One of my favourite behavioural adaptations from a bird was a woodpecker that had found a metal post made a really loud noise when they pecked it, so they became a metalpecker! Top stuff.
Bring down copyright back to reasonable terms - something like 5-10 years. How often do books/music/etc. make money after the first few years? Certainly not enough to justify such a long copyright.
Terms should be longer than 10 years. Sure, most books, songs etc are out of print long before then. But there are creative types that are sort of familiar names, but not megastars, that should really be supported by copyright. The types that get "cult followings" and are "rediscovered" years after their creative height. They probably make up the majority of people who make their living off their creative output. If the copyright terms are too short, this group could atrophy, which would be a big loss.
One of the saddest problems with ridiculously long copyright terms is that you basically lose loads of stuff because they're out of print, and the person controlling the copyright has no financial interest in a reissue -- but society would benefit enormously from having free access to it. Or you find something, but you don't know who has the rights to it, and it would be quite expensive to track them down (when the people involved might be dead, or have forgotten about it, and ownership has passed to some as-yet unknown third party). This can have a chilling effect on the production of synthetic works and the like.
There is a happy medium. I'm not sure what it is, someone wiser than me will be a better judge. However, I imagine it would be closer to your length than what they are currently, and there's probably quite a bit of flexibility about it.
Used to be that the benefit was essentially automatic. You bought a new computer, loaded your software on it, and it was all twice as fast.
The original article by Moore formulated it in terms of cost:
In 1965, Moore examined the density of transistors at which cost is minimized, and observed that, as transistors were made smaller through advances in photolithography, this number would increase at "a rate of roughly a factor of two per year".
As you have said, this means that computers have been getting faster. But look at the other side of the equation.
You can get a decent computer for next to nothing, and put it in your toaster, or your hat, or wherever you like -- computing is now ubiquitous. I mean how much is an ARM processor these days? 10 cents apiece? You could rig it up to a board and have a full hat controller to, say, control the hat's pigment for a few dollars (of course that pigment system might cost you a bit).
What is interesting is that, while people have been trying to call anything following an exponential curve in technology as being "Moore's Law," things that Moore actually discussed, and form part of the law, and which are always talked about (here anyway), are almost never associated with Moore's Law.
Well it depends. You can objectively assess the greatness of someone, if you use "great" to mean "important and influential" rather than "big" or "really good." Of course making such an assessment is anything but straightforward.
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Their natural right to do business as they see fit, so long as they aren't harming others, free from interference.
Of course, in order for it to occur in this case, some measure of government interference (that is, setting up temporary monopolies) has to also occur. This is not a question of "natural rights," particularly. It's more an answer to a particular question: how does a society afford for new artistic and technical works? Currently the answer is temporary monopoly. Or, as your constitution puts it:
The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
It used to be patronage. I think this was an inferior system because fewer people could enter, for patrons would often only commission works that glorified them in some way or another.
You set yourself up for a fail when you talk of the "natural rights" of a company basing its business around copyright. This language is usually used when it would take some positive government action to deprive said holder of said right. Whereas in this case, it takes positive government action to afford said holder of said right. In those terms it is little different from the right to free healthcare, if such a thing were instituted. What I'm saying here is that you should try to justify copyrights on something a bit more appropriate to the subject. I happen to think they are justified, but in a more limited form than they exist today, based on what they give society. I won't go into it here as it's a long enough post, but my point is that they can be justified, but appealing to "natural rights" is not an appropriate method of doing so.
Yeah - Americans invented nationalism. Get serious.
** bob.appleyard puts on his serious hat **
There's actually a fun controversy over what constituted the first case of nationalism, and many historians hold that the American War of Independence and other movements in the colonies were the first "national struggles" (e.g. Benedict Anderson). Others reckon it was the First French Republic when nationalism really got going (e.g. Eric Hobsbawm), whilst others still (including myself) believing nationalism emerged as a product of the struggle between France and England in the Middle Ages.
So yeah, Americans might have actually invented nationalism! It's not that ridiculous!
"Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)"
Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed.
Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog
message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K;
and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
It's OK. This is a Gentoo user. Getting make to work on multicore well has a significant impact on the usability of his computer.
Note that English keeps the spellings, though.
With most other languages, when a foreign word gets in, its spelling is mangled to fit the native pronunciation.
This contributes to English phonemes and lexemes becoming totally out of whack.
Jokes on us! We're all driving Renaults and measuring in metres and Celsius.
The lone scientist was not the article's myth. It's a common by-product of the manner in which the history of science is discussed.
"Hey, that sphere's a cube!" -- Gene Ray
Good luck keeping it that way inside a PC.
One of my favourite behavioural adaptations from a bird was a woodpecker that had found a metal post made a really loud noise when they pecked it, so they became a metalpecker! Top stuff.
Bring down copyright back to reasonable terms - something like 5-10 years. How often do books/music/etc. make money after the first few years? Certainly not enough to justify such a long copyright.
Terms should be longer than 10 years. Sure, most books, songs etc are out of print long before then. But there are creative types that are sort of familiar names, but not megastars, that should really be supported by copyright. The types that get "cult followings" and are "rediscovered" years after their creative height. They probably make up the majority of people who make their living off their creative output. If the copyright terms are too short, this group could atrophy, which would be a big loss.
One of the saddest problems with ridiculously long copyright terms is that you basically lose loads of stuff because they're out of print, and the person controlling the copyright has no financial interest in a reissue -- but society would benefit enormously from having free access to it. Or you find something, but you don't know who has the rights to it, and it would be quite expensive to track them down (when the people involved might be dead, or have forgotten about it, and ownership has passed to some as-yet unknown third party). This can have a chilling effect on the production of synthetic works and the like.
There is a happy medium. I'm not sure what it is, someone wiser than me will be a better judge. However, I imagine it would be closer to your length than what they are currently, and there's probably quite a bit of flexibility about it.
Used to be that the benefit was essentially automatic. You bought a new computer, loaded your software on it, and it was all twice as fast.
The original article by Moore formulated it in terms of cost:
In 1965, Moore examined the density of transistors at which cost is minimized, and observed that, as transistors were made smaller through advances in photolithography, this number would increase at "a rate of roughly a factor of two per year".
Wikipedia, citing ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf. Emphasis added.
As you have said, this means that computers have been getting faster. But look at the other side of the equation.
You can get a decent computer for next to nothing, and put it in your toaster, or your hat, or wherever you like -- computing is now ubiquitous. I mean how much is an ARM processor these days? 10 cents apiece? You could rig it up to a board and have a full hat controller to, say, control the hat's pigment for a few dollars (of course that pigment system might cost you a bit).
What is interesting is that, while people have been trying to call anything following an exponential curve in technology as being "Moore's Law," things that Moore actually discussed, and form part of the law, and which are always talked about (here anyway), are almost never associated with Moore's Law.
What if MS already put a rootkit in windows?
Why on Earth would they do that, if they can just modify the kernel?
And how do you know that it isn't part of a botnet?
Well it depends. You can objectively assess the greatness of someone, if you use "great" to mean "important and influential" rather than "big" or "really good." Of course making such an assessment is anything but straightforward.
Stick a naked singularity next to it, anything's possible!
The post you're replying to said they were from Yorkshire, not Islington.
Then it's settled. Ron Jeremy for copyright tsar!
A load of rpmfusion repos just showed up in my repolist today.
I like the bit at the top.
This story or article is absolutely free to read!
We hope you enjoy it, we certainly did. Now here's the rub. JBU pays professional rates for these stories, and in order to do that, we sell subscriptions and memberships in the Universe Club. If you liked the story, please
But no matter what you do, when you leave this page, please pass this URL on to your friends, so they can read this fantastic story, and have the chance of being part of Jim Baen's Universe.
I'm not just talking about "us vs. them" of course. Nationalism is a specific thing, even if nations aren't.
Whatever, troll
Their natural right to do business as they see fit, so long as they aren't harming others, free from interference.
Of course, in order for it to occur in this case, some measure of government interference (that is, setting up temporary monopolies) has to also occur. This is not a question of "natural rights," particularly. It's more an answer to a particular question: how does a society afford for new artistic and technical works? Currently the answer is temporary monopoly. Or, as your constitution puts it:
The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
It used to be patronage. I think this was an inferior system because fewer people could enter, for patrons would often only commission works that glorified them in some way or another.
You set yourself up for a fail when you talk of the "natural rights" of a company basing its business around copyright. This language is usually used when it would take some positive government action to deprive said holder of said right. Whereas in this case, it takes positive government action to afford said holder of said right. In those terms it is little different from the right to free healthcare, if such a thing were instituted. What I'm saying here is that you should try to justify copyrights on something a bit more appropriate to the subject. I happen to think they are justified, but in a more limited form than they exist today, based on what they give society. I won't go into it here as it's a long enough post, but my point is that they can be justified, but appealing to "natural rights" is not an appropriate method of doing so.
plain old pots modem.
Plain old plain old telephone service?
Yeah - Americans invented nationalism. Get serious.
** bob.appleyard puts on his serious hat **
There's actually a fun controversy over what constituted the first case of nationalism, and many historians hold that the American War of Independence and other movements in the colonies were the first "national struggles" (e.g. Benedict Anderson). Others reckon it was the First French Republic when nationalism really got going (e.g. Eric Hobsbawm), whilst others still (including myself) believing nationalism emerged as a product of the struggle between France and England in the Middle Ages.
So yeah, Americans might have actually invented nationalism! It's not that ridiculous!
"Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)"
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php
The more significant difference is that the distribution of mix tapes is far harder to track than the distribution of MP3s over the Internet.
There's always the classic:
Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
Source