> The division between physical copyright laws and intellectual copyright laws, is then a false dichotomy.
Nonsense. There are two major differences between physical property and intellectual property.
1) Physical property cannot easily be replicated. Hence, if you give someone else an object, you no longer have that object. Intellectual property can typically be replicated trivially. If I give someone else an idea, then I still have the idea. This is a critical distinction. The whole notion of right to life, liberty, and property exists in the context that you cannot casually be deprived of those things. Nobody's arguing that anything should be taken away from anybody. Disney can continue to use Mickey Mouse if the copyright lapses. They just wouldn't be able use the government to prevent others from using it as well.
2) The whole concept of intellectual property runs contrary to free speech, and by implication the concept of liberty. By granting permanent, exclusive license to an idea, government prevents others from using or sharing that idea freely, and that deprives individuals of their liberty. Intellectual property, unlike physical property is wholely and entirely a construct of the government.
If you refer to the Constitution, the intent was that copyright laws be finite in duration (much like patents). Since they admittedly restrict liberty, they are only defensible in that they promote the arts (the constitutionally stated purpose behind copyright law). As the dissenting opinion pointed out, extending the duration of copyright on works already created does nothing to stimulate the creation of those works (especially when the creator is already dead, as in the case of Walt Disney).
The real hypocrisy of Disney (the corporation) in this matter is that Disney has a history of making films based on works that have lapsed into the public domain (thereby sparing themselves the expense of buying film rights to copyrighted works in many cases). The concept of copyrighted works lapsing into the public domain is an old one, long predating Marx, and Disney has taken thorough advantage of it. They should be willing to give something back eventually.
I understand you're new around here. I suggest you read our Constitution before you start calling us all a bunch of Marxists.
PVMPOV has supported parallel rendering of a single frame on a cluster (or a massively parallel supercomputer, or a network of workstations) for years.
The screenshots PNG's have transparency and therefore look lousy under Netscape 4.x. To see how they really look, you'll need to use either Mozilla or a standalone image viewer.
"Yeah, if they have the train go out to the suburbs, crooks are going to come from the inner city on the train to break into my house, steal my television, and take it home on the train."
What's scary is that some people actually believe that nonsense. I picked my apartment largely for proximity to a train station.
There's a great deal of confusion between conformity and morals, such that many people (e.g. high school administrators and other former high school conformists) feel that anyone who doesn't conform to social standards (of dress, hairstyle, interest in sports, etc.) is obviously morally bankrupt and capable of ultimate evil, whereas conformists, who go along with the system, are angels, nigh incapable of sin. Now do you see the connection?
Then again, I live in Middlesex County, so it might be comparatively easy for me to convince local government that the filters block things they shouldn't.
Seriously, some local governments are going to be interested, and some are going to resent having this forced down their throats. The federal government can claim that it's being useful if it offers grants to state and local governments to help pay for filtering software, but madating it serves nobody, especially considering how badly broken the whole concept of filtering software is.
If I ever have kids, I'll just run a proxy server (I'd probably have one in any event) and let them know that I'm going to be keeping an eye on the logs. If I find what they're browsing disturbing, I can sit down and have a chat with them about it. That's all that really needs to happen.
So far as I can tell, Lieberman and Bennett are mostly going after Hollywood. As long as they stick to criticism rather than actual censorship, I'd say that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Valenti has to call in favors in order to get Congress to cut the industry slack on violence, then that's so many fewer favors that Congress owes the film industry the next time the film industry wants Congress to take away our rights. In practice, I think the current hearings are pre-election grandstanding, and the film industry will be back to business as usual in six weeks. As for actual technology issues, Lieberman voted against the CDA, and I haven't seen any issues where he's appeared actively anti-technology.
After living in Madison for twelve years and growing entirely sick and tired of the drunken crowds that swarm around Camp Randall. Don't try to pin this on MIT; I'm just looking to live further away from the hordes of crazed sports fans.
I feel the success of the UW's sports program has cheapened my degree. Now I have to say that I went to a "football school" rather than a University.
Re:This sounds just like the University of Wiscons
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>Oh yeah, not everyone at the UW is obsessed with
>athletics. Somebody must have gotten picked last >for playground kickball quite a bit to get a chip
>on their shoulder that big!
That describes me pretty well. Beyond that, if you're a guy in Madison, and you're not a jock, it's next to impossible to get a date. And I refused to lower myself to that level. I'd rather leave town.
Re:This sounds just like the University of Wiscons
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OK, but it still sounds just like the University of Wisconsin.;-)
-Mark Gordon
This sounds just like the University of Wisconsin
on
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"If you're not into sports (e.g. softball), there's something wrong with you! Go Big Red!"
The University of Wisconsin (and Madison, and Wisconsin, and the Midwest in general) is pathologically sports-obsessed. That kind of thinking is one of the reasons I left town. Now I'm a couple blocks off the campus of MIT. The only time MIT goes to the Rose Bowl is when CalTech hacks the scoreboard, in which case MIT gets creamed.;-)
Rothschild is in the Pale (don't ask why - it's a joke, OK?), and he goes into a store and asks how much an egg costs. "Ten rubles," says the storekeeper. "Ten rubles!" exclaims Rothschild. "Are eggs that scarce in these parts?" "No," responded the storekeeper, "but Rothschilds are."
don't sell it, and don't give it away. If you do otherwise, you may as well concede that people are going to hack it. People have been hacking hardware since our ancestors started flint-knapping, and no pack of lawyers is going to be able to stop human progress in this regard.
On a related note, Jack Valenti should realize that the only way to eliminate piracy in the film industry is to stop producing films. The film industry should realize that the object of the game is to maximize profits, not to minimize piracy, at which point they should come to realize that Jack Valenti is obsolete.
>IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE LAWS IN THIS COUNTRY (oh yeah, the freedoms, benefits, etc too) MOVE AWAY.
One of the problems of military service is that it trains people to follow orders without question, and this has the unfortunate side effect of undermining democracy.
Laws in this country are not like military orders. If you don't like them, you can work in various ways to try to get them changed. Believe it or not, this is not treasonous activity. You're not going to face court martial for writing to Congress, which is one of the more effective ways by which citizens can work to change laws. That's the way democracy works. Anyone who sincerely believes in "America, love it or leave it" has missed the point entirely.
Please do this country a favor and look into getting yourself deprogrammed after you leave the Air Force.
The amount of energy that goes into the production of ammonia to fertilize the fields that grow the corn far outstrips the amount of energy that can be gained by converting the corn to ethanol. Do the math, and it's a very big net loss. There are only three reasons to support growing corn as a fuel:
Humans and livestock can use corn as fuel, er, food, more readily than they can use petroleum or coal, which taste nasty.;-)
Corn-based fuels can burn cleaner, which is important in smog-ridden cities. There's some merit to this, but it offers no real advantages over electric in that case.
Farmers like it, because it increases the demand for corn. Politicians representing corn-growing states like it, because their constituents like it. Not a scientifically valid reason.
I've never seen cephalopod eyes on a gastropod.;-)
If anything, cephalopod eyes are of a superior design. The nerves leading away from the photoreceptors in cephalopod eyes stick out the back. In vertebrates, the nerves stick out the front, blocking some of the light, and they have go out the back of the retina, resulting in a blind spot.
This difference helps underscore the fact that cephalopod eyes and vertebrate eyes evolved separately (much like bird wings, bat wings, pterosaur wings, and insect wings). Parallel evolution is seldom parallel in the finer details.
Read a book. There are lots of books in the public domain at this point (from back in the days when copyrighted works would eventually lapse into the public domain, before the closing of the IP common). Check out the Gutenberg Project.
Granted, it's impossible to keep anyone from extending these books in such a way that they fall under copyright (e.g. films based on the works of Shakespeare), but I don't feel too threatened by that.
Actually I suspect the MPAA (and its agents) are granted such rights by the major studios. It would be a fairly routine agreement their idle lawyers would have thought up one day while bored.
"I'm not a senile old man, but I play one on the witness stand."
Reminds me a lot of Reagan during the Iran-Contra controversy, except that Reagan had moved from Hollywood to Washington rather than the other way around. Of course, Reagan later grew into the role...
Slashdot Mirror
> The division between physical copyright laws and intellectual copyright laws, is then a false dichotomy.
Nonsense. There are two major differences between physical property and intellectual property.
1) Physical property cannot easily be replicated. Hence, if you give someone else an object, you no longer have that object. Intellectual property can typically be replicated trivially. If I give someone else an idea, then I still have the idea. This is a critical distinction. The whole notion of right to life, liberty, and property exists in the context that you cannot casually be deprived of those things. Nobody's arguing that anything should be taken away from anybody. Disney can continue to use Mickey Mouse if the copyright lapses. They just wouldn't be able use the government to prevent others from using it as well.
2) The whole concept of intellectual property runs contrary to free speech, and by implication the concept of liberty. By granting permanent, exclusive license to an idea, government prevents others from using or sharing that idea freely, and that deprives individuals of their liberty. Intellectual property, unlike physical property is wholely and entirely a construct of the government.
If you refer to the Constitution, the intent was that copyright laws be finite in duration (much like patents). Since they admittedly restrict liberty, they are only defensible in that they promote the arts (the constitutionally stated purpose behind copyright law). As the dissenting opinion pointed out, extending the duration of copyright on works already created does nothing to stimulate the creation of those works (especially when the creator is already dead, as in the case of Walt Disney).
The real hypocrisy of Disney (the corporation) in this matter is that Disney has a history of making films based on works that have lapsed into the public domain (thereby sparing themselves the expense of buying film rights to copyrighted works in many cases). The concept of copyrighted works lapsing into the public domain is an old one, long predating Marx, and Disney has taken thorough advantage of it. They should be willing to give something back eventually.
I understand you're new around here. I suggest you read our Constitution before you start calling us all a bunch of Marxists.
PVMPOV has supported parallel rendering of a single frame on a cluster (or a massively parallel supercomputer, or a network of workstations) for years.
The screenshots PNG's have transparency and therefore look lousy under Netscape 4.x. To see how they really look, you'll need to use either Mozilla or a standalone image viewer.
"Yeah, if they have the train go out to the suburbs, crooks are going to come from the inner city on the train to break into my house, steal my television, and take it home on the train."
What's scary is that some people actually believe that nonsense. I picked my apartment largely for proximity to a train station.
There's a great deal of confusion between conformity and morals, such that many people (e.g. high school administrators and other former high school conformists) feel that anyone who doesn't conform to social standards (of dress, hairstyle, interest in sports, etc.) is obviously morally bankrupt and capable of ultimate evil, whereas conformists, who go along with the system, are angels, nigh incapable of sin. Now do you see the connection?
Write a gratuitously inflammatory story about Linux and submit it to Slashdot. Make sure your servers can take the load, though.
Then again, I live in Middlesex County, so it might be comparatively easy for me to convince local government that the filters block things they shouldn't.
Seriously, some local governments are going to be interested, and some are going to resent having this forced down their throats. The federal government can claim that it's being useful if it offers grants to state and local governments to help pay for filtering software, but madating it serves nobody, especially considering how badly broken the whole concept of filtering software is.
If I ever have kids, I'll just run a proxy server (I'd probably have one in any event) and let them know that I'm going to be keeping an eye on the logs. If I find what they're browsing disturbing, I can sit down and have a chat with them about it. That's all that really needs to happen.
And here I thought it was a fast lexical analyser generator!
http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/flex.html
Hmmm... I must not be watching the soap operas where Revlon is spending all their advertising dollars...
So far as I can tell, Lieberman and Bennett are mostly going after Hollywood. As long as they stick to criticism rather than actual censorship, I'd say that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Valenti has to call in favors in order to get Congress to cut the industry slack on violence, then that's so many fewer favors that Congress owes the film industry the next time the film industry wants Congress to take away our rights. In practice, I think the current hearings are pre-election grandstanding, and the film industry will be back to business as usual in six weeks. As for actual technology issues, Lieberman voted against the CDA, and I haven't seen any issues where he's appeared actively anti-technology.
After living in Madison for twelve years and growing entirely sick and tired of the drunken crowds that swarm around Camp Randall. Don't try to pin this on MIT; I'm just looking to live further away from the hordes of crazed sports fans.
I feel the success of the UW's sports program has cheapened my degree. Now I have to say that I went to a "football school" rather than a University.
>Oh yeah, not everyone at the UW is obsessed with
>athletics. Somebody must have gotten picked last >for playground kickball quite a bit to get a chip
>on their shoulder that big!
That describes me pretty well. Beyond that, if you're a guy in Madison, and you're not a jock, it's next to impossible to get a date. And I refused to lower myself to that level. I'd rather leave town.
-Mark Gordon
"If you're not into sports (e.g. softball), there's something wrong with you! Go Big Red!"
;-)
The University of Wisconsin (and Madison, and Wisconsin, and the Midwest in general) is pathologically sports-obsessed. That kind of thinking is one of the reasons I left town. Now I'm a couple blocks off the campus of MIT. The only time MIT goes to the Rose Bowl is when CalTech hacks the scoreboard, in which case MIT gets creamed.
Rothschild is in the Pale (don't ask why - it's a joke, OK?), and he goes into a store and asks how much an egg costs. "Ten rubles," says the storekeeper. "Ten rubles!" exclaims Rothschild. "Are eggs that scarce in these parts?" "No," responded the storekeeper, "but Rothschilds are."
don't sell it, and don't give it away. If you do otherwise, you may as well concede that people are going to hack it. People have been hacking hardware since our ancestors started flint-knapping, and no pack of lawyers is going to be able to stop human progress in this regard.
On a related note, Jack Valenti should realize that the only way to eliminate piracy in the film industry is to stop producing films. The film industry should realize that the object of the game is to maximize profits, not to minimize piracy, at which point they should come to realize that Jack Valenti is obsolete.
>IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE LAWS IN THIS COUNTRY (oh yeah, the freedoms, benefits, etc too) MOVE AWAY.
One of the problems of military service is that it trains people to follow orders without question, and this has the unfortunate side effect of undermining democracy.
Laws in this country are not like military orders. If you don't like them, you can work in various ways to try to get them changed. Believe it or not, this is not treasonous activity. You're not going to face court martial for writing to Congress, which is one of the more effective ways by which citizens can work to change laws. That's the way democracy works. Anyone who sincerely believes in "America, love it or leave it" has missed the point entirely.
Please do this country a favor and look into getting yourself deprogrammed after you leave the Air Force.
My preferred entertainment alternatives:
1) reading
2) live theater
The former works well for a solitary activity. The latter (where available) also makes for a good date.
I've never seen cephalopod eyes on a gastropod. ;-)
If anything, cephalopod eyes are of a superior design. The nerves leading away from the photoreceptors in cephalopod eyes stick out the back. In vertebrates, the nerves stick out the front, blocking some of the light, and they have go out the back of the retina, resulting in a blind spot.
This difference helps underscore the fact that cephalopod eyes and vertebrate eyes evolved separately (much like bird wings, bat wings, pterosaur wings, and insect wings). Parallel evolution is seldom parallel in the finer details.
Read a book. There are lots of books in the public domain at this point (from back in the days when copyrighted works would eventually lapse into the public domain, before the closing of the IP common). Check out the Gutenberg Project.
Granted, it's impossible to keep anyone from extending these books in such a way that they fall under copyright (e.g. films based on the works of Shakespeare), but I don't feel too threatened by that.
Actually I suspect the MPAA (and its agents) are granted such rights by the major studios. It would be a fairly routine agreement their idle lawyers would have thought up one day while bored.
"I'm not a senile old man, but I play one on the witness stand."
Reminds me a lot of Reagan during the Iran-Contra controversy, except that Reagan had moved from Hollywood to Washington rather than the other way around. Of course, Reagan later grew into the role...
People who live in glass houses...
Sounds like Slashdot to me...
There's a patent on one-cliche.