to someone doing research than a far greater quantity of facts without the organizational structure of a book.
Bloggers who focus primarily on
-- putting together collections of obscure references
-- often don't have formal training in their areas
objected to the classical approach to research that Gorman advocated.
I see this article as written response the blogs which attacked Gorman. As a society we could wonders on the library front for a fraction of the cost of projects like Google's; this is a point that no one questions. The real issue is what is the relative value of libraries as contrasted with digital information repositories.
Blogging proposes a very democratic model of information evaluation that any intelligent person given access to the information will be able to derive the correct conclusions quickly and easily. The classic approach argues that a guided program of study is highly advisable prior deviling into raw sources of information. In feeds in which you are an expert which approach do you think is more correct? -
Re:In case of Slashdotting, son
"Earlier this year, Nintendo's share price plunged on news that Sony would begin selling Linux desktops, challenging RedHat in a market that it has dominated. It was hit again when Sony announced a new multi-function machine that would combine a DVD recorder with a church."
DVD recorder + church?
Whoah! -
AOL USERS!!!
(psst! don't let Amazon know!!
:) LOLOLOL)
FREE BOOKS ONLINE! NO credit card required! No obligation!
RIGHT HERE!!1 Just click on a link on the left and be taken to the uncensored full texts!!!
Hurry! THey're going fast@ REmember: NO credit card required, it's FREE, no obligation!!1
Here's an excerpt!! (direct from link to full text!!1 http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/_Gutenberg_Etext _Books/etext97/memho10.txt
Adventure VI
The Reigate Puzzle
It was some time before the health of my friend Mr.
Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by
his immense exertions in the spring of '87. The whole
question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the
colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis are too recent in
the minds of the public, and are too intimately
concerned with politics and finance to be fitting
subjects for this series of sketches. They led,
however, in an indirect fashion to a singular and
complex problem which gave my friend an opportunity of
demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among the
many with which he waged his life-long battle against
crime.
On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the
14th of April that I received a telegram from Lyons
which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the
Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his
sick-room, and was relieved to find that there was
nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron
constitution, however, had broken down under the
strain of an investigation which had extended over two
months, during which period he had never worked less
than fifteen hours a day, and had more than once, as
he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a
stretch. Even the triumphant issue of his labors
could not save him from reaction after so terrible an
exertion, and at a time when Europe was ringing with
his name and when his room was literally ankle-deep
with congratulatory telegrams I found him a prey to
the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he
had succeeded where the police of three countries had
failed, and that he had outmanoeuvred at every point
the most accomplished swindler in Europe, was
insufficient to rouse him from his nervous
prostration.
Three days later we were back in Baker Street
together; but it was evident that my friend would be
much the better for a change, and the thought of a
week of spring time in the country was full of
attractions to me also. My old friend, Colonel
Hayter, who had come under my professional care in
Afghanistan, had now taken a house near Reigate in
Surrey, and had frequently asked me to come down to
him upon a visit. On the last occasion he had
remarked that if my friend would only come with me he
would be glad to extend his hospitality to him also.
A little diplomacy was needed, but when Holmes
understood that the establishment was a bachelor one,
and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom, he
fell in with my plans and a week after our return from
Lyons we were under the Colonel's roof. Hayter was a
fine old soldier who had seen much of the world, and
he soon found, as I had expected, that Holmes and he
had much in common.
On the evening of our arrival we were sitting in the
Colonel's gun-room after dinner, Holmes stretched upon
the sofa, while Hayter and I looked over his little
armory of Eastern weapons.
"By the way," said he suddenly, "I think I'll take one
of these pistols upstairs with me in case we have an
alarm."
"An alarm!" said I.