You might also want to check out this article on Canada's CBC. This guy was making a half million a month doing this, and had assets of $24 million. This is the kind of money that is normally associated with narcotic trafficing. Perhaps the lengthy sentence is necessary as a deterrent.
Actually, the greatest (and most under rated) inventor in western history, Nikola Tesla, has already created it. For some unknown reason, J.P. Morgan refused to back it.
Secondly, the section you reference empowers Congress to give authors a monopoly over their works "for a limited period of time." In my opinion (which is what the words "I feel" mean), a copyright term longer than the lifespan of your average citizens is, for all realistic intents and purposes, unlimited. While a work written the day of my birth will (barring any further Bono-esque extensions) eventually become public domain, it will never happen within my lifetime so what's the point?
I think the supreme court might disagree with you.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress has the power perpetually to extend the terms of existing copyrights. This brief "experiment with the public domain," as the NYT eloquently put it, is over. In twenty years, we can expect terms will be extended again. There is no good reason to expect anything different.
If you want the ultimate blend of the usability of vinyl with the freedom of computer sampling, I suggest you check out the amazing final scratch system by Stanton. Used by such world renowned DJ's as Ritchie Hawtin, you use a specially encoded piece of vinyl on your normal turntable to control MP3 or WAV samples and tracks through a laptop. It's absolutely brilliant.
The only problem I see with your plan is this: what gets these pods up in space? If we launch rockets up, what do we do? Leave them there? Seems like a bit of a waste. As an emergency re-entry system for the ISS though, this does make some sense.
Actually, this is a striking example of how recording techniques can ruin sound as well. Take a look at the Apollo 440 album - Gettin' High on Your Own Supply. A good mixture of guitars and electronics, right? Well, look at the frequency graph again. See how virtually every guitar frequency variation has been cut out: this music was recorded digitally, mostly using samples by the looks of it. The normal variations you'd associate with having guitars play live are all filtered out, and the graph goes back to the flat digital sound again.
Actually, this has little to do with digital vs. analog recording. The phenomenon you are refering to here is the overuse of compression (not data compression but audio compression) in dance music. Most recording engineers, especially in classical or jazz music, try to maximize the dynamic range of instruments, to mimic a live listening situation. Dance music is often hypercompressed, where the loud sounds are made quieter, then the overall mix amplified, to create a mix with a much higher overall loudness, but with the same peak levels. This kind of record will stand out in a mix as "punchier", getting a dance floor more worked up. It does however, severly blunt the natural sound of live instruments which comes from their dynamic range. But for a bunch of kids in a dark club high on pills dancing at 4am, this is highly desireable.
This comment just shows how ignorant you are of the differences between the impending conflict in Afghanistan and American action in the Gulf and Second World Wars. Consider this:
1). Who's an enemy?
In both the Gulf War and the Second World War, most of the combatants were uniformed. For the most part, if they weren't uniformed, they weren't shooting. This isn't the case in Afghanistan. The enemy combatants are indistinguishable from civilians. How are you going to find them? Walk through every collection of huts asking? If you just try to bomb them (and by extension the entire innocent population of Afghanistan), you kill many many innocent civilians. And for every innocent civilian you kill, you have a family that wants another dead American. This country doesn't have sole prerogative to want blood when another country kills it's innocent. And as one BBC journalist put it: "this seems to be a country where every family in a barren hut has an AK-47".
2). There is no infrastructure in Afghanistan
The campaigns in the Gulf War and Second World War were based around the concerted aerial bombing of war supporting infrastructure in order to cripple forces on the ground. This is impossible in Afghanistan. No useful infrastructure is left standing after the long period of civil war. So, what to bomb? If you want to bomb the civilian population, see above objection. If you want to bomb some caves which may be somewhere in the mountains, enjoy wasting your ordinance.
3). What's the mission objective?
The Gulf War had a simple mission objective: Iraqis out of Kuwait. The Second World War had a simple objective: Hitler out of this world. What's the mission objective here? To wipe out terrorist camps? There are no terrorist camps. There are villages with 95% innocent population. The other 5% are indistinguishable. To see how well America does in a conflict without a clear mission objective, just look at Vietnam.
In fact, I would add here, that perhaps the only valid comparison to a previous American conflict would be to Vietnam. Except there are still some differences. The enemy and potential enemy are even more battle trained than the Vietnamese were. The enemy is religiously motivated, believing every dead infidel during a jihad will be a servant of the martyr in the afterlife. Even the Marxists didn't go for their own propaganda that much. The terrain is even less hospitable to American efforts (agent orange works on jungle, not mountains).
All in all, I think a veteran of the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan summed it up very well saying:
"Can it be that America is nostalgic for the times it was getting daily deliveries of zinc coffins from Vietnam?"
The cultural myth of the bloodless war which has arisen in America in the last three decades is about to come to an end.
I would say the greatest technological innovation in the past century was the assembly line. Good or bad, the paradigm behind the work of most of the industrialized world is the humble old assembly line as envisioned by Henry Ford. Even any group coding practices follow some of the concepts laid down by Ford. Without the assembly line, almost none of the other technological innovations mentioned would not have been feasibly produced in numbers to really effect our society the way they did.
Slashdot Mirror
You might also want to check out this article on Canada's CBC. This guy was making a half million a month doing this, and had assets of $24 million. This is the kind of money that is normally associated with narcotic trafficing. Perhaps the lengthy sentence is necessary as a deterrent.
You read the article in the Atlantic, didn't you?
Actually, the greatest (and most under rated) inventor in western history, Nikola Tesla, has already created it. For some unknown reason, J.P. Morgan refused to back it.
I think the supreme court might disagree with you.
From Larry Lessig's blog:
There's also a more informative article on the Beeb, here.
It seems there might be a problem with false positives, but for such a non-invasive screening process, that isn't much of a drawback.
is only for the flambe option.......
In an even better incident of canadian security, Prime Minister Jean Chetien receives a cream pie in the face from the "PEI Pie Brigade".
See pictures here at ABC news.
Talk about weapons of mass humiliation.
If you want the ultimate blend of the usability of vinyl with the freedom of computer sampling, I suggest you check out the amazing final scratch system by Stanton. Used by such world renowned DJ's as Ritchie Hawtin, you use a specially encoded piece of vinyl on your normal turntable to control MP3 or WAV samples and tracks through a laptop. It's absolutely brilliant.
The only problem I see with your plan is this: what gets these pods up in space? If we launch rockets up, what do we do? Leave them there? Seems like a bit of a waste. As an emergency re-entry system for the ISS though, this does make some sense.
to quote:
Actually, this is a striking example of how recording techniques can ruin sound as well. Take a look at the Apollo 440 album - Gettin' High on Your Own Supply. A good mixture of guitars and electronics, right? Well, look at the frequency graph again. See how virtually every guitar frequency variation has been cut out: this music was recorded digitally, mostly using samples by the looks of it. The normal variations you'd associate with having guitars play live are all filtered out, and the graph goes back to the flat digital sound again.
Actually, this has little to do with digital vs. analog recording. The phenomenon you are refering to here is the overuse of compression (not data compression but audio compression) in dance music. Most recording engineers, especially in classical or jazz music, try to maximize the dynamic range of instruments, to mimic a live listening situation. Dance music is often hypercompressed, where the loud sounds are made quieter, then the overall mix amplified, to create a mix with a much higher overall loudness, but with the same peak levels. This kind of record will stand out in a mix as "punchier", getting a dance floor more worked up. It does however, severly blunt the natural sound of live instruments which comes from their dynamic range. But for a bunch of kids in a dark club high on pills dancing at 4am, this is highly desireable.This comment just shows how ignorant you are of the differences between the impending conflict in Afghanistan and American action in the Gulf and Second World Wars. Consider this:
1). Who's an enemy?
In both the Gulf War and the Second World War, most of the combatants were uniformed. For the most part, if they weren't uniformed, they weren't shooting. This isn't the case in Afghanistan. The enemy combatants are indistinguishable from civilians. How are you going to find them? Walk through every collection of huts asking? If you just try to bomb them (and by extension the entire innocent population of Afghanistan), you kill many many innocent civilians. And for every innocent civilian you kill, you have a family that wants another dead American. This country doesn't have sole prerogative to want blood when another country kills it's innocent. And as one BBC journalist put it: "this seems to be a country where every family in a barren hut has an AK-47".
2). There is no infrastructure in Afghanistan
The campaigns in the Gulf War and Second World War were based around the concerted aerial bombing of war supporting infrastructure in order to cripple forces on the ground. This is impossible in Afghanistan. No useful infrastructure is left standing after the long period of civil war. So, what to bomb? If you want to bomb the civilian population, see above objection. If you want to bomb some caves which may be somewhere in the mountains, enjoy wasting your ordinance.
3). What's the mission objective?
The Gulf War had a simple mission objective: Iraqis out of Kuwait. The Second World War had a simple objective: Hitler out of this world. What's the mission objective here? To wipe out terrorist camps? There are no terrorist camps. There are villages with 95% innocent population. The other 5% are indistinguishable. To see how well America does in a conflict without a clear mission objective, just look at Vietnam.
In fact, I would add here, that perhaps the only valid comparison to a previous American conflict would be to Vietnam. Except there are still some differences. The enemy and potential enemy are even more battle trained than the Vietnamese were. The enemy is religiously motivated, believing every dead infidel during a jihad will be a servant of the martyr in the afterlife. Even the Marxists didn't go for their own propaganda that much. The terrain is even less hospitable to American efforts (agent orange works on jungle, not mountains).
All in all, I think a veteran of the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan summed it up very well saying:
"Can it be that America is nostalgic for the times it was getting daily deliveries of zinc coffins from Vietnam?"
The cultural myth of the bloodless war which has arisen in America in the last three decades is about to come to an end.
I would say the greatest technological innovation in the past century was the assembly line. Good or bad, the paradigm behind the work of most of the industrialized world is the humble old assembly line as envisioned by Henry Ford. Even any group coding practices follow some of the concepts laid down by Ford. Without the assembly line, almost none of the other technological innovations mentioned would not have been feasibly produced in numbers to really effect our society the way they did.