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User: NMerriam

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Comments · 2,648

  1. Re:Evolution in Action on Cops Walking the MySpace Beat · · Score: 1

    Doing something in private and being ashamed of it are two separate things. I go to the bathroom and have sex in private, but I'm not ashamed of either one. I'm not embarassed or unwilling to admit to either, they are simply things that i do in private out of respect. You may think doing drugs is great, so by all means protest the laws and try to change them, speak out when possible. But actually doing drugs in private has nothing to do with shame or embarassment and everything to do with the fact that if you do it in public, a guy with a gun will show up and lock you in a cage for 20 years. Being willing to admit doing drugs and being willing to be locked in a cage because someone else thinks drugs are bad are two separate things that have nothing whatsoever to do with integrity or existential wholeness.

  2. Re:Rules for Free Markets. on Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again · · Score: 1

    Land developers have to pay taxes and maintenance costs on that land every year they hold it, so when they receive a fair offer they're going to sell. There is no similar disincentive to massive domain speculation, they can afford to just sit on 10,000 domains in the hopes that a millionaire will decide THAT is the word.com he simply has to buy this week.

  3. Re:Are we reading the same data? on Mass Microsoft Defections to Apple Possible · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Video editing is not demanding on video performance

    In the 20th century, that was true. Modern operating systems now use the powerful graphics processors available to manipulate video frames in real-time without touching the CPU. This is the sort of stuff we used to buy $3,000 real-time video compression cards for only a few years ago (of course, they were always tied to particular software and codecs).

    Windows has viable video editing applications

    They are viable, but none are nearly as good/powerful as the Final Cut family. Premiere and even Avid look downright cro-magnon when compared to FCP. My only regret is that after nearly 6 years of professional video editing, I only got to spend the last year and a half of it on a Mac with FCP.

  4. Re:What's new in Firefox 1.5.0.2 on Firefox Update Kills Bugs, Adds Mac Support · · Score: 1

    Oh fantastic! I hadn't thought about it much, but I had noticed the tab shortcuts were broken and assumed it was because of Tab Mix Plus or something and didn't really investigate. Glad to be able to navigate like a grown-up again! :P

  5. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 1

    And it certainly WILL curtail the work created by an artist if they feel they are losing control of their own creations

    I'm pretty sure I said that in the message you replied to.

    I don't misunderstand the original intent of copyright, it was mostly to protect publishers (creative types were considered replacable craftsmen who risked no capital in a publishing venture).

    I was stating my views on what would be more fair to both the creator and the public, not what was originally intended.

  6. Re:More Likely: Windows OEM on Cringely Predicts Apple to Ship OS X for Any PC · · Score: 1

    Let's check back in a year and I bet preinstalled Windows is a checkbox right on the Apple Store.

    I'll take that bet. It's one thing to talk about how they can make a profit off the OEM price they'd pay for windows. It's quite another to explain how or why Apple would want to rebuild their entire Applecare support system to accommodate the exponential increase in software issues. The cost of Windows support (indeed any OS support) dwarfs the intial purchase price -- making $50 or 150 profit from the license would never cover the increased support costs. But hey, this is speculation and we'll all find out in a year.

    BIOS question has been answered elsewhere. Zealots said they wouldn't add a BIOS CSM, but there it is. Therefore don't listen to Zealots. :)

    Yes, elsewhere people proved your statement wrong, and you keep moving the goalposts around in hopes of sounding like less of a Zealot yourself. There's a huge, gaping void of difference between an "outdated BIOS" and a BIOS CSM. It's like comparing Dos 3.0 to the Windows XP Windows on Windows layer and saying "see, MS still installs DOS on XP systems!!!11!!"

    When Apple announced the platform change, everybody knew they'd never use the outdated BIOS systems current Windows boxes ship with, and EFI was the most logical choice and many, many, many people speculated/assumed after the Intel announcement that EFI would be the system used to bootstrap the x86 Macs. Surprise (or rather no surprise), it was.

    Nobody was "wrong" about Apple using the decrepit compatibility-chained BIOS, and no matter how many times you wave your hands and throw in unrelated technology, you're not going to change history or sound like any less of a Zealot.

  7. Re:More Likely: Windows OEM on Cringely Predicts Apple to Ship OS X for Any PC · · Score: 1

    why would Apple create a Windows boot environment, if they weren't planning on selling it.

    Because they don't want the support issues that come with selling it? They don't want people running windows forever, they just want it as training wheels for people who need it. Making it _available_ eliminates a major point of contention for possible switchers. Apple has nothing to lose and everything to gain -- it's not like there's a lot of Mac users who would jump to Windows if only it were easier to run it on the same hardware. But there are a LOT of people on the opposite side of that equation.

    Apple will never ship an obsolete BIOS

    And how was that wrong? I don't know what glue you're sniffing, but if you know of a more modern way than EFI to get a system booted on Intel hardware, I'm sure everyone would love to hear it. What everyone said was that Apple would never ship a system with the antiquated BIOS Windows hardware has these days -- crappy, limited 1980s technology that prevents more than one primary partition from being visible and has all kinds of hacks just to support hard drives that weren't even cutting edge in 1990. Because that is not elegant -- and of course Apple doesn't do things that aren't elegant (to the user, at least).

  8. Who is the target audience? on In-Depth ajaxWrite Review · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I could understand if these guys were building a component for rich text editing for form fields, ala TinyMCE or such. But this seems to be...just completely bizarre?

    Who is the target market user for this -- people who think Windows Write is just too convenient? Someone whose 486 didn't come with a Turbo button, so all their old text editing programs just run too fast?

    It has all the features of Windows Write or Apple Textedit, with the stability and performance of a web browser! It's annoying enough to type out a response in a text field and have it get eaten by a network error or page refresh problem or browser crash -- do we really need to start losing entire documents?

  9. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 1

    I tend to support the idea that a work created by an individual should belong wholly to that individual until they die. Works created by a corporation would more easily fit a fixed time limit.

    It just seems "unfair" (if that word applies at all when discussing commerce and law) that Stepehn King should be forced in his 50s to see his first books be republished, rewritten, and changed to include whatever horrible thing he disagrees with, and have no say whatsoever about it.

    A novel or painting is just much more personal and it seems disrespectful to say that when a person gets older they'll lose control of their own life's work simply so someone else can make a buck. But I wouldn't be opposed to some sort of "in-print" clause for commercial works that requires a work to actually be available if you want to maintain commercial exclusivity. Authors get just as frustrated as readers when their books are no longer available due to publishing houses that maintina the copyright yet don't find it profitable to publish the book. They should have to either give the copyright back to the author or publish the book.

    I DO know that if a fixed period were used and it were much less than, say, 20 years, it would actually change the work being made available, particularly in series and larger works. There would simply be very little personal incentive to create amazing characters in an ongoing story if you knew that before your kids were even old enough to appreciate your writing, the characters would be headlining in porno films and used to sell cigarettes.

  10. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 1

    If you want to troll, you could at least look up the difference between patent and copyright before you begin. I mean, we do have some minimal standards here on /.

  11. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 1


    I can think of very, very few creators who stop creating because they became successful. The motivation for creators is rarely financial. But that hardly means society will get as much benefit if we remove all compensation from creating.

    Stephen King isn't exactly putting out books to cover rent these days, but you can be sure if he was working 50 hours a week as a plumber to pay the bills, there would be a lot fewer Stephen King novels available for people to enjoy (or hate, depending on your taste).

  12. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 1

    "Copyright law certainly does encourage creation of works"

    You mean, extra economic incentive may encourage the creation of works.


    No, I meant what I said. While economic benefits are important to creators in allowing them to create full-time, they are not always the most important thing. To a creator who has just made a personal work drawn from his own life, control is the most important thing, not money. It would be great to make money from it, but what would be even more upsetting is to see someone else change the work into something that is anathema to your beliefs.

    If someone takes the beautiful drawing I did of my neice and uses it on the cover of a book of sexually explicit drawings of children, I'll be far more pissed off than I ever would be if a publisher made more money than I off some random drawing. One of the key aspects of copyright is not that it guarantees money (because it doesn't, by a long shot), but it guarantees control over how the work can be used.

    This is not theoretical, I know several creators who have stopped releasing anything other than their coookie-cutter stuff to pay the bills, simply because they've been screwed over one too many times by publishers doing something they find unconscionable with works they've created. We all lose when that happens, and it would happen far more commonly in a system where publishers had no minimal need to keep creators happy in order to have access to their creations.

  13. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 1

    Honestly, the solution need not even be so radical as publishing source code. Just modify the way Copyright is registered -- in order to register a work you have to send in a copy of the material to Washington, which ultimately goes to the Library of Congress. Simply require that any softweare program must also include source code to be registered, but the source code itself will be held in escrow unavailable to the public at the Library of Congress until the term of protection expires.

    Then the LoC can be the gatekeeper in charge of making sure the data is kept in current physical media for the period until it is available. They already handle such data updating issues, and have more incentive than the company itself to make sure it is done properly.

  14. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 1

    I tend to agree, there is a vast difference between functional items like software and more "expressive" (for lack of a better term) items like a novel or painting, and that should dictate different terms.

    In my mind, the division is more of personal vs corporate works -- part of the reason I support copyright for the life of the artist is because it just seems insulting to suggest that in my 60s I should be forced to watch other people change and resell my own earlier work in ways that might be completely contrary to my original intent. Personal works usually draw from the life of the artist, from the people he knows and situations he has been in, so in that sense there is more than commerce at stake when discussing what is fair to the artist. And it certainly WILL curtail the work created by an artist if they feel they are losing control of their own creations, we see this with work-for-hire situations and short copyright terms would only exacerbate the situation.

    But a corporation has no ego or feelings, Microsoft won't have restless nights of tossing and turning because somebody recoded DOS 3.0 to advocate kicking puppies (though they'd have legitimate trademark concerns). There's little chance that by changing a line of code in AutoCAD, you'll inadvertantly be slighting the beloved neice who was the inspiration for that modal dialog.

    I wouldn't mind at all also seeing a requirement of some sort that corporations could renew copyright on works by reissuing them -- one of the biggest problems currently is the out-of-print but still protected work that will quite literally disintegrate before anyone is legally allowed to make a copy for posterity. I don't know how exactly it would work, but especially given the ease of digital duplication, such a requirement wouldn't be a huge burden any more than the similar requirements that trademark law make on corporations (for those who don't know, trademarks must be used periodically to maintain protection, which is why you'll see a lousy series that doesn't sell be published every few years anyways -- they're just printing the books to protect a trademark that might be more profitable in TV or film).

  15. Re:ok, how do you prove/disprove an theory? on Prof Denied Funds Over Evolution Evidence · · Score: 1

    Yes, many aspects of evolutionary theory have been discarded over the years. Particularly before the discovery of DNA and the underlying mechanism of generational change, there were numerous competing theories in evolutionary science that proved wrong. Where does any scientist claim otherwise?

    Science is a process, as results come in, the theories get changed, evolutionary theory is no different than gravitational theory in that regard. But to suggest evolution itself is in doubt because one portion of the theory doesn't pan out is as silly as suggesting gravity is in doubt because Einstein proved portions of Newton's theories wrong.

    Hey, if there's a Copernicus out there with the theory that blows evolution out of the water, he'll win every prize and honor on Earth, have more funding and fame than he would know what to do with. There's no biologist on Earth who wouldn't want to break through with such changes as Einstein did in physics.

  16. Re:The continuing problem of patents... on Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Copyright law certainly does encourage creation of works -- what is bad is the ridiculously long periods for which copyrights are now granted. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

    I'm an artist/writer, my girlfriend is an artist/writer, we're friends with many, many other creative professionals. Every one of us is able to do what we do precisely because we can pay the bills, sell our work, and have it not be manipulated by others or outright stolen (on any large commercial scale).

    That said, I don't know many creative professionals who think we need "protection" for decades after we're in the grave. While the original 14-year period of copyright might be ludicrously short for modern use (since oftentimes, especially when producing a series, it will only become commercially successful 10 or 20 years into the project), the idea that what we create will be disallowed as source material for several generations of future creators is equally ludicrous. As Picasso said, Good artists borrow, great artists steal. After a certain period, the works themselves become a part of culture that needs to be commented on through art, and saying that this arbitrary part of common culture should be off-limits is damaging to all.

  17. Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions on Missing Link Fossil Discovered · · Score: 1

    I understand what you're saying completely, but you seem to think there is some requirement for how God must work, and no Christian is going to agree with you on that.

    Just because God made both apes and Man with DNA doesn't mean Man MUST have a common ancestry with apes. It is the logical conclusion for a scientist, but if God wants to wink Man into being independently, he certainly is capable of doing so, and your argument doesn't change that.

    Both bridges and house foundations can be made with concrete, but that doesn't mean they are related, it means the builders used the same materials to accomplish similar functions because those are the best materials. That's the argument I would make, were I a creationist worried about common DNA.

  18. Re:ok, how do you prove/disprove an theory? on Prof Denied Funds Over Evolution Evidence · · Score: 1

    Both are currently viable theories. So get over it.

    No they aren't. Evolutionary theory makes predictions, and we can test those predictions. ID makes no predictions, so it is impossible to test.

    If you use the word "theory" to mean "guess", then of course you'd be right, but you'd also be changing the English language just to cover up for your idiocy.

  19. Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions on Missing Link Fossil Discovered · · Score: 1

    if man is not evolved from another animal then why do we share 88%-95% of our DNA with the great apes? If we're not related to any other creature there shouldn't be ANY similarity between us and other creatures.

    Why shouldn't there be any similarity? If God created us, and God created animals (through evolution or not), presumably there were some answers to problems that were simply "correct", and he'd use the same fundamental pieces of DNA to create both man and the beasts.

    Christians don't claim that having hair or lactating is what makes us special, it is the soul that makes us unique, and that is not contained in our DNA. 98% similarity in DNA simply has nothing whatsoever to do with whether God could or couldn't have created things separately. Of course, to a scientist it is pretty compelling evidence of common origin.

  20. Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions on Missing Link Fossil Discovered · · Score: 1

    Many Creationists will reply that evolution can certainly apply to the animal kingdom, but that Man is a divinely created being who is outside of evolution as a process, or at least did not evolve from any "lower" animal.

  21. Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions on Missing Link Fossil Discovered · · Score: 1

    And with all due respect, "evolution" is not used by many people in the way you use it.

    With all due respect, all evolutionary scientists and professional "evolutionists" use it in the proper sense. Those who use it differently do so out of ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation.

    As I said in the original message, both the general public AND the professional proponents of Creationism use the term in a manner other than the poster. There is no group with either professional/historical/religious/technical authority or sheer numbers claiming it means what the poster claims it means.

  22. Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions on Missing Link Fossil Discovered · · Score: 2, Informative

    With all due respect, Creationism is not used by many people in the way you use it.

    You are right, there is nothing mutually exclusive about religion and evolution, or divine creation and evolution. There are many who believe in theistic evolution and there is nothing contradictory about it -- that God set up the laws of evolution, or even that he guides the process.

    But Creationism is a word that, right or wrong, is used by both the general public and its most vocal proponents to mean a belief in a literal interpretation of the Biblical account of Genesis, and as such is incompatible with any evolutionary theory.

  23. Re:Give me a Break on Frustration With Oblivion Mod Costs on Xbox Live · · Score: 1

    Indeed, following their current pricing scheme any expansion packs to Oblivion will cost as much as a small car.

  24. Re:A travesty on Life or Death for Tivo · · Score: 1

    The jury does not make decisions based on law.

    Anyone who believes so has no idea what the purpose of the jury is or why it was implemented. The Magna Carta, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court of the United States all disagree with such an interpretation.

  25. Re:We call that "Forum Shopping" on Life or Death for Tivo · · Score: 1

    Jury Nullification has nothing to do with civil cases, only criminal ones.

    The Judge has not only the ability, but the legal responsibility, to overturn the jury if the legal burden of proof one way or the other has not been met. This works both ways in a civil trial, but the judge has no ability to overturn a not guilty verdict in a criminal trial.