100% wrong. There are three possible reaons for your siblings not getting paid for your work.
1) You did the work freelance, and sold the rights to it outright 2) You did the work as an employee, and your employer has the rights 3) You retain the rights, but they have zero value because nobody wants it
For options 1 and 2, you made the choice to accept the security of getting paid up-front vs getting paid by market value of your work. If you were wise, you invested some of that money in assets that have increased their value, and your siblings can now benefit from that investment. Meanwhile, whoever you sold the rights to has now assumed the risks and rewards of your work. Maybe they were never able to sell a single thing based on your work, and took a huge loss on it. You still got paid though, didn't you? Did you give the money back? Of course not. On the other hand, they could still be selling (and making money on) things based on your work. You could still be receiving income from that had you not opted for the security of a paycheck.
For option 3, too bad. That is the risk inherent in basing your income on the market.
Tolkien, on the other hand, received ZERO for the act of writing his books, not one cent. ALL of his income is because people actually want his product. The fact that his works are still making money today is not some sort of flaw in the system, it is a testament to his ability to create something people still want after all this time, and his willingness to take the risk of writing it, not knowing if he would ever make a single cent from it.
The problem with you anti-copyright types is that you only ever focus on the upside. Copyright is evil, you say, because (among other reasons) people continue to get paid long after they did the 'work'. But you never say anything about the vastly larger group of people who write, compose, whatever, and make no money at all from it. That is their problem, you say, nobody is entitled to get paid just because they did work.
What an idiot. Are you trying to say that as soon as the major earner in a household dies, all of his assets should immediately disappear? House - gone. Bank accounts - gone. Retirement fund - gone. Every single thing that person has worked for instantly becomes worthless?
The stuff Disney based their works on was long out of copyright. Tokien's works are still under copyright for 30 more years.
As for who owns what, it seems that Tolkien Enterprises owns all of the 'merchandising' rights (which would include movies and video games), but that 'specific likenesses of characters and other imagery is owned by the adoptors' (from wikipedia). So, either they must get permission from Tolkien Enterprises, or, if they are using likenesses and imagery from the movies, from WB.
You seem to have some difficulty with the concept of 'original'. If JRRT et al have laid claim to 'various concepts', then come up with your own, NEW concepts. Granted, it may be much harder to come up with new concepts that anybody cares about, but that is not because of lack of money, it is because of lack of creativity and imagination. And that is why we reward the people who can come up with such things with IP.
The event was new, but the event is not what is being reported on here.
This was not an announcement of change in direction or anything else. Somebody with an axe to grind asked the guy if they were going to use ARM, and he said 'probably not'. That is not news. News is when something changes (or maybe was expected to change, but didn't), not when it stays the same.
There is a reason why a 'news' reporter reporting that 'Generalissimo Franco is still dead' was funny - because it was not news.
There is no reason to assume that EMC would be changing the chips they are using, and some dope asking a question about it does not make the fact that they are continuing to use the same chips news.
OK, so if I interpretted you incorrectly, please explain how. Why did you highlight the 'take' phrase, and why did you include the word 'merely' in the copy phrase, if not for the reasons I said? Of course, you won't do that, or you would have already explained it instead of the unintelligible post you made.
The part where you can't seem to grasp the concept that what is being compared is not action but damage. Everybody knows that copying and physically removing something are not the same thing, and nobody argues otherwise. The word game you are playing is saying that people are equating the two. What people are actually equating is the damage caused by the actions. You can directly compare the damage caused by taking with the damage caused by copying, because both can be translated into the same things - dollars, lost business, etc. It may be difficult to get accurate figures, and sometimes the figures are assigned arbitrarily, but figures can be assigned nonetheless.
When someone reaches into the till and grabs a handful of money, the problem is not that they have the money in their hand, it is that the bank has been harmed. When someone hacks a website and copies private data, the problem is not that they have duplicated some bits, it is that the operator of the website has been harmed.
I disagree with your assessment. It is not tech-savvy users who prefer highly-configurable things, it is people that have nothing better to do than tinker with their system. And it is not computer idiots who like things to work as-is, it is people who just want to use their tools.
I am tech-savvy. I have been developing Linux applications (server-side) and using them in critical production environments for over a decade. No complaints, Linux works perfectly and is trouble-free in that environment.
A few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and switch from using Windows on my primary workstation, to using Linux. Installation (RHEL 6) was very smooth, no problems.
Here is my experience. Log on first time, get desktop window. Looks reasonable. Start web browser (firefox). Dear god, what is with those fonts? They are absolutely hideous. OK, I'll see what the wisdom of the web says about that. Aha! All you have to do is intall the msttcorefonts package, and you are good to go. OK, I'll give that a try - it works! I have usable fonts. Hmm, I wonder what the msttcorefonts package did? I see, it installed fonts from Windows!
Go to another web page. Uh-oh, more trouble. Thi s pa ge h as tex t that lo oks li ke thi s. WTF? Back to the web. Well, you must be missing a font. Find out what the web page is trying to use. OK, it is using Helvetica, about the most popular font in the world. Well, you are in trouble then, because there is no legal Helvectica package for Linux. But, you are in luck, thanks to the wonderfulness of Linux. All you need to do I write some obscure XML and put it in the/etc/fonts/local.font file, and all of the 'Hevetica' requests will be automatically changed to use Microsofts(!) Arial font. I do that, and lo and behold it does work.
OK, some I am doing some work with a maximizde window, and I move the mouse up to the lop right corner of the screen to close the window, and WTF! All of the windows on my desktop make a cute little circle, and I have to click on the window I wanted to close to make it active. Try to close it again, same thing! Oh, I see, I have to be very careful not to put the mouse all the way in the corner. I can't think of any reason I would want this behavior, so I want to turn it off. Should be easy, right? Just right-click on the desktop and there will be an option to turn that off, right? Nope. Well, I am stumped. Back to the web. Look, you stupid noob, that is not a desktop setting, it is a window manager setting. You must go into the 'Compiz Settings' app from the Control Center. Why didn't I think of that? It is plainly obvious that something called Compiz would be controlling what happens with my mouse! OK, I am in the Compiz settings, so where is the setting that says 'put the windows in a circle'? Aha! It is the one with a music note icon and the name of 'Scale'. Makes perfect sense. How could I be so stupid as to not know that?
OK, now it has been a few days, and I want to add one of my frequently-used programs to the 'Favorites' menu. Right-click on the Favorites menu - nothing. OK, I'll create it on the desktop. Lo and behold, there is a 'create launcher' function. I create the launcher. The icon shows up as a spring with a board on it, but I don't really care about that. Right click on the icon, and Tada! there is an 'Add to favorites' option. Click it. Absolutely nothing happens. Back to the web. No, you stupid noob, you did it wrong. You need to go into the.local/share/applications directly and manally create a launcher. That launcher will the show up in the 'Application Browser', and you can add it to the favorites from there.
I was never any kind of Windows fan, but I think I am starting become one after that experience.
Obviously you do not have any involvement with manufacturing or supply chains. "Having replacements on shelves before running out of the old stuff" is, and most cases, NOT better planning. Having excess inventory on hand at the end of a product lifecycle is not good. It means that you have spent money to build stuff that people are not going to want to buy (because of the new product). To recoup that cost, you MUST sell that excess inventory, which usually means steep discounts. If someone buys your old product at a steep discount, it means you have lost a sale of the new product. Not good.
On the other hand, running out of supply is only a problem if the potential sales dry up. Even then, the loss of some potential sales to a competitor may still be preferable to losing more sales to yourself by having excess inventory.
Running out of supply on Black Friday is bad - you are going to lose a lot of customers to competitors who have supply. Running out of supply for ONE WEEK at the end of August (after back to school sales and before Christmas sales), is brilliant planning.
So what you're saying is that you're a thief. Since obviously they would have refunded your money if you had actually sent the thing back, they have not 'ripped you off'.
The headline of the article is "Kindle Fire 2 expected next week". Why would they deliberately increase the stock of the current generation, when they are going to have to sell them at a discount when the new generation comes out, thus competing with themselves?
The ideal situation for a manufacturer to be in is to sell out all of his old stock exactly when the new product is available. Next best is to have a small gap between product availabilty, building a little pent-up demand. Worst is having excess stock of the old product which must be dumped on the market.
Are you kidding? They would be competing with themselves. Someone looking to buy one would have to decide "New model for full price, or steeply discounted old model". Why would you want to do that?
You said they didn't take anything, they merely copied it.
Why emphasize the 'take' part? It indicates that taking is clearly import. Furthermore, not only does 'copied' not get emphasized, it gets a 'merely' tacked on.
Any normal person would read that as 'taking' is a serious action, while 'merely copying' is a much lesser offense. The only reason copying would be a much lesser offense is that it causes much less harm.
It is a stupid word game when you claim the analogy fails because of the difference.
Scenario 1: Customer leaves money with a bank, bank does not completely protect it, opportunist comes along and harms the bank and/or the customer (by stealing the money)
Scenario 2: Customer leaves private info with Sony, Sony does not completely protect it, opportunist comes along and harms Sony and/or the customer (by copying the data)
How is that not a valid analogy? The only way you can claim that the analogy is invalid is if you say that either stealing money or copying data does not cause harm.
Oh nonsense. Everyone who is using the cloud knows perfectly well that the data is someone else's servers - it is the whole reason they use the cloud in the first place. Are you really trying to claim that people sign up for 'Amazon Cloud Services' (or whatever it is called) for the purposes of getting more storage, doing backups, whatever, log on to 'Amazon Cloud Services', upload to 'Amazon Cloud Services', and aren't aware that they are sending their data to Amazon? Bullshit.
Now, it may be perfectly true that they have not thoroughly thought out the implications of storing their data at Amazon, and maybe they are too trusting of Amazon, but claiming they didn't KNOW they were using Amazon is just plain stupid. On the other hand, they may indeed have thought it through, and decided that storing their data on somebodies else's servers is no different than dropping the days cash receipts into a little slot in somebody else's building.
People come up with new terms because the old terms are no longer descriptive enough, or their meanings have changed over time.
In the early days of computing, there were several things in metal frames which made up a 'computer system'. This included things like card readers, card punches, tape drives, printers, etc. Of course, one of these things is the part that did all the work - the 'main frame'.
With the advent of microprocessors, the term 'main frame' was not useful, so people started calling the thing that did the work a CPU. The term 'mainframe' then became synonymous with very large computers that did not contain microprocessors. Over time, even that changed and today "mainframe" pretty much means machines running IBMs zSeries architecture. So when you say we should use the term 'mainframe computing', are you referring to an IBM zSeries machine, a large machine that doesn't use microprocessors, or a CPU? None of those are true, so we don't use that term.
Same with 'electric car'. Once upon a time that may have been descriptive enough. Today, it is not. Is an 'electric car' one that runs only on battery power (like Tesla), one that runs mostly on battery power with a generator to charge the batteries (Volt), or one that runs on either battery or electric power depending on conditions (Prius)?
That is a great way to go through life, and of course always works out well for everyone. One hell of a lot of blodd has been shed over time because of people with that idiotic philosophy.
Well, if you really want to play that stupid word games, lets. 'Merely copying' is potentially much more damaging than physical theft, because it is impossible to rectify. If you physically steal $1000, that is easily remedied by returning $1000 (notwithstanding any other punishments that may be meted out). 'Merely copying' private data, on the other hand, renders the data permanently non-private. So while you may not have 'taken' anything, you have completely and permanently destroyed its value.
Bullshit. Sony did not 'leave your money sitting out front'. They left your money in the teller's drawer, as is normal practice. If someone comes in and reaches over the counter, opens the drawer, and removes the money, that person has committed a crime. Not the bank.
Stop making excuses for these 'kids'. Sony may have had lax security, but they did not commit a crime. The 'kids', on the other hand, willfully commited a crime. The 'fault' is entirely theirs.
Oh lookie, another idiot parroting some stupid meme without any thought at all.
15 years is the MAXIMUM sentence that can be handed down for violating unathorized use of computer laws. The ACTUAL sentence (if convicted) can range anywhere from probabtion up to 15 years.
The MAXIMUM sentence for intentionally killing someone (depending on jurisdiction) is either life in prison, life in prison without possibility of parole, or death.
Slashdot Mirror
100% wrong. There are three possible reaons for your siblings not getting paid for your work.
1) You did the work freelance, and sold the rights to it outright
2) You did the work as an employee, and your employer has the rights
3) You retain the rights, but they have zero value because nobody wants it
For options 1 and 2, you made the choice to accept the security of getting paid up-front vs getting paid by market value of your work. If you were wise, you invested some of that money in assets that have increased their value, and your siblings can now benefit from that investment. Meanwhile, whoever you sold the rights to has now assumed the risks and rewards of your work. Maybe they were never able to sell a single thing based on your work, and took a huge loss on it. You still got paid though, didn't you? Did you give the money back? Of course not. On the other hand, they could still be selling (and making money on) things based on your work. You could still be receiving income from that had you not opted for the security of a paycheck.
For option 3, too bad. That is the risk inherent in basing your income on the market.
Tolkien, on the other hand, received ZERO for the act of writing his books, not one cent. ALL of his income is because people actually want his product. The fact that his works are still making money today is not some sort of flaw in the system, it is a testament to his ability to create something people still want after all this time, and his willingness to take the risk of writing it, not knowing if he would ever make a single cent from it.
The problem with you anti-copyright types is that you only ever focus on the upside. Copyright is evil, you say, because (among other reasons) people continue to get paid long after they did the 'work'. But you never say anything about the vastly larger group of people who write, compose, whatever, and make no money at all from it. That is their problem, you say, nobody is entitled to get paid just because they did work.
What an idiot. Are you trying to say that as soon as the major earner in a household dies, all of his assets should immediately disappear? House - gone. Bank accounts - gone. Retirement fund - gone. Every single thing that person has worked for instantly becomes worthless?
The stuff Disney based their works on was long out of copyright. Tokien's works are still under copyright for 30 more years.
As for who owns what, it seems that Tolkien Enterprises owns all of the 'merchandising' rights (which would include movies and video games), but that 'specific likenesses of characters and other imagery is owned by the adoptors' (from wikipedia). So, either they must get permission from Tolkien Enterprises, or, if they are using likenesses and imagery from the movies, from WB.
You seem to have some difficulty with the concept of 'original'. If JRRT et al have laid claim to 'various concepts', then come up with your own, NEW concepts. Granted, it may be much harder to come up with new concepts that anybody cares about, but that is not because of lack of money, it is because of lack of creativity and imagination. And that is why we reward the people who can come up with such things with IP.
Conveniently skipped over the 'can't find anywhere to legally get the Helvetica font', didn't you?
The 'make an XML file' was not for installing a font, it was for replacing a commonly used font that is not available.
The event was new, but the event is not what is being reported on here.
This was not an announcement of change in direction or anything else. Somebody with an axe to grind asked the guy if they were going to use ARM, and he said 'probably not'. That is not news. News is when something changes (or maybe was expected to change, but didn't), not when it stays the same.
There is a reason why a 'news' reporter reporting that 'Generalissimo Franco is still dead' was funny - because it was not news.
There is no reason to assume that EMC would be changing the chips they are using, and some dope asking a question about it does not make the fact that they are continuing to use the same chips news.
OK, so if I interpretted you incorrectly, please explain how. Why did you highlight the 'take' phrase, and why did you include the word 'merely' in the copy phrase, if not for the reasons I said? Of course, you won't do that, or you would have already explained it instead of the unintelligible post you made.
The part where you can't seem to grasp the concept that what is being compared is not action but damage. Everybody knows that copying and physically removing something are not the same thing, and nobody argues otherwise. The word game you are playing is saying that people are equating the two. What people are actually equating is the damage caused by the actions. You can directly compare the damage caused by taking with the damage caused by copying, because both can be translated into the same things - dollars, lost business, etc. It may be difficult to get accurate figures, and sometimes the figures are assigned arbitrarily, but figures can be assigned nonetheless.
When someone reaches into the till and grabs a handful of money, the problem is not that they have the money in their hand, it is that the bank has been harmed. When someone hacks a website and copies private data, the problem is not that they have duplicated some bits, it is that the operator of the website has been harmed.
I disagree with your assessment. It is not tech-savvy users who prefer highly-configurable things, it is people that have nothing better to do than tinker with their system. And it is not computer idiots who like things to work as-is, it is people who just want to use their tools.
I am tech-savvy. I have been developing Linux applications (server-side) and using them in critical production environments for over a decade. No complaints, Linux works perfectly and is trouble-free in that environment.
A few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and switch from using Windows on my primary workstation, to using Linux. Installation (RHEL 6) was very smooth, no problems.
Here is my experience. Log on first time, get desktop window. Looks reasonable. Start web browser (firefox). Dear god, what is with those fonts? They are absolutely hideous. OK, I'll see what the wisdom of the web says about that. Aha! All you have to do is intall the msttcorefonts package, and you are good to go. OK, I'll give that a try - it works! I have usable fonts. Hmm, I wonder what the msttcorefonts package did? I see, it installed fonts from Windows!
Go to another web page. Uh-oh, more trouble. Thi s pa ge h as tex t that lo oks li ke thi s. WTF? Back to the web. Well, you must be missing a font. Find out what the web page is trying to use. OK, it is using Helvetica, about the most popular font in the world. Well, you are in trouble then, because there is no legal Helvectica package for Linux. But, you are in luck, thanks to the wonderfulness of Linux. All you need to do I write some obscure XML and put it in the /etc/fonts/local.font file, and all of the 'Hevetica' requests will be automatically changed to use Microsofts(!) Arial font. I do that, and lo and behold it does work.
OK, some I am doing some work with a maximizde window, and I move the mouse up to the lop right corner of the screen to close the window, and WTF! All of the windows on my desktop make a cute little circle, and I have to click on the window I wanted to close to make it active. Try to close it again, same thing! Oh, I see, I have to be very careful not to put the mouse all the way in the corner. I can't think of any reason I would want this behavior, so I want to turn it off. Should be easy, right? Just right-click on the desktop and there will be an option to turn that off, right? Nope. Well, I am stumped. Back to the web. Look, you stupid noob, that is not a desktop setting, it is a window manager setting. You must go into the 'Compiz Settings' app from the Control Center. Why didn't I think of that? It is plainly obvious that something called Compiz would be controlling what happens with my mouse! OK, I am in the Compiz settings, so where is the setting that says 'put the windows in a circle'? Aha! It is the one with a music note icon and the name of 'Scale'. Makes perfect sense. How could I be so stupid as to not know that?
OK, now it has been a few days, and I want to add one of my frequently-used programs to the 'Favorites' menu. Right-click on the Favorites menu - nothing. OK, I'll create it on the desktop. Lo and behold, there is a 'create launcher' function. I create the launcher. The icon shows up as a spring with a board on it, but I don't really care about that. Right click on the icon, and Tada! there is an 'Add to favorites' option. Click it. Absolutely nothing happens. Back to the web. No, you stupid noob, you did it wrong. You need to go into the .local/share/applications directly and manally create a launcher. That launcher will the show up in the 'Application Browser', and you can add it to the favorites from there.
I was never any kind of Windows fan, but I think I am starting become one after that experience.
I don't consider it newsworthy unless it is news. A big part of the word 'news' is the word 'new'. There is absolutely nothing new in this article.
Yes, you must indeed be a 'hopeless edge case' if you enjoy reading in the bath, by a pool, on a beach, on a camping or hiking trip, etc.
Obviously you do not have any involvement with manufacturing or supply chains. "Having replacements on shelves before running out of the old stuff" is, and most cases, NOT better planning. Having excess inventory on hand at the end of a product lifecycle is not good. It means that you have spent money to build stuff that people are not going to want to buy (because of the new product). To recoup that cost, you MUST sell that excess inventory, which usually means steep discounts. If someone buys your old product at a steep discount, it means you have lost a sale of the new product. Not good.
On the other hand, running out of supply is only a problem if the potential sales dry up. Even then, the loss of some potential sales to a competitor may still be preferable to losing more sales to yourself by having excess inventory.
Running out of supply on Black Friday is bad - you are going to lose a lot of customers to competitors who have supply. Running out of supply for ONE WEEK at the end of August (after back to school sales and before Christmas sales), is brilliant planning.
So what you're saying is that you're a thief. Since obviously they would have refunded your money if you had actually sent the thing back, they have not 'ripped you off'.
Incorrectly managed their supply lines? Sounds damn near perfect.
The headline of the article is "Kindle Fire 2 expected next week". Why would they deliberately increase the stock of the current generation, when they are going to have to sell them at a discount when the new generation comes out, thus competing with themselves?
The ideal situation for a manufacturer to be in is to sell out all of his old stock exactly when the new product is available. Next best is to have a small gap between product availabilty, building a little pent-up demand. Worst is having excess stock of the old product which must be dumped on the market.
Are you kidding? They would be competing with themselves. Someone looking to buy one would have to decide "New model for full price, or steeply discounted old model". Why would you want to do that?
You said they didn't take anything, they merely copied it.
Why emphasize the 'take' part? It indicates that taking is clearly import. Furthermore, not only does 'copied' not get emphasized, it gets a 'merely' tacked on.
Any normal person would read that as 'taking' is a serious action, while 'merely copying' is a much lesser offense. The only reason copying would be a much lesser offense is that it causes much less harm.
So yes, you did say exactly that it was harmless.
It is a stupid word game when you claim the analogy fails because of the difference.
Scenario 1: Customer leaves money with a bank, bank does not completely protect it, opportunist comes along and harms the bank and/or the customer (by stealing the money)
Scenario 2: Customer leaves private info with Sony, Sony does not completely protect it, opportunist comes along and harms Sony and/or the customer (by copying the data)
How is that not a valid analogy? The only way you can claim that the analogy is invalid is if you say that either stealing money or copying data does not cause harm.
Oh nonsense. Everyone who is using the cloud knows perfectly well that the data is someone else's servers - it is the whole reason they use the cloud in the first place. Are you really trying to claim that people sign up for 'Amazon Cloud Services' (or whatever it is called) for the purposes of getting more storage, doing backups, whatever, log on to 'Amazon Cloud Services', upload to 'Amazon Cloud Services', and aren't aware that they are sending their data to Amazon? Bullshit.
Now, it may be perfectly true that they have not thoroughly thought out the implications of storing their data at Amazon, and maybe they are too trusting of Amazon, but claiming they didn't KNOW they were using Amazon is just plain stupid. On the other hand, they may indeed have thought it through, and decided that storing their data on somebodies else's servers is no different than dropping the days cash receipts into a little slot in somebody else's building.
Excellent post.
People come up with new terms because the old terms are no longer descriptive enough, or their meanings have changed over time.
In the early days of computing, there were several things in metal frames which made up a 'computer system'. This included things like card readers, card punches, tape drives, printers, etc. Of course, one of these things is the part that did all the work - the 'main frame'.
With the advent of microprocessors, the term 'main frame' was not useful, so people started calling the thing that did the work a CPU. The term 'mainframe' then became synonymous with very large computers that did not contain microprocessors. Over time, even that changed and today "mainframe" pretty much means machines running IBMs zSeries architecture. So when you say we should use the term 'mainframe computing', are you referring to an IBM zSeries machine, a large machine that doesn't use microprocessors, or a CPU? None of those are true, so we don't use that term.
Same with 'electric car'. Once upon a time that may have been descriptive enough. Today, it is not. Is an 'electric car' one that runs only on battery power (like Tesla), one that runs mostly on battery power with a generator to charge the batteries (Volt), or one that runs on either battery or electric power depending on conditions (Prius)?
That is a great way to go through life, and of course always works out well for everyone. One hell of a lot of blodd has been shed over time because of people with that idiotic philosophy.
Well, if you really want to play that stupid word games, lets. 'Merely copying' is potentially much more damaging than physical theft, because it is impossible to rectify. If you physically steal $1000, that is easily remedied by returning $1000 (notwithstanding any other punishments that may be meted out). 'Merely copying' private data, on the other hand, renders the data permanently non-private. So while you may not have 'taken' anything, you have completely and permanently destroyed its value.
Bullshit. Sony did not 'leave your money sitting out front'. They left your money in the teller's drawer, as is normal practice. If someone comes in and reaches over the counter, opens the drawer, and removes the money, that person has committed a crime. Not the bank.
Stop making excuses for these 'kids'. Sony may have had lax security, but they did not commit a crime. The 'kids', on the other hand, willfully commited a crime. The 'fault' is entirely theirs.
Oh lookie, another idiot parroting some stupid meme without any thought at all.
15 years is the MAXIMUM sentence that can be handed down for violating unathorized use of computer laws. The ACTUAL sentence (if convicted) can range anywhere from probabtion up to 15 years.
The MAXIMUM sentence for intentionally killing someone (depending on jurisdiction) is either life in prison, life in prison without possibility of parole, or death.
Your idiotic meme is just plain bullshit.