This man does not understand that the state has no rights - only the people have rights. The influence this authoritarian has on government needs to be severely curtailed. What a pity then we can't vote him out.
The NDAA is a fact not an opinion. But I'm not so sure there is any way to answer your question without an opinion or a judgement. You could easily shut down anything by claiming it's just an opinion or judgement (by using your opinion or judgement); i.e. you may think the NDAA is not a loss of rights, someone else does. Ultimately, every perceived violation of the Constitution comes before a judge who gives a professional judgement / opinion on whether it is a violation or not.
Well I am going to break a bit with Slashdot tradition here but I think as a Brit living in London who values both security and liberty (liberty much more than security), I probably have some opinions and perspectives here that might contribute to the debate on the use of CCTV in our country (even if it is to stir up a hornet's nest of antipathetic disagreement!)
I am often a little bit bemused by the reaction of some of our Atlantic cousins to the CCTV we have over here. I often think, given some of the reaction and comments made on that side of the pond that they must think that every single one of us has cameras pointing into our bedrooms 24 hours a day like some kind of city-wide Big Brother TV show. Sometimes I think that is the only thing that could explain such strong reactions. I have read enough articles by freedom-loving American commentators deploring the insufferable intrusions we experience on a daily basis into our private and personal lives and I just can't relate to it. Let me assure you that the experience for most of us here is far from the picture that is often painted. I will try to explain why, and why I think this reaction is, while well-meaning, unnecessary. I am sure many people will disagree with my assessment (particular given the political leanings of most Slashdot readers), some of them British as well and I am glad to hear of other people's perspectives. I am just writing here of my current thoughts and feelings on this matter and I, of course, reserve the right to change my opinion if someone convinces me that I have it all wrong:-)
My experience relates mostly to the CCTV in London which is supposedly the worst offender of civil liberties in most people's eyes, particularly as far as CCTV is concerned. To understand why I disagree with the controversy surrounding CCTV in London (most of it anyway) and why most Londoners are just not really bothered by CCTV you have to first have some understanding London's infrastructure and architecture (and, indeed, many other cities in the UK). I am not completely sure how different they are from American cities and towns (I've never been to the US) but I suspect, from some of the movies and documentaries I have seen of American cities, there are some differencesâ"at least when comparing the major cities.
For starters, where I live--which resembles areas most average Londoners live in--one could walk around for miles and never see a CCTV camera anywhere; in my area, which is edging on suburbia, this could be in any direction, with perhaps the exception of one. If I walk in one particular direction for about a third of a mile I will eventually come across what we call the "high street" that serves my local areaâ"basically a street that contains most, if not all, of the shops, banks and business that serve the local area. This is quite typical of most London regions -- a couple of miles in any direction and you pass through only residential areas. Each residential area has one (or maybe two) of these streets. Usually they are less than half a mile long and have few or no residential dwellings in them apart from single- or double-floored residential apartments above some shops (many of these are just owned and used by the shops below for whatever purposes they see fit). There are usually CCTV cameras pointing up and down the high streets where no one really lives but none at all in the residential areas. These cameras are placed here primarily because the chavs, youths, drunks tend to congregate in the high streets (if the area has such people). In many places these cameras have resulted in a reduction in crime and antisocial behaviour (yeah I suppose they have just gone elsewhere but there is a reason why they congregated in these places in the first place so if it makes it harder for these people to get up to mischief it's a bonus in my book; and the high street is where most decent people like to go too so there's good reason for getting antisocial crime away from that area). Most law-abiding people kno
Anyone can write an article on pornography, it just needs to be the sort of article you would expect to find in an encyclopaedia on a high school library or family bookshelf rather than hidden under a mattress in your parents bedroom.
When writing articles for Citizendium, in terms of content think "Encyclopaedia Britannica" rather than "Wikipedia".
The reason it isn't there is simply because no one has got around to writing it yet and there are hundreds of other articles people would rather be working on. If you really want to see an article on pornography, feel free to sign up and write it. I suspect many members are just not really interested in an article on pornography. Perhaps people are also put off starting this article by having to use their real names and having people draw wrong conclusions.
This is what I would term a "cultural misunderstanding". For most Windows users, the "operating system" is the whole shebang including the window manager. For users of Linux-based OSs, the operating system is the kernel and some lower level functionality the average user never concerns themselves with.
Linux users would interpret Linus' comments correctly as they were intended, but Windows users would typically misunderstand them because of how the concept of "operating system" is presented to them.
It is a shame that authors in magazines like CNET, who purport to having technical understanding, can't discern such things nor translate them for their readers. Ignorance at this level should not be tolerated in an IT publication.
...* Scan & Download Brain to Cheat Death I can never quite understand how people think that making a copy of themselves means they personally will live forever. The copy is a separate individual from you and when you die, you are dead. Granted there's now a copy of you running around but that's all it is, a copy. It isn't you.
Think of it in the converse; if someone made a copy of you and the copy died would you be dead? No, it is copy-by-value, not copy-by-reference. When the copied object is garbage-collected (dies) the original object still remains.:-)
TV is just a method for distributing information, same as books and radio. What makes it the defacto frame for social interaction is that 90%+ of homes have one. It is probably not much worse than sitting around a fire listening to stories if it is in a social context, for limited periods only and the content reasonably wholesome and of good quality. Watching educational or uplifting TV and discussing it afterwards can be helpful with younger kids; with older teens you can probably relax a bit more and hope your earlier interactions have led to improved tastes and discernment but still try to engage them by talking about what they watch and the ramifications of what is being shown.
The thing kids miss out mostly these days with mindless TV viewing is the lack of participation in the creative process (either by utilising their imaginations or participating in a performance), social interaction and, as some scientific studies show, prolonged TV viewing in children can result in stunting effects on brain development: link, link, link.
In my case, I think most music is crap (like 99.999% of it - I am a real musical fascist!!). These days I only buy 2 or 3 CDs a year (if that) I really like and I play these regularly along with my existing CD collection. That satisfies me.
When I'm not listening to my CDs, for background music I listen to Internet radio (by preferred genre but tracks I probably don't care enough about to download); I may occasionally hear an artist here that impresses me enough to consider buying a track but I haven't done so yet. I don't music download illegally.
So for that reason I don't wish to, and don't see why I should, pay an extra $5 a month for my broadband so that other people can download music I don't care for. Nice for them, but not for me.
I suppose if this were adopted I would probably download more music to make up for the extra cost; potentially, I might end up finding some more music I like but, even so, I highly doubt it would be enough justify the price of even half a CD. Also, I would not want to waste the disk or shelf space with MP3s/CDs I would hardly listen to.
I am afraid this solution does not work but for the musical junkie and those with a very low threshold in musical taste. Back to the drawing board, friends!
I have read a lot of posts on this and yours is one I think actually has a chance of growing legs! You should definitely put this idea out there a bit more. It makes sense a lot of different levels.
Personally, I would probably make the copyright term a bit longer, though. Five years in business terms might be too short.
Something like:
First 5 years: Free Next 5 years: 1,000 dollars Next 10 years: 10,000 dollars Next 10 years: 100,000 dollars Goes to public domain.
What about those books that aren't popular and then suddenly become popular after 5 or 10 years--say, for instance, a movie is made out of an unknown sci-fi book or short story and everybody goes out and buys the book after seeing the movie. That's a lot of money to lose out on!
This post is both in the state of being the first and not the first post until I hit the submit button and decide the outcome by refreshing the page. That's quantum computing. I just saw your first post. Now it's the LAST post!
Of course, if you wanted good free jazz you could go to a jazz website/forum and link with free jazz lovers in social networks where the good free jazz would likely float to the top. Same for other genres. Even if you don't like the taste of the community at one site you could quite easily find one that does share your tastes. The Internet opens your options right up.
Internet distribution beats label distribution in almost every way IMO - the only exception being perhaps being the availability of large upfront payments for new artists, but even this is changing with venture capitalists beginning to look at independent music artists in much the same way as they would look at any other dotcom start-up. After all, an artist distributing their music from their own website is not very different to a dotcom company. With moves already afoot by some visionaries and established musicians to popularize this practice, I see little room for recording labels in their current form in the future.
The vast majority of the problems with Windows, however, are entirely based on the stupidity of its user base.
I've heard this kind of comment many times and used it often myself but upon hearing it this time it prompted some thoughts that hit me more strongly than before. I hope I will be indulged writing them here.
You see, it occurred to me that, although we throw around blame casually and, often-times, tongue-in-cheekily, it seems a bit of a cop-out to be really blaming the user for breaking a system when, after all, it is we, the software engineers and system designers, who so kindly provided then with the ability to break it in the software itself in the first place!
There should be no reason for a basic user to go on a computer course just in order to check their emails, surf the web, write letters, do their personal accounts and edit a few digital photographs. There should also be no reason why a person doing that should ever end up hosing their operating system, but it still happens.
Truthfully, the majority of computer users are not really stupid at all--many of them are, in fact, quite clever (perhaps they don't have the tech smarts like we do but smart in other ways - and I challenge anyone here to say honestly that they have never accidentally hosed a system, Windows or Linux--I know I have... both). Nonetheless, most users will still, at some point, have to deal with a malware problem or a broken system due to their own neglect or some wrong action. But why does this happen? Why, indeed, should it happen at all? If the users are not stupid there has to be another explanation...
Despite the complexity of building good software, I find myself wondering why it is still possible for a user to break an operating system. Is impossible to design and build an operating system that is unbreakable, even if the average user tried to really hard (notwithstanding dropping the computer or erasing the hard drive with a magnet)? Difficult maybe, but surely not impossible. Theoretically, it should be possible to create an OS that knows what actions would break it and try to prevent it happening. At the very least, it should be fairly simple to prevent some of the more obvious ways to hose a system. Some progress is being been made in this area but we have not yet reached the ideal.
I suppose for some users (especially you, dear readers) the ability to mess up an OS is a design feature, not a bug and you would complain loudly if the OS designers ever prevented you from doing whatever you wanted to do to the OS (including hosing it if you really wanted) but we are a distinct minority; the default behaviour of an OS should be to assume the user will break whatever is breakable and prevent it from happening (in a sensible way)--and make the expert opt-in deliberately to operate in unsafe mode, and do so in such a way that the casual user would find it difficult to find and make that choice.
I am certain a lot of this is obvious to you and I know it is not as simple as it sounds Further more, a lot of research and effort has gone into improving OS usability and reliability and I don't wish in any way to belittle these efforts; but I do think, however, that part of the problem stems from a culture of blaming the user for when things go wrong rather than, as system designers and developers, taking responsibility to ensure it can't go wrong in the first place.
That's great news--I hope you do join. One of the things I enjoy about Citizendium because I enjoy writing, is the ability to contribute significantly to new articles.
The license is still under consideration but will be decided this month. There is no doubt it will be one of the free licenses (looking to be CC-by-nc for original content but that could change in the final decision).
The time taken to pick a license I believe is for several reasons: 1) No-one near the top sees themselves as a license expert. 2) It's awkward to change a license once it's been set so it's best to get it right first time 3) there is a desire for meaningful feedback from the community which is not really been possible until a certain state of maturity has been reached (which is probably the case now). Having read some of the arguments for and against certain licenses I can see why it is not a simple decision.
Fair point, Wikipedia does have a significant head start (although some of Citizendium's content is explicitly a "fork" of Wikipedia content used as a base).
There is much less Wikipedia content than a lot of people believe (good or bad, right or wrong) and it seems, in practice, the pendulum has swung sharply in favour of original articles.
However, I am instinctively a believer in the "more eyeballs" theory of open source development... more people poring over, tweaking, and writing code will improve its quality. If Citizendium is seen as limiting or discouraging by potential contributors, the articles won't be worked on as much, and I expect it will suffer in the long run.
I can see how Wikipedia may be stronger on the matter of more eyeballs but for the same reason is probably going to be weaker--more people doing damage (and despite the number of eyeballs they don't always notice it). To continue the open source software analogy: in most open source projects you cannot just add code to the main trunk without an account or at least someone with an account looking over a patch you emailed before it gets integrated. To allow this would be crazy and asking for trouble with your code! But in this analogy, yes, at the moment there is not a way for a person to anonymously to submit a "patch" to a Citizendium article without an account; I don't know if this would ever change. I suppose one reason to keep it is to actually encourage people to sign up for an account which could make them more likely to contribute more often (and be more eyeballs checking articles on a regular basis). If people could submit anonymously how many of them would bother signing up for an account (which, at the moment, it is pretty easy to do this) as the whole point of making people post without anonymity is to increase reliability. As Larry says, this is still an experiment to see if this approach can make a more reliable encyclopedia and there is a possibility it might not work but it is still early days yet and things are looking positive so far.
Yeah, that's a good point. Although I believe that there's a widespread perception that non-experts aren't so welcome at Citizendium. This is probably wrong, but maybe they need to do a better job of advertising this fact.
Unfortunately, this perception is mostly because people have spread false information (either by accident or by design) on various websites and forums (perhaps it's Wikipedian F.U.D!:-P ). To be honest, I cannot think of anything more anyone at Citizendium could have done to counter this. Larry mentions it continually in his blog, official Citizendium articles and articles on other websites and in press releases this idea still seems to persist.
I guess I basically don't feel that Wikipedia is lacking or shoddy in any of the fields where I rely on it for technical information (condensed matter physics, materials science, signal processing, computer programming). Some articles lack sorely in terms of having a coherent narration of their topic, but in terms of fact-checking and having ability to follow up with more in-depth references, I'm very pleased. So perhaps I just don't clearly see what the separate expert role brings to the table...
I think Wikipedia is great in the sections where its main user base is strong (the fields you mentioned) and pretty good on others too but one of the things Larry is wanting to address with Citizendium is not just actual unreliability but the perception of unreliabilty; it seems he wants to build an online encyclopedia where people eventually feel they can rely on it, say, in academic articles. Admittedly it would take some time to get to that stage but it's early days yet.
I think it would be excellent if you joined and contributed your knowledge to the project. You seem like a very knowledgeable and level-headed guy, the kind of expert Citizendium needs. You'd be made to feel very welcome. You can read more about what experts do here.
Amazingly being quasi-anonymous online let's me both prevent annoying excessively-sensitive people in RL and let's me express my thoughts without bounds.
Though you may not have intended your comment to refer to Citizendium in this case, it does raise an important point in this discussion: if a person is writing properly for a neutral encyclopedia it is unlikely you would be offending overly-sensitive people and definitely not expressing your boundless thoughts and opinions on a matter. Many of the arguments for anonymity on Citizendium are quite moot (with a few exceptions but pseudonymns are not banned on Citizendium but must be requested for separately).
Pseudonyms have their place on the 'Net as do real names. People can vent freely and anonymously on Slashdot forums and Usenet which are provided, in part, for that very purpose. Citizendium is not a place for venting and presenting private opinions and so anonymity is both unnecessary and, in most cases, not helpful.
It is useful to point out here that pseudonyms are not "banned" as such on Citizendium--you just need to email the "constabulary" and show you have a genuine need for one.
One thing often overlooked when comparing the Citizedium expert-led model to the Wikipedia so-called egalitarian model is that, although there is no "expert" role on Wikipedia as such, your contributions are often watched over by other Wikipedians who have a vested interest in the article (whether they wrote it or have a strong enough motivation to make sure that their opinions remain the dominant theme in the article). In these cases, you are at the mercy of whoever feels more strongly about their edits and whoever has the time or inclination to hang around continually reverting any edits made that they disagree with. I and many others have come up against this problem on wikis--well-reasoned arguments don't always win out. The problem with this approach is that dominant users don't even have to be experts in a subject matter (even quite the opposite), just someone with a strong enough axe to grind along with time and motivation to keep at it. At the very least, on Citizendium, it is a policy that where there is an unresolved disagreement between contributors on a matter they must defer to the judgement of an expert.
This is all, of course, not going to be perfect but I think there's a chance it might be better at resulting in balanced articles rather than the "wikiality" found in most wiki models. It may be too soon to tell if this is going to be the case yet but, as I said in my parent post, time will tell as Citizendium gains more contributors and has more time to grow and evolve their articles.
I agree there is a difference in quality between the two Biology articles (particularly with the overemphasis on philosophy) but the quality so far may have something to do with how long the article has existed, the amount of edits and number people working on it so far compared to Wikipedia's entry. To use the Biology article as an example, experts and current contributors at Citizendium may know their Biology but not be as good at writing articles but the improvements will come over time as Citizendium continues to exist and gains more authors who are good at both Biology and writing articles (as happened with Wikipedia).
While I personally would not have "approved" the Biology article with its current introductory paragraphs, I think it is a little unfair at the moment comparing current Citizendium to current Wikipedia -- it would make more sense to compare current Citizendium after one year to where Wikipedia was at around the same time. Perhaps the Biology article on Wikipedia back then was not so great either.
Also, to correct one misapprehension in your post: anyone can contribute to Citizendium--they just have to sign up for an account; it's not just the experts who write the articles--in fact, the bulk of articles are created and edited by ordinary, non-"expert" authors and the experts (called editors in CZ-speak) mostly just keep a watch over the factual aspects--making sure there are no egregious or subtle errors creeping in--and making the odd contribution here and there (being experts in their field they are most likely also very busy outside of their Citizendium responsibilities).
Well, I am not a lawyer, Canadian or a big music downloader so I have not really kept up with this issue, but yes, I see that downloading music through P2P is currently legal in Canada (but this could easily change; if it does, will the tax?). However, the fact I wanted to make was that there is no longer any real incentive for people to use traditional digital music outlets any more and many people will switch to P2P to avoid paying the tax twice. Digital music distributors may lose a lot of business and artists may not get end up being paid as much.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing necessarily--it may end up being good for the music industry for things to change and business models to be shaken up (God knows, some of the artists don't deserve that kind of money and many could do with less money to spend on Humvees and crystal meth) but I just don't think taxing those who download music through traditional digital music outlets, who are already paying for their product (some perhaps out of conscience) is necessarily the appropriate solution.
This sounds to me like the surest way to change many currently legal music downloaders (who are happy to pay for their music) into illegal downloaders who resent being "taxed" for doing the right thing.
It's not like there are very many who follow the legal route, one would think they would be treated with little a bit more respect.
Regardless of the Web being world-wide, such a method of distribution is still only really going to have an effect on countries where Radiohead already has a pre-existent fan-base with only a minor increase due to people being curious or supporting the distribution method for idealogical reasons. On top of that, obviously not everyone in the world has an Internet connection...
>In its "Worldwide Online Population Forecast, 2006 to 2011," JupiterResearch anticipates that a 38 percent increase in the number of people with online access will mean that, by 2011, 22 percent of the Earth's population will surf the Internet regularly.
So using the supposed global distribution of the WWW as a means of judging the popularity of this album is, really, quite misleading; we should not be using the ratio of downloads to global Web access to judge, rather how much richer Radiohead is by using this strategy compared to the traditional record label one. If they make more money using this method, it's a success and other artists will undoubtedly follow.
As long as the browser prompts the user and gives them adequate warning of the risks then the security risk is mainly the USER not the browser, in my opinion.
I don't want the inconvenience of being forced to open an application manually and most people wouldn't so the solution is making sure users know what they are doing.
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This man does not understand that the state has no rights - only the people have rights. The influence this authoritarian has on government needs to be severely curtailed. What a pity then we can't vote him out.
The NDAA is a fact not an opinion. But I'm not so sure there is any way to answer your question without an opinion or a judgement. You could easily shut down anything by claiming it's just an opinion or judgement (by using your opinion or judgement); i.e. you may think the NDAA is not a loss of rights, someone else does. Ultimately, every perceived violation of the Constitution comes before a judge who gives a professional judgement / opinion on whether it is a violation or not.
Well I am going to break a bit with Slashdot tradition here but I think as a Brit living in London who values both security and liberty (liberty much more than security), I probably have some opinions and perspectives here that might contribute to the debate on the use of CCTV in our country (even if it is to stir up a hornet's nest of antipathetic disagreement!)
:-)
I am often a little bit bemused by the reaction of some of our Atlantic cousins to the CCTV we have over here. I often think, given some of the reaction and comments made on that side of the pond that they must think that every single one of us has cameras pointing into our bedrooms 24 hours a day like some kind of city-wide Big Brother TV show. Sometimes I think that is the only thing that could explain such strong reactions. I have read enough articles by freedom-loving American commentators deploring the insufferable intrusions we experience on a daily basis into our private and personal lives and I just can't relate to it. Let me assure you that the experience for most of us here is far from the picture that is often painted. I will try to explain why, and why I think this reaction is, while well-meaning, unnecessary. I am sure many people will disagree with my assessment (particular given the political leanings of most Slashdot readers), some of them British as well and I am glad to hear of other people's perspectives. I am just writing here of my current thoughts and feelings on this matter and I, of course, reserve the right to change my opinion if someone convinces me that I have it all wrong
My experience relates mostly to the CCTV in London which is supposedly the worst offender of civil liberties in most people's eyes, particularly as far as CCTV is concerned. To understand why I disagree with the controversy surrounding CCTV in London (most of it anyway) and why most Londoners are just not really bothered by CCTV you have to first have some understanding London's infrastructure and architecture (and, indeed, many other cities in the UK). I am not completely sure how different they are from American cities and towns (I've never been to the US) but I suspect, from some of the movies and documentaries I have seen of American cities, there are some differencesâ"at least when comparing the major cities.
For starters, where I live--which resembles areas most average Londoners live in--one could walk around for miles and never see a CCTV camera anywhere; in my area, which is edging on suburbia, this could be in any direction, with perhaps the exception of one. If I walk in one particular direction for about a third of a mile I will eventually come across what we call the "high street" that serves my local areaâ"basically a street that contains most, if not all, of the shops, banks and business that serve the local area. This is quite typical of most London regions -- a couple of miles in any direction and you pass through only residential areas. Each residential area has one (or maybe two) of these streets. Usually they are less than half a mile long and have few or no residential dwellings in them apart from single- or double-floored residential apartments above some shops (many of these are just owned and used by the shops below for whatever purposes they see fit). There are usually CCTV cameras pointing up and down the high streets where no one really lives but none at all in the residential areas. These cameras are placed here primarily because the chavs, youths, drunks tend to congregate in the high streets (if the area has such people). In many places these cameras have resulted in a reduction in crime and antisocial behaviour (yeah I suppose they have just gone elsewhere but there is a reason why they congregated in these places in the first place so if it makes it harder for these people to get up to mischief it's a bonus in my book; and the high street is where most decent people like to go too so there's good reason for getting antisocial crime away from that area). Most law-abiding people kno
Anyone can write an article on pornography, it just needs to be the sort of article you would expect to find in an encyclopaedia on a high school library or family bookshelf rather than hidden under a mattress in your parents bedroom.
When writing articles for Citizendium, in terms of content think "Encyclopaedia Britannica" rather than "Wikipedia".
The reason it isn't there is simply because no one has got around to writing it yet and there are hundreds of other articles people would rather be working on. If you really want to see an article on pornography, feel free to sign up and write it. I suspect many members are just not really interested in an article on pornography. Perhaps people are also put off starting this article by having to use their real names and having people draw wrong conclusions.
Precisely!
This is what I would term a "cultural misunderstanding". For most Windows users, the "operating system" is the whole shebang including the window manager. For users of Linux-based OSs, the operating system is the kernel and some lower level functionality the average user never concerns themselves with.
Linux users would interpret Linus' comments correctly as they were intended, but Windows users would typically misunderstand them because of how the concept of "operating system" is presented to them.
It is a shame that authors in magazines like CNET, who purport to having technical understanding, can't discern such things nor translate them for their readers. Ignorance at this level should not be tolerated in an IT publication.
...* Scan & Download Brain to Cheat Death I can never quite understand how people think that making a copy of themselves means they personally will live forever. The copy is a separate individual from you and when you die, you are dead. Granted there's now a copy of you running around but that's all it is, a copy. It isn't you.Think of it in the converse; if someone made a copy of you and the copy died would you be dead? No, it is copy-by-value, not copy-by-reference. When the copied object is garbage-collected (dies) the original object still remains.
The thing kids miss out mostly these days with mindless TV viewing is the lack of participation in the creative process (either by utilising their imaginations or participating in a performance), social interaction and, as some scientific studies show, prolonged TV viewing in children can result in stunting effects on brain development: link, link, link.
In my case, I think most music is crap (like 99.999% of it - I am a real musical fascist!!). These days I only buy 2 or 3 CDs a year (if that) I really like and I play these regularly along with my existing CD collection. That satisfies me.
When I'm not listening to my CDs, for background music I listen to Internet radio (by preferred genre but tracks I probably don't care enough about to download); I may occasionally hear an artist here that impresses me enough to consider buying a track but I haven't done so yet. I don't music download illegally.
So for that reason I don't wish to, and don't see why I should, pay an extra $5 a month for my broadband so that other people can download music I don't care for. Nice for them, but not for me.
I suppose if this were adopted I would probably download more music to make up for the extra cost; potentially, I might end up finding some more music I like but, even so, I highly doubt it would be enough justify the price of even half a CD. Also, I would not want to waste the disk or shelf space with MP3s/CDs I would hardly listen to.
I am afraid this solution does not work but for the musical junkie and those with a very low threshold in musical taste. Back to the drawing board, friends!
I have read a lot of posts on this and yours is one I think actually has a chance of growing legs! You should definitely put this idea out there a bit more. It makes sense a lot of different levels.
Personally, I would probably make the copyright term a bit longer, though. Five years in business terms might be too short.
Something like:
First 5 years: Free
Next 5 years: 1,000 dollars
Next 10 years: 10,000 dollars
Next 10 years: 100,000 dollars
Goes to public domain.
What about those books that aren't popular and then suddenly become popular after 5 or 10 years--say, for instance, a movie is made out of an unknown sci-fi book or short story and everybody goes out and buys the book after seeing the movie. That's a lot of money to lose out on!
Maybe 20 years is more reasonable?
Of course, if you wanted good free jazz you could go to a jazz website/forum and link with free jazz lovers in social networks where the good free jazz would likely float to the top. Same for other genres. Even if you don't like the taste of the community at one site you could quite easily find one that does share your tastes. The Internet opens your options right up.
Internet distribution beats label distribution in almost every way IMO - the only exception being perhaps being the availability of large upfront payments for new artists, but even this is changing with venture capitalists beginning to look at independent music artists in much the same way as they would look at any other dotcom start-up. After all, an artist distributing their music from their own website is not very different to a dotcom company. With moves already afoot by some visionaries and established musicians to popularize this practice, I see little room for recording labels in their current form in the future.
I've heard this kind of comment many times and used it often myself but upon hearing it this time it prompted some thoughts that hit me more strongly than before. I hope I will be indulged writing them here.
You see, it occurred to me that, although we throw around blame casually and, often-times, tongue-in-cheekily, it seems a bit of a cop-out to be really blaming the user for breaking a system when, after all, it is we, the software engineers and system designers, who so kindly provided then with the ability to break it in the software itself in the first place!
There should be no reason for a basic user to go on a computer course just in order to check their emails, surf the web, write letters, do their personal accounts and edit a few digital photographs. There should also be no reason why a person doing that should ever end up hosing their operating system, but it still happens.
Truthfully, the majority of computer users are not really stupid at all--many of them are, in fact, quite clever (perhaps they don't have the tech smarts like we do but smart in other ways - and I challenge anyone here to say honestly that they have never accidentally hosed a system, Windows or Linux--I know I have... both). Nonetheless, most users will still, at some point, have to deal with a malware problem or a broken system due to their own neglect or some wrong action. But why does this happen? Why, indeed, should it happen at all? If the users are not stupid there has to be another explanation...
Despite the complexity of building good software, I find myself wondering why it is still possible for a user to break an operating system. Is impossible to design and build an operating system that is unbreakable, even if the average user tried to really hard (notwithstanding dropping the computer or erasing the hard drive with a magnet)? Difficult maybe, but surely not impossible. Theoretically, it should be possible to create an OS that knows what actions would break it and try to prevent it happening. At the very least, it should be fairly simple to prevent some of the more obvious ways to hose a system. Some progress is being been made in this area but we have not yet reached the ideal.
I suppose for some users (especially you, dear readers) the ability to mess up an OS is a design feature, not a bug and you would complain loudly if the OS designers ever prevented you from doing whatever you wanted to do to the OS (including hosing it if you really wanted) but we are a distinct minority; the default behaviour of an OS should be to assume the user will break whatever is breakable and prevent it from happening (in a sensible way)--and make the expert opt-in deliberately to operate in unsafe mode, and do so in such a way that the casual user would find it difficult to find and make that choice.
I am certain a lot of this is obvious to you and I know it is not as simple as it sounds Further more, a lot of research and effort has gone into improving OS usability and reliability and I don't wish in any way to belittle these efforts; but I do think, however, that part of the problem stems from a culture of blaming the user for when things go wrong rather than, as system designers and developers, taking responsibility to ensure it can't go wrong in the first place.
That's great news--I hope you do join. One of the things I enjoy about Citizendium because I enjoy writing, is the ability to contribute significantly to new articles.
The license is still under consideration but will be decided this month. There is no doubt it will be one of the free licenses (looking to be CC-by-nc for original content but that could change in the final decision).
The time taken to pick a license I believe is for several reasons: 1) No-one near the top sees themselves as a license expert. 2) It's awkward to change a license once it's been set so it's best to get it right first time 3) there is a desire for meaningful feedback from the community which is not really been possible until a certain state of maturity has been reached (which is probably the case now). Having read some of the arguments for and against certain licenses I can see why it is not a simple decision.
There is much less Wikipedia content than a lot of people believe (good or bad, right or wrong) and it seems, in practice, the pendulum has swung sharply in favour of original articles.
I can see how Wikipedia may be stronger on the matter of more eyeballs but for the same reason is probably going to be weaker--more people doing damage (and despite the number of eyeballs they don't always notice it). To continue the open source software analogy: in most open source projects you cannot just add code to the main trunk without an account or at least someone with an account looking over a patch you emailed before it gets integrated. To allow this would be crazy and asking for trouble with your code! But in this analogy, yes, at the moment there is not a way for a person to anonymously to submit a "patch" to a Citizendium article without an account; I don't know if this would ever change. I suppose one reason to keep it is to actually encourage people to sign up for an account which could make them more likely to contribute more often (and be more eyeballs checking articles on a regular basis). If people could submit anonymously how many of them would bother signing up for an account (which, at the moment, it is pretty easy to do this) as the whole point of making people post without anonymity is to increase reliability. As Larry says, this is still an experiment to see if this approach can make a more reliable encyclopedia and there is a possibility it might not work but it is still early days yet and things are looking positive so far.
Unfortunately, this perception is mostly because people have spread false information (either by accident or by design) on various websites and forums (perhaps it's Wikipedian F.U.D!
I think Wikipedia is great in the sections where its main user base is strong (the fields you mentioned) and pretty good on others too but one of the things Larry is wanting to address with Citizendium is not just actual unreliability but the perception of unreliabilty; it seems he wants to build an online encyclopedia where people eventually feel they can rely on it, say, in academic articles. Admittedly it would take some time to get to that stage but it's early days yet.
I think it would be excellent if you joined and contributed your knowledge to the project. You seem like a very knowledgeable and level-headed guy, the kind of expert Citizendium needs. You'd be made to feel very welcome. You can read more about what experts do here.
Though you may not have intended your comment to refer to Citizendium in this case, it does raise an important point in this discussion: if a person is writing properly for a neutral encyclopedia it is unlikely you would be offending overly-sensitive people and definitely not expressing your boundless thoughts and opinions on a matter. Many of the arguments for anonymity on Citizendium are quite moot (with a few exceptions but pseudonymns are not banned on Citizendium but must be requested for separately).
Pseudonyms have their place on the 'Net as do real names. People can vent freely and anonymously on Slashdot forums and Usenet which are provided, in part, for that very purpose. Citizendium is not a place for venting and presenting private opinions and so anonymity is both unnecessary and, in most cases, not helpful.
It is useful to point out here that pseudonyms are not "banned" as such on Citizendium--you just need to email the "constabulary" and show you have a genuine need for one.
One thing often overlooked when comparing the Citizedium expert-led model to the Wikipedia so-called egalitarian model is that, although there is no "expert" role on Wikipedia as such, your contributions are often watched over by other Wikipedians who have a vested interest in the article (whether they wrote it or have a strong enough motivation to make sure that their opinions remain the dominant theme in the article). In these cases, you are at the mercy of whoever feels more strongly about their edits and whoever has the time or inclination to hang around continually reverting any edits made that they disagree with. I and many others have come up against this problem on wikis--well-reasoned arguments don't always win out. The problem with this approach is that dominant users don't even have to be experts in a subject matter (even quite the opposite), just someone with a strong enough axe to grind along with time and motivation to keep at it. At the very least, on Citizendium, it is a policy that where there is an unresolved disagreement between contributors on a matter they must defer to the judgement of an expert.
This is all, of course, not going to be perfect but I think there's a chance it might be better at resulting in balanced articles rather than the "wikiality" found in most wiki models. It may be too soon to tell if this is going to be the case yet but, as I said in my parent post, time will tell as Citizendium gains more contributors and has more time to grow and evolve their articles.
I agree there is a difference in quality between the two Biology articles (particularly with the overemphasis on philosophy) but the quality so far may have something to do with how long the article has existed, the amount of edits and number people working on it so far compared to Wikipedia's entry. To use the Biology article as an example, experts and current contributors at Citizendium may know their Biology but not be as good at writing articles but the improvements will come over time as Citizendium continues to exist and gains more authors who are good at both Biology and writing articles (as happened with Wikipedia).
While I personally would not have "approved" the Biology article with its current introductory paragraphs, I think it is a little unfair at the moment comparing current Citizendium to current Wikipedia -- it would make more sense to compare current Citizendium after one year to where Wikipedia was at around the same time. Perhaps the Biology article on Wikipedia back then was not so great either.
Also, to correct one misapprehension in your post: anyone can contribute to Citizendium--they just have to sign up for an account; it's not just the experts who write the articles--in fact, the bulk of articles are created and edited by ordinary, non-"expert" authors and the experts (called editors in CZ-speak) mostly just keep a watch over the factual aspects--making sure there are no egregious or subtle errors creeping in--and making the odd contribution here and there (being experts in their field they are most likely also very busy outside of their Citizendium responsibilities).
Well, I am not a lawyer, Canadian or a big music downloader so I have not really kept up with this issue, but yes, I see that downloading music through P2P is currently legal in Canada (but this could easily change; if it does, will the tax?). However, the fact I wanted to make was that there is no longer any real incentive for people to use traditional digital music outlets any more and many people will switch to P2P to avoid paying the tax twice. Digital music distributors may lose a lot of business and artists may not get end up being paid as much.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing necessarily--it may end up being good for the music industry for things to change and business models to be shaken up (God knows, some of the artists don't deserve that kind of money and many could do with less money to spend on Humvees and crystal meth) but I just don't think taxing those who download music through traditional digital music outlets, who are already paying for their product (some perhaps out of conscience) is necessarily the appropriate solution.
thesbian (thes'pe-an) adj.
1. Female thespian who prefers the company of ladies.
This sounds to me like the surest way to change many currently legal music downloaders (who are happy to pay for their music) into illegal downloaders who resent being "taxed" for doing the right thing.
It's not like there are very many who follow the legal route, one would think they would be treated with little a bit more respect.
Regardless of the Web being world-wide, such a method of distribution is still only really going to have an effect on countries where Radiohead already has a pre-existent fan-base with only a minor increase due to people being curious or supporting the distribution method for idealogical reasons. On top of that, obviously not everyone in the world has an Internet connection...
From Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet#Worldwide_Online_Population_Forecast ):
>In its "Worldwide Online Population Forecast, 2006 to 2011," JupiterResearch anticipates that a 38 percent increase in the number of people with online access will mean that, by 2011, 22 percent of the Earth's population will surf the Internet regularly.
So using the supposed global distribution of the WWW as a means of judging the popularity of this album is, really, quite misleading; we should not be using the ratio of downloads to global Web access to judge, rather how much richer Radiohead is by using this strategy compared to the traditional record label one. If they make more money using this method, it's a success and other artists will undoubtedly follow.
As long as the browser prompts the user and gives them adequate warning of the risks then the security risk is mainly the USER not the browser, in my opinion.
I don't want the inconvenience of being forced to open an application manually and most people wouldn't so the solution is making sure users know what they are doing.