Jack Valenti is sortof a liar.. and yet he's speaking the truth as well. He's sneaky and deceptive, in that he's using a different definition for VCR than most people. He wasn't opposed to the VCR as a playback device (that I know of), but he was certainly opposed to the models that could record.
The phrases "floppy drives" and "reliable" should never be used in the same sentence. Perhaps you can say floppy drives are standard. Convenient (usually). But floppies are much further from reliability than CD-RWs are.
If you haven't seen the movie and didn't want to read spoilers, then why are you reading an article on why Nemesis tanked, not to mention a list of specific reasons why the movie sucked?
Now they're shutting down the file sharing channels. Maybe next week they'll shut down the "illegal" channels... the pedos, the bomb makers, the druggies. The week after that? Who knows?
I can't speak for how DALnet operates now (I haven't paid attention to the network or the IRC scene for a few years now), but there was a time when DALnet did try to regulate the content of channels more closely. They had a "closers" team whose purpose was to look for pedophile channels (and sometimes warez channels) and close them down. Take the ChanServ registration, mass-kick the channel, and close it. The people in #!!!!!8YearOldSex and such never argued with this, they just tried to slink away and disappear. Now the WaReZ folks.. they always liked to argue about the injustice. Unfortunately they've often been the types to DDoS servers too.
Eventually this practice stopped, especially when it was revealed FBI agents didn't like us to shut down these sorts of channels (the pedo channels specifically). It was better to have them findable, so they could be easily caught. Another con to the whole closers program was the whole question of liability -- if the network starts trying to regulate the content of channels, is it now liable for the channels it does allow? Is it liable for any banned channels it doesn't catch? These arguements went back and forth for awhile, and it looks like they've been revived again -- but this time the arguement isn't about the morality of hosting certain types of channels, it's almost certainly about self-preservation.
It has been interesting to hear the commentators deal with the technical aspects of this story, like speeds and distances. I've heard that the shuttle was 207,000 miles up when it broke up (wow!) I've heard them say that the shuttle was going 12,500 miles per hour, or mach 7 (???).
That's not as bad as CNN's assertion at one point that the shuttle was traveling at 18 times the speed of light (instead of 18x the speed of sound).
Re:You need a cover sheet on your TPS reports!!!
on
Superbowl XXXVII
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(on an added note: these anti-drug commercials are getting rediculous. all you could hear when those went on was "bullshit". cmon america, get with it.)
Those commercials are unintentionally the best ads out there for the legalization of drugs. I think they're backfiring.
Concerning petitioners assertion that Congress might evade the limitation on its authority by stringing together an unlimited number of "limited Times," the Court of Appeals stated that such legislative misbehavior clearly is not the situation before us...... And as we observe, infra, at 18, there is no cause to suspect that a purpose to evade the "limited Times" prescription prompted Congress to adopt the CTEA.
This is just plain wrong though. The exact opposite situation is before us -- we have been seeing 20 year+ increases regularly, and the court's majority rebuttal to that charge was "nuh-uh!" Yet it is very clear that that is the situation. Every time media from the 30's and onward comes close to entering public domain, Congress passes another copyright extention to prevent that from happening. This will keep occuring as long as keeping those works out of the public domain is profitable for those who send gifts to Congress.
Frodo being chosen to carry the ring? Come on! The only things Tolkien did to the whole mess was to string the elements together (basic engineering) and add characterization (albeit 2-dimensional).
In fact, the idea behind the ring of power comes from Plato (at least, I believe it was Plato) who wrote about a man who found a ring on the ground, and that if he wore it he would become invisible. This man then used that to his advantage to do evil works (like Gollum when he first got the ring). Plato argued that the temptation to use the ring would be so great that no man would be able to resist the temptation... though this temptation didn't come from any evil corrupting influence of the ring, but that it simply gave power, and that no man would be able to resist using it.
What right do the few thousand people, who desire the work of art, have to obtain it? I'd like the Mona Lisa in my living room. Do I have a right to have it there even if it's owned by someone else? Is
Invalid analogy -- we're not talking about taking original works away from the owners, we're talking about allowing others to legally make copies of it. For that reason you can have a copy of the Mona Lisa in your living room (and some people do!) because it isn't copyrighted anymore.
Copyright was always a compromise. Denying people the ability to copy is wrong, but without doing so, there's not a lot of incentive for content creators to.. create. There's always doing it for the fun of it, but few could make a true living on commission. So the compromise between these two positions was copyright -- restrict the ability to copy, but for a limited time. Eventually, everything should fall into public domain. Over time, this notion has been eaten away, as the lengths of copyrights have only increased as publishers, movie studios, and recording studios have gained political power.
In the case of copyright the founding intent is clear, and is exemplified by early implimentation of that intent. The court, as it often has, acted decitfully on grounds of "policy" and the "social good" rather than a Constitutional one. The court has never had much problem effectively re-writing the Constitution, efficently bypassing the prescribed process. This is yet another such time.
You're speaking of the Surpreme Court as if it were a single continuous entity that has never changed mindsets. As different presidents have appointed different members, the outlook has shifted back and forth. Sometimes the Court has acted to "interpret" the Constitution in very creative ways, acting as an activist court. Other members have been stricter and do not render verdicts that do not believe are not fully supported by what lies in the Constitution.
You could plausably define "free speech" as speech that is unemcombered by law to the contrary
You could define it any way you want, but that doesn't mean it's correct or the one supported by the higher documents.
Indeed, US citizens consistantly define themselves as "free" by that very definition. "Free", they say, as they are massively encumbered by laws of a totalitarian nature that intrude into utterly personal choices.
It is entirely irrelevant what people think and claim their freedom really is. What matters is what is written. Again, in the Constitution. The attitudes that people have are important in the sense that they shape the ideals behind many of the laws which get passed, but again, they're like the Declaration of Independance. A nice read, good philosophy and explanation of ideals of society, but with no legal weight.
Anyway, in the world you desribe, the Court may rightly rule that a "National Safe Speech Act", banning dissenting speech about Government and Corporations, or condoning a contrary foreign interest or lifestyle, is fully constitutional on the basis that Congress can always legislate differently later.
Incorrect. This very clearly goes against the First Amendment. The Sonny Bono Copyright Act, while perhaps flouting the ideals of the Constitution, does not specifically flout the letter.
as Disney controls the asset it retains maximum monitary value and, if you ask Disney, allows them to employ more people.
The argument is false, of course, that logic leads directly to Fachism
Tell that to the gay community. They regularly use Popeye as a gay icon. "I am what I am" and all that jazz.
Wow. I'm a gay man, and this is the first time I've ever heard of that. Maybe I'm out of touch... or maybe there really isn't such a thing as the "gay community," outside of small population enclaves.
I don't know why it still amazes me when I see something that seems so obviously sided one way. I guess that is just my idealism (read: youth)
That's because you probably haven't run into too many of the intellectual property types yet... people who because that "IP" is just like real property, an asset to be handed down and owned from generation to generation, and that if that IP falls out of copyright into public domain, then it's a financial loss tantamount to theft.
In this context, intellectual "property" is an abomination. It is essentially the haves stealing from the have nots, by depriving them of works that SHOULD enter the public domain.
A side note: The Supreme Court didn't rule about whether Congress what "right" to extend copyrights, just that they had the constitutional power.
I'm nominating our civilization for a Darwin Award, now, because I don't see anyone doing the nominating after WWIII... ( the remnant'd have, ah, other concerns...
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein
1. Netscape was always free, no matter what they claimed - show me someone who paid for it and I'll show you an idiot.
Netscape was free to students, but that was about it. I know people who don't pay for the shareware they use often, but I wouldn't think they're idiots if they did so. I paid for the few shareware apps I use because it's the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, no. The problem is that the process of installing the software makes a copy. This has been held to be a copy that mere ownership of the media does not give you the right to make.
I believe that the courts (at least here in Calif) have decided differently - that if "copying" (into memory, onto disk) is required to make the product you purchased work, then you have a legal right to make that copy.
Two reasons, I think. First, they aren't optimistic about being able to sell HDTV equipment because it's expensive and almost nothing uses it (yet). So showing HDTV and regular TV broadcasts on two TVs right next to each other makes the regular TV look like crap. So people see their options as being "spend $2000+ on a TV, or spend $500 on a TV that looks like crap."
I think the reason might be even simpler: a lot of people really don't like letterboxing. They really don't like it in 4:3, and one of the misleading selling points behind the push for HDTVs in stores is watching widescreen content without letterboxing. I see awful ads all the time for widescreen tvs saying things like "view all your movies without any of those annoying black bars," disregarding that almost no movies are released in the 16:9 aspect ratio. But by completely eliminating letterboxing, they also degrade the quality and distort the image, an unacceptable solution in my book...
3) those who have habits/conditions which they desire to keep private which can include things from porn to clinical depression etc.
This information while not illegal could be embarrassing and therefore useful for blackmail, boardroom coups, politics of personal destruction, discrimination.
This is, in fact, what J Edgar Hoover used the FBI for. His personal blackmail tool. Even he had something to hide, though..
No, of course not. Heck, they've been fighting tooth and nail to prevent information about their little energy meetings from being released to the American public.
Yes, this was a huge advantage of Napster - centralized searching. Searches were faster, and you didn't have to use lots of bandwidth either on them. It did, however, also make Napster more susceptible to legal attack. WinMX works the way it does not because it's better (it's a truly inferior system), but because centralizing all searching creates a single focal point for legal attack.
I don't know why everyone prefers Kazza, or places it at the forefront of any p2p discussion. WinMX is much more configurable a
Possibly because WinMX is the most wasteful program I've ever had the "privilage" of using. It constantly uses LOTS of bandwidth, with no option to turn that off. It's probably the searches due to its decentralized nature, another advantage of the old Napster over WinMX. No wonder so many universities and businesses try to block it. Hell, if I administered a network here, I'd try to block it, not for piracy concerns, but just that it uses so much damned bandwidth all the time.
I mean, this guy's a "professional" movie critic, and he starts the review by saying:
"'m sitting there during "Star Trek: Nemesis," the 10th "Star Trek" movie, and I'm smiling like a good sport and trying to get with the dialogue about the isotronic Ruritronic signature from planet Kolarus III, or whatever the hell they were saying, maybe it was "positronic,"
Actually, he had a good point: technobabble is meaningless. Nothing the characters say really matters anymore, except to make them sound advanced.
And the grudge match between Frodo and the Witch King kinda ruins the plot... Frodo and Sam are able to make it only because Sauron doesn't know about them. Having Frodo march up to the Lord of the Nazgul and give him a righteous stink-eye is a good way to blow your cover.
It's a good thing that Frodo was in Gondor when that happened, isn't it?:)
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I can't speak for how DALnet operates now (I haven't paid attention to the network or the IRC scene for a few years now), but there was a time when DALnet did try to regulate the content of channels more closely. They had a "closers" team whose purpose was to look for pedophile channels (and sometimes warez channels) and close them down. Take the ChanServ registration, mass-kick the channel, and close it. The people in #!!!!!8YearOldSex and such never argued with this, they just tried to slink away and disappear. Now the WaReZ folks.. they always liked to argue about the injustice. Unfortunately they've often been the types to DDoS servers too.
Eventually this practice stopped, especially when it was revealed FBI agents didn't like us to shut down these sorts of channels (the pedo channels specifically). It was better to have them findable, so they could be easily caught. Another con to the whole closers program was the whole question of liability -- if the network starts trying to regulate the content of channels, is it now liable for the channels it does allow? Is it liable for any banned channels it doesn't catch? These arguements went back and forth for awhile, and it looks like they've been revived again -- but this time the arguement isn't about the morality of hosting certain types of channels, it's almost certainly about self-preservation.
That's not as bad as CNN's assertion at one point that the shuttle was traveling at 18 times the speed of light (instead of 18x the speed of sound).
Those commercials are unintentionally the best ads out there for the legalization of drugs. I think they're backfiring.
This is just plain wrong though. The exact opposite situation is before us -- we have been seeing 20 year+ increases regularly, and the court's majority rebuttal to that charge was "nuh-uh!" Yet it is very clear that that is the situation. Every time media from the 30's and onward comes close to entering public domain, Congress passes another copyright extention to prevent that from happening. This will keep occuring as long as keeping those works out of the public domain is profitable for those who send gifts to Congress.
In fact, the idea behind the ring of power comes from Plato (at least, I believe it was Plato) who wrote about a man who found a ring on the ground, and that if he wore it he would become invisible. This man then used that to his advantage to do evil works (like Gollum when he first got the ring). Plato argued that the temptation to use the ring would be so great that no man would be able to resist the temptation... though this temptation didn't come from any evil corrupting influence of the ring, but that it simply gave power, and that no man would be able to resist using it.
Invalid analogy -- we're not talking about taking original works away from the owners, we're talking about allowing others to legally make copies of it. For that reason you can have a copy of the Mona Lisa in your living room (and some people do!) because it isn't copyrighted anymore.
Copyright was always a compromise. Denying people the ability to copy is wrong, but without doing so, there's not a lot of incentive for content creators to.. create. There's always doing it for the fun of it, but few could make a true living on commission. So the compromise between these two positions was copyright -- restrict the ability to copy, but for a limited time. Eventually, everything should fall into public domain. Over time, this notion has been eaten away, as the lengths of copyrights have only increased as publishers, movie studios, and recording studios have gained political power.
You're speaking of the Surpreme Court as if it were a single continuous entity that has never changed mindsets. As different presidents have appointed different members, the outlook has shifted back and forth. Sometimes the Court has acted to "interpret" the Constitution in very creative ways, acting as an activist court. Other members have been stricter and do not render verdicts that do not believe are not fully supported by what lies in the Constitution.
You could plausably define "free speech" as speech that is unemcombered by law to the contrary
You could define it any way you want, but that doesn't mean it's correct or the one supported by the higher documents.
Indeed, US citizens consistantly define themselves as "free" by that very definition. "Free", they say, as they are massively encumbered by laws of a totalitarian nature that intrude into utterly personal choices.
It is entirely irrelevant what people think and claim their freedom really is. What matters is what is written. Again, in the Constitution. The attitudes that people have are important in the sense that they shape the ideals behind many of the laws which get passed, but again, they're like the Declaration of Independance. A nice read, good philosophy and explanation of ideals of society, but with no legal weight.
Anyway, in the world you desribe, the Court may rightly rule that a "National Safe Speech Act", banning dissenting speech about Government and Corporations, or condoning a contrary foreign interest or lifestyle, is fully constitutional on the basis that Congress can always legislate differently later.
Incorrect. This very clearly goes against the First Amendment. The Sonny Bono Copyright Act, while perhaps flouting the ideals of the Constitution, does not specifically flout the letter.
as Disney controls the asset it retains maximum monitary value and, if you ask Disney, allows them to employ more people. The argument is false, of course, that logic leads directly to Fachism
Worse than that, it leads to Randroids. ;)
Wow. I'm a gay man, and this is the first time I've ever heard of that. Maybe I'm out of touch... or maybe there really isn't such a thing as the "gay community," outside of small population enclaves.
That's because you probably haven't run into too many of the intellectual property types yet... people who because that "IP" is just like real property, an asset to be handed down and owned from generation to generation, and that if that IP falls out of copyright into public domain, then it's a financial loss tantamount to theft.
In this context, intellectual "property" is an abomination. It is essentially the haves stealing from the have nots, by depriving them of works that SHOULD enter the public domain.
A side note: The Supreme Court didn't rule about whether Congress what "right" to extend copyrights, just that they had the constitutional power.
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein
Netscape was free to students, but that was about it. I know people who don't pay for the shareware they use often, but I wouldn't think they're idiots if they did so. I paid for the few shareware apps I use because it's the right thing to do.
I believe that the courts (at least here in Calif) have decided differently - that if "copying" (into memory, onto disk) is required to make the product you purchased work, then you have a legal right to make that copy.
I think the reason might be even simpler: a lot of people really don't like letterboxing. They really don't like it in 4:3, and one of the misleading selling points behind the push for HDTVs in stores is watching widescreen content without letterboxing. I see awful ads all the time for widescreen tvs saying things like "view all your movies without any of those annoying black bars," disregarding that almost no movies are released in the 16:9 aspect ratio. But by completely eliminating letterboxing, they also degrade the quality and distort the image, an unacceptable solution in my book...
This information while not illegal could be embarrassing and therefore useful for blackmail, boardroom coups, politics of personal destruction, discrimination.
This is, in fact, what J Edgar Hoover used the FBI for. His personal blackmail tool. Even he had something to hide, though..
Most likely the former.
No, of course not. Heck, they've been fighting tooth and nail to prevent information about their little energy meetings from being released to the American public.
Yes, this was a huge advantage of Napster - centralized searching. Searches were faster, and you didn't have to use lots of bandwidth either on them. It did, however, also make Napster more susceptible to legal attack. WinMX works the way it does not because it's better (it's a truly inferior system), but because centralizing all searching creates a single focal point for legal attack.
Possibly because WinMX is the most wasteful program I've ever had the "privilage" of using. It constantly uses LOTS of bandwidth, with no option to turn that off. It's probably the searches due to its decentralized nature, another advantage of the old Napster over WinMX. No wonder so many universities and businesses try to block it. Hell, if I administered a network here, I'd try to block it, not for piracy concerns, but just that it uses so much damned bandwidth all the time.
Actually, he had a good point: technobabble is meaningless. Nothing the characters say really matters anymore, except to make them sound advanced.
It's a good thing that Frodo was in Gondor when that happened, isn't it? :)