It would be more accurate to say that scientists BELIEVE there is an upper limit on the size of incects, arachnids, and other creatures. And, they have some pretty good reasons for believing so. All the same - dsc.discovery.com comes up with some pretty astounding news each and every month. Often enough, the scientists have to go back and re-examine what they believe to be true. (go check out the hobbits, LMAO)
Global warming, anyone? Changes in the partial pressures of oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other gases? Hmmmm - how MIGHT such things affect upper limits on size?
Everyone in the world who owns a PC either knows how to burn an ISO, or has someone in the family who burns ISO's, or knows someone who can burn an ISO. This, after all, is what has the MPAA's panties in a wad. EVEN MORONS BURN ISO's!! ISO's aren't hard to burn, at all. XP can't burn an ISO OOB? Well, duhhh, it takes exactly one freaking google to come up with dozens of ways to burn them - whether by enabling it within XP, or downloading a program to do it, or installing a real operating system that isn't aware of CD/DVD burning limitations.
I have to tell this story one more time. When XP was a new thing, I installed it on an AMD K6-3 running at 450 mhz, and tweaked it like a madman. Soon thereafter, the wife bought a new Compaq with a 1ghz Athlon. My machine was faster, subjectively speaking.
Benchmarks be damned - it is the user's experience that counts. It matters little how fast that Ghz machine can crunch numbers, if it makes me wait a second or two for a menu to pop up. The first time a user has to wait on ANYTHING, he is irritated.
I can, and will, verify that Win7 is a huge improvement over Vista. I might even agree that Win7 is a small improvement over WinXP. I did some moderate tweaking on Win7, and afterwards, I saw no difference in speed or usability. Again, these are SUBJECTIVE measurements. I simply don't CARE what a benchmark might say, if and when my subjective experience is contrary to that benchmark.
(I can't say that I've ever used a computer on a bench, anyway. I have an office chair that I sit on mostly.)
"In any case, a purge is not complete until a final overwrite is made using unclassified data."
This. Wiping, randomizing, etc, yada yada yada is all fine and dandy. But, when you OVERWRITE the damned platters with SOMETHING, then you have pretty much screwed the pooch when it comes to data recovery. Gonna sell a hard drive? Use a couple different wiping tools like DD and/dev/urandom. Then, make sure it's full of music. Download a few dozen songs without burdensome copyrights attached, and fill the drive up. A script can easily create a directory structure, so that you can write the same songs 25,000 times to ensure the disk is entirely overwritten.
Doing so ensures that data recovery people don't have to merely search for clues and listen to echoes of ghosts - first they have to unearth the clues and the echoes.
Same or similar reason that not everyone uses network security? Ignorance. I have a PILE of hard drives from old computers that I have browsed through. One of them contains an ancient NT4 network server. Not much on it - but the really funny thing is, I can log onto that company's network as administrator, because it STILL HAS the same admin password. If I were dishonest, there is SO MUCH I could do......
On the other hand, leaving your loaded weapons lying on the porch beside your front door, visible from the street, would make you criminally liable in most jurisdictions in the United States. And, this is very nearly the situation we have today, with computers. Clueless individuals buy a machine, plug it in, connect it to the internet, amuse themselves with it - and give NO THOUGHT to security. When they are finished amusing themselves, the machine is left connected to the internet, completely unsecured, so that script kiddies can set up a botnet - or whatever. The owner should be liable for a misdemeanor, at the least. Repeated offenses could amount to a criminal charge, just as repeated petty thefts can turn into a felony.
Pure insanity. I mean, really. I demand that an operating system cost 50 bucks, or less. I demand that my software is mostly included with the operating system. Those special things that I need should be available for ten bucks or less. I mean, I don't even spend a thousand dollars on HARDWARE (build my own) so why should I spend hundreds and thousands on OS + SOFTWARE??
I sit in front of a dual core Opteron, with everything I could possibly need installed, and it cost me a grand total of about $600, including OS, office suite, virtualization, entertainment - the works.
I refuse to pay Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, the government, or anyone else for any of this. I simply refuse.
What's more, I think it simply insane that common people DO PAY $200+ for an operating system, 200+ for their office suite, $50 a pop for numerous games, plus more music and movies than I could possibly store on a terabyte drive.
I simply see no value in any of it.
Open source enables me to do ANYTHING that the proprietary stuff can do, at little to no cost. (I contribute a little bit now and then to open source, so there is a little cost to me in the long run)
The fact that a machine can be set to run automatically should relieve you of your responsibility for that machine? The fact that MS has enabled the "feature" that you describe somehow relieves you of responsibility? Which part of responsibility is it that you fail to understand?
YOU, THE USER, ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MANNER IN WHICH YOUR MACHINE AND EQUIPMENT ARE USED.
Ask a judge. Ask a lawyer. Unless you can attribute the actions and inactions of your machine to an "act of God", then you are responsible.
Raymansean fails to grasp the distinction between "responsibility" and "fault". The user has a responsibility to use his car in a manner that does not threaten people. He also has a responsibility to use his computer in a manner that poses no threat to his neighbors. Failure to operate his car in a safe manner gets a ticket, because he failed to meet his responsibilities. Failure to operate a computer in a safe manner should result in similar penalties, for the same reasons.
Stop whining, and making excuses. Failure to have all the required software at hand to do a SAFE installation of your operating system is a failure of responsibility, and your computer should be impounded, and you spend a night in jail for putting people around you at risk. Tell it to the judge, buddy, I don't want to hear it.
You said, "a result of combination of idiocy never seen before" thereby making the case that Russians are capable of unprecedented idiocy. Would you care to start over? Perhaps you meant to make some other point?
Granted, we have had our share of idiots in the US. Three Mile Island comes readily to mind. Somehow, our idiots surpassed your idiots in their ability to recover from idiocy.
I guess you have industrial grade idiots over there, huh? Fool proof idiots? We need to explore the subject of idiocy some more, and try to determine qualities, quantities, and relative strengths and weaknesses of the idiots produced by various nations.
While the "gateway drug" thing is being joked about, it isn't very far off target. The first exclusivity contract was signed with manufacturers, because MS understood that once the relatively low "learning curve" was behind a user, that user is unlikely to look at the higher learning curve necessary to learn *nix.
Let us remember that MS is a "for profit" corporation. Every decision is calculated to make money in the long run. Sometimes the decision is right, sometimes it is wrong, but it is always calculated to seperate you from your money.
Scores of 100 are months old. I uploaded this screenie only weeks ago, after I misplaced the older screenie showing the same thing. Download and test Midori. Consistent fast times, and scores 100 every time.
If you think ANYONE is their own boss, you are living in some fantasy land. Even the funny looking dude living in the White House has bosses, he answers to people, and he's under pressure to get things done.
Think of the decision makers at Microsoft. They invested all that time and money into IE8, so that they could claim to have a secure browser, and make some lame claims about being "standards compliant".
Bill is giving Steve HELL for not pushing that high dollar investment out into the wild, where it can work to MS benefit. Bill wants MARKET SHARE that he can show to investors.
Those insensitive, inbred, illiterates who are still using IE6 are costing precious MARKET SHARE on IE8!!
Get with the program, all you idiot Windows users!! Bill has given you so much, it's time to give something back to Bill!! Upgrade NOW!!!
I feel sorry for Steve, having to admit to his boss that IE8 has a poor showing in the market share.
Alright guys, just kidding. I don't feel one bit sorry for Bill, Steve, or any other Microsoft Zombie. But, now, those who don't understand the corporate mind know why IE8 is being pushed as a priority update.
*sigh* Apple and Microsft aren't equal. In fact, they aren't equally detrimental to the world of computer science. And, it goes beyond scale.
Apple sells physical products, which happen to be preloaded with their own operating systems and software. Apple won't permit anyone to do much of anything with those systems, which apple doesn't approve of. Apple, bad, yeah.
Microsoft sells almost no physical products, instead relying on an established monopoly, created by intimidating manufacturers of computer hardware. Exclusivity agreements barred mfgrs from offering any competing systems on their hardware. By default, everyone in the world bought either MS operating systems, or they bought Apple, or they bought machines with no OS, or they simply bought the parts to build their own no OS systems. There was an enforced virtual MS tax on almost all computers for more than a decade, and many people still pay that tax. (I can find more proofs that MS is evil, but this one is enough to suffice) Microsoft evil.
On the one hand, we have bad. On the other, we have evil. Perhaps the bad boy would LIKE TO BE evil, but we don't know that, and we certainly can't prove it. Bad is bad, but evil trumps bad, every time.
Running WinXP in a VM right now. The single noticeable issue with USB is my headset. Going to Youtube to watch a video give choppy audio. Otherwise, everything works great. USB flash drives, external hard drive, mouse and keyboard, as well as a USB device for flashing BIOS ROM's.
Plugging in a new USB device causes VirtualBox to pop up a window, asking if I want to attach the device to the host, or to the guest. That pop up needs a little streamlining, because right now, the host automatically mounts the USB device, leaving the pop up powerless to assign the device. However, I can, and do, u mount the device in the host, then use the tool bar in VirtualBox to mount the device within the VM. No problem, just an extra step.
XP in a virtual machine is pretty good, really. At least when using VMWare or VirtualBox. I run everything I need in Ubuntu, and when I choose to play a Windows game, or I have to open an MS Office document (not all macros are fully supported in Open Office), then I just open XP in a window. I need not worry much about viruses, trojans or other malware - I always have a snapshot that I can restore to. Gaming is rather lackluster - some performance is lost due to being virtualized. But, this is hardly a consideration for a corporate setting - MS Office runs quite well, as will almost any business oriented software.
Bottom line seems to be, gamers aren't going to like a VM at all, but it's great for almost anyone else.
Personally, I can't see the point in paying a couple hundred dollars for an MS operating system that will virtualize Windows XP, when Linux does it so well for FREE. Of course, I'm a tightwad. I realize that most people in this world have money to throw away every time MS feels the need to generate more revenue.
NO! This is not copyright infringement, which is a civil offense, but something akin to "misappropriation of government property", or maybe "theft of property". Contrary to the rules and regulations in place, a cop took images that belonged to the state, and used them for his own gratification. This is a criminal act, unlike copyright infringement.
OK, I'll repeat. "In effect, we have non-expiring copyright law today."
A copyright on a corporate work goes into effect right now, tonight. How many people born tonight will live long enough to see that work go into the public domain? 95 years is a long time. My great-grandchildren may be dying of old age by that time!!
So, IN EFFECT, we have non-expiring copyright law.
Well, the fact is, few works are worth millions and millions of dollars to an author. An author may reach the end of his productive career, and all of his works taken together may earn him a couple thousand dollars a month. He deserves that couple of thousand, IMO. More, if he dies a short time after publication, his estate should be entitled to something.
It is the rare author who earns so much on a single work (even if it is his last and greatest) that he could afford to retire on it, and live the life of leisure. Authors aren't exactly movie stars, after all.
No mod points - you deserve some. I will say "Thank you, Sir" for your post.
I'm a parent. Yes, I've been called in the middle of the night. Yes, I looked at my son with only half his face, lying on a hospital bed. It's a shock, no matter how stable you are. This despite the fact that I have witnessed worse, in real life. (Worst one ever, as a first responder, I found a car with 5 kids in it. It took over an hour to find the last child, wedged into the back of the trunk UNDER the transmission - the only one still breathing - and Daddy's princess wasn't anything you wanted to look at.)
To the parents in the article, I say, "Get over it!" Stuff happens. Life is not idyllic. Kids screw up. Mine, yours, everyone's kids screw up, and often times die because of it. Life sucks.
Don't try to alter the law, just because you are hurt. Some kids actually learn from images like this. To few, but some. The shocking images of your daughter MAY just save some other idiot kid from doing the same thing. Censorship is far more obscene than the images of any casualty of the highway.
Can we attempt to put this into a little better perspective?
A lifetime is generally unfair to a lot of authors - if the old dude wrote his greatest work only days, months, or two or three years before croaking, he and his estate make very little.
Lifetime +50 might be a little to much, but I can live with it.
Lifetime +25 seems reasonable to me - even if the old goat's work is published the day he dies, his estate has a quarter CENTURY to make something of his work.
The problem is, WHO OWNS MOST COPYRIGHT TODAY?!?!?!
It isn't the old goat who wrote a book, a song, or a software. It's the CORPORATIONS!
And, what, precisely, is the lifetime of any given corporation? In effect, we have non-expiring copyright law today. Even if a corporation goes bankrupt, someone, somewhere BUYS their assets, becoming the new corporate owner of the copyright.
Time limits on copyright needs to be addressed all over again, bearing in mind that the vast bulk of copyrights are either created by corporations and/or their employees in the name of the corporation, OR bought by corporations.
Personally, I could justify limiting all copyright to 50 years, period.
Aside from that, fair use really needs to be defined quite clearly. Copyright law was NEVER intended to inhibit creativity and free expression. It's ONLY legitimate purpose is to prevent other people from plegiarising and/or profiting from an original work.
First time was a RedHat. Maybe 1999, not sure when. I still have the CD and floppies laying around somewhere. This was my introduction to Hardware Hell. None of my modems worked, I knew next to nothing, the man pages didn't make a lot sense to me, and I gave up.
Since the wife and I were on the same computer at the time, I had little choice but to put Windows back on the machine, so that she could browse the internet and check email, and PLAY GAMES!!
Eventually, maybe 2003, I bought hardware that "supports Linux". Even so, I wandered around on the edges of hardware hell for awhile before I got it working.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be more accurate to say that scientists BELIEVE there is an upper limit on the size of incects, arachnids, and other creatures. And, they have some pretty good reasons for believing so. All the same - dsc.discovery.com comes up with some pretty astounding news each and every month. Often enough, the scientists have to go back and re-examine what they believe to be true. (go check out the hobbits, LMAO)
Global warming, anyone? Changes in the partial pressures of oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other gases? Hmmmm - how MIGHT such things affect upper limits on size?
Everyone in the world who owns a PC either knows how to burn an ISO, or has someone in the family who burns ISO's, or knows someone who can burn an ISO. This, after all, is what has the MPAA's panties in a wad. EVEN MORONS BURN ISO's!! ISO's aren't hard to burn, at all. XP can't burn an ISO OOB? Well, duhhh, it takes exactly one freaking google to come up with dozens of ways to burn them - whether by enabling it within XP, or downloading a program to do it, or installing a real operating system that isn't aware of CD/DVD burning limitations.
I have to tell this story one more time. When XP was a new thing, I installed it on an AMD K6-3 running at 450 mhz, and tweaked it like a madman. Soon thereafter, the wife bought a new Compaq with a 1ghz Athlon. My machine was faster, subjectively speaking.
Benchmarks be damned - it is the user's experience that counts. It matters little how fast that Ghz machine can crunch numbers, if it makes me wait a second or two for a menu to pop up. The first time a user has to wait on ANYTHING, he is irritated.
I can, and will, verify that Win7 is a huge improvement over Vista. I might even agree that Win7 is a small improvement over WinXP. I did some moderate tweaking on Win7, and afterwards, I saw no difference in speed or usability. Again, these are SUBJECTIVE measurements. I simply don't CARE what a benchmark might say, if and when my subjective experience is contrary to that benchmark.
(I can't say that I've ever used a computer on a bench, anyway. I have an office chair that I sit on mostly.)
"In any case, a purge is not complete until a final overwrite is made using unclassified data."
This. Wiping, randomizing, etc, yada yada yada is all fine and dandy. But, when you OVERWRITE the damned platters with SOMETHING, then you have pretty much screwed the pooch when it comes to data recovery. Gonna sell a hard drive? Use a couple different wiping tools like DD and /dev/urandom. Then, make sure it's full of music. Download a few dozen songs without burdensome copyrights attached, and fill the drive up. A script can easily create a directory structure, so that you can write the same songs 25,000 times to ensure the disk is entirely overwritten.
Doing so ensures that data recovery people don't have to merely search for clues and listen to echoes of ghosts - first they have to unearth the clues and the echoes.
Same or similar reason that not everyone uses network security? Ignorance. I have a PILE of hard drives from old computers that I have browsed through. One of them contains an ancient NT4 network server. Not much on it - but the really funny thing is, I can log onto that company's network as administrator, because it STILL HAS the same admin password. If I were dishonest, there is SO MUCH I could do......
On the other hand, leaving your loaded weapons lying on the porch beside your front door, visible from the street, would make you criminally liable in most jurisdictions in the United States. And, this is very nearly the situation we have today, with computers. Clueless individuals buy a machine, plug it in, connect it to the internet, amuse themselves with it - and give NO THOUGHT to security. When they are finished amusing themselves, the machine is left connected to the internet, completely unsecured, so that script kiddies can set up a botnet - or whatever. The owner should be liable for a misdemeanor, at the least. Repeated offenses could amount to a criminal charge, just as repeated petty thefts can turn into a felony.
Responsibility. Take some.
Pure insanity. I mean, really. I demand that an operating system cost 50 bucks, or less. I demand that my software is mostly included with the operating system. Those special things that I need should be available for ten bucks or less. I mean, I don't even spend a thousand dollars on HARDWARE (build my own) so why should I spend hundreds and thousands on OS + SOFTWARE??
I sit in front of a dual core Opteron, with everything I could possibly need installed, and it cost me a grand total of about $600, including OS, office suite, virtualization, entertainment - the works.
I refuse to pay Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, the government, or anyone else for any of this. I simply refuse.
What's more, I think it simply insane that common people DO PAY $200+ for an operating system, 200+ for their office suite, $50 a pop for numerous games, plus more music and movies than I could possibly store on a terabyte drive.
I simply see no value in any of it.
Open source enables me to do ANYTHING that the proprietary stuff can do, at little to no cost. (I contribute a little bit now and then to open source, so there is a little cost to me in the long run)
End rant.
The fact that a machine can be set to run automatically should relieve you of your responsibility for that machine? The fact that MS has enabled the "feature" that you describe somehow relieves you of responsibility? Which part of responsibility is it that you fail to understand?
YOU, THE USER, ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MANNER IN WHICH YOUR MACHINE AND EQUIPMENT ARE USED.
Ask a judge. Ask a lawyer. Unless you can attribute the actions and inactions of your machine to an "act of God", then you are responsible.
Raymansean fails to grasp the distinction between "responsibility" and "fault". The user has a responsibility to use his car in a manner that does not threaten people. He also has a responsibility to use his computer in a manner that poses no threat to his neighbors. Failure to operate his car in a safe manner gets a ticket, because he failed to meet his responsibilities. Failure to operate a computer in a safe manner should result in similar penalties, for the same reasons.
Stop whining, and making excuses. Failure to have all the required software at hand to do a SAFE installation of your operating system is a failure of responsibility, and your computer should be impounded, and you spend a night in jail for putting people around you at risk. Tell it to the judge, buddy, I don't want to hear it.
You said, "a result of combination of idiocy never seen before" thereby making the case that Russians are capable of unprecedented idiocy. Would you care to start over? Perhaps you meant to make some other point?
Granted, we have had our share of idiots in the US. Three Mile Island comes readily to mind. Somehow, our idiots surpassed your idiots in their ability to recover from idiocy.
I guess you have industrial grade idiots over there, huh? Fool proof idiots? We need to explore the subject of idiocy some more, and try to determine qualities, quantities, and relative strengths and weaknesses of the idiots produced by various nations.
While the "gateway drug" thing is being joked about, it isn't very far off target. The first exclusivity contract was signed with manufacturers, because MS understood that once the relatively low "learning curve" was behind a user, that user is unlikely to look at the higher learning curve necessary to learn *nix.
Let us remember that MS is a "for profit" corporation. Every decision is calculated to make money in the long run. Sometimes the decision is right, sometimes it is wrong, but it is always calculated to seperate you from your money.
http://s217.photobucket.com/albums/cc226/Runaway1956/?action=view¤t=Midori_Acid3.png
Scores of 100 are months old. I uploaded this screenie only weeks ago, after I misplaced the older screenie showing the same thing. Download and test Midori. Consistent fast times, and scores 100 every time.
If you think ANYONE is their own boss, you are living in some fantasy land. Even the funny looking dude living in the White House has bosses, he answers to people, and he's under pressure to get things done.
Slash dot is FILLED WITH INSENSITIVE CLODS!!!
Think of the decision makers at Microsoft. They invested all that time and money into IE8, so that they could claim to have a secure browser, and make some lame claims about being "standards compliant".
Bill is giving Steve HELL for not pushing that high dollar investment out into the wild, where it can work to MS benefit. Bill wants MARKET SHARE that he can show to investors.
Those insensitive, inbred, illiterates who are still using IE6 are costing precious MARKET SHARE on IE8!!
Get with the program, all you idiot Windows users!! Bill has given you so much, it's time to give something back to Bill!! Upgrade NOW!!!
I feel sorry for Steve, having to admit to his boss that IE8 has a poor showing in the market share.
Alright guys, just kidding. I don't feel one bit sorry for Bill, Steve, or any other Microsoft Zombie. But, now, those who don't understand the corporate mind know why IE8 is being pushed as a priority update.
I certainly hope there's no "taste".
Uhhh, you were planning on sampling it?
*sigh* Apple and Microsft aren't equal. In fact, they aren't equally detrimental to the world of computer science. And, it goes beyond scale.
Apple sells physical products, which happen to be preloaded with their own operating systems and software. Apple won't permit anyone to do much of anything with those systems, which apple doesn't approve of. Apple, bad, yeah.
Microsoft sells almost no physical products, instead relying on an established monopoly, created by intimidating manufacturers of computer hardware. Exclusivity agreements barred mfgrs from offering any competing systems on their hardware. By default, everyone in the world bought either MS operating systems, or they bought Apple, or they bought machines with no OS, or they simply bought the parts to build their own no OS systems. There was an enforced virtual MS tax on almost all computers for more than a decade, and many people still pay that tax. (I can find more proofs that MS is evil, but this one is enough to suffice) Microsoft evil.
On the one hand, we have bad. On the other, we have evil. Perhaps the bad boy would LIKE TO BE evil, but we don't know that, and we certainly can't prove it. Bad is bad, but evil trumps bad, every time.
Running WinXP in a VM right now. The single noticeable issue with USB is my headset. Going to Youtube to watch a video give choppy audio. Otherwise, everything works great. USB flash drives, external hard drive, mouse and keyboard, as well as a USB device for flashing BIOS ROM's.
Plugging in a new USB device causes VirtualBox to pop up a window, asking if I want to attach the device to the host, or to the guest. That pop up needs a little streamlining, because right now, the host automatically mounts the USB device, leaving the pop up powerless to assign the device. However, I can, and do, u mount the device in the host, then use the tool bar in VirtualBox to mount the device within the VM. No problem, just an extra step.
XP in a virtual machine is pretty good, really. At least when using VMWare or VirtualBox. I run everything I need in Ubuntu, and when I choose to play a Windows game, or I have to open an MS Office document (not all macros are fully supported in Open Office), then I just open XP in a window. I need not worry much about viruses, trojans or other malware - I always have a snapshot that I can restore to. Gaming is rather lackluster - some performance is lost due to being virtualized. But, this is hardly a consideration for a corporate setting - MS Office runs quite well, as will almost any business oriented software.
Bottom line seems to be, gamers aren't going to like a VM at all, but it's great for almost anyone else.
Personally, I can't see the point in paying a couple hundred dollars for an MS operating system that will virtualize Windows XP, when Linux does it so well for FREE. Of course, I'm a tightwad. I realize that most people in this world have money to throw away every time MS feels the need to generate more revenue.
NO! This is not copyright infringement, which is a civil offense, but something akin to "misappropriation of government property", or maybe "theft of property". Contrary to the rules and regulations in place, a cop took images that belonged to the state, and used them for his own gratification. This is a criminal act, unlike copyright infringement.
OK, I'll repeat. "In effect, we have non-expiring copyright law today."
A copyright on a corporate work goes into effect right now, tonight. How many people born tonight will live long enough to see that work go into the public domain? 95 years is a long time. My great-grandchildren may be dying of old age by that time!!
So, IN EFFECT, we have non-expiring copyright law.
Well, the fact is, few works are worth millions and millions of dollars to an author. An author may reach the end of his productive career, and all of his works taken together may earn him a couple thousand dollars a month. He deserves that couple of thousand, IMO. More, if he dies a short time after publication, his estate should be entitled to something.
It is the rare author who earns so much on a single work (even if it is his last and greatest) that he could afford to retire on it, and live the life of leisure. Authors aren't exactly movie stars, after all.
No mod points - you deserve some. I will say "Thank you, Sir" for your post.
I'm a parent. Yes, I've been called in the middle of the night. Yes, I looked at my son with only half his face, lying on a hospital bed. It's a shock, no matter how stable you are. This despite the fact that I have witnessed worse, in real life. (Worst one ever, as a first responder, I found a car with 5 kids in it. It took over an hour to find the last child, wedged into the back of the trunk UNDER the transmission - the only one still breathing - and Daddy's princess wasn't anything you wanted to look at.)
To the parents in the article, I say, "Get over it!" Stuff happens. Life is not idyllic. Kids screw up. Mine, yours, everyone's kids screw up, and often times die because of it. Life sucks.
Don't try to alter the law, just because you are hurt. Some kids actually learn from images like this. To few, but some. The shocking images of your daughter MAY just save some other idiot kid from doing the same thing. Censorship is far more obscene than the images of any casualty of the highway.
Can we attempt to put this into a little better perspective?
A lifetime is generally unfair to a lot of authors - if the old dude wrote his greatest work only days, months, or two or three years before croaking, he and his estate make very little.
Lifetime +50 might be a little to much, but I can live with it.
Lifetime +25 seems reasonable to me - even if the old goat's work is published the day he dies, his estate has a quarter CENTURY to make something of his work.
The problem is, WHO OWNS MOST COPYRIGHT TODAY?!?!?!
It isn't the old goat who wrote a book, a song, or a software. It's the CORPORATIONS!
And, what, precisely, is the lifetime of any given corporation? In effect, we have non-expiring copyright law today. Even if a corporation goes bankrupt, someone, somewhere BUYS their assets, becoming the new corporate owner of the copyright.
Time limits on copyright needs to be addressed all over again, bearing in mind that the vast bulk of copyrights are either created by corporations and/or their employees in the name of the corporation, OR bought by corporations.
Personally, I could justify limiting all copyright to 50 years, period.
Aside from that, fair use really needs to be defined quite clearly. Copyright law was NEVER intended to inhibit creativity and free expression. It's ONLY legitimate purpose is to prevent other people from plegiarising and/or profiting from an original work.
Fuck them.
Not with MY dick! If I had the longest pole on earth, I wouldn't want to stand close enough to use it!
First time was a RedHat. Maybe 1999, not sure when. I still have the CD and floppies laying around somewhere. This was my introduction to Hardware Hell. None of my modems worked, I knew next to nothing, the man pages didn't make a lot sense to me, and I gave up.
Since the wife and I were on the same computer at the time, I had little choice but to put Windows back on the machine, so that she could browse the internet and check email, and PLAY GAMES!!
Eventually, maybe 2003, I bought hardware that "supports Linux". Even so, I wandered around on the edges of hardware hell for awhile before I got it working.