When I watch TV, I watch it for the program, not for the ads. When I read a magazine, I read it for the articles, not for the ads. And when I visit a web page, I visit it for its contents, not for the ads.
Ads are noise. What's worse, they are often the only noise present. I look them up when I need them, I tolerate them when they are periferal, I block them when they get in the way.
The truly scary part of your message is how you did not get modded down as a troll.
"So as software developers, we can tack on licenses such as the GPL to determine how our works are used... but networks cannot tack on restrictions to how their media is used."
No, no, no, no!
The works are not of the authors, they are of the people. The authors are promised a temporary monopoly to incentivize them to create the software in the first place. Which for all but custom-built software is complete nonsense.
The media is not the networks'; not in a real property kind of way, and not even in a copyright, temporary-monopoly kind of way.
The GPL does not determine how a work may be used; it only restricts it's distribution.
The GPL, by the way, was created exactly because copyrighting software is such an insanely stupid idea in the case of off-the-shelve software. It was introduced to counter-act the idiocy of granting temporary monopolies to things that don't need such a monopoly. Using it as an example of how great copyright is, is either a very cynical or a very stupid thing to do.
And finally, do not include yourself in "us" when you have no idea whatsoever of what the GPL does and why it was created in the first-place. You are as much part of us as dog-shit is of a man who just stepped in it.
"start wondering why they have the right to record that episode"
I am legally allowed to do anything that is not explicitely forbidden. In that class of things to do there are still a lot of things that are immoral or unwise, but recording TV programs is not one of them.
"It doesn't mean we pay to be able to copy this content, distribute it or whatever the hell else we want to do with it."
That is because the "content" is already burdened by a little thing called copyright. If the networks want to be part of the copyright racket, they should start producing this "content" you speak of. That nets them automatic copyrights.
"My favorite book was published in 1956, and the author died just 7 years later. He had no offspring and he outlived his wife. Now would someone please explain to me why someone was allowed to extend the copyright and why the work isn't yet in the public domain?"
Without knowing which book you are talking about, it is difficult to give an answer.
Generally though, when somebody dies, there is an heir. That heir would then hold any copyrights the deceased may have owned.
If you are talking about Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley or either of The Last Battle and Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, a complicating matter may be that these authors were not American. Unless they published these books also in the US, a different set of rules apply that basically come down to Life+75.
I doubt that the estates of Huxley and Lewis would not have renewed these works, although of course you never know. I seem to have read that Project Gutenberg is producing one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's works that wasn't registered or renewed. Science Fiction may yield good finds anyway, because SF stories were often published in magazine, and the author may have transferred rights, or may have forgotten to register a copyright.
2. Disclaimer: a G. Newby works for the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.
3. It is not too hard to predict this consortium will fare better, as one of its members, the Internet Archive, has been collecting scans of books in its Million Books Project and Canadian Libraries archive for months, and is thus able to make a running start.
If you actually enjoy watching Gorillas day in, day out, for ten years in a row, only to see them touch their celery twice, I am sure you will have no trouble getting one of those jobs.
[snipped list of what bringing the Russians aboard has cost the US]
It costs the Russians somewhere around 7M US$ to bring a NASA astrounaut to the ISS. It would have cost NASA ca. 71M US$ to do the same, if they only could manage to stop their flying bricks from blowing up every time the things need to do something more complicated than floating through the void. If anything, NASA has saved approximately 324M US$ since 2003 by taking the Russian route.
The launch of a Soyuz costs around 20M US$. Roskosmos is basically having Olsen pay for the entire flight. Still, that is pretty cheap. NASA will have to pay Energia (or whoever the operator is, that's not quite clear) 60M US$, and a tourist who wants to fly around the moon (that includes two Soyuz launches) pays 100M US$ to Space Adventures, an American company. The two launches for the moonflight are necessary to get the Soyuz-TMA to escape orbit.
"Google reports 1040 hits [google.com] of "cash-strapped" near "Russian space agency". I don't intend to add great insight here, but in today's sophisticated capitalist societies, there must be other synonyms much as the Eskimos supposedly had 40 words for snow."
You're asking quite a lot from our imagination strapped journalist brethern.
"You do realise that the US has been legally prevented from doing this very funding for 5 years due to the Iran Nonpoliferation Act of 2000, yet they have been launching US astronauts and resupplying the ISS for the past 2 and a half years for no funding."
IIRC, Roskosmos still owed NASA some money for putting Russian ISS components into space, and that is why US astronauts have been getting free rides on Soyuz for the past few years. Apparently with the October 1 launch NASA and Roskosmos don't owe each other anything anymore, and Russia is going to let the meter run.
One of E-Ink's lead developers created a DIY ebook/mp3-player called Juicebox for which you can dl the schematics from Sourceforge. I seem to remember a price quoted of ca. 50 US$ for the parts, though I cannot find that figure now.
He made one with an E-Ink screen, though you probably couldn't buy one. There are low energy consumption LCDs though.
Whether playing an audio CD on a computer is a privilege or a right in Finland depends on Finnish law.
Re:The Moon for 100 Billion, Mars for 20 Billion?
on
NASA's New Shuttle
·
· Score: 1
"The only possible reason to go to the moon is to build an industry to mine the moon and transport its products to, I don't know, outer space somewhere. If you want to send stuff to Mars, why not just build the industry there right away?"
The reason to go to the moon first is to test the Mars ride. If you went to Mars right away, and half-way through the trip realized you forgot to pack clean underwear, you're stuck. But if you first do a moon run, you can add stuff to your todo list if you forgot to do so at first.
"The BBC [bbc.co.uk] has answered your questions better than I can."
That article has got a very scary picture at the bottom, BTW. In it, you see four space craft. Three of those are manned, but only two have the sort of rocket on the top that is needed to lift a crew to safety during a launch failure.
"There are simply some missions only a space-shuttle type vehicle can accomplish."
You are right. The Shuttle alone can do such things as:
- Collect the garbage (but it's a bit expensive for that, is it not?)
- Repair the Hubble (but that's not going to happen, because Shuttle launches aren't safe enough)
And then there are the military missions that the Shuttle was originally designed for, but that was for USAF use. A civilian organization such as NASA is not supposed to drop bombs. At least not that I am aware of.
Re:based on Space Shuttle technology
on
NASA's New Shuttle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"So NASA's going to be using the latest in 1970's tech? Woo Hoo!"
If you drive a car, you use bronze age tech (the wheel). Got a problem with that?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The shuttle was clearly broken, so now NASA is returning to proven concepts. If anything, they should be applauded for that.
"I though 16bit support was due in GIMP about now?"
Yes, for any given meaning of "now".:-)
GIMP 1.4 (later renamed to 2.0) was going to a reorganization of the code, with a better separation of core functionality and interface. Then the GEGL library was going to replace the graphics processing functions. Except that by 2.0, GEGL wasn't nearly ready yet.
In the meantime it had been decided that because of the many ideas for new features that had been on hold while waiting for 2.0, a version 2.2 would be brought out first that incorporated all these new features (better previews, live transformations, better dialogs, &c.).
GEGL was going to happen in 2.4, IIRC, but that plan also seems to have been given up. A mail on the developer list from June 5, 2005, titled "The GUADEC meeting", detailing a meeting of several developers, reads:
"We would like to get GIMP 2.4 out soon. The plan is to finish what has been started in the development branch. This should be doable over the summer. This means that 2.4 will have color management but we aren't going to try larger changes such as adding support for higher bit depths."
"We agreed though that 8bit is not going to get us much further and that we need to pick up on GEGL again. The GEGL source tree had been abandoned for a while, the last commit dating back to March 2004. We found that in order to make further plans, we first need to get an overview on the current state of the code."
It doesn't say so in the e-mail message, but the colour management Sven is referring to probably does not entail true CMYK, because that was also planned for (and put off for) GEGL.
"There's always cinepaint, the new version sounds promising."
Last time I checked, Cinepaint was a one man show and fairly buggy. (Granted, that was a while ago.)
Slashdot Mirror
When I watch TV, I watch it for the program, not for the ads. When I read a magazine, I read it for the articles, not for the ads. And when I visit a web page, I visit it for its contents, not for the ads.
Ads are noise. What's worse, they are often the only noise present. I look them up when I need them, I tolerate them when they are periferal, I block them when they get in the way.
The truly scary part of your message is how you did not get modded down as a troll.
"So as software developers, we can tack on licenses such as the GPL to determine how our works are used... but networks cannot tack on restrictions to how their media is used."
No, no, no, no!
The works are not of the authors, they are of the people. The authors are promised a temporary monopoly to incentivize them to create the software in the first place. Which for all but custom-built software is complete nonsense.
The media is not the networks'; not in a real property kind of way, and not even in a copyright, temporary-monopoly kind of way.
The GPL does not determine how a work may be used; it only restricts it's distribution.
The GPL, by the way, was created exactly because copyrighting software is such an insanely stupid idea in the case of off-the-shelve software. It was introduced to counter-act the idiocy of granting temporary monopolies to things that don't need such a monopoly. Using it as an example of how great copyright is, is either a very cynical or a very stupid thing to do.
And finally, do not include yourself in "us" when you have no idea whatsoever of what the GPL does and why it was created in the first-place. You are as much part of us as dog-shit is of a man who just stepped in it.
"start wondering why they have the right to record that episode"
I am legally allowed to do anything that is not explicitely forbidden. In that class of things to do there are still a lot of things that are immoral or unwise, but recording TV programs is not one of them.
"It doesn't mean we pay to be able to copy this content, distribute it or whatever the hell else we want to do with it."
That is because the "content" is already burdened by a little thing called copyright. If the networks want to be part of the copyright racket, they should start producing this "content" you speak of. That nets them automatic copyrights.
"It is preferable because then he wouldn't be in jail now."
He isn't in jail now, but he most likely would have been if he had told the truth.
"Very unprofessional behavior from a supposed "security professional.""
Er, no. In civilized countries, lying to the police is not a crime.
I don't believe you.
" They're a great group, but they've using some *really* shitty compression algos. :-)
Format - Encoding - - Compression - Size
HTML - - iso-8859-1 - none - - - -- 1.27 MB
HTML - - iso-8859-1 - zip - - - - - 5.95 MB "
The uncompressed number refers to just the HTML file. The compressed number refers to the HTML file and the files of all the embedded images.
"My favorite book was published in 1956, and the author died just 7 years later. He had no offspring and he outlived his wife. Now would someone please explain to me why someone was allowed to extend the copyright and why the work isn't yet in the public domain?"
Without knowing which book you are talking about, it is difficult to give an answer.
Generally though, when somebody dies, there is an heir. That heir would then hold any copyrights the deceased may have owned.
If you are talking about Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley or either of The Last Battle and Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, a complicating matter may be that these authors were not American. Unless they published these books also in the US, a different set of rules apply that basically come down to Life+75.
I doubt that the estates of Huxley and Lewis would not have renewed these works, although of course you never know. I seem to have read that Project Gutenberg is producing one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's works that wasn't registered or renewed. Science Fiction may yield good finds anyway, because SF stories were often published in magazine, and the author may have transferred rights, or may have forgotten to register a copyright.
1. s/the different is/the difference is/
2. Disclaimer: a G. Newby works for the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.
3. It is not too hard to predict this consortium will fare better, as one of its members, the Internet Archive, has been collecting scans of books in its Million Books Project and Canadian Libraries archive for months, and is thus able to make a running start.
(Disclaimer, I am a PG volunteer.)
"Where do I sign up for these jobs?"
If you actually enjoy watching Gorillas day in, day out, for ten years in a row, only to see them touch their celery twice, I am sure you will have no trouble getting one of those jobs.
[snipped list of what bringing the Russians aboard has cost the US]
It costs the Russians somewhere around 7M US$ to bring a NASA astrounaut to the ISS. It would have cost NASA ca. 71M US$ to do the same, if they only could manage to stop their flying bricks from blowing up every time the things need to do something more complicated than floating through the void. If anything, NASA has saved approximately 324M US$ since 2003 by taking the Russian route.
The launch of a Soyuz costs around 20M US$. Roskosmos is basically having Olsen pay for the entire flight. Still, that is pretty cheap. NASA will have to pay Energia (or whoever the operator is, that's not quite clear) 60M US$, and a tourist who wants to fly around the moon (that includes two Soyuz launches) pays 100M US$ to Space Adventures, an American company. The two launches for the moonflight are necessary to get the Soyuz-TMA to escape orbit.
"Google reports 1040 hits [google.com] of "cash-strapped" near "Russian space agency". I don't intend to add great insight here, but in today's sophisticated capitalist societies, there must be other synonyms much as the Eskimos supposedly had 40 words for snow."
You're asking quite a lot from our imagination strapped journalist brethern.
"City agencies have a fiduciary responsibility to the citizens of their city"
Assuming this is true, what means have the citizens of New York to "correct" MTA if that organisation is not living up to its responsibility?
"You do realise that the US has been legally prevented from doing this very funding for 5 years due to the Iran Nonpoliferation Act of 2000, yet they have been launching US astronauts and resupplying the ISS for the past 2 and a half years for no funding."
IIRC, Roskosmos still owed NASA some money for putting Russian ISS components into space, and that is why US astronauts have been getting free rides on Soyuz for the past few years. Apparently with the October 1 launch NASA and Roskosmos don't owe each other anything anymore, and Russia is going to let the meter run.
"3,000 for a DEV BOARD?"
One of E-Ink's lead developers created a DIY ebook/mp3-player called Juicebox for which you can dl the schematics from Sourceforge. I seem to remember a price quoted of ca. 50 US$ for the parts, though I cannot find that figure now.
He made one with an E-Ink screen, though you probably couldn't buy one. There are low energy consumption LCDs though.
As does whether calling something a CD when it does not adhere to Philips' specs constitutes a trademark violation.
Whether playing an audio CD on a computer is a privilege or a right in Finland depends on Finnish law.
"The only possible reason to go to the moon is to build an industry to mine the moon and transport its products to, I don't know, outer space somewhere. If you want to send stuff to Mars, why not just build the industry there right away?"
The reason to go to the moon first is to test the Mars ride. If you went to Mars right away, and half-way through the trip realized you forgot to pack clean underwear, you're stuck. But if you first do a moon run, you can add stuff to your todo list if you forgot to do so at first.
"they're already man-rated"
Wouldn't they need to be man-rated again when flown in their new configuration?
"The BBC [bbc.co.uk] has answered your questions better than I can."
That article has got a very scary picture at the bottom, BTW. In it, you see four space craft. Three of those are manned, but only two have the sort of rocket on the top that is needed to lift a crew to safety during a launch failure.
"There are simply some missions only a space-shuttle type vehicle can accomplish."
You are right. The Shuttle alone can do such things as:
- Collect the garbage (but it's a bit expensive for that, is it not?)
- Repair the Hubble (but that's not going to happen, because Shuttle launches aren't safe enough)
And then there are the military missions that the Shuttle was originally designed for, but that was for USAF use. A civilian organization such as NASA is not supposed to drop bombs. At least not that I am aware of.
"So NASA's going to be using the latest in 1970's tech? Woo Hoo!"
If you drive a car, you use bronze age tech (the wheel). Got a problem with that?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The shuttle was clearly broken, so now NASA is returning to proven concepts. If anything, they should be applauded for that.
""we're not making enough!, oh here's US 30M to play with new technology to potentially deter the piracy community""
That's called: you've got to spend money to make money.
"They could call it, "Who Wants to Be Shot into space on Outdated Russian Gear millionare?""
Yeah, and the losers get to fly the Space Shuttle.
"I though 16bit support was due in GIMP about now?"
:-)
Yes, for any given meaning of "now".
GIMP 1.4 (later renamed to 2.0) was going to a reorganization of the code, with a better separation of core functionality and interface. Then the GEGL library was going to replace the graphics processing functions. Except that by 2.0, GEGL wasn't nearly ready yet.
In the meantime it had been decided that because of the many ideas for new features that had been on hold while waiting for 2.0, a version 2.2 would be brought out first that incorporated all these new features (better previews, live transformations, better dialogs, &c.).
GEGL was going to happen in 2.4, IIRC, but that plan also seems to have been given up. A mail on the developer list from June 5, 2005, titled "The GUADEC meeting", detailing a meeting of several developers, reads:
"We would like to get GIMP 2.4 out soon. The plan is to finish what has been started in the development branch. This should be doable over the summer. This means that 2.4 will have color management but we aren't going to try larger changes such as adding support for higher bit depths."
"We agreed though that 8bit is not going to get us much further and that we need to pick up on GEGL again. The GEGL source tree had been abandoned for a while, the last commit dating back to March 2004. We found that in order to make further plans, we first need to get an overview on the current state of the code."
There is also mention of reworked menus.
It doesn't say so in the e-mail message, but the colour management Sven is referring to probably does not entail true CMYK, because that was also planned for (and put off for) GEGL.
"There's always cinepaint, the new version sounds promising."
Last time I checked, Cinepaint was a one man show and fairly buggy. (Granted, that was a while ago.)