That depends on whether you tried to pass the video off as your own creation. That, in essence, is the core of the issue with the Discovery Institute's usage. Despite the title of the summary, the copyright violation is not what lies at the heart of this matter--it is the plagiarism. Surely your students cannot reasonably assume you were the sole author of the video. The same could not be said of a large, well-funded organization such as the DI.
Your post isn't going to be modded down because the rest of us are bigoted (or even merely biased) against your viewpoint, but because it fails to address the reality of the situation. (1) The Discovery Institute did not secure permission to use the video. (2) The video was shown with the copyright removed. (3) The substance of the video was changed by overdubbed narration that implied that the video depicted evidence of intelligent design in biochemical mechanisms. (4) Through the removal of copyright information and failure to refer to the actual source, the DI plagiarized the video by presenting it as its own original work rather than a derivative work. This action is not covered under fair use.
I would also like to point out that complaining that your post will be modded down is not somehow a sort of magical incantation to prevent it from actually being modded down. That sort of reverse psychology does not work, especially when you fail to have any legitimate points.
To call the Discovery Institute's use of the Harvard video merely "copyright violation" overlooks the more fundamental problem, because the DI did not just copy and redistribute the content without permission, but in fact (a) distorted and misrepresented the meaning of the content via overdubbed narration, and (b) knowingly misrepresented the authorship of the content. The former is fraud (though perhaps not in a legal context), and the second is plagiarism (which does satisfy the legal definition).
Violation of copyright is really only the superficial issue, and only addresses the ownership of the original work.
The creationist/intelligent design cabal is successful because since the time of Darwin, they have understood that their views cannot be defended through legitimate scientific inquiry, and can never be by definition. Therefore, they attack evolution by natural selection by appealing to and exploiting public passions, fears, and ignorance, and cloaking themselves in psuedoscientific legitimacy. They hope to insinuate themselves into rational discourse by invoking a false sense of objectivity and open-mindedness, appealing to the public to "hear both sides," which is merely a sophistic tactic to put their position on equal footing with decades of confirmed and verified scientific theory.
In the end, what I truly don't understand is why the creationists are so hell-bent on disproving evolution. History has shown us time and time again that when religion fights science, religion ends up with egg on its face. (Galileo and his support of Copernican heliocentrism comes to mind.) If I were devoutly religious, the last thing I would want is to try to prove God's existence, because then such a proof would obviate the need for faith in the first place. Such a desire to enshrine one's belief in the language of science seems horribly misplaced at best, and ultimately, is a far greater detriment and threat to religion than science. Meanwhile, the scientists can only follow the path that nature reveals.
RTFA. Obviously it can't consume no energy--it just doesn't consume mains energy, and even then, it shuts off if left in standby for more than five days. Seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem.
"Wal-Mart is now selling an electronic LCD game in the kid's section that resembles a Wiimote so closely that even Wal-Mart employees can't tell them apart in a picture.
You know, given the intelligence level of your average Wal-Mart employee, that latter statement isn't really saying a whole lot. Then again, much the same could be said of your average Wal-Mart consumer. A fool and his money are soon parted.
The problem with using a "reverse DLP" mechanism for light capture is that it's just not possible to scan several millions of pixels at higher shutter speeds. The method neither scales well with resolution nor time, unlike existing CMOS/CCD technologies which does scale very well with time, and reasonably well with resolution. Even worse, there is a more fundamental problem--the incoming photons through the aperture enter at different angles and energies. How do you properly distinguish them with a sufficiently precise moving object, when the camera is handheld?
Eventually, one reaches a limit where the ability to trigger a sensing element falls below the noise threshold. Simply increasing the sensor size does not completely resolve this issue, although it does mitigate the need for extremely sensitive pixels.
I forsee the short-term future of digital light capture to go in the direction of improvements in sensor design and optics, perhaps even implementing layered sensors (higher frequency photons penetrate more layers, thereby resulting in better frequency capture), rather than the commonly-used Bayer filters that invariably result in information loss. Long-term, I see things like capturing phase information, leading to natural light, full-color holography, thereby rendering photography obsolete.
Your use of the word "immoral" is inconsistent with its understood meaning, because moral behavior is in accordance with what is considered good or acceptable by the society or culture in which that behavior takes place. Therefore, it is not "almost immoral" for executives to not try to use whatever means necessary to increase their control of the market or their share of the profits. To the extent that such behavior is prohibited by statute, consumer outrage, and yes, the morality of the cultural context, it is not moral to do so.
In a way, you have only reinforced my claim that such behavior is juvenile and a sign of emotional and psychological underdevelopment. For you see, children (for the most part) act naively in that they will deliberately and repeatedly break rules established by authority figures, as long as they feel that there is a possibility of gaining from it. A child will push any limits set upon them, until they know 100% of the time that no benefit results from such pushing. When failure to establish firm limits occurs, the result is a very spoiled child, who never graduates to higher-level social functioning and reasoning in order to achieve their goals. Sounds a lot like some of these execs to me.
Oh, and one more thing: Just because that is the way the world works, doesn't mean that's the way it should work. Otherwise, we'd be shooting people for no cause, or committing atrocities for monetary gain. Oh wait--that's already happening in the Middle East. Forgive the oil execs, because it's "almost immoral" for them not to try.
...when the movie/music industry execs get their panties up in a wad and behave like crybabies, insisting that they "deserve" a cut of profits on hardware sales. Each successive generation of corporate big shots is increasingly afflicted with the seemingly unstoppable disease that is called self-entitlement. "I'm going to cut in line because I'm busy and can't wait." "I'm going to swerve across 4 lanes of traffic while talking on my phone because I'm more important than everyone else." "That money is mine because I say it is."
As children, these folks were the ones who stood alone on the playground at recess, holding the ball, because for all intents and purposes, they believed the entire world belonged to them. And they haven't grown up since then. The only reason why they've gotten as far as they have in life is because their limitless greed and egotism is repeatedly mistaken for ambition and confidence. The sad truth is that they only have as much power as others are willing to concede to them, and so their existence is more a reflection of the inability of our society to stand up and refuse to reward such psychopathy.
Let's look at the numbers. I don't dispute Nokia is a huge company and that they make a lot of money. But you obviously missed the point of my post, which is that the wireless market at its core is a service-driven industry. There will always be demand for hardware, no doubt. But you seem to have gotten the facts mixed up regarding who is in control of the wireless market. Here's a hint: it's not the handset manufacturers. With the iPhone, Apple has made a brilliant play to be an exception to the rule, and for that reason, we may see well-established business models shifting, with potential benefits (or downsides) to consumers. When was the last time you paid full price for a Nokia handset? How come service contracts are ubiquitous in the wireless industry? How much of your money goes to the equipment manufacturer, and how much goes to your service provider? Your statement about Nokia is sophistic, because as big as they may be....the wireless companies are even bigger.
Everyone already knows that the real money to be made in the mobile telecommunications market is in the service itself, rather than the hardware. It's simple math. ($60/mo) x (24 mo) = $1440. Even the most expensive consumer phones (we're not talking about limited edition, diamond-encrusted atrocities) are at most half the value of the 2-year contract. Is it any wonder that Apple would seek to leverage its design and cachet to grab a slice of the huge pie that is wireless? What's most telling about this is not how much Apple gets from each iPhone sale, but rather, how much other wireless companies make off of everybody. If AT&T is willing to part with $18/mo for the increased market share, then how much profit margin do you think they (along with Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.) make off of non-iPhone customers?
The problem with your DRM analogy is that DRM does not interfere with your ability to use non-DRM songs. The same cannot be said of GM crops.
Crops do not have any inherent understanding of where they can and cannot reproduce. There have been instances where Farmer A plants GM crops adjacent to Farmer B's non-GM crops of the same species. The result is cross-pollination. Farmer B's crops become contaminated with the genetic modifications present from Farmer A's crops, sometimes without B's knowledge. Monsanto comes in and sues Farmer B for the illegal use of their product.
Food safety is not, in my view, the underlying problem with GMO. Rather, the real issue is the application of the concept of GMO in real-world practice is unfortunately contaminated by the faulty premise that alterations to the genetic structure of organisms for commercial use can somehow be forever isolated from their respective non-modified organisms. Indeed, humans cannot even stop the threat of invasive species, and these are organisms that already exist in nature! It is the height of idiocy and arrogance to believe we can control life on a genetic level but can't even prevent a tropical aquarium plant from overrunning the Mediterranean.
Biology, by its very nature, is inextricably concerned with reproduction. One cannot create something new, distribute it on a wide scale, and yet reasonably expect that such changes will never escape one's control. Mutation and recombination is the cornerstone of genetics. In short, the critically flawed assumption is that innovations in GMOs are somehow technologically equivalent to, say, developing a new microprocessor, or even programming code. Despite the superficial similarities, they are not.
Just a few days ago, I had the existing AT&T DSL service switched over to my name. Although I didn't need new equipment, AT&T said they needed to disconnect the service for four days, after which it would take an additional four days after registration under my name to reconnect the same service. Because they didn't send me any hardware, I never received an installation CD. (Not that I ever intended to defile my system with their awful installer.) When I called up AT&T tech support, the woman was relatively clueless--I pretty much walked myself through the process.
But there was one hitch: Using either Firefox or Safari (IE was discontinued for the Mac), I could not register a new DSL username in their system. The hardware and network setup were working perfectly; something about AT&T's (aka Yahoo!/SBC) online registration system, however, required that I use IE. And as a long-time Apple user, I would switch to cable modem before I'd install "malware" on my machine.
It then came to me to try Opera. I downloaded a copy on my PowerBook through a nearby free access point (I love that place--best danishes I've ever had). And it worked. Obviously, AT&T is to blame, but am I ever relieved that Opera came through for me. Granted, I've gone back to using Firefox, but just in case, I've kept Opera on my system.
Slashdot Mirror
That depends on whether you tried to pass the video off as your own creation. That, in essence, is the core of the issue with the Discovery Institute's usage. Despite the title of the summary, the copyright violation is not what lies at the heart of this matter--it is the plagiarism. Surely your students cannot reasonably assume you were the sole author of the video. The same could not be said of a large, well-funded organization such as the DI.
Your post isn't going to be modded down because the rest of us are bigoted (or even merely biased) against your viewpoint, but because it fails to address the reality of the situation. (1) The Discovery Institute did not secure permission to use the video. (2) The video was shown with the copyright removed. (3) The substance of the video was changed by overdubbed narration that implied that the video depicted evidence of intelligent design in biochemical mechanisms. (4) Through the removal of copyright information and failure to refer to the actual source, the DI plagiarized the video by presenting it as its own original work rather than a derivative work. This action is not covered under fair use.
I would also like to point out that complaining that your post will be modded down is not somehow a sort of magical incantation to prevent it from actually being modded down. That sort of reverse psychology does not work, especially when you fail to have any legitimate points.
To call the Discovery Institute's use of the Harvard video merely "copyright violation" overlooks the more fundamental problem, because the DI did not just copy and redistribute the content without permission, but in fact (a) distorted and misrepresented the meaning of the content via overdubbed narration, and (b) knowingly misrepresented the authorship of the content. The former is fraud (though perhaps not in a legal context), and the second is plagiarism (which does satisfy the legal definition).
Violation of copyright is really only the superficial issue, and only addresses the ownership of the original work.
The creationist/intelligent design cabal is successful because since the time of Darwin, they have understood that their views cannot be defended through legitimate scientific inquiry, and can never be by definition. Therefore, they attack evolution by natural selection by appealing to and exploiting public passions, fears, and ignorance, and cloaking themselves in psuedoscientific legitimacy. They hope to insinuate themselves into rational discourse by invoking a false sense of objectivity and open-mindedness, appealing to the public to "hear both sides," which is merely a sophistic tactic to put their position on equal footing with decades of confirmed and verified scientific theory.
In the end, what I truly don't understand is why the creationists are so hell-bent on disproving evolution. History has shown us time and time again that when religion fights science, religion ends up with egg on its face. (Galileo and his support of Copernican heliocentrism comes to mind.) If I were devoutly religious, the last thing I would want is to try to prove God's existence, because then such a proof would obviate the need for faith in the first place. Such a desire to enshrine one's belief in the language of science seems horribly misplaced at best, and ultimately, is a far greater detriment and threat to religion than science. Meanwhile, the scientists can only follow the path that nature reveals.
RTFA. Obviously it can't consume no energy--it just doesn't consume mains energy, and even then, it shuts off if left in standby for more than five days. Seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem.
The problem with using a "reverse DLP" mechanism for light capture is that it's just not possible to scan several millions of pixels at higher shutter speeds. The method neither scales well with resolution nor time, unlike existing CMOS/CCD technologies which does scale very well with time, and reasonably well with resolution. Even worse, there is a more fundamental problem--the incoming photons through the aperture enter at different angles and energies. How do you properly distinguish them with a sufficiently precise moving object, when the camera is handheld? Eventually, one reaches a limit where the ability to trigger a sensing element falls below the noise threshold. Simply increasing the sensor size does not completely resolve this issue, although it does mitigate the need for extremely sensitive pixels. I forsee the short-term future of digital light capture to go in the direction of improvements in sensor design and optics, perhaps even implementing layered sensors (higher frequency photons penetrate more layers, thereby resulting in better frequency capture), rather than the commonly-used Bayer filters that invariably result in information loss. Long-term, I see things like capturing phase information, leading to natural light, full-color holography, thereby rendering photography obsolete.
Your use of the word "immoral" is inconsistent with its understood meaning, because moral behavior is in accordance with what is considered good or acceptable by the society or culture in which that behavior takes place. Therefore, it is not "almost immoral" for executives to not try to use whatever means necessary to increase their control of the market or their share of the profits. To the extent that such behavior is prohibited by statute, consumer outrage, and yes, the morality of the cultural context, it is not moral to do so. In a way, you have only reinforced my claim that such behavior is juvenile and a sign of emotional and psychological underdevelopment. For you see, children (for the most part) act naively in that they will deliberately and repeatedly break rules established by authority figures, as long as they feel that there is a possibility of gaining from it. A child will push any limits set upon them, until they know 100% of the time that no benefit results from such pushing. When failure to establish firm limits occurs, the result is a very spoiled child, who never graduates to higher-level social functioning and reasoning in order to achieve their goals. Sounds a lot like some of these execs to me. Oh, and one more thing: Just because that is the way the world works, doesn't mean that's the way it should work. Otherwise, we'd be shooting people for no cause, or committing atrocities for monetary gain. Oh wait--that's already happening in the Middle East. Forgive the oil execs, because it's "almost immoral" for them not to try.
...when the movie/music industry execs get their panties up in a wad and behave like crybabies, insisting that they "deserve" a cut of profits on hardware sales. Each successive generation of corporate big shots is increasingly afflicted with the seemingly unstoppable disease that is called self-entitlement. "I'm going to cut in line because I'm busy and can't wait." "I'm going to swerve across 4 lanes of traffic while talking on my phone because I'm more important than everyone else." "That money is mine because I say it is."
As children, these folks were the ones who stood alone on the playground at recess, holding the ball, because for all intents and purposes, they believed the entire world belonged to them. And they haven't grown up since then. The only reason why they've gotten as far as they have in life is because their limitless greed and egotism is repeatedly mistaken for ambition and confidence. The sad truth is that they only have as much power as others are willing to concede to them, and so their existence is more a reflection of the inability of our society to stand up and refuse to reward such psychopathy.
Let's look at the numbers. I don't dispute Nokia is a huge company and that they make a lot of money. But you obviously missed the point of my post, which is that the wireless market at its core is a service-driven industry. There will always be demand for hardware, no doubt. But you seem to have gotten the facts mixed up regarding who is in control of the wireless market. Here's a hint: it's not the handset manufacturers. With the iPhone, Apple has made a brilliant play to be an exception to the rule, and for that reason, we may see well-established business models shifting, with potential benefits (or downsides) to consumers. When was the last time you paid full price for a Nokia handset? How come service contracts are ubiquitous in the wireless industry? How much of your money goes to the equipment manufacturer, and how much goes to your service provider? Your statement about Nokia is sophistic, because as big as they may be....the wireless companies are even bigger.
Everyone already knows that the real money to be made in the mobile telecommunications market is in the service itself, rather than the hardware. It's simple math. ($60/mo) x (24 mo) = $1440. Even the most expensive consumer phones (we're not talking about limited edition, diamond-encrusted atrocities) are at most half the value of the 2-year contract. Is it any wonder that Apple would seek to leverage its design and cachet to grab a slice of the huge pie that is wireless? What's most telling about this is not how much Apple gets from each iPhone sale, but rather, how much other wireless companies make off of everybody. If AT&T is willing to part with $18/mo for the increased market share, then how much profit margin do you think they (along with Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.) make off of non-iPhone customers?
I got totally turned on after reading his proof! Now if only he'd trim that beard down a bit....
The problem with your DRM analogy is that DRM does not interfere with your ability to use non-DRM songs. The same cannot be said of GM crops. Crops do not have any inherent understanding of where they can and cannot reproduce. There have been instances where Farmer A plants GM crops adjacent to Farmer B's non-GM crops of the same species. The result is cross-pollination. Farmer B's crops become contaminated with the genetic modifications present from Farmer A's crops, sometimes without B's knowledge. Monsanto comes in and sues Farmer B for the illegal use of their product.
Food safety is not, in my view, the underlying problem with GMO. Rather, the real issue is the application of the concept of GMO in real-world practice is unfortunately contaminated by the faulty premise that alterations to the genetic structure of organisms for commercial use can somehow be forever isolated from their respective non-modified organisms. Indeed, humans cannot even stop the threat of invasive species, and these are organisms that already exist in nature! It is the height of idiocy and arrogance to believe we can control life on a genetic level but can't even prevent a tropical aquarium plant from overrunning the Mediterranean.
Biology, by its very nature, is inextricably concerned with reproduction. One cannot create something new, distribute it on a wide scale, and yet reasonably expect that such changes will never escape one's control. Mutation and recombination is the cornerstone of genetics. In short, the critically flawed assumption is that innovations in GMOs are somehow technologically equivalent to, say, developing a new microprocessor, or even programming code. Despite the superficial similarities, they are not.
Just a few days ago, I had the existing AT&T DSL service switched over to my name. Although I didn't need new equipment, AT&T said they needed to disconnect the service for four days, after which it would take an additional four days after registration under my name to reconnect the same service. Because they didn't send me any hardware, I never received an installation CD. (Not that I ever intended to defile my system with their awful installer.) When I called up AT&T tech support, the woman was relatively clueless--I pretty much walked myself through the process. But there was one hitch: Using either Firefox or Safari (IE was discontinued for the Mac), I could not register a new DSL username in their system. The hardware and network setup were working perfectly; something about AT&T's (aka Yahoo!/SBC) online registration system, however, required that I use IE. And as a long-time Apple user, I would switch to cable modem before I'd install "malware" on my machine. It then came to me to try Opera. I downloaded a copy on my PowerBook through a nearby free access point (I love that place--best danishes I've ever had). And it worked. Obviously, AT&T is to blame, but am I ever relieved that Opera came through for me. Granted, I've gone back to using Firefox, but just in case, I've kept Opera on my system.