Additionally, by have no copyrighted material they are not beholden to anyone. If you own the copyright to something on their page, then you have a say in how it is used. Or there needs to be a contract saying they can use it freely. Either way, it's a huge burden for an entity that relies on the general public for content.
By using freely available material that has no restrictions, they can do what they want with it and don't have to worry about any legal/contractual issues.
[quote] Much of the "traditional" media also seems to be mistakenly pursuing "balance" as some ultimate goal. This consists of finding two sides to any issue, despite the fact that it may be far more nuanced than this, and giving both of them equal time and credence, whether or not they deserve it. This is all slotted into a sixty second package which tells viewers almost nothing, then repeated ad nauseum until interest in the story completely dies, or something more important happens, like a celebrity farting.[/quote]
Definitely. . "It's first-est with the least-est." And then when they do have a "in depth" report it's just two diametrically opposed individuals spouting out garbage. Things are more subtle than they're reported, and both sides aren't always equally right. In most cases, one is right, one is wrong, or their both wrong. Ask and get answers to the deep questions.
I'd agree that is a large portion of the decline in traditional news outlets/papers. Too many shallow stories without deep investigative work. Take political stories for example, you almost always see the news outlets repeat the "company" lines without any analysis as to whether they're right or not. On some things, there is no "right" answer, but for many things there is a position that is much more tenable, is not framed to be misleading, etc. News outlets need to hit on these things. . Their other issue is they've been giving it away for years now. People are used to getting it for free, why pay now?
Exactly, that is why this is rather crazy. You either give no browser at all, and really gimp the OS or you have to install all of them. How can they make the determination that X browser is good but Y isn't?
The best choice would be to include it, but have it not be so integrated into the OS. But at any rate, it gives MS a leg up on the competition but it doesn't prevent the competition from being used. So does Safari on OSX though.
This is somewhat true, the majority of the Wii titles are pure garbage with motion controls. . However, look at many of the best selling games on the other consoles. Sure the excellent games sell well. But just about every movie tie-in is absolutely terrible, and gets panned by the game media, yet consistently sell well enough to be in the top in terms of sales volume. . To some extent it is not a Wii problem exclusively. Although, the Wii seems to be even worse than the rest. Wii Fit is a mid-quality program. It is unique, but it is insanely shallow. It doesn't even let you make your own workouts and save them. Yet it is one of the best selling titles month after month. .
90% of the titles for the Wii do seem to be shovelware with motion controls.
Water down isn't the right word. It provides a different game experience.
The Wii is not optimized for the latest and greatest games. It doesn't have much more power than the previous Gamecube. So if you look at processor power, polygon counts, and other performance/hardware metrics then the Wii does produce a lesser "experience."
What the Wii does have is a new and unique control scheme. For some games it works, for some it doesn't. Part of this is the publishers fault for not really considering the control schemes, part of it is the limitations of the Wii, such as button placements/numbers and control accuracy.
For the games that do work with the Wii, the control scheme is superior to the competitors and also less "scary" to the non-gamer/casual gamer population.
If you're teaching computer "programming" for mathematical and data manipulation, Matlab is really going to be the best thing to teach. It's VERY common in industry and quite powerful for that purpose.
FORTRAN really isn't a good language to be teaching anymore. It's virtually extinct except at Universities, and in legacy programs that have been around 20+ years. I've not seen it used ever to make "new" code. If the goal is to teach a programming language so people can write their own code, something like C++ or other common language would be much more useful.
Yeah, Gamestop absolutely has an absolutely pathetic collection of PC games. It's not even worth looking there anymore. Thank god there is a Microcenter within a couple miles of home. That place has an amazing stock of anything computer related.
In response to the original article, sure the publishers want a piece of the action. What company doesn't want to earn more money? However, all they are legally entitled to is the ability to piss and moan over it. Once a manufactured good is purchased by a consumer (or business), they have the legal right to resell the copy.
Yes, but this isn't an issue of piracy per se. It is an issue of a lack of "security" of the game code prior to release. That is what allows this entire thing to happen. If you secure the code prior to the release date this doesn't happen. And by security, I don't mean DRM type security. I mean physical security of the data preventing it from being leaked.
The shuttle is very fragile compared to the Apollo spacecraft. I would call it a poor design as far as safety goes.
In general, ice forms on the fuel tanks as they sit waiting for launch. On launch, the entire thing shakes and the ice falls off. On Apollo, the spacecraft was at the top so nothing could fall onto it. The shuttle has all the "sensitive" parts in the middle, so there is plenty that can fall on it.
This sort of damage has always happened. NASA has just become very concerned over it lately and does massive checks once in orbit.
I heard of DoD personnel taking hard drives to drill presses to render them useless. I'm not sure if they were also degaussed/erased prior to or what information was originally on them.
It is an obvious conflict of interest when you are presiding over a case and are a member of an organization that sides strongly with one of the parties in the case.
It is generally okay to be biased toward one side due to internal beliefs. Most people do tend toward one side in contentious issues, but to openly run around and say it or promote one side (via membership in pro- organizations) is inappropriate.
"What does violate the letter of the Constitution is that these extensions do not "promote the Progress" of science and arts, but rather retard them. Past a certain length, copyright terms don't create any additional encouragement to create; they just make it easier for huge corporations to monopolize our common culture."
I agree with you on this. Copyright is a requirement. You do need some form of a protection for artists so they can profit from their work, whatever it is.
However, copyright in this country has grown into an unworkable goliath. The terms are insane, and serve only to fatten the giant corporations like Disney, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
If a patent lasts for less than 20 years, why does a copyright have to last for nearly 100? Am I going to stop making music b/c I can only earn money from it for 20 years, instead of decades after I'm dead?
Also, the original protections built into the copyright laws for fair use have been slashed through various provisions like the DMCA.
Not really, phytoplankton, copepods and amphipods are ubiquitous. There is no massive ocean region free of them.
There is no way of preventing them from multiplying in favorable nutrient conditions, although you may be able to get another organism to out compete some of them.
This by far the largest imbalance in the legal system.
If a big company/corporation/MAFIAA starts a lawsuit against an individual, it can easily bankrupt an individual in a short time period while being a drop in the bucket to the company/corporation.
The defendants in most of these cases loose considerably even if they have the lawsuit dropped somewhere in the process. They have almost no means to win, as the MAFIAA does everything it can to avoid paying out a cent while fleecing individuals.
Full agreement there. If the school thinks that strongly that the student may have drugs or some other "disallowed" item on them, they need to hand it over to the police. Schools are not the DEA and students aren't hardened criminals.
The school has no business strip searching people period. Regardless of the alleged infraction.
I injected insulin on school grounds daily through high school. Not a damn thing that the school could have done about it. If the school thinks is a problem, hold the student in an administrators office and call their parents.
The entire thing is ludicrous. There is nothing wrong with bringing prescription meds to school. If there is no reason to suspect that she is distributing the drugs, then they have no reason to search her. From the articles, it does not appear that they believed that to be the case.
They can't restrict you from bringing in medications that a doctor states you need. I've brought all sorts of prescription medications to school including syringes. If anyone at school ever wanted to search me in any way similar to that, they'd get a stern "fuck off" and a similar call from a lawyer.
And even if they believed she was carrying and selling/distributing they could have ascertained if she had any on her with a simple pat down. There is zero reason to ever have to strip down naked to prove it. Going to that level is completely unreasonable.
Large companies build up patent portfolios for the sole intention of using them in standoff mode or as defense.
I talked to someone in the digital storage area, and who basically said each company patents all they can so they have a large number as a defense. They basically have to infringe on others patents, and others have to infringe on theirs and they all just agree to go on doing business rather than pay the lawyers to squabble.
It is for these very instances. Company A goes to Company B and says your infringing on my patents. Company B's response is that you (company A) are infringing on mine as well. Nobody will win other than the patent lawyers.
In general, a patent is to give you rights to an invention. It gives you sole ability to profit off that invention.
However, it does not mean that nobody can come in and make a similar invention. Patents are (supposedly) limited in scope.
This patent IMO, is insanely broad to the point of prohibiting any remotely related product from ever being created. It covers every distribution method of any sort of DRM'd e-book.
Yes, either that or there was considerable questions posed to the inventors that took a long time to be worked out. For example, if the patent office thinks that there is some issue it can take a while to convince them the inventor is right (or that it's just easier for the USPTO to approve the patent).
8 years is a very long time, about twice what it is expected to take.
Slashdot Mirror
Additionally, by have no copyrighted material they are not beholden to anyone. If you own the copyright to something on their page, then you have a say in how it is used. Or there needs to be a contract saying they can use it freely. Either way, it's a huge burden for an entity that relies on the general public for content.
By using freely available material that has no restrictions, they can do what they want with it and don't have to worry about any legal/contractual issues.
[quote]
Much of the "traditional" media also seems to be mistakenly pursuing "balance" as some ultimate goal. This consists of finding two sides to any issue, despite the fact that it may be far more nuanced than this, and giving both of them equal time and credence, whether or not they deserve it. This is all slotted into a sixty second package which tells viewers almost nothing, then repeated ad nauseum until interest in the story completely dies, or something more important happens, like a celebrity farting.[/quote]
Definitely.
.
"It's first-est with the least-est." And then when they do have a "in depth" report it's just two diametrically opposed individuals spouting out garbage. Things are more subtle than they're reported, and both sides aren't always equally right. In most cases, one is right, one is wrong, or their both wrong. Ask and get answers to the deep questions.
I'd agree that is a large portion of the decline in traditional news outlets/papers. Too many shallow stories without deep investigative work. Take political stories for example, you almost always see the news outlets repeat the "company" lines without any analysis as to whether they're right or not. On some things, there is no "right" answer, but for many things there is a position that is much more tenable, is not framed to be misleading, etc. News outlets need to hit on these things.
.
Their other issue is they've been giving it away for years now. People are used to getting it for free, why pay now?
Exactly, that is why this is rather crazy. You either give no browser at all, and really gimp the OS or you have to install all of them. How can they make the determination that X browser is good but Y isn't?
The best choice would be to include it, but have it not be so integrated into the OS. But at any rate, it gives MS a leg up on the competition but it doesn't prevent the competition from being used. So does Safari on OSX though.
This is somewhat true, the majority of the Wii titles are pure garbage with motion controls.
.
However, look at many of the best selling games on the other consoles. Sure the excellent games sell well. But just about every movie tie-in is absolutely terrible, and gets panned by the game media, yet consistently sell well enough to be in the top in terms of sales volume.
.
To some extent it is not a Wii problem exclusively. Although, the Wii seems to be even worse than the rest. Wii Fit is a mid-quality program. It is unique, but it is insanely shallow. It doesn't even let you make your own workouts and save them. Yet it is one of the best selling titles month after month.
.
90% of the titles for the Wii do seem to be shovelware with motion controls.
Water down isn't the right word. It provides a different game experience.
The Wii is not optimized for the latest and greatest games. It doesn't have much more power than the previous Gamecube. So if you look at processor power, polygon counts, and other performance/hardware metrics then the Wii does produce a lesser "experience."
What the Wii does have is a new and unique control scheme. For some games it works, for some it doesn't. Part of this is the publishers fault for not really considering the control schemes, part of it is the limitations of the Wii, such as button placements/numbers and control accuracy.
For the games that do work with the Wii, the control scheme is superior to the competitors and also less "scary" to the non-gamer/casual gamer population.
If you're teaching computer "programming" for mathematical and data manipulation, Matlab is really going to be the best thing to teach. It's VERY common in industry and quite powerful for that purpose.
FORTRAN really isn't a good language to be teaching anymore. It's virtually extinct except at Universities, and in legacy programs that have been around 20+ years. I've not seen it used ever to make "new" code. If the goal is to teach a programming language so people can write their own code, something like C++ or other common language would be much more useful.
Yeah, Gamestop absolutely has an absolutely pathetic collection of PC games. It's not even worth looking there anymore. Thank god there is a Microcenter within a couple miles of home. That place has an amazing stock of anything computer related.
In response to the original article, sure the publishers want a piece of the action. What company doesn't want to earn more money? However, all they are legally entitled to is the ability to piss and moan over it. Once a manufactured good is purchased by a consumer (or business), they have the legal right to resell the copy.
Yes, but this isn't an issue of piracy per se. It is an issue of a lack of "security" of the game code prior to release. That is what allows this entire thing to happen. If you secure the code prior to the release date this doesn't happen. And by security, I don't mean DRM type security. I mean physical security of the data preventing it from being leaked.
Congress thought it was a good idea.
The shuttle is very fragile compared to the Apollo spacecraft. I would call it a poor design as far as safety goes.
In general, ice forms on the fuel tanks as they sit waiting for launch. On launch, the entire thing shakes and the ice falls off. On Apollo, the spacecraft was at the top so nothing could fall onto it. The shuttle has all the "sensitive" parts in the middle, so there is plenty that can fall on it.
This sort of damage has always happened. NASA has just become very concerned over it lately and does massive checks once in orbit.
I believe this only works if you are in Sweden though. I'm not sure of their legal requirements to send refunds to ppl outside the country.
I heard of DoD personnel taking hard drives to drill presses to render them useless. I'm not sure if they were also degaussed/erased prior to or what information was originally on them.
I do not think there is anything surprising about that conclusion that the entire thing is an attempt to force other countries into "compliance"
It is an obvious conflict of interest when you are presiding over a case and are a member of an organization that sides strongly with one of the parties in the case.
It is generally okay to be biased toward one side due to internal beliefs. Most people do tend toward one side in contentious issues, but to openly run around and say it or promote one side (via membership in pro- organizations) is inappropriate.
"What does violate the letter of the Constitution is that these extensions do not "promote the Progress" of science and arts, but rather retard them. Past a certain length, copyright terms don't create any additional encouragement to create; they just make it easier for huge corporations to monopolize our common culture."
I agree with you on this. Copyright is a requirement. You do need some form of a protection for artists so they can profit from their work, whatever it is.
However, copyright in this country has grown into an unworkable goliath. The terms are insane, and serve only to fatten the giant corporations like Disney, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
If a patent lasts for less than 20 years, why does a copyright have to last for nearly 100? Am I going to stop making music b/c I can only earn money from it for 20 years, instead of decades after I'm dead?
Also, the original protections built into the copyright laws for fair use have been slashed through various provisions like the DMCA.
What you need to consider is that the requirements on the older technology were less.
The hard drives spin slower, so the parts wear more slowly. The data densities are lower, so entropy flipping bits is less likely.
The power requirements are lower, so less heat and less diffusion and less wear.
All things being equal, larger feature sizes are more fault tolerant assuming there is no critical initial fault.
Not really, phytoplankton, copepods and amphipods are ubiquitous. There is no massive ocean region free of them.
There is no way of preventing them from multiplying in favorable nutrient conditions, although you may be able to get another organism to out compete some of them.
This by far the largest imbalance in the legal system.
If a big company/corporation/MAFIAA starts a lawsuit against an individual, it can easily bankrupt an individual in a short time period while being a drop in the bucket to the company/corporation.
The defendants in most of these cases loose considerably even if they have the lawsuit dropped somewhere in the process. They have almost no means to win, as the MAFIAA does everything it can to avoid paying out a cent while fleecing individuals.
Full agreement there. If the school thinks that strongly that the student may have drugs or some other "disallowed" item on them, they need to hand it over to the police. Schools are not the DEA and students aren't hardened criminals.
The school has no business strip searching people period. Regardless of the alleged infraction.
I injected insulin on school grounds daily through high school. Not a damn thing that the school could have done about it. If the school thinks is a problem, hold the student in an administrators office and call their parents.
The entire thing is ludicrous. There is nothing wrong with bringing prescription meds to school. If there is no reason to suspect that she is distributing the drugs, then they have no reason to search her. From the articles, it does not appear that they believed that to be the case.
They can't restrict you from bringing in medications that a doctor states you need. I've brought all sorts of prescription medications to school including syringes. If anyone at school ever wanted to search me in any way similar to that, they'd get a stern "fuck off" and a similar call from a lawyer.
And even if they believed she was carrying and selling/distributing they could have ascertained if she had any on her with a simple pat down. There is zero reason to ever have to strip down naked to prove it. Going to that level is completely unreasonable.
Pretty much.
Large companies build up patent portfolios for the sole intention of using them in standoff mode or as defense.
I talked to someone in the digital storage area, and who basically said each company patents all they can so they have a large number as a defense. They basically have to infringe on others patents, and others have to infringe on theirs and they all just agree to go on doing business rather than pay the lawyers to squabble.
It is for these very instances. Company A goes to Company B and says your infringing on my patents. Company B's response is that you (company A) are infringing on mine as well. Nobody will win other than the patent lawyers.
In general, a patent is to give you rights to an invention. It gives you sole ability to profit off that invention.
However, it does not mean that nobody can come in and make a similar invention. Patents are (supposedly) limited in scope.
This patent IMO, is insanely broad to the point of prohibiting any remotely related product from ever being created. It covers every distribution method of any sort of DRM'd e-book.
...and cable networks, device-to-device, publisher direct, kiosk, library, wireless, etc.
It is pretty broad in my view.
Yes, either that or there was considerable questions posed to the inventors that took a long time to be worked out. For example, if the patent office thinks that there is some issue it can take a while to convince them the inventor is right (or that it's just easier for the USPTO to approve the patent).
8 years is a very long time, about twice what it is expected to take.