Now you're talking afirmative action. This I do agree with you on. I dislike affirmative action because it forces others to accept minorities based solely on their minority status. However, the rights to ride on public transportation, sit in public spaces and use the same commercial facilities as others is certainly fair and does not cancel the rigths of the majority in any way.
Not that I agree with spammers or their methods, but speech is speech, whether you like it or not is irrelevant. Their methods might be illegal but this does not make their speech illegal. If they commit fraud then there are legal questions that need to be answered which the Washington law does. However, notice that he was found guilty of providing false information, which the law forbids, not for selling some dubious material via e-mail.
"When it starts to protect or create the rights of a minority at the expense of the rights of the whole population, there is a serious problem with the philosophy of law."
I just thought I'd point out that all our civil rights laws are based on this premise. The rights of minorties were being violated and new laws were written which affected the entire nation and in some cases the entire world. Just some food for thought.
Microsoft didn't do this, a Public Relations firm working for Microsoft did this. Once Microsoft was made aware of the site did they leave it up and make excuses for its existence? No, they removed it immediately and have openly stated that this is not true nor is it an image Microsoft wants to portray to the public. If you're going to hate Microsoft, hate them for things they actually do, not things sites like Slashdot attribute to them.
Hey, dumbass, HTML was originally designed to replace paper based media, not to create a new way to convey information. It was the designers who have pushed the web towards this way to imaprt information to users. If the people building the web had their way we would still be using HTML 1.0, which by the way is a subset of SGML which is used to design large *GASP* [music: dum dum dummmmmm] paper based documents (Framekmaker is a good example of a document design application used for large paper based publishing). Sometimes the tools aren't available to solve the problems we face. Imagine your very same world without screwdrivers. Sometimes you just need to pound the screws in with the hammer until someone invents the screwdriver.
You know what? I would love to use CSS and nothing else but there is this problem of clients wanting their customers to view their web pages. That menas older browsers. But thanks Captain obvious for pointing out the W3C specs. Why didn't I think of reading those? Oh, yeah. I already did. In fact, I've been reading them since the HTML 1.0 specs. Just because you'r enew to the internet doesn't mean all of us are. I've been designing web pages since Netscape was a beta.
Because somethign a fuckwitr like you doens't understand is designers don't sit in photoshop all day thinking of new ways to make their buttons look like the Apple aqua buttons. We communicate ideas using typography and/or images that convey a message. Allowing users to realign tabled data is stupid. Yes tables are great for layout, but they can be used to actually build a table of data...**GASP*** [music: dum dum dummmmmm...] Oh my fucking god, you mean tables can be used to convey data which actually belongs in a table? How the fuck does Opera know the intent of MY fucking design layout? Pull your head out of your ass and wake up. There is more to this world that YOU and your concerns. Quit generalizing...ooop, I forgot this was Slashdot, the place where facts aren't welcome and generalizations and stereotypes reign supreme. Go ahead and stick your head back in your ass. Sorry for disturbing your world.
As a designer I don't like this concept at all. I placed my content in two columns for a reason and when the web browser makes decisions to combine this data, they can ultimately change, and confuse, the meaning of the data. We don't need cell phones with full web page support, we need to start pushing the use of XML to push data to these devices in ways that are more practical. I hope there is a way to force Opera to render the page the way I designed it the way IE offers a meta tag that shut off the smart tags feature of their web browser.
"A modified version of this same kind of rocket will be used to carry cosmonauts to the ISS later this month."
Let's hope they modify it to not blow up next time. I'd bet those ACME rocket plans and mail order boxes wasn't the best approach for their space program after all. Perhaps we should cut off their access to the Cartoon Network until after the manned launch.
Yeah, Microsoft stifles the mod community. That's why Dungeon Seige and Flight Simulator aren't gmax ready...ooops, I'm sorry, they are gmax ready. Perhaps this was an oversight on MS' part? Nope, Dungeon Seige has released the actual toolkit for developing the levels as well documentation to build your own adventures. Numerous SDKs are available for modders to enahnce MS Flight Similator 2002 as well. Hmmm...I thought you said MS stifles the modding community? Perhaps you were wrong? I think you were.
I understood your point from the start. You just don't get my message. You can explore all you like you just can't do it with copyrighted material. But why would you anyway? You don't need to use copyrighted material to explore ojn your own and learn. There is absolutely NO reason to do so. None. Zero. Zip. The DMCA is soing nothing to inhibit your ability to learn and explore, it is only keeping you from unlocking copyrighted material that you seem to believe will somehow make you a better post production artist. I'm telling you from experience that this is simply not true. You will learn FAR more from doing small projects that focus on particular effects than to bother with trying to duplicate the same scene you saw in a movie. As the Scooby-doo footage was likely not shot to fit any of the small projects you would likely design for yourself, it serves to do nothing more than inhibit your ability to truly explore.
My point was you don't even need this to learn how to do things like this. Don't get me wrong. I purchased movies like "Contact" and "Lost in Space" specifically for the DVD content which demonstrates how they designed and produced the special effects in their movie. When it came time to do this myself, I came up with my own project, shot footage I needed with my DV camera and hacked away in AE. I learned FAR more than the movie could have ever taught me and I have a greater respect, as well as expanded vocabulary, for the work of others in the process. Using the footage in ANY of these movies would have NEVER have taught me as much as I now know, mostly because I had to work just a little bit harder to attain my goal. Basically what I'm saying is you NEED to run into a few of thes pitfalls so you can learn to avoid them in the future, but better still, you can deal with them if you can't avoid them.
Myself, and hundreds of thousands of others have had no problem doing the "garage" approach to learning. Using studio work, even the stuff you describe, doesn't help in anyway shape or form. You need to think about projects in a smaller scale and scope. You can learn a lot by just producing tiny shorts using studio techniques and if you're good, these can be included on your demo reel. You can't put any thing from the scooby-doo hack in your demo reel regardless of the DMCA.
How about trying to get Lawrence Lessig to sit in as a technical advisor? I guess they forgot to check into his past dealing with Netscape when he tried toconvince Jim Barksdale to sue Microsoft for anti-trust violations long before Netscape's ultimate demise. oops.
"But, as Lawrence Lessig says, "nobody can do to Disney what Disney did to the Brothers Grimm"."
Why would anyone want to? Why make a story based on another story? The idea is to create a story, write a song, perform a play, sculpt or paint a work of art that expresses an idea in a new and unique way. Lawernce Lessig clearly can't see this or chooses not to. I see this argument as ridiculous and in no way does it reflect poorly on copyright law.
You know, it's vocal, endorsed and promoted projects like this that give the OSS and free software community a bad name. YOU might view it as tinkering or whatever but the general populace views it as "pissing in the pool" so to speak. The XBOX Linux project might be for running Linux on the XBOX but it is viewed as much for that as it is for harming Microsoft's profits in the gaming console market. Perhaps the OSS and free software community should consider a different approach to establishing their self-image and promoting their cause.
But doesn't society in genenral have equal access to the works Disney based their own creations on? Of course they do. Anyone can create an animated story based on a number of fables, fairy tales and tall stories from our past. Creative poeple understand this. We know that we can take the essence of many stories (good v. evil, love conquers all obstacles...) and create a new story wholly our own. We can even take things like The Jungle Book and present our own vision of the story in an animated fashion or live action. NOTHING precludes you, me or anyone else from doing this. The one thing you cannot do is use the "expression of the idea" that someone else has already used (i.e. Disney's animated versions of famous fairy tales). This is the point most miss when discussing copyright. Is having The Matrix in the public doamin going to change this? No, because anyone can write a story about a christ-like character and base the entier thing in cybespace if they want. You have to be careful how close to The Matrix you make your story. A good example of this would be the two movies "A Bug's Life" and "Antz". Both movies are about an improbable hero (an ant) who saves their colony from disaster, yet neither violates copyright law in any way.
But i didn't even use the original artwork. I never said I did. In fact, I said I refuse to copy and plagurise. What I do is STUDY the artowrk and learn from it. What is it about the work (media, technique, color, shape) that makes it stand out? I then use this knowledge to create my own work. I might have learned a new brush technique but I use a completely different medium, subject and color palette. Sometimes I see a series of colro that strike me as a good source of inspiration. I might like the colors I see in a painting, for instance, but I'll take textiles using these colors and form a collage with those. That's inspiration, that's using copyright ina fair manner. I'm not taking, I'm learning. Nowehere in my final piece is there the original copyright. There is no derived work because my idea is completely different from the original idea. I might do a painting inspired by a sign I saw. I might create a poster inspired by japanese artwork but not use any japanese artowk in the final piece (I use colors and brush strokes indicitive of japanese artowrk). That's how artists work but I wouldn't expect many in the slashdot community to understand this seeing as how many of them are of the mind that the only way to make new stuff is to copy old stuff.
Actually I am an artist and I can still be inspired by protected pieces of work. What I cannot do, nor will I do, even with public domain pieces of work, is copy or rip them off. Inspiration comes from MANY different places. I could be walking down the street and see a sign and be inspired. I've been inspired by traditional japanese paintings. In fact I used this theme in a recent poster I designed. Did I copy another piece of work? No. What did I do? I studied japanese prints and mixed this look with my own personal style creating a completely original piece of work.
The fact is Disney is a straw man argument. People want copyright to go away compeletely do they can copy music online via P2P apps. If works in the public domain were held in as high esteem as you seem to think they are then P2P networsk would be flooded by early jazz, blues and classical music. Instead we see current movies and music being traded on a scale never possible before. People don't want Steamboat Willie, they want to copy the latest Disney film.
Gender changers are a useful tool in your shop? What kinds of problems do you run into that you gotta go whacking off body parts of sticking new ones on with super glue?
Reminds me a little bit of a Neil Gaiman short story. Guy develops a pill to cure some disease but it has an odd side effect, it can change your sex. Society began to use the drug recreationally.
Your argument could turned against you you know. It's insane. Absolutely insane that you people have zero regard for artists rights, I have to admit, it disgusts me sometimes that I live in this society.
I can't prove it but I think whoever designed the new Redhat UI appears to have copied much of the work I have done on the OBOS GUI (hopefully to be used in the R2 release), the only real differences being the tabbed titlebar and repositioning of some of the widgets. Not only did they appear to have copied my work, they didn't do a very good job of it. As with many other *nix GUIs, Redhat overdid the look without truly innovating in the functionality department. Paint a turd and it's still a turd, it's just a different color.
Microsoft signs exclusive deals with OEMs (Dell, HP, Gateway) and they are convicted of abusing their monopoly power to shut others out of the market. Sony signs exclusive deals with game producers to shut others out of the market and they are competing fairly? Microsoft was already in a deal to get GTA III for the XBOX before Sony shut the door on that by paying Rockstar millions so Microsoft wouldn't get the title. Funny thing is this is EXACTLY how MS wound up in their legal quandry. They signed exclusive deals and wound up a monopoly. They did not become a monopoly first THEN sign exclusive deals.
I smell a rat and once again the/. community is fine with this as long as it hurts Microsoft. Hypocrites. You cry that MS should play fair and compete on the technical merits. They did just this with the XBOX and now that Sony is abusing their dominant position in the console market and the slashbots cheer.
There's a difference between taping the live show and ripping the CD and passing it around. First, fans have only been given permission to tape the show, something that won't likely be a huge seller anyway for most bands and if a song or two does happen to make it onto a compilation album at some point, these bootlegs won't affect sales of the compilation that much.
Second, the bootlegged recordings might be nice to listen to but they don't compare to being at a well produced concert. Good quality MP3 rips on the other hand can encapsulate the exact same experience the original CD does. The next step in P2P music swapping is to scan the liner notes and offer PDFs of them. After that what's the point of buying the CD?
People who go to concerts, even to record the show and pass it around (is it really bootleg is the bands allow it to happen?) People who download hundreds of MP3s are leeches.
Open software, closed minds. I've hit this brick wall a number of times. I'm currently working with the OBOS group developing the GUI and hopefully working towards pushing the group into desiging the UI with typical users in mind. Part of this has been developing functionality but my achilles heel is my lackof programming ability so I'm left only contributing ideas and graphics. Granted this is an important contribution, IMHO, but I'm limited as to how far I can demonstrate the ideas and why they are usefuland/or needed. Hopefully this OSS group will have an open mind and listen. So far so good but far too many OSS groups have closed minds.
Slashdot Mirror
Now you're talking afirmative action. This I do agree with you on. I dislike affirmative action because it forces others to accept minorities based solely on their minority status. However, the rights to ride on public transportation, sit in public spaces and use the same commercial facilities as others is certainly fair and does not cancel the rigths of the majority in any way.
Not that I agree with spammers or their methods, but speech is speech, whether you like it or not is irrelevant. Their methods might be illegal but this does not make their speech illegal. If they commit fraud then there are legal questions that need to be answered which the Washington law does. However, notice that he was found guilty of providing false information, which the law forbids, not for selling some dubious material via e-mail.
"When it starts to protect or create the rights of a minority at the expense of the rights of the whole population, there is a serious problem with the philosophy of law."
I just thought I'd point out that all our civil rights laws are based on this premise. The rights of minorties were being violated and new laws were written which affected the entire nation and in some cases the entire world. Just some food for thought.
Microsoft didn't do this, a Public Relations firm working for Microsoft did this. Once Microsoft was made aware of the site did they leave it up and make excuses for its existence? No, they removed it immediately and have openly stated that this is not true nor is it an image Microsoft wants to portray to the public. If you're going to hate Microsoft, hate them for things they actually do, not things sites like Slashdot attribute to them.
Hey, dumbass, HTML was originally designed to replace paper based media, not to create a new way to convey information. It was the designers who have pushed the web towards this way to imaprt information to users. If the people building the web had their way we would still be using HTML 1.0, which by the way is a subset of SGML which is used to design large *GASP* [music: dum dum dummmmmm] paper based documents (Framekmaker is a good example of a document design application used for large paper based publishing). Sometimes the tools aren't available to solve the problems we face. Imagine your very same world without screwdrivers. Sometimes you just need to pound the screws in with the hammer until someone invents the screwdriver.
You know what? I would love to use CSS and nothing else but there is this problem of clients wanting their customers to view their web pages. That menas older browsers. But thanks Captain obvious for pointing out the W3C specs. Why didn't I think of reading those? Oh, yeah. I already did. In fact, I've been reading them since the HTML 1.0 specs. Just because you'r enew to the internet doesn't mean all of us are. I've been designing web pages since Netscape was a beta.
Because somethign a fuckwitr like you doens't understand is designers don't sit in photoshop all day thinking of new ways to make their buttons look like the Apple aqua buttons. We communicate ideas using typography and/or images that convey a message. Allowing users to realign tabled data is stupid. Yes tables are great for layout, but they can be used to actually build a table of data...**GASP*** [music: dum dum dummmmmm...] Oh my fucking god, you mean tables can be used to convey data which actually belongs in a table? How the fuck does Opera know the intent of MY fucking design layout? Pull your head out of your ass and wake up. There is more to this world that YOU and your concerns. Quit generalizing...ooop, I forgot this was Slashdot, the place where facts aren't welcome and generalizations and stereotypes reign supreme. Go ahead and stick your head back in your ass. Sorry for disturbing your world.
As a designer I don't like this concept at all. I placed my content in two columns for a reason and when the web browser makes decisions to combine this data, they can ultimately change, and confuse, the meaning of the data. We don't need cell phones with full web page support, we need to start pushing the use of XML to push data to these devices in ways that are more practical. I hope there is a way to force Opera to render the page the way I designed it the way IE offers a meta tag that shut off the smart tags feature of their web browser.
"A modified version of this same kind of rocket will be used to carry cosmonauts to the ISS later this month."
Let's hope they modify it to not blow up next time. I'd bet those ACME rocket plans and mail order boxes wasn't the best approach for their space program after all. Perhaps we should cut off their access to the Cartoon Network until after the manned launch.
Yeah, Microsoft stifles the mod community. That's why Dungeon Seige and Flight Simulator aren't gmax ready...ooops, I'm sorry, they are gmax ready. Perhaps this was an oversight on MS' part? Nope, Dungeon Seige has released the actual toolkit for developing the levels as well documentation to build your own adventures. Numerous SDKs are available for modders to enahnce MS Flight Similator 2002 as well. Hmmm...I thought you said MS stifles the modding community? Perhaps you were wrong? I think you were.
I understood your point from the start. You just don't get my message. You can explore all you like you just can't do it with copyrighted material. But why would you anyway? You don't need to use copyrighted material to explore ojn your own and learn. There is absolutely NO reason to do so. None. Zero. Zip. The DMCA is soing nothing to inhibit your ability to learn and explore, it is only keeping you from unlocking copyrighted material that you seem to believe will somehow make you a better post production artist. I'm telling you from experience that this is simply not true. You will learn FAR more from doing small projects that focus on particular effects than to bother with trying to duplicate the same scene you saw in a movie. As the Scooby-doo footage was likely not shot to fit any of the small projects you would likely design for yourself, it serves to do nothing more than inhibit your ability to truly explore.
My point was you don't even need this to learn how to do things like this. Don't get me wrong. I purchased movies like "Contact" and "Lost in Space" specifically for the DVD content which demonstrates how they designed and produced the special effects in their movie. When it came time to do this myself, I came up with my own project, shot footage I needed with my DV camera and hacked away in AE. I learned FAR more than the movie could have ever taught me and I have a greater respect, as well as expanded vocabulary, for the work of others in the process. Using the footage in ANY of these movies would have NEVER have taught me as much as I now know, mostly because I had to work just a little bit harder to attain my goal. Basically what I'm saying is you NEED to run into a few of thes pitfalls so you can learn to avoid them in the future, but better still, you can deal with them if you can't avoid them.
Myself, and hundreds of thousands of others have had no problem doing the "garage" approach to learning. Using studio work, even the stuff you describe, doesn't help in anyway shape or form. You need to think about projects in a smaller scale and scope. You can learn a lot by just producing tiny shorts using studio techniques and if you're good, these can be included on your demo reel. You can't put any thing from the scooby-doo hack in your demo reel regardless of the DMCA.
How about trying to get Lawrence Lessig to sit in as a technical advisor? I guess they forgot to check into his past dealing with Netscape when he tried toconvince Jim Barksdale to sue Microsoft for anti-trust violations long before Netscape's ultimate demise. oops.
"But, as Lawrence Lessig says, "nobody can do to Disney what Disney did to the Brothers Grimm"."
Why would anyone want to? Why make a story based on another story? The idea is to create a story, write a song, perform a play, sculpt or paint a work of art that expresses an idea in a new and unique way. Lawernce Lessig clearly can't see this or chooses not to. I see this argument as ridiculous and in no way does it reflect poorly on copyright law.
You know, it's vocal, endorsed and promoted projects like this that give the OSS and free software community a bad name. YOU might view it as tinkering or whatever but the general populace views it as "pissing in the pool" so to speak. The XBOX Linux project might be for running Linux on the XBOX but it is viewed as much for that as it is for harming Microsoft's profits in the gaming console market. Perhaps the OSS and free software community should consider a different approach to establishing their self-image and promoting their cause.
But doesn't society in genenral have equal access to the works Disney based their own creations on? Of course they do. Anyone can create an animated story based on a number of fables, fairy tales and tall stories from our past. Creative poeple understand this. We know that we can take the essence of many stories (good v. evil, love conquers all obstacles...) and create a new story wholly our own. We can even take things like The Jungle Book and present our own vision of the story in an animated fashion or live action. NOTHING precludes you, me or anyone else from doing this. The one thing you cannot do is use the "expression of the idea" that someone else has already used (i.e. Disney's animated versions of famous fairy tales). This is the point most miss when discussing copyright. Is having The Matrix in the public doamin going to change this? No, because anyone can write a story about a christ-like character and base the entier thing in cybespace if they want. You have to be careful how close to The Matrix you make your story. A good example of this would be the two movies "A Bug's Life" and "Antz". Both movies are about an improbable hero (an ant) who saves their colony from disaster, yet neither violates copyright law in any way.
But i didn't even use the original artwork. I never said I did. In fact, I said I refuse to copy and plagurise. What I do is STUDY the artowrk and learn from it. What is it about the work (media, technique, color, shape) that makes it stand out? I then use this knowledge to create my own work. I might have learned a new brush technique but I use a completely different medium, subject and color palette. Sometimes I see a series of colro that strike me as a good source of inspiration. I might like the colors I see in a painting, for instance, but I'll take textiles using these colors and form a collage with those. That's inspiration, that's using copyright ina fair manner. I'm not taking, I'm learning. Nowehere in my final piece is there the original copyright. There is no derived work because my idea is completely different from the original idea. I might do a painting inspired by a sign I saw. I might create a poster inspired by japanese artwork but not use any japanese artowk in the final piece (I use colors and brush strokes indicitive of japanese artowrk). That's how artists work but I wouldn't expect many in the slashdot community to understand this seeing as how many of them are of the mind that the only way to make new stuff is to copy old stuff.
Actually I am an artist and I can still be inspired by protected pieces of work. What I cannot do, nor will I do, even with public domain pieces of work, is copy or rip them off. Inspiration comes from MANY different places. I could be walking down the street and see a sign and be inspired. I've been inspired by traditional japanese paintings. In fact I used this theme in a recent poster I designed. Did I copy another piece of work? No. What did I do? I studied japanese prints and mixed this look with my own personal style creating a completely original piece of work.
The fact is Disney is a straw man argument. People want copyright to go away compeletely do they can copy music online via P2P apps. If works in the public domain were held in as high esteem as you seem to think they are then P2P networsk would be flooded by early jazz, blues and classical music. Instead we see current movies and music being traded on a scale never possible before. People don't want Steamboat Willie, they want to copy the latest Disney film.
Gender changers are a useful tool in your shop? What kinds of problems do you run into that you gotta go whacking off body parts of sticking new ones on with super glue?
Reminds me a little bit of a Neil Gaiman short story. Guy develops a pill to cure some disease but it has an odd side effect, it can change your sex. Society began to use the drug recreationally.
Your argument could turned against you you know. It's insane. Absolutely insane that you people have zero regard for artists rights, I have to admit, it disgusts me sometimes that I live in this society.
I can't prove it but I think whoever designed the new Redhat UI appears to have copied much of the work I have done on the OBOS GUI (hopefully to be used in the R2 release), the only real differences being the tabbed titlebar and repositioning of some of the widgets. Not only did they appear to have copied my work, they didn't do a very good job of it. As with many other *nix GUIs, Redhat overdid the look without truly innovating in the functionality department. Paint a turd and it's still a turd, it's just a different color.
Microsoft signs exclusive deals with OEMs (Dell, HP, Gateway) and they are convicted of abusing their monopoly power to shut others out of the market. Sony signs exclusive deals with game producers to shut others out of the market and they are competing fairly? Microsoft was already in a deal to get GTA III for the XBOX before Sony shut the door on that by paying Rockstar millions so Microsoft wouldn't get the title. Funny thing is this is EXACTLY how MS wound up in their legal quandry. They signed exclusive deals and wound up a monopoly. They did not become a monopoly first THEN sign exclusive deals.
/. community is fine with this as long as it hurts Microsoft. Hypocrites. You cry that MS should play fair and compete on the technical merits. They did just this with the XBOX and now that Sony is abusing their dominant position in the console market and the slashbots cheer.
I smell a rat and once again the
There's a difference between taping the live show and ripping the CD and passing it around. First, fans have only been given permission to tape the show, something that won't likely be a huge seller anyway for most bands and if a song or two does happen to make it onto a compilation album at some point, these bootlegs won't affect sales of the compilation that much.
Second, the bootlegged recordings might be nice to listen to but they don't compare to being at a well produced concert. Good quality MP3 rips on the other hand can encapsulate the exact same experience the original CD does. The next step in P2P music swapping is to scan the liner notes and offer PDFs of them. After that what's the point of buying the CD?
People who go to concerts, even to record the show and pass it around (is it really bootleg is the bands allow it to happen?) People who download hundreds of MP3s are leeches.
Open software, closed minds. I've hit this brick wall a number of times. I'm currently working with the OBOS group developing the GUI and hopefully working towards pushing the group into desiging the UI with typical users in mind. Part of this has been developing functionality but my achilles heel is my lackof programming ability so I'm left only contributing ideas and graphics. Granted this is an important contribution, IMHO, but I'm limited as to how far I can demonstrate the ideas and why they are usefuland/or needed. Hopefully this OSS group will have an open mind and listen. So far so good but far too many OSS groups have closed minds.