I don't recall writing that, though I agree with its broad outlines.
But yes, Disney and others who lobby Congress to extend copyrights beyond all reason have contributed to the problem of orphan works. Orphan works come about when, for example, copyright law extends protection of works whose authors are already dead.
Your comments suggest that you don't really have an idea of the scope of the problem or how it comes about. Every original work--not just entertainment--that is fixed in a tangible medium is copyrighted, automatically, and thus automatically protected for the life of the author plus 70 years. The level of protection for pre-1976 works is a little different, but still far out of scale with the problem copyright tries to solve--namely, providing a sufficient incentive to authors to ensure the flow of new creative works without placing unnecessary restrictions on free expression.
That (1) misses the point, which is that U.S. copyright law has become wholly uncoupled from the point of granting copyrights in the first place, and (2) isn't even true for a lot of works. Google "orphan works."
I can't speak for anybody else, but I watched a bunch of educational programming when I was a kid. Yes, Sesame Street--but also Mr. Rogers, the Electric Company, and Square One spring immediately to mind. Oh, and I bet I could still whistle the theme to "Voyage of the Mimi." Maybe I'm not typical, but I think all of those shows were pretty valuable. Given the choice, I would probably STILL watch half an hour of Square One over half an hour of Survivor's Next Top Idol.
I can't speak for "the medical field," but better schools do indeed mean more job opportunities in the legal field. This is not to say that a JD from a top law school is the guaranteed job it was five or ten years ago--or that it's impossible to get a job if you didn't attend a prestigious school--but firms certainly do look at where you went to school as a primary indicator of your value and ability.
Sure, nutjobs are the problem, but guns let nutjobs translate nutjob impulses into mass death with the press of a finger. And many of the same people who advocate free, easy access to guns are the same people who suggest that government funding for things like mental health assessments and treatment is a huge waste of taxpayer money and an invasion of personal liberty.
The logical outcome of that thinking, of course, is that as long as there continue to be more and more widely publicized shootings (this is the second this week, by the way--third if you count the guy who shot himself inside a federal courthouse during business hours yesterday), it becomes less and less possible ever to discuss the politically addressable contributing factors to those shootings.
On the other hand, I assume that's the effect you're going for.
Something that is bad for us in high doses may be beneficial in low doses?! Next they'll be telling us that exposure to radiation and toxins can help cure cancer, or that the same stuff that rusts away unprotected steel and iron is actually necessary for animal life!
One second at 70 mph isn't 1/70th of a mile. It's around 1/50th of a mile.
One second at 60 mph is 1/60th of a mile, but that's the only speed for which that coincidence of numbering is true, because there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.
Yeah. Those stupid Democrats. Why, if it were up to Democrats, we never would have gone to the moon!
Fortunately, we have a wise, fiscally responsible Republican administration in office--one that would never waste money entrusted to it by the taxpayers of this country on anything irresponsible.
Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule
on
iPod Video Dissection
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd say the integrated iTunes Music Store played a big role, too... the iTunes software is about a times easier to use than the garbage put out by, e.g., Creative Labs, and I can buy a song on the Music Store and be listening to it on my iPod in under a minute all with the same piece of software.
Whether you include that under the heading of "marketing" I don't know, but that was one of the big selling points of the iPod for me after dealing with a Creative Jukebox and then an RCA Lyra and their attendant shortcomings.
Yeah, it's a "likely next step" like Bill Gates selling his possessions and moving to a commune is a "likely next step" in his charity work.
OS X is not about the "look and feel," it's about the underlying stability of the system. Yeah, Aqua is a pretty interface, but the thing that got me to switch from Windows to Mac is that the product works. And works. And continues working. Grafting Aqua onto the front of a Windows backend would be like putting fake tits on George Steinbrenner... sure, you could do it, but what would be the point?
Apple has made a name for itself among niche buyers by creating an extremely high-quality product. Switching to an underlying Windows OS would mean giving up stability, freedom from viruses and spyware, and the loyalty and love of their core market. I've never been to business school, but even I can tell that's a remarkably stupid idea.
Your comment (like Dvorak's similarly deluded article) demonstrates an absolute and rather breathtaking failure to grasp the reason behind the loyalty of Apple's user base.
So, if they are the same device, the music can automatically stop when you start calling or an incoming call arrives.
You know, they've been making cellphones that vibrate for several years now. I've never had a problem with missing a phone call because I have my iPod on.
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?
An iPod and a separate phone.
I want my iPod to be an entertainment device. Period. If I'd wanted a Treo, I'd've bought a Treo.
My experience with the Sidekick has convinced me that it's much better to have a device that does one thing incredibly well (as the iPod does) than to have a device that does one thing pretty well, two other things fairly poorly, and a fourth feature that breaks within two months.
Software crashes. A stable operating system doesn't mean that the applications that run on it will never crash. It does mean that, generally speaking, you can force-quit the application and reopen it without it hosing your entire system and forcing a computer restart.
MS-Word crashes on my mac nearly as often as it does on my PC, but the difference is that I can generally open it right back up and keep working on my Mac, whereas it takes a huge dump in memory on my PC and slows everything else down.
I'd never played before and always thought it sounded interesting, so I downloaded the free 10-day trial.
The supposed interesting, exciting, fast-paced combat was really none of the three, and the rest of the content I experienced didn't even entice me to stick it out for three days, let alone ten.
I got into the habit of lugging my laptop to the laundromat with me to watch DVDs while I waited for my clothes to dry. This was definitely not an optimal solution--it's already awkward to manage two baskets of laundry and a bottle of detergent; having to deal with a laptop bag on top of that was a pain.
When I got a PSP, I started using that instead. But the movies and games are expensive.
An iPod with video capability seems like it would be a perfect laundromat companion. The fact that they're not really sacrificing any of the original functionality or design, or increasing the price, makes it a no-brainer. If you can give me more options without taking away the things I like already, I'm a happy camper.
For cell phones, on the other hand, the "feature" I used to like was being able to quickly select a name from my phone book and dial that person's number. Now, with the camera and the games and the other garbage they've installed, this process takes longer and longer and seems to be less and less reliable.
I can see your point about Dashboard, and I can really see your point about Automator--I was very excited about that feature of Tiger, and have been quite disappointed in its implementation.
But having the Spotlight search bar in every file open window? That has saved me cumulative HOURS. As a tech writer, I have to deliver a lot of similarly-named documents, in varying formats. Keeping track of them all--multiple projects for multiple clients, with multiple deliverables on each project--involves a pretty deeply nested file structure, which makes them easy, but not quick, to find.
Spotlight has almost completely eradicated the "hunt through sixteen folders" process I used to have to go through when attaching files to emails.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't recall writing that, though I agree with its broad outlines.
But yes, Disney and others who lobby Congress to extend copyrights beyond all reason have contributed to the problem of orphan works. Orphan works come about when, for example, copyright law extends protection of works whose authors are already dead.
Your comments suggest that you don't really have an idea of the scope of the problem or how it comes about. Every original work--not just entertainment--that is fixed in a tangible medium is copyrighted, automatically, and thus automatically protected for the life of the author plus 70 years. The level of protection for pre-1976 works is a little different, but still far out of scale with the problem copyright tries to solve--namely, providing a sufficient incentive to authors to ensure the flow of new creative works without placing unnecessary restrictions on free expression.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=orphan+works
Are you "deprived" of food, because you have to pay for it?
(1) If you can't afford it, yes.
(2) If you can't find the person who has it to pay them, yes.
That (1) misses the point, which is that U.S. copyright law has become wholly uncoupled from the point of granting copyrights in the first place, and (2) isn't even true for a lot of works. Google "orphan works."
Happy to, Trollio. It's the other $80 for 90000 channels i dont watch that I object to.
I can't speak for anybody else, but I watched a bunch of educational programming when I was a kid. Yes, Sesame Street--but also Mr. Rogers, the Electric Company, and Square One spring immediately to mind. Oh, and I bet I could still whistle the theme to "Voyage of the Mimi." Maybe I'm not typical, but I think all of those shows were pretty valuable. Given the choice, I would probably STILL watch half an hour of Square One over half an hour of Survivor's Next Top Idol.
No, this is LEGO. You have to put the skids on yourself.
I can't speak for "the medical field," but better schools do indeed mean more job opportunities in the legal field. This is not to say that a JD from a top law school is the guaranteed job it was five or ten years ago--or that it's impossible to get a job if you didn't attend a prestigious school--but firms certainly do look at where you went to school as a primary indicator of your value and ability.
... 0 dead in mass stabbing.
Sure, nutjobs are the problem, but guns let nutjobs translate nutjob impulses into mass death with the press of a finger. And many of the same people who advocate free, easy access to guns are the same people who suggest that government funding for things like mental health assessments and treatment is a huge waste of taxpayer money and an invasion of personal liberty.
The logical outcome of that thinking, of course, is that as long as there continue to be more and more widely publicized shootings (this is the second this week, by the way--third if you count the guy who shot himself inside a federal courthouse during business hours yesterday), it becomes less and less possible ever to discuss the politically addressable contributing factors to those shootings.
On the other hand, I assume that's the effect you're going for.
Something that is bad for us in high doses may be beneficial in low doses?! Next they'll be telling us that exposure to radiation and toxins can help cure cancer, or that the same stuff that rusts away unprotected steel and iron is actually necessary for animal life!
The rest of the headline: "Kids also okay with booze; Jury out about porn."
One second at 70 mph isn't 1/70th of a mile. It's around 1/50th of a mile.
One second at 60 mph is 1/60th of a mile, but that's the only speed for which that coincidence of numbering is true, because there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.
Yeah. Those stupid Democrats. Why, if it were up to Democrats, we never would have gone to the moon!
Fortunately, we have a wise, fiscally responsible Republican administration in office--one that would never waste money entrusted to it by the taxpayers of this country on anything irresponsible.
This is even better than the first time I read it!
I'd say the integrated iTunes Music Store played a big role, too... the iTunes software is about a times easier to use than the garbage put out by, e.g., Creative Labs, and I can buy a song on the Music Store and be listening to it on my iPod in under a minute all with the same piece of software.
Whether you include that under the heading of "marketing" I don't know, but that was one of the big selling points of the iPod for me after dealing with a Creative Jukebox and then an RCA Lyra and their attendant shortcomings.
Yeah, it's a "likely next step" like Bill Gates selling his possessions and moving to a commune is a "likely next step" in his charity work.
OS X is not about the "look and feel," it's about the underlying stability of the system. Yeah, Aqua is a pretty interface, but the thing that got me to switch from Windows to Mac is that the product works. And works. And continues working. Grafting Aqua onto the front of a Windows backend would be like putting fake tits on George Steinbrenner... sure, you could do it, but what would be the point?
Apple has made a name for itself among niche buyers by creating an extremely high-quality product. Switching to an underlying Windows OS would mean giving up stability, freedom from viruses and spyware, and the loyalty and love of their core market. I've never been to business school, but even I can tell that's a remarkably stupid idea.
Your comment (like Dvorak's similarly deluded article) demonstrates an absolute and rather breathtaking failure to grasp the reason behind the loyalty of Apple's user base.
"Compatible" my ass. I spend several hours every day cleaning up the garbage that results from conversions between .doc and .sxw files.
So, if they are the same device, the music can automatically stop when you start calling or an incoming call arrives. You know, they've been making cellphones that vibrate for several years now. I've never had a problem with missing a phone call because I have my iPod on.
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in? An iPod and a separate phone. I want my iPod to be an entertainment device. Period. If I'd wanted a Treo, I'd've bought a Treo. My experience with the Sidekick has convinced me that it's much better to have a device that does one thing incredibly well (as the iPod does) than to have a device that does one thing pretty well, two other things fairly poorly, and a fourth feature that breaks within two months.
Software crashes. A stable operating system doesn't mean that the applications that run on it will never crash. It does mean that, generally speaking, you can force-quit the application and reopen it without it hosing your entire system and forcing a computer restart.
MS-Word crashes on my mac nearly as often as it does on my PC, but the difference is that I can generally open it right back up and keep working on my Mac, whereas it takes a huge dump in memory on my PC and slows everything else down.
... says the anthropomorphized Mac.
I'd never played before and always thought it sounded interesting, so I downloaded the free 10-day trial.
The supposed interesting, exciting, fast-paced combat was really none of the three, and the rest of the content I experienced didn't even entice me to stick it out for three days, let alone ten.
I got into the habit of lugging my laptop to the laundromat with me to watch DVDs while I waited for my clothes to dry. This was definitely not an optimal solution--it's already awkward to manage two baskets of laundry and a bottle of detergent; having to deal with a laptop bag on top of that was a pain.
When I got a PSP, I started using that instead. But the movies and games are expensive.
An iPod with video capability seems like it would be a perfect laundromat companion. The fact that they're not really sacrificing any of the original functionality or design, or increasing the price, makes it a no-brainer. If you can give me more options without taking away the things I like already, I'm a happy camper.
For cell phones, on the other hand, the "feature" I used to like was being able to quickly select a name from my phone book and dial that person's number. Now, with the camera and the games and the other garbage they've installed, this process takes longer and longer and seems to be less and less reliable.
I can see your point about Dashboard, and I can really see your point about Automator--I was very excited about that feature of Tiger, and have been quite disappointed in its implementation.
But having the Spotlight search bar in every file open window? That has saved me cumulative HOURS. As a tech writer, I have to deliver a lot of similarly-named documents, in varying formats. Keeping track of them all--multiple projects for multiple clients, with multiple deliverables on each project--involves a pretty deeply nested file structure, which makes them easy, but not quick, to find.
Spotlight has almost completely eradicated the "hunt through sixteen folders" process I used to have to go through when attaching files to emails.