What made you so mad at Christians in general? You are a true odd ball. Do you hate everything in this world that you are unable to achieve? I've known people like that, and you reek of it.
This blog entry is actually a good starting point, if you're sincere about wanting to know why people "hate" Christians. (Some ads on the page may be NSFW.)
*sigh* Thanks a lot for burning 2 hours of my time (supposed to be writing at the moment):p. That's a wonderful blog entry and I (naturally) started reading her other posts as well. Amazingly lucid writer - she goes on my 'permanent reading' list. Cheers/
Notepad++ works for all my technical needs (coding or general writing).
For creative writing, I use this single exe file (357kB) free tool called Q10 (eminently portable so I use it from my usb stick). Superb writing program - opens full screen, soft font, no formatting possible and you can customize background and font colors (but that's it). All keyboard driven (no mouse functions and the mouse cursor disappears entirely) - a command list appears with F1 (intuitive - open close, save). Oh, best thing - you can choose to hear a typewritten sound when you type:). Wrote a lot of neat stuff on this thing - I can see the difference in the way I write.
There is the pink page of death and other nasty bits that I think/. could get rid of, but on the whole this site caters to its posters very well. That said, the groupthink is still very obvious.
What's the pink page of death? o.O (I'd really like to know)
Also, there is a fine line between groupthink and consensus. That line is defined by objective correctness (when it exists, else the line becomes vanishingly thin). I don't doubt that groupthink does exist even here, but I do trust that you're not making the common mistake of thinking the two are identical. For what it's worth (based on what I remember of your posting history), I don't think you are.
Just needed to be said because there are far too many idiots on the intertubes (again, not referring to you) with persecution complexes the size of Montana who immediately cry "groupthink" (and break out their copy of Sparknotes: 1984) when their pet lunacies are summarily dismissed by rational people.
As for being banned from Freeperville, isn't that the final test of a rational human being? Like being cast out from intellectual purgatory and sent back to earth.
Here's an idea - raise property taxes to the point where the village can exist without extorting its people in random ways. Oh wait, no one's gonna want that either are they? It's like a bad game of Monopoly where any half-penny township gets ticketing control over the tiny stretch of federal or state roadway that runs through it. Or like a mundane version of 'Salem's lot:p
*sigh* I'm afraid you're not responding to my arguments, but rather what you believe my arguments are. Let me try again (based on your latest post).
The problem is that nation states have the intrinsic right to self-governance.When it comes to nation states, there is not "higher authority" per-se; They are all peers.
In principle perhaps. But in reality, only as valid as its enforceability. Here's the funny part that you valiantly continue to ignore - Why the hell should I respect this so-called "intrinsic right of self-governance" of a nation-state that does not respect its citizens basic human rights? If that's too strong, I'll weaken my point a bit to suggest where we might be talking past each other. I can agree to respecting the rights of the nation-state to govern itself while recognizing the fact that the government of that state is an entity distinct from the nation-state (which I take to mean the people who reside in it). Do you see the difference?
It sounds to me like the issue you have with the concept of blanket national soveriegnty is that it allows forms of government and political activities that you personally disagree with to go "Unpunished", as long as they dont start pooping in other people's cheerios.The issue is one of who watches the watchers.
Not really. The issue I have is simply that I shouldn't be expected to agree to (what you assume is a) "basic right" as it applies to governments that themselves do not agree with me with what human rights their citizens should have. It's a matter of symmetry. If you're an oppressive government, you can't fuck humanitarian principles in the ass when it applies to your own people and then shamelessly expect the rest of the world to respect your sovereign rights. As for watching the watchers, I'm a pragmatist. The answer is whoever has the means, motive and opportunity. Having said that, I fully agree that this can't be unilateral - though not for the same reason as yours (so I'm not sure why you're belaboring this point instead of responding to one of my major ones). I just think the US doesn't owe the world any policemen. Let the barbarians civilize themselves. It's a thankless job and is all too often like teen rebellion (doing something bad just to piss off the parents).
As for the question that brings up the spectre of Godwin's law: (I dont intend for this to sound aggressive, btw.)
Perhaps you missed out on Chairman Mao's little happy fun-ride through China? What did the world stage do about it? What is it doing about the aftermath of it right now? [exactly.]
Or, for a more recent example, Sarkosy (however you sell his name anyway) and the Roma extirpation; even though it does not involve extermination.
So, your argument is that global intervention doesn't occur for every example of government oppression, so we should just not do it at all?
The most that other nations have the RIGHT to do about these kinds of things are to 1) Condemn the practice publicly, and 2) withold trade from those countries.
I'll take a page from your relativist handbook and ask you - "WHO decides that this is the only right a nation has?":p
Who decides what is ethical, what is justified, and what is a crime? (more importantly, who has the RIGHT to impose such arbitration?)
If we can't agree about what's ethical, and what's justified and what is a crime, on what moral basis are you arguing so vehemently for national sovereignty? Can't have it both ways boyo:p If even human rights are so morally ambiguous for you (ew! by the way) that mass killing or political imprisonment cannot be judged as wrong by anyone, why is national sovereignty the only unambiguous principle you adhere to? And that's the crux of the issue here - WHAT moral principle could possibly justify the idea
What's a "liberal arts degree"? My degree is a B.A. in Physics (from a liberal arts school). Same with my M.A. in Physics. I think you're terminologically confused. In case it wasn't clear, the A in BA and MA stands for Arts:p.
wierd_w:-If that means being a theocratically managed hell-hole, that is THEIR business.
Not trying to Godwin the thread, but is this really a good principle to have? On a case by case basis, some of what you said could possibly be said to have merit (with serious reservations at that), but taking the above statement as a guiding principle would mean that in principle, the only thing Hitler did that warranted intervention from the rest of the world, was attack his neighboring countries. Anything related to the holocaust within Germany proper was off-limits to the rest of the world under the principle of national sovereignty. Same with Rwanda (in fact, the argument works better because that's really an internal problem. Who are we to trample on their national sovereignty? So they commit genocide - a principle is far more important than people, right?
You do well to say "Iran is in charge of Iran" (it probably is - marginally). How about some others? Pre-war Afghanistan? pre-war Iraq? The best you could have said then was that someone was in charge of those countries. Why should we recognize a government that doesn't even pretend to represent its people? I don't think we have a moral obligation to respect the sovereignty of tin-pot dictatorships or "theocratic hellholes". Clearly, the vast majority of its people don't give a shit about who rules them (or they would have revolted). Why should we care? Why should I personally grant respect to a government or organization whose stated aim is the destruction of everything I actually do respect? You can't have it both ways.
Here's a principle that I think would actually work:
National sovereignty will apply only to nation-states that can coexist peacefully with other states (just as freedom in a democratic society applies only to non-criminals). Nations with governments that largely behave analogously to criminals do not need to be granted the respect or deference that is the natural due of a sovereign state. Don't like it? Tough noogies. Respond with terrorism? Well, there are solutions to that.
wierd_w:-They want us to stop. It's that simple. It's not that they hate OUR freedom, they WANT freedom from US! (and they are willing to kill for it.))
No. It's not that simple. You ascribe to a bunch of dispersed jihadists a unity of purpose that simply does not exist. Seems to me like you're falling in the same trap as the people you criticize (of the vast terrorist network with a common goal).
wierd_w:-The argument that "They hate our freedom!" is both a smokescreen and a farce all wrapped up in one
While there is some truth to the idea that this reason is used frequently as a smokescreen by politicians, it is far from being a farce. I will agree that it is simplistic and limited because freedom itself is not the major bone of contention. The problem with theocratic (or otherwise totalitarian) societies is that its leadership promises certain rewards in return for the loss of certain freedoms and privileges. These rewards can be either concrete ["the godly way brings prosperity"] or abstract ["behave the way we tell you to or you ain't going to paradise"]. The problem of faith-based terrorism is related in part to the disconnect between promises and reality.
The standard of life (in materialistic terms at least) is seen to be better in the "freer" countries. The theocratic promises start becoming more and more abstract (since the concrete becomes undeliverable). However, they can only be made so abstract before more and more people start catching on to the bullshit. Do you think "wag the dog" is limited to the west? Well, the theocratic nations (and otherwise closed states like NK) have been playing the most colossal and long-running game of "wag the dog" in recorded history. And its citizens (for the most part) remain blissfully ignorant of this. "The infidel is to bla
... get the title right *sigh*. Is that so much to ask from (even) self-published authors?
Super Principia Mathematica: The Rage[sic] to Master Conceptual and Mathematica[sic] Physics
Without RTFA, is this an Onion review?
However most notably Robert Louis Kemp celebrates the work and wisdom on one which he quotes throughout his prose and cites credit beyond all the others, and that is God. I would not classify this book within the genre of theology; however it is refreshing to see a man with such scientific acumen articulate his respect for a fundamentally diametrically opposing thought process.
I call troll =). Heck, I doubt even theologians would take this guy seriously. Sounds like one of the people who keeps spamming our entire physics department every once in a while with "proofs" that the earth is going to collide with hell (you can't make this shit up).
Sure you can. I have plenty of software where I can give you a copy, and you can install it, and it will work for a limited time for you.
Unlike these e-books, there's no artificial limitation aping physical objects by allowing only a single person a copy, or by disabling the original.
Otherwise known as software demos. That has exactly nothing to do with lending licenses. I could get a "limited time" demo direct from the publisher without you lending [sic] it to me. The analogous thing would be book samples or previews. Again, no limitation (anyone can download them without restriction).
Then there's Steam, with "Guest passes", which lets you lend the software to others so they can play multiplayer with you. Another broken concept, by the way, because it too relies too much on the old "physical copy" paradigm, which is an anathema to raw digital data.
A marginally better analogy. But still, it's not really lending because these magical guest passes seem to appear randomly (I use Steam). It would be like the book fairy suddenly appearing in your house and touching a couple of books on your shelf and giving your permission to lend them out. I'm glad you realize that's a broken concept.
By the way, nothing you said counters my main point which was - the current ebook selling and lending schemes have nothing to do with physical object scarcity and everything to do with taking a page out of the software licensing handbook. You gave all those examples to counter what was essentially a "by the way" statement.
Again, the whole physical buy/sell based on scarcity model doesn't work for digital works.
It may be unfair (in your opinion). It may be detrimental to certain principles (that I suspect are not rooted in economic reality - but that's another discussion for another day. I won't insist upon that here). However, it is an incontestable fact that the model is working. The vast majority of people have accepted the model (as horrible as I personally find it) - as evidenced by the mass migration of ordinary non-technical folks towards E-ink based ebook readers (visit the B&N forum sometime and you'll be as amazed as I was about the demographics that have converted to the dark side:p). I suspect we might have a lot in common as to how we feel the world should work in this regard. Your mistake lies in ignoring what's really happening - your little ditty about the "dying publishing industry" is a clear indication of that.
I.e. abolition of copyrights is an important first step.
Sure, let's throw the baby out with the bathwater. That oughta be good for a few laughs:p.
Actually, in this case, their political history is a potent weapon wielded by the people. The French Revolution should keep the government afraid of what happens when the ruling class gets all uppity:).
Self-reply: should have RTFA:p. Apparently there was no jury o.O. I take it all back. Apparently, if even well-off people would rather roll over and play dead rather than stand up and fight, they don't deserve much sympathy.
There will always be a conflict of interest there because the medical professionals, even if not practicing, may remember a time when they did something like that and be biased because of it.
As opposed to laypeople who'll go "what the fuck does that mean?" and "Screw it. I'll just find for the plaintiff, coz' lookit at the cute little kid who suffered cuzza the big bad doctor"? If you allow for the possibility of medical professionals being biased, I don't see how the solution is getting ignorant people to decide cases where a deep knowledge of medicine is needed to even understand the issue at hand. No thank you, better to be biased by medical facts than some obscure ideology.
Justice should be blind, not stupid. Of course, my opinion is worth crap here, because any shyster who succeeded in extorting 20mil in a case like this would have had to start out by systematically eradicating any vestiges of medial knowledge from the jury. I can just see the pretrial questions: "How is babby formed?"
I'm against this with every fiber of my being and hope it dies.
Good thing that hope is meaningless. Library ebooks have been around for a looooong time now, with the same paradigm. The only thing new is... well, absolutely nothing. Well, maybe the fact that Sony has finally jumped on the bandwagon and breathed new life into a... healthy and thriving library book market. *yawn* I've been borrowing DRM'd ebooks from the Cleveland Public Library for over 9 years now and reading it on one portable reader after another. Try not to have a knee-jerk reaction to DRM. DRM is fine for rentals (you're renting the property - the owners can do whatever the fuck they want to hobble it). DRM is NOT fine for sold content. Write that on the board 500 times:p.
There has to be some sort of return on producing books, are we going to rely on people doing it as a hobby, or go back to the old days where you need a patron? (Hope there is some rich guy who likes your genre and hires an author?)
+1.
Considering that the world's stock of rich patrons would consist mostly of rich old farts, get ready for some of the most boring literature ever conceived by man.
Randall, you might know, is the author of XKCD and the book sales from XKCD Vol. 0 helped to build a school in Laos.
Oh wait...
As far the T-shirts and mugs and all that trash, I hardly think selling kitschy garbage to eke out a living is more dignified than charging people for the actual creative stuff they produce. By the way, in case it needs to be made explicit, Munroe SOLD the freaking books, didn't give them away. And sold them at way above the actual manufacturing price (look it up at some point and you'll see that manufacturing costs are actually much lower than people think - most of the book costs have to do with promotion, advances, overhead and shit like that. Which means that self-published authors like webcomic artists are merely taking advantage of an established price point that is totally artificial for them). No free lunch - if those creative artists are going to make a living from their "art", they're going to violate your amusing ideas of art at some point.
Barnes & Noble Nook also has a crippled lending scheme, the difference being that it's not library based, but allows people to lend books to others.
Did you even read any post before yours? The B&N nook has supported Adobe Digital Editions and Overdrive for a long time now (used in conjunction with tons of libraries around the US). This story about a pissant 50 libraries in the UK signals a severely ignorant submitter. "Breathes new life into library books" - my sainted arse. The lendme feature that you touched upon is crippled - no arguments there. However, the essential idea is probably the best that can be done as far as lending goes. You want two copies of a book simultaneously readable - farking pay for two copies. Paying the author one book's royalty doesn't entitle you to mass-produce the damn thing.
same artificial imitate-dead-trees limitation of one reader at a time...
As much as I loathe DRM, I must take exception to this ridiculous concept. The one reader at a time has nothing to do with imitating dead tree books. It is a direct crossover from the software industry and its pay-per-license paradigm. Why is that so hard to understand? In a way, it's far superior to anything the software industry has managed to come up with. You can't lend software licenses can you?
No, realistic would mean what you said. "Realistic" means what I said;) (as other people have commented, we are used to certain imperfections and that's what we think of as real (in the context of video). Somehow we have this dual definition of realism as it pertains to what you see with the naked eye and what you see on a screen. Or at least I do, perhaps our descendants won't.
Very interesting! Thanks for the detailed explanation. Although, I don't totally get your statement about HDR looking real - we simply don't see those great highlights and such fantastic depth of field (in the sense of all objects looking clear irrespective of their depth coordinates) in real life. That's why (to me), the example video looked very artificial (but beautiful as all hell).
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they can go to Congress (as one group of wankers to another) and beg for a bailout?
Is it groupthink to agree with the obvious?
... and prolongs unicorn marriages..
/fap?
Of course you have a lot of crap too, but thats why we have ratings systems.
Dude, just filter out that kind of stuff. :p. ... )
(What? It's the apocalypse and the puns are out in force. Live with it
*sputter* new keyboard. you. owe. me... (and paper towels?)
What made you so mad at Christians in general? You are a true odd ball. Do you hate everything in this world that you are unable to achieve? I've known people like that, and you reek of it.
This blog entry is actually a good starting point, if you're sincere about wanting to know why people "hate" Christians. (Some ads on the page may be NSFW.)
*sigh* Thanks a lot for burning 2 hours of my time (supposed to be writing at the moment) :p. That's a wonderful blog entry and I (naturally) started reading her other posts as well. Amazingly lucid writer - she goes on my 'permanent reading' list. Cheers/
Agreed.
:). Wrote a lot of neat stuff on this thing - I can see the difference in the way I write.
Notepad++ works for all my technical needs (coding or general writing).
For creative writing, I use this single exe file (357kB) free tool called Q10 (eminently portable so I use it from my usb stick). Superb writing program - opens full screen, soft font, no formatting possible and you can customize background and font colors (but that's it). All keyboard driven (no mouse functions and the mouse cursor disappears entirely) - a command list appears with F1 (intuitive - open close, save). Oh, best thing - you can choose to hear a typewritten sound when you type
Thanks for the info :). Weird stuff...
There is the pink page of death and other nasty bits that I think /. could get rid of, but on the whole this site caters to its posters very well. That said, the groupthink is still very obvious.
What's the pink page of death? o.O (I'd really like to know)
Also, there is a fine line between groupthink and consensus. That line is defined by objective correctness (when it exists, else the line becomes vanishingly thin). I don't doubt that groupthink does exist even here, but I do trust that you're not making the common mistake of thinking the two are identical. For what it's worth (based on what I remember of your posting history), I don't think you are.
Just needed to be said because there are far too many idiots on the intertubes (again, not referring to you) with persecution complexes the size of Montana who immediately cry "groupthink" (and break out their copy of Sparknotes: 1984) when their pet lunacies are summarily dismissed by rational people.
As for being banned from Freeperville, isn't that the final test of a rational human being? Like being cast out from intellectual purgatory and sent back to earth.
Here's an idea - raise property taxes to the point where the village can exist without extorting its people in random ways. Oh wait, no one's gonna want that either are they? It's like a bad game of Monopoly where any half-penny township gets ticketing control over the tiny stretch of federal or state roadway that runs through it. Or like a mundane version of 'Salem's lot :p
The problem is that nation states have the intrinsic right to self-governance.When it comes to nation states, there is not "higher authority" per-se; They are all peers.
In principle perhaps. But in reality, only as valid as its enforceability. Here's the funny part that you valiantly continue to ignore - Why the hell should I respect this so-called "intrinsic right of self-governance" of a nation-state that does not respect its citizens basic human rights? If that's too strong, I'll weaken my point a bit to suggest where we might be talking past each other. I can agree to respecting the rights of the nation-state to govern itself while recognizing the fact that the government of that state is an entity distinct from the nation-state (which I take to mean the people who reside in it). Do you see the difference?
It sounds to me like the issue you have with the concept of blanket national soveriegnty is that it allows forms of government and political activities that you personally disagree with to go "Unpunished", as long as they dont start pooping in other people's cheerios.The issue is one of who watches the watchers.
Not really. The issue I have is simply that I shouldn't be expected to agree to (what you assume is a) "basic right" as it applies to governments that themselves do not agree with me with what human rights their citizens should have. It's a matter of symmetry. If you're an oppressive government, you can't fuck humanitarian principles in the ass when it applies to your own people and then shamelessly expect the rest of the world to respect your sovereign rights. As for watching the watchers, I'm a pragmatist. The answer is whoever has the means, motive and opportunity. Having said that, I fully agree that this can't be unilateral - though not for the same reason as yours (so I'm not sure why you're belaboring this point instead of responding to one of my major ones). I just think the US doesn't owe the world any policemen. Let the barbarians civilize themselves. It's a thankless job and is all too often like teen rebellion (doing something bad just to piss off the parents).
As for the question that brings up the spectre of Godwin's law: (I dont intend for this to sound aggressive, btw.)
Perhaps you missed out on Chairman Mao's little happy fun-ride through China? What did the world stage do about it? What is it doing about the aftermath of it right now? [exactly.]
Or, for a more recent example, Sarkosy (however you sell his name anyway) and the Roma extirpation; even though it does not involve extermination.
So, your argument is that global intervention doesn't occur for every example of government oppression, so we should just not do it at all?
The most that other nations have the RIGHT to do about these kinds of things are to 1) Condemn the practice publicly, and 2) withold trade from those countries.
I'll take a page from your relativist handbook and ask you - "WHO decides that this is the only right a nation has?" :p
Who decides what is ethical, what is justified, and what is a crime? (more importantly, who has the RIGHT to impose such arbitration?)
If we can't agree about what's ethical, and what's justified and what is a crime, on what moral basis are you arguing so vehemently for national sovereignty? Can't have it both ways boyo :p If even human rights are so morally ambiguous for you (ew! by the way) that mass killing or political imprisonment cannot be judged as wrong by anyone, why is national sovereignty the only unambiguous principle you adhere to? And that's the crux of the issue here - WHAT moral principle could possibly justify the idea
What's a "liberal arts degree"? My degree is a B.A. in Physics (from a liberal arts school). Same with my M.A. in Physics. I think you're terminologically confused. In case it wasn't clear, the A in BA and MA stands for Arts :p.
wierd_w:-If that means being a theocratically managed hell-hole, that is THEIR business.
Not trying to Godwin the thread, but is this really a good principle to have? On a case by case basis, some of what you said could possibly be said to have merit (with serious reservations at that), but taking the above statement as a guiding principle would mean that in principle, the only thing Hitler did that warranted intervention from the rest of the world, was attack his neighboring countries. Anything related to the holocaust within Germany proper was off-limits to the rest of the world under the principle of national sovereignty. Same with Rwanda (in fact, the argument works better because that's really an internal problem. Who are we to trample on their national sovereignty? So they commit genocide - a principle is far more important than people, right?
You do well to say "Iran is in charge of Iran" (it probably is - marginally). How about some others? Pre-war Afghanistan? pre-war Iraq? The best you could have said then was that someone was in charge of those countries. Why should we recognize a government that doesn't even pretend to represent its people? I don't think we have a moral obligation to respect the sovereignty of tin-pot dictatorships or "theocratic hellholes". Clearly, the vast majority of its people don't give a shit about who rules them (or they would have revolted). Why should we care? Why should I personally grant respect to a government or organization whose stated aim is the destruction of everything I actually do respect? You can't have it both ways.
Here's a principle that I think would actually work:
National sovereignty will apply only to nation-states that can coexist peacefully with other states (just as freedom in a democratic society applies only to non-criminals). Nations with governments that largely behave analogously to criminals do not need to be granted the respect or deference that is the natural due of a sovereign state. Don't like it? Tough noogies. Respond with terrorism? Well, there are solutions to that.
wierd_w:-They want us to stop. It's that simple. It's not that they hate OUR freedom, they WANT freedom from US! (and they are willing to kill for it.))
No. It's not that simple. You ascribe to a bunch of dispersed jihadists a unity of purpose that simply does not exist. Seems to me like you're falling in the same trap as the people you criticize (of the vast terrorist network with a common goal).
wierd_w:-The argument that "They hate our freedom!" is both a smokescreen and a farce all wrapped up in one
While there is some truth to the idea that this reason is used frequently as a smokescreen by politicians, it is far from being a farce. I will agree that it is simplistic and limited because freedom itself is not the major bone of contention. The problem with theocratic (or otherwise totalitarian) societies is that its leadership promises certain rewards in return for the loss of certain freedoms and privileges. These rewards can be either concrete ["the godly way brings prosperity"] or abstract ["behave the way we tell you to or you ain't going to paradise"]. The problem of faith-based terrorism is related in part to the disconnect between promises and reality.
The standard of life (in materialistic terms at least) is seen to be better in the "freer" countries. The theocratic promises start becoming more and more abstract (since the concrete becomes undeliverable). However, they can only be made so abstract before more and more people start catching on to the bullshit. Do you think "wag the dog" is limited to the west? Well, the theocratic nations (and otherwise closed states like NK) have been playing the most colossal and long-running game of "wag the dog" in recorded history. And its citizens (for the most part) remain blissfully ignorant of this. "The infidel is to bla
Super Principia Mathematica: The Rage[sic] to Master Conceptual and Mathematica[sic] Physics
Without RTFA, is this an Onion review?
However most notably Robert Louis Kemp celebrates the work and wisdom on one which he quotes throughout his prose and cites credit beyond all the others, and that is God. I would not classify this book within the genre of theology; however it is refreshing to see a man with such scientific acumen articulate his respect for a fundamentally diametrically opposing thought process.
I call troll =). Heck, I doubt even theologians would take this guy seriously. Sounds like one of the people who keeps spamming our entire physics department every once in a while with "proofs" that the earth is going to collide with hell (you can't make this shit up).
Sure you can. I have plenty of software where I can give you a copy, and you can install it, and it will work for a limited time for you. Unlike these e-books, there's no artificial limitation aping physical objects by allowing only a single person a copy, or by disabling the original.
Otherwise known as software demos. That has exactly nothing to do with lending licenses. I could get a "limited time" demo direct from the publisher without you lending [sic] it to me. The analogous thing would be book samples or previews. Again, no limitation (anyone can download them without restriction).
Then there's Steam, with "Guest passes", which lets you lend the software to others so they can play multiplayer with you. Another broken concept, by the way, because it too relies too much on the old "physical copy" paradigm, which is an anathema to raw digital data.
A marginally better analogy. But still, it's not really lending because these magical guest passes seem to appear randomly (I use Steam). It would be like the book fairy suddenly appearing in your house and touching a couple of books on your shelf and giving your permission to lend them out. I'm glad you realize that's a broken concept.
By the way, nothing you said counters my main point which was - the current ebook selling and lending schemes have nothing to do with physical object scarcity and everything to do with taking a page out of the software licensing handbook. You gave all those examples to counter what was essentially a "by the way" statement.
Again, the whole physical buy/sell based on scarcity model doesn't work for digital works.
It may be unfair (in your opinion). It may be detrimental to certain principles (that I suspect are not rooted in economic reality - but that's another discussion for another day. I won't insist upon that here). However, it is an incontestable fact that the model is working. The vast majority of people have accepted the model (as horrible as I personally find it) - as evidenced by the mass migration of ordinary non-technical folks towards E-ink based ebook readers (visit the B&N forum sometime and you'll be as amazed as I was about the demographics that have converted to the dark side :p). I suspect we might have a lot in common as to how we feel the world should work in this regard. Your mistake lies in ignoring what's really happening - your little ditty about the "dying publishing industry" is a clear indication of that.
I.e. abolition of copyrights is an important first step.
Sure, let's throw the baby out with the bathwater. That oughta be good for a few laughs :p.
Actually, in this case, their political history is a potent weapon wielded by the people. The French Revolution should keep the government afraid of what happens when the ruling class gets all uppity :).
Self-reply: should have RTFA :p. Apparently there was no jury o.O. I take it all back. Apparently, if even well-off people would rather roll over and play dead rather than stand up and fight, they don't deserve much sympathy.
There will always be a conflict of interest there because the medical professionals, even if not practicing, may remember a time when they did something like that and be biased because of it.
As opposed to laypeople who'll go "what the fuck does that mean?" and "Screw it. I'll just find for the plaintiff, coz' lookit at the cute little kid who suffered cuzza the big bad doctor"? If you allow for the possibility of medical professionals being biased, I don't see how the solution is getting ignorant people to decide cases where a deep knowledge of medicine is needed to even understand the issue at hand. No thank you, better to be biased by medical facts than some obscure ideology.
Justice should be blind, not stupid. Of course, my opinion is worth crap here, because any shyster who succeeded in extorting 20mil in a case like this would have had to start out by systematically eradicating any vestiges of medial knowledge from the jury. I can just see the pretrial questions: "How is babby formed?"
I'm against this with every fiber of my being and hope it dies.
Good thing that hope is meaningless. Library ebooks have been around for a looooong time now, with the same paradigm. The only thing new is ... well, absolutely nothing. Well, maybe the fact that Sony has finally jumped on the bandwagon and breathed new life into a ... healthy and thriving library book market. *yawn* I've been borrowing DRM'd ebooks from the Cleveland Public Library for over 9 years now and reading it on one portable reader after another. Try not to have a knee-jerk reaction to DRM. DRM is fine for rentals (you're renting the property - the owners can do whatever the fuck they want to hobble it). DRM is NOT fine for sold content. Write that on the board 500 times :p.
Honestly, what would you want?
There has to be some sort of return on producing books, are we going to rely on people doing it as a hobby, or go back to the old days where you need a patron? (Hope there is some rich guy who likes your genre and hires an author?)
+1.
Considering that the world's stock of rich patrons would consist mostly of rich old farts, get ready for some of the most boring literature ever conceived by man.
Randall, you might know, is the author of XKCD and the book sales from XKCD Vol. 0 helped to build a school in Laos.
Oh wait ...
As far the T-shirts and mugs and all that trash, I hardly think selling kitschy garbage to eke out a living is more dignified than charging people for the actual creative stuff they produce. By the way, in case it needs to be made explicit, Munroe SOLD the freaking books, didn't give them away. And sold them at way above the actual manufacturing price (look it up at some point and you'll see that manufacturing costs are actually much lower than people think - most of the book costs have to do with promotion, advances, overhead and shit like that. Which means that self-published authors like webcomic artists are merely taking advantage of an established price point that is totally artificial for them). No free lunch - if those creative artists are going to make a living from their "art", they're going to violate your amusing ideas of art at some point.
Barnes & Noble Nook also has a crippled lending scheme, the difference being that it's not library based, but allows people to lend books to others.
Did you even read any post before yours? The B&N nook has supported Adobe Digital Editions and Overdrive for a long time now (used in conjunction with tons of libraries around the US). This story about a pissant 50 libraries in the UK signals a severely ignorant submitter. "Breathes new life into library books" - my sainted arse. The lendme feature that you touched upon is crippled - no arguments there. However, the essential idea is probably the best that can be done as far as lending goes. You want two copies of a book simultaneously readable - farking pay for two copies. Paying the author one book's royalty doesn't entitle you to mass-produce the damn thing.
same artificial imitate-dead-trees limitation of one reader at a time ...
As much as I loathe DRM, I must take exception to this ridiculous concept. The one reader at a time has nothing to do with imitating dead tree books. It is a direct crossover from the software industry and its pay-per-license paradigm. Why is that so hard to understand? In a way, it's far superior to anything the software industry has managed to come up with. You can't lend software licenses can you?
life support for a dying publishing industry.
*sigh* never mind. This is weapons-grade funny.
No, realistic would mean what you said. "Realistic" means what I said ;) (as other people have commented, we are used to certain imperfections and that's what we think of as real (in the context of video). Somehow we have this dual definition of realism as it pertains to what you see with the naked eye and what you see on a screen. Or at least I do, perhaps our descendants won't.
Very interesting! Thanks for the detailed explanation. Although, I don't totally get your statement about HDR looking real - we simply don't see those great highlights and such fantastic depth of field (in the sense of all objects looking clear irrespective of their depth coordinates) in real life. That's why (to me), the example video looked very artificial (but beautiful as all hell).
That's kinda what i was going for (OP). That example HDR video did not look "real" (where "real" is defined by our old experiences).