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Check out this essay by Jaron Lanier

Ewww.... that looks like Earse.cx. Did that illustrator get his idea from some goat site?

But then I scrolled down to the bottom and noticed the irony: a publication of The Walt Disney Company, known in political circles as the biggest corporate sponsor of the Slippery Slope Towards Perpetual Copyright Establishment Act (commonly called the Bono Act), just endorsed Napster.

The DMCA doesn't outlaw the trafficking of a security circumvention device. Only tools which circumvent access to a *copyrighted work*.

And because works in the public domain are not copyrighted, it only takes one person to use access control on a public domain work to allow Americans to release tools designed to decrypt that specific public domain work and that "happen" to also decrypt copyrighted works. (See also Charlie Chaplin DVD.)

This is why is why Congress passed the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act during the same week, during the same media cover (both Kosovo and Lewinsky), and using the same unaccountable method (voice vote). Disney didn't want to be the one to provide the loophole mentioned earlier by releasing a DVD of "Steamboat Willie" and "Plane Crazy," two of the first five Mickey Mouse films.

nice, but you forgot the corollary to Godwin's Law... :)

(end of first paragraph)

I don't see any reason to believe that the existence of intellectual property rights would have hindered the Renaissance -- or helped it much either.

Watch one painter sue another painter. Watch one composer sue another composer. Had strong, long term copyrights existed during the Renaissance, the world would have seen more lawsuits than works of art.

The first U.S. Congress originally created copyright law to protect authors from piratical publishers. Now it works the other way around: publishers sue their customers for promoting the publishers' products with fan fiction and the like.

See here
or here

To summarize the articles, the idea of something that could hang in a fixed location above the earth is an old one (early indian mythology). However, it was generally considered impossible, impractical etc. Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short (nonficiton) article in which he asserted that geosynchronous satellites would revolutionize communication. Permitting a link between any two points on the globe. Based upon that article people went out and built such satellites. Now the modern international infrasturctre (long distance telecommunications, broadcast networks, etc.), Governments (Spy Satellites, star wars (if its ever built)), and hikers (GPS) all depend upon the technology.

Strictly speaking its not an example of pure science fiction as Clarke's article appeard in a nonfiction publication. But he was a specialist in Science fiction, and what he did was assert the effect such things would have if they existed not how to make them.

Someone should start a wiki wiki web (a page modifiable by anyone, a la Wikipedia) for people to post information they find about this little bastard. Eventually, enough info should come together to allow writing a specific detection utility, which could then be slashdotted. I would do it myself, but I don't have a server (I'm in Romania).

Abe Lincoln has been dead for a long time, copyright has expired on his portrait (10 years after death, IIRC)

This may be true of Abraham Lincoln, but it isn't true of anybody who died on or after January 1, 1931. Copyright lasts until the later of 70 years after December 31 on or after the death of the last surviving author, or 95 years after December 31 on or after first publication. And yes I do think believe that the term is too long to effectively "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." See also Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

Even then, trademarks never expire as long as they remain in use.

remember that the _purpose_ of copyright is to encourage many people to read the works, and eventually change and incorporate them in new works

If individuals want to incorporate copyrighted works into new works without a lawsuit or royalties bankrupting them, they have to wait for the copyright to expire. Yeah, right. Not in my lifetime nor in yours. Copyrights already last 95 years, and you can bet that by 2020, Di$ney will have contributed another $6 million of soft money to the Republicratic Party in exchange for yet another term extension. How the courts consider 95 years as sufficiently "limited Times" designed "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" escapes me.

Boycott the estate of Sonny Bono, whose widow introduced and sponsored the bill. Boycott Cher, who has been quoted as favoring a term of "forever less a day." Boycott the Walt Disney Company, which bankrolled the bribes that got the bill passed. Boycott all color motion pictures produced by MPAA member studios, as the first commercial color film technology appeared in 1923, and all works created on or after January 1, 1923, are under an effective perpetual copyright in the United States.

May Sonny Bono rot in he11.

From the article:

Royden Yates, one of the team that discovered the tools, told the BBC: "Every indication that we have been able to gather suggests that we are looking at something between 80 and 100,000 years old.

In other words, the bone sculptures may just barely be old enough not to qualify for effectively perpetual copyright under the Sonny "Bone"-o Act?

(Yes, I knew they meant 80K to 100K years, but I couldn't resist.)

I would think that you can use this citation to argue that copyrights, while supposed to be limited in scope, are now becoming de facto limitless, and thus are not 'for limited times'

No. The citation says that unlike copyrights, trade secrets are perpetual. However, this ignores that every 20 years, Disney employees contribute upwards of US$6 million to congressional re-election campaigns to get 20 more years of copyright monopoly. See also the Wikipedia article about the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. In fact, according to one interpretation of the Constitution, a billion years plus two days would be considered sufficiently "limited times."

A curse on the Bono family for being so dang greedy.

If you like learning what you don't know and teaching what you do know, check out the open-content project Wikipedia. If you like problem solving in all its aspects, check out the Web of Knowledge & Know-How

The oft forgotten (and more modern category) are the non-cognitivists, whose position is, essentially: "the claims for (this) god are so unintelligible that even if I wanted to "believe" I couldn't, because I have no idea what sort of thing I would even be "believing" in."

That's a pretty good approximation of my own position, but I don't think "non-cognitivist" is the right term for it. Here's a pretty good essay on non-cognitivism, which is the view that ethical statements have no meaning other than as a description of how we feel or what we want others to do.

My view is that the term "god" lacks coherence; it is not well enough defined that one can meaningfully say much about it. In a pluralistic society, the question "Does god exist?" makes no sense without some clarification as to which God the question is about and what its characteristics are alleged to be.

A google search would do the trick, or you could just read this Wikipedia article I contributed to which should give you some idea.

... is of course the S l a s h d o t E f f e c t.

Sooo... congresscritters are thinking of passing a nasty ole law? Rob could just threaten to post a story like "An anonymous coward writes: Streaming video of Natalie Portmans hot grit's posted to the US Congress Web site. "([sic] - TacoLexicon in force. my real grammar is better.)

Congress would naturally cave in and meet all our demands. Well, maybe not RMS's...

Actually, the subject's kind of a lie, but it's also kind of true. I was just talking about this very issue with my friend earlier, who's been getting very depressed about news addiction. We both live in New York City.

I've made sure that each day I go out into the city, talking with people, learning their stories, taking pictures.

Then I put them up.

<p class="Katzian">
What prevents the downward spiral of information-void-despair is becoming a white hole, sending out information as well. What we nerds/information Morlocks are good at is processing information--if all we're doing is storing, compiling it, it'll drive us crazy. It's crucial to find a way to create something with that knowledge.
&lt/p>

What I've been doing with a bunch of other people is to build an open, free site in memoriam of the event and the victims--ostensibly as part of Wikipedia. That way the emphasis is on super-efficient information delivery, and it works just great as a balance on the news gathering addiction.

Of course, I'm currently having the apposite problem of overcreation, having spent the last 10 hours straight on it, but I'll deal. I'm making sure to get together with my friends, away from computers and hopefully televisions.

Speaking of which, radios seem to be the equivalent of the nicotine patch. They give me the info-dosage I need without trapping and obsessing me; a soothing buffer of bits instead of a mesmerizing stream.

So if you want help yourself, and you want to help--because telling the stories of the victims, or creating a definitive repository of knowledge, is so very helpful to everyone else--go to wikipedia and flood their servers with all the knowledge and analysis you've gleaned. Or figure out how to take over the information already used to make an even better site.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get my fix from just this one site, so I won't have to ever be searching.

Actually, the subject's kind of a lie, but it's also kind of true. I was just talking about this very issue with my friend earlier, who's been getting very depressed about news addiction. We both live in New York City.

I've made sure that each day I go out into the city, talking with people, learning their stories, taking pictures.

Then I put them up.

<p class="Katzian">
What prevents the downward spiral of information-void-despair is becoming a white hole, sending out information as well. What we nerds/information Morlocks are good at is processing information--if all we're doing is storing, compiling it, it'll drive us crazy. It's crucial to find a way to create something with that knowledge.
&lt/p>

What I've been doing with a bunch of other people is to build an open, free site in memoriam of the event and the victims--ostensibly as part of Wikipedia. That way the emphasis is on super-efficient information delivery, and it works just great as a balance on the news gathering addiction.

Of course, I'm currently having the apposite problem of overcreation, having spent the last 10 hours straight on it, but I'll deal. I'm making sure to get together with my friends, away from computers and hopefully televisions.

Speaking of which, radios seem to be the equivalent of the nicotine patch. They give me the info-dosage I need without trapping and obsessing me; a soothing buffer of bits instead of a mesmerizing stream.

So if you want help yourself, and you want to help--because telling the stories of the victims, or creating a definitive repository of knowledge, is so very helpful to everyone else--go to wikipedia and flood their servers with all the knowledge and analysis you've gleaned. Or figure out how to take over the information already used to make an even better site.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get my fix from just this one site, so I won't have to ever be searching.

Actually, the subject's kind of a lie, but it's also kind of true. I was just talking about this very issue with my friend earlier, who's been getting very depressed about news addiction. We both live in New York City.

I've made sure that each day I go out into the city, talking with people, learning their stories, taking pictures.

Then I put them up.

<p class="Katzian">
What prevents the downward spiral of information-void-despair is becoming a white hole, sending out information as well. What we nerds/information Morlocks are good at is processing information--if all we're doing is storing, compiling it, it'll drive us crazy. It's crucial to find a way to create something with that knowledge.
&lt/p>

What I've been doing with a bunch of other people is to build an open, free site in memoriam of the event and the victims--ostensibly as part of Wikipedia. That way the emphasis is on super-efficient information delivery, and it works just great as a balance on the news gathering addiction.

Of course, I'm currently having the apposite problem of overcreation, having spent the last 10 hours straight on it, but I'll deal. I'm making sure to get together with my friends, away from computers and hopefully televisions.

Speaking of which, radios seem to be the equivalent of the nicotine patch. They give me the info-dosage I need without trapping and obsessing me; a soothing buffer of bits instead of a mesmerizing stream.

So if you want help yourself, and you want to help--because telling the stories of the victims, or creating a definitive repository of knowledge, is so very helpful to everyone else--go to wikipedia and flood their servers with all the knowledge and analysis you've gleaned. Or figure out how to take over the information already used to make an even better site.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get my fix from just this one site, so I won't have to ever be searching.

I'm not convinced it's the perfect path to peace. It may be the easiest however. Obviously, though, the US culture is the same one that has incensed some group of people enough to carry out such horrifying attacks. These attacks were NOT carried out by uneducated fanatics that didn't and, more importantly, couldn't see what they were doing was wrong. They knew full well the implications and the horror. Yet it was still worth it.

For our culture to be so out of touch, so concerned with itself, so focused on all the trappings of everyday that we didn't realize the danger we were in... well that is a sick culture. Like the family and friends of individuals who go on a massacre of innocents, we missed the warning signs. Actually "missed" might be the wrong word. We didn't care, the suffering of others at our hands wasn't interesting enough to pull in the necessary ratings to the big media networks. Instead we have O.J. and Princess Diane. We see more minutes of advertisements and product placements than world news.

So, sure, we can fight them culturally... we can make them just like us.

Perhaps ignorance is bliss.

Then again, maybe we need to change before we can help anyone else.

Vinge does not require the advancement of computers to a point at which they are regarded intelligent. This is only one of several possibilities mentioned in his paper.

Other possibilities include:

• "Waking up" of computer networks.
• Humans using sophisticated HCI. (e.g. Vinge's Focused, Stephenson's Drummers)
• Genetically altered humans. (Card's Descolada?)

Asking who is going to pay these editors and quality controllers is like asking who is going to pay the maintainers of free software. If GNU/Linux and all the free BSD variants didn't exist, you'd be justified in your skepticism.

But we already know this will work.

What about wikipedia? Well, here you have to judge for yourself. The review process is open and eternally ongoing. Being less rigorous, the quality of the final product is lower than Nupedia. But if you look through it, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how good it really is.

no reference work started out comprehensive

And what exactly are you basing that observation on? I have a facimille of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and, while some of the articles are a bit shorter that we would expect in a modern volume (famously the complete entry for Woman runs: "the female of man. See Homo.") but it is comprehensive with few, if any, obvious omissions.

Similarly, the French L'Encyclopédie was, with its original 28 and first edition 35 volumes in folio size, a remarkably comprehensive work.

Indeed, I would argue that (commercial) encyclopaedias have a history of being very comprehensive from the first edition onwards. In this spirit, none of the free versions are anywhere close, not even beta.

The point of an encyclopaedia is, indeed, to be comprehensive and also authoritative. I had a look at the "best of Wikipedia" pages, and while the writing was sometimes engaging, on these two counts the articles simply did not measure up.

As an example, look at the article on Calendar. On the first count, that of being comprehansive, it fails obviously by missing half of the articles to specific calendars it mentions at the bottom. (This may change over time.)

On the second count, that of being authoritative, the Encyclopædia Britannica (subscription required, yadayada) runs to 17 double column pages in my printed edition. It mentions over 15 specific calendars, as opposed to the 6 of Wiki (3 of which has no content).

And - I almost forgot! - the Wiki page is factually incorrect. A calendar does not measure time, a clock does. The printed Britannica definition "a calendar is a means of grouping days in ways convenient for regulating life and religious observances and for historical and scientific purposes" is much better.

For the computer programmers out there, think of the calendar as the thing that translates time (time_t or whatever; an event in the Universe) into a date; a date having a legal or social meaning. In this context it is interesting that the calendar can change with eight to ten weeks' notice.

So I guess I'm not impressed yet. Still, it is early days and the project may grow.

no reference work started out comprehensive

And what exactly are you basing that observation on? I have a facimille of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and, while some of the articles are a bit shorter that we would expect in a modern volume (famously the complete entry for Woman runs: "the female of man. See Homo.") but it is comprehensive with few, if any, obvious omissions.

Similarly, the French L'Encyclopédie was, with its original 28 and first edition 35 volumes in folio size, a remarkably comprehensive work.

Indeed, I would argue that (commercial) encyclopaedias have a history of being very comprehensive from the first edition onwards. In this spirit, none of the free versions are anywhere close, not even beta.

The point of an encyclopaedia is, indeed, to be comprehensive and also authoritative. I had a look at the "best of Wikipedia" pages, and while the writing was sometimes engaging, on these two counts the articles simply did not measure up.

As an example, look at the article on Calendar. On the first count, that of being comprehansive, it fails obviously by missing half of the articles to specific calendars it mentions at the bottom. (This may change over time.)

On the second count, that of being authoritative, the Encyclopædia Britannica (subscription required, yadayada) runs to 17 double column pages in my printed edition. It mentions over 15 specific calendars, as opposed to the 6 of Wiki (3 of which has no content).

And - I almost forgot! - the Wiki page is factually incorrect. A calendar does not measure time, a clock does. The printed Britannica definition "a calendar is a means of grouping days in ways convenient for regulating life and religious observances and for historical and scientific purposes" is much better.

For the computer programmers out there, think of the calendar as the thing that translates time (time_t or whatever; an event in the Universe) into a date; a date having a legal or social meaning. In this context it is interesting that the calendar can change with eight to ten weeks' notice.

So I guess I'm not impressed yet. Still, it is early days and the project may grow.

What about the controversial issues in these open encyclopedias - I don't mean Windows/Linux stuff, I am talking about the really controversial things, such as Middle East conflict, for example.

Are projects like Wikipedia built to deal with it? Usenet-style wars on articles?

Just don't tell me the regular users will decide what's right and wrong, it won't work.

A History of BASIC (Jones Telecommunication & Multimedia Encycolpedia)

BASIC (Wikipedia)

Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? (comp.compilers article by David Wright)

Since opening in January, we already have over 2000 articles, many of very good quality.

Everything2 is awesome. But many of the entries are more humor than anything else. An encyclopedia is a different beast.

http://www.wikipedia.com/

Also, there's an entire wiki dedicated to Extreme Programming.
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