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MS Calls On Kids to Stop Thought Thieves
theodp writes "Microsoft is calling all UK kids aged 14-17 to enter its Thought Thieves Competition. Remember kids, finalists must agree to formally license all intellectual property rights in their film on terms acceptable to Microsoft. And don't forget to download your free Thought Thieves Poster!"
Currently in my mind i am breaking a hell of alot of copyright laws. . .
. .. Way to go microsoft ..
.
Songs that get stuck in my head , many many ideas , Songs i remember
I occasionaly hum a tune thats most likely copyrighted
I have an idea that may already be patent.
When you start labeling copyright/patent infringment Thought theft then your walking on a really dodgy line. it really does sound incredibly facist
We should be teaching children to share and help others , instead we are teaching them suspicion and greed
I really hope alot of kids send MS vidios depicting facist states Abusing its citizens in some cyber punk future where your thoughts are monitored
as it was the first thing that came to my mind when i heard thought thieves
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
All I can say is wow. Considering MS is the biggest stealer of ideas in history, the multiple levels of irony in this article make that Alanis Morissette song (or more precisely the fact that the song isn't ironic at all) pale in comparison. This can't be real. Would Microsoft be this dumb? Nah, I don't believe it. Good hoax though...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
This is the M.O. of slimy corporations and politicians everywhere--they are basically lying to people through their gross simplification of complex issues (see 'pirates are bad'), misuse of language (this competition), and outright lying (too many examples to mention).
What's next? 'Find the hidden pirate treasure on your parent's computer? '
This made me think about the childrens thought police games and later real life actions:
...
"A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.
'You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. 'You're a thought- criminal! You're a Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize you, I'll send you to the salt mines!'
Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting 'Traitor!' and 'Thought-criminal!' the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy's eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought."
"With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police."
It's good that I don't have children..
How about this, "One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today." 112,003 high school students were surveyed, that doesn't seem like too small a population to me.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I was thinking of:
Starts with black screen and text fades in reading "Imaging working for hundreds of hours..."
Screen fades to a coder sitting at a linux box with the sudo source code on the screen. Screen fades back to black.
Text fades in "Finally completing it". Screen fades to display of coder falling back with a sigh of relief. Screen fades to black.
Text fades in "Giving it away for Free".
Screen fades to linux machine running Firefox uploading sudo to sourceforge.
Screen fades to black and fades in text "15 years later... " Text fades out, fades in picture of Slashdot story of MS patenting sudo, story of MS trying to patent the internet again, story of Amazon one click patent. Screen fades to black, fades in text "Only to be told YOU could be sued because companies have "stolen" your idea and patented it." Screen fades to black and fades in text "No software patents. No monopolies on ideas."
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
I just hope kids remain indifferent enough that they don't buy into this. What's unfortunate is that I think - if they get to these kids early enough - they'll change their attitudes for life.
I had the same worry up until a few years ago. I was on a bus in London and some kids wanted to tag the bus. However, Britain being the camera society that it is they would have been caught on film.
Two of the girls staged an argument on the stairs and blocked the view of the camera. The boy sneaked up behind them and tagged the stairs. Even though it was an act of vandalism it revived my faith in human nature and I had a Jurassic Park like moment "life will always find a way". Yeah, I think the kids will be fine...
Say you spend an hour talking about the tenets of free speech, and how the freedom to criticize elected officials is guaranteed by the Constitution. Then the student goes home and watches an hour of TV news, pumping fear-stories about "There is a website publishing pictures that could help terrorists attack us!" (cryptome.org) and "One website claims that the Microsoft software you use could be insecure and get you infected with a virus! What?! These people must be crazy!" (slashdot.org).
Maybe they run a story about how a group of people dared - dared, since questioning the government is now officially unAmerican - to confront Republican Senator Bill Frist while he was parked illegally, buying shoes next to a known Democratic lobbying organization's headquarters. And it's the protestors who are being criticized, nevermind the fact that the Senator is parked illegally, or that he chose to shop right next to his opponents' HQ. No, the story is that "poor Bill Frist got protested." Damned "liberal" media again!
Or they show video footage of people in a "Free Speech Zone," with a subtle comment about how those protestors are really are getting riled up, maybe they're violent, thank God they're caged up inside the chain-link fence of the "Free Speech Zone." And that video clip of people in a "Free Speech Zone" negates what you tried to impart to your students, the fact that the entire United States of America is a free speech zone, that the term "Free Speech Zone" didn't come about until the Bush administration, and that you don't necessarily need a permit to assemble peaceably.
Perspectives can be altered. Easily. Especially in younger minds. I hope that by age 17, most Americans have developed enough critical thinking skills to make their own determinations, but at 14, I'd bet that most teens base their decisions upon what their parents say and what they've learned to be the "popular opinion." And popular opinions don't come from the History Teacher.
I'm not a teacher by profession (though I'm happy to impart knowledge about any topic with which I'm familiar, anytime, to anyone, of any age) - I don't have it in me to do that day in and day out - but I have enormous amounts of respect for those who are.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
No it doesn't, the Godwin Point is only reached when comparing to nazis ... your oponents in a discussion. /. lurkers) to nazis, nor did he directly compare MS guys to nazis, his post therefore doesn't qualify as "reaching the godwin point".
GP compared MS propaganda to nazi's, he didn't compare YOU (or pro-MS
The godwin point is reached when you're so out of arguments that you have to rely on the worst ad-hominem attacks (comparing your oponents to the worst kind of suckers ever) to try to make a point...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
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Why not give Microsoft exactly what they are asking for?
A little movie about a small company that comes out with some cool new technology, and wants to give it out for free because they feel it will better mankind. A few months after its out it is quite popular in its niche and they are doing well from their ideas, they get a letter from a big company "Letigisoft" saying they infringed on a software patent of theirs. Our heros don't have much money for a legal defense, so they scramble. They know they can't keep their product functional and remove the infringing bit, they can't charge license fees, or afford legal costs. Plus, the patent claims being made are obviously very questionable, but they don't have the legal resources to prove that. Any attempt to go about against "Letigisoft" burries them in paperwork, and onerous disclosure requests that expose all their company's ideas to Letigisoft. So they end up with no choice but the close up shop. A year later "Letigisoft" develops a similar product and charges a lot for it.
So do something like that with nice production values so the judges will have to watch it. Let it develop slowly, so at first you might not realize that its such a David getting crushed by Goliath sort of thing. Make them all confortable by giving them exactly what they want.
Big companies who want all this IP fascism have to realize that they need to be careful what they ask for, because it works both ways, and they just might get what they want.