I think to a certain degree software should be patentable. If you go out and develop new, innovative, and suddenly popular software - you should have a time when you don't have to worry about being deluged with copycats. That being said, a more intelligent idea might be to have time limits with variance per the item being copyrighted.
Notice what you just said there? "... certain software should be patentable... variance per the item being copyrighted." That is precisely the problem.
Patents and Copyrights are NOT the same thing! One is for an invention. One is for a creative work. They strike a different balance between protection and allowing copycats for very specific, good reasons. The confusing of the two is precisely why we have such a problem in the copyright world right now; the PTB have convinced people that copyright should be treated with the same exclusivity as patents, whichis nonsense.
Please don't bow to the pressure from the media and confuse the two. It only hurts you, me, and us.
I don't play many Blizzard games... someone care to tell me what this means?
This is the equivalent of Hawkins/Dubinsky/Collings leaving Palm to found Handspring in 1998. Or Alan Cox saying he's bored with Red Hat and going to do something else. (Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.)
I'm wondering what is happening with Chris Metzin. Wasn't he a mover and shaker in the Warcraft/Starcraft arena? (All the artwork is credited to him in the manuals, and didn't he help with the story line?)
So if virus writers and spammers are the same folks (or even just partners), that makes life so much easier. Only one group of people to have publically drawn and quartered. Saves time and money (and cleanup costs).
"The IBM infidels are not in Utah! And if they are, we are driving them back, and they are falling before us! We cannot be defeated by the infidel Penguinistas! The people of Unix will never fall to the Linux infidels!"
*glances over shoulder, sees 500 IBM lawyers licking their lips and advancing, carrying briefcases, with black crows taking off before them.*
"As I was saying, the IBM infidels are not here, and if they are, we are driving them back, and they are falling before us!"
At the rate we're going, Ford won't be allowed to take apart Chevys to see how they work... McDonald's employees will be jailed when they eat at Burger King... and software engineers who look at competitor's interfaces will be blinded with hot irons.
OK, who the heck modded this Funny? There's nothing funny about the world that we're building for ourselves, where the very act of thought becomes illegal because it's based on some other thought. I want a +1 Scary, or +1 Orwellian-But-True. That would be more accurate than +1 Funny.
If you're taking the time to write a comment on this story, DON'T. Instead, take that same amount of time to write a one page, reasoned, intelligent letter to your Senators (you have two, you know that?) telling them that you disapprove of this bill, telling them WHY (privacy violation, overextension of copyright, and so forth are good places to start), and encouraging them to work against it. Not tomorrow morning, RIGHT NOW. Get away from that Submit button and go write a letter to someone who could actually do something. Then send it snail mail to their LOCAL office (not DC office), or fax it. (Not email. Many offices don't pay attention to email, although some do.)
I don't want to see any replies to this post. Get away from Slashdot and do something other than whine, or you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
Are you still here? Stop reading and start acting!
Why are you surprised? When the term "Hollywood liberal" refers to members and associates of the MPAA and RIAA, and the "D" before many congressmen's names refers to "Disney", I don't particularly perceive the Democrat party as one championing my rights to listen to the music I have purchased.
And I don't particularly perceive the Republican party as one championing my rights to a fair trial before being jailed, my right to not have my citizenship stripped from me without cause, or investigating corporate misconduct.
This isn't a partisan issue. Both parties are corrupt almost to the core. It's a matter of finding the few good needles in both haystacks and rallying around them, in the hopes that they'll turn both of their parties around and actually do something decent for a change. (A pipe dream, perhaps, but it's that or suicide, and I rather like having me around.)
Computer Lab?
on
ClusterKnoppix
·
· Score: 4, Informative
From the web site:
* "openMosix terminal server" - uses PXE, DHCP and tftp to boot linux clients via the network.
No CDrom drive/harddisk/floppy needed for the clients
* openMosix autodiscovery - new nodes automatically join the cluster (no configuration needed)
* Clustermanagement tools - openMosix userland/openMosixview
* Every node has rootaccess to every other node via ssh/RSAkeys
* MFS/dfsa support
* Every node can run full blown X (PC-room/demo setup) or console only (more memory available)
Aside from the "every node has root access" bit, am I way out in left field thinking that this would make a good computer lab system? Just start up the clients and they pull from the Knoppix central server and you're done. No need to have floppies, or even to bother locking down a system. The student does something screwy to the PC, hit reset and you're back to fresh configuration.
This goes beyond having the fox guard the henhouse. This is giving the fox a fork, knife, and napkin and saying "bon appatite".
If you support George W. Bush, you're supporting corporate totalitarianism the world over. Sorry, I normally don't hold voters personally responsible for the people they vote for, but in the past 3 years I've come to the conclusion that I cannot in good conscience NOT condemn anyone who supports the current fascist regime in the US, either here in the US or abroad.
I'd even back Ralph Nader of George W. Bush, and I hate Nader with a passion.
A LOT of fan-based filters use a plywood backing to support the fan. The problem is that often plywood is made using a glue that contains, get this, formaldahyde. Guess what is a major alergen for a lot of people? That's right, formaldahyde, which these filters blow into the air as quickly as their fans can handle. (Source: My allergist who has been in the business for about 40 years.)
I once got a HEPA filter at home that apparently had a plywood backing. I'm allergic to about a dozen airborn allergen, ranging from dust to pets to trees. I could only sort of breathe before I got the filter. With the filter on, I was in constant misery. If I turned it off, 12 hours later I could breathe again. No kidding. Avoid any air filter that uses plywood in its construction.
I have 2 of the Ionic Breeze air filters now myself, one for the living room / computer room and one for my bedroom. I don't know what Consumer Reports said about them, but they work fine for me. I clean them about once a week, which involves wiping them down with a wet paper towel and getting globs of black ugly stuff coming off of it; black ugly stuff that I would be breathing otherwise. My nose seems to notice the difference.:-) I've not tried the cheaper knockoffs like Radio Shack's stuff, but I've heard from other patients that those work fine too.
Honestly, your best bet is to ask your doctor for a referral to a good allergist, and ask them what they recommend. Ask 2 or 3, in fact. Given the number of people who are allergic to dust, and that cat hair and dust are the same as far as your computer's concerned, they'll probably give you some really good answers.
One other thing: Make sure your computer room is a smoke free area. The tar in cigarette smoke is even more lethal to a computer than it is to you, and that's saying a great deal.
My work address is my home address, too. Does that mean I can sue him for sending me spam on safety grounds?
If you run an extortion business, expect to have people with guns hanging around. Deal. If you run a drug dealing business, expect to have crazy drug addicts knocking on your door. Deal. If you fence stolen goods, expect to have theives around you often. Deal.
If you are going to send spam, don't complain when you get it back. Deal. Sorry, I've got no sympathy.
I have to say, um, wow.:-) How exactly did you write said XSLT scripts, and what tools did you use to generate XML representations of the MySQL database? And most of all is it open source?:-)
The above qualifies as "neato cool reason why XML does not suck in my book.
I don't know why this went through the theaters so quickly, but it was an excellent film. Yes, it's yet another old radioshow/comic book adapted for the big screen, but those have a tendency to be rather well done.:-) (See also: Spiderman, Batman (the first one), Superman, X-Men, etc.) Highly recommended rental.
Actually, the EFF says [eff.org] that, post 9/11, email is better than snail mail for this sort of thing. The delay resulting from security checking makes snail mail, in their opinion, a less useful option than email and faxes for activism.
Snailmail works IF it's sent to the local office. Sending mail to a DC office will take about 6 months to get through the anthrax checks, but I've sent stuff to a local campaign office and not only has it arrived quickly but I've gotten responses back within 2 weeks.
(The above statement is according to my own congressentitty, with whom I have spoken on that same issue.)
Good: Knoppix CDs that boot themselves and then let you write to a small section of the CD, so that you can keep a permanent record of the files you write in the computer lab.
Bad (and the likely goal): CDRs that have DRM features written at the beginning of the disk to keep you from writing "untrusted" content to the rest of it. Watch these replace normal CDRs and hurt the CD remixing industry. (While the RIAA collects a higher piracy tax on them anyway.)
That's really multiple questions rolled into one there.:-)
1) Blackboxes. You have to code in a black box. Well, either that or write the entire system, from the OS through the UI, in binary. I'd advise against it.:-) The question isn't *should* you think in black boxes, it's at what level do you modularize. THAT'S the tricky part.
In general I'd say that everyone on a project should have a cursory understanding of every other part of the project. The UI guy doesn't have to know SQL, but he should know the basics of an RDBMS, and know that, say, user login information and their preferences are stored in separate areas. And vice-versa, the DB guy shouldn't have to worry about details like what color the widgets are going to be, but he should know that the user is expected to access both their login information and preferences at the same time 90% of the time, because that means combining the two will not only speed up access (fewer joins) but will result in less processing to format correctly, which means fewer opportunities for bugs. (Just as an example.) Making sure that everyone has that cursory understanding of the whole system, and that things are "chunked" properly, is the job of a good manager.
2) Theory vs. Practice. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.:-) Experience will only get you so far. At some point, you HAVE to know the Why in addition to the How. And of course, the Why is useless without the How. It took me a while to wrap my head around C memory handling, but once I did (and it was one of those lightbulb moments), my code got a LOT better and a LOT cleaner. I was tutoring someone in C++ at one point, and he simply couldn't grasp arrays and iterative loops until I explained it to him in terms of memory offsets. (Another lightbulb moment.) Of course, neither of us could have had any idea what the theory actually meant unless we'd actually written something so that we could apply the theory in our minds, and then go back and REapply it to the problem.
That's a problem of the educational system. They don't integrate theory and practice enough. They do all theory, and then you get out into the real world and do all practice, and the two never meet. If they did, we'd have better programmers and better programs.
Further up in this thread, I saw two rather interesting posts. One said basically "stop being about characters and give me a setting and history and culture!" The other said "Screw this, give me characters that keep changing and getting challenged!" If the fan base can't make up its mind, how is Berman going to?:-)
That said, Nemesis was a HORRID movie. I rank it as the worst Trek movie, and yet another reason that Berman needs to be as far from Trek as possible.
For my part, Trek is not about characters, or setting. It's about questions of morality. It's not an accurate representation of the future. Here is Trek in a nutshell, as Roddenberry saw it: Humanity has finally achieved nirvana, a perfect future in which we HAVE solved all our problems. Now use that as a MIRROR to examine other cultures and in them, we see ourselves. In so doing, we can ask the questions, we can stop and think, we can challenge our own morality and consider questions of the universe.
There WAS character development in TNG. But it was very very subtle. Compare any of the characters in season 1 to what they were like in season 7. They changed a great deal, but it was so subtle that you didn't really see it in any given episode, which is far more realistic. (Data babbling in Season 1 to Data as almost human in Season 7, Riker going from the young upstart to the "seasoned" officer, Picard in anything, etc. Of course, it helps that TNG had a SUPERB cast from the get-go.) Compare that to DS9 or (ugh) Voyager where they tried to make big moving character changes the central focus, and it failed more often than not. There were exceptions, like "Duet" (DS9), but for the most part it just didn't work.
I'm in a group that every month gets together to watch an episode or two of Trek and then use that as a springboard for social/moral/ethical/political/religious discussion and debate. You can't do that with any other show. It's just not there. And you an only rarely do that with DS9 or Voyager (and it usually involves the holo-doc, Voyager's only good actor). Roddenberry knew how to make people think. Berman doesn't. Berman is trying to be Babylon 5, which is a completely different branch of Sci-Fi. (As is Star Wars. They're all three different areas that can't be directly compared.)
Berman couldn't even keep from destroying the best villan ever created; the Borg. The original Borg were scary, because that is where we are headed! Technology permiates our lives more and more, we wear more and more of it on our bodies, we're starting to put it inside our bodies..... the Borg IS our future. To see that end result coming back on us is SCARY! Berman turned them into the slime zombies from Planet X. (The queen was the beginning of the end for the Borg, utterly rediculous idea.)
Star Trek is not about realism. It's about thinking. It's about morality. It's about hope. It's about looking at another and in the process seeing something of yourself. It's about growing. It's about learning. Star Trek is a thinking man's show.
No, giving the copyright industry what they want for even a one year copyright term is not acceptable. DRM is itself immoral, for any length of time. If I buy a DVD that is encrypted (pretend for a moment that there's no DeCSS), and the copyright expires a year later.... I still have to get a decryption system from the content provider. That means I'm still at Disney's beck and call. That still means that historians viewing this period of history will not be able to view any of our encrypted art.
Saying that what's inside the box is free and public does not work when the box is locked and the key costs $1000. That is not free (in either meaning of the word).
Firstly, the administrative costs of Internet Sales Taxes would eat up any profits involved, unless it were (a) strictly Federal or (b) so staggerinly high that it would wipe-out the online sales market.
Secondly, sales tax is a horrible way to raise money anyway. Of the three forms of taxation (income, property, sales aka "outgo"), it is the most regressive (meaning impacts the middle class more than the upper class and the lower class more than the middle class). A sales tax discourages purchasing. Sales tax HURTS the economy more than any other form of taxation.
If the states wanted to raise taxes to get more money, they should be looking at the income tax, specifically at the upper-end. Income tax may reduce spending (since people have less to spend), but unlike sales tax it does not also discourage spending as well. If taxation is the only answer, then at least tax the right thing! Sales tax only hurts the economy more.
"But my income tax is too high already!" Only because the current federal income tax system (state income tax is typically around 2-3% compared to the up to 33% federal) is effectively regressive. If we didn't give upper-class income brackets all sorts of effective loopholes to reduce their income (eg, Congress just declared the capital gains tax to be zero, eliminating BILLIONS of dollars of federal income, and returning money to the people in the country who are in the least need of additional cash), because, and this is the important part, different income levels tend to get their income from different sources, and those sources are taxed differently.
You want to raise more money through taxes? Fine. All income from any source whatsoever is treated the same. Wage, stock options, capital gains, everything. Then impose a staggered, progressive income tax on it, without any loopholes or exemptions or "business deductables". Then drop the percentage rate from where it is now by, say, 25%.
Then eliminate all sales tax, Internet or otherwise.
Not only will 90% of the population have MORE money to spend (stimulating the economy), it will reduce the cost of operations for the IRS and for state tax agencies (reducing the budget), and still give the government (at various levels) more money to play with to fund social programs or invasions of other countries (whichever they're in the mood for this week).
Internet Sales Tax? No. Let's not have an Internet sales tax. Let's not have a sales tax at all. There are far less damaging ways for governments to raise money, and they involve smaller (and cheaper) armies of accountants to do it.
Does anyone know what software they're using to enforce this? It could be Palm's, but it could be another as well. Either way, I'm certain it will lock out GNU/Linux users. And, of course, trying to find a way to read such books on Linux will be a felony. (Hey, Dmitry, up for another challenge?:-)
I read ebooks. I buy ebooks. I pay for them. I only buy unencrypted, public format ebooks. Anyone else can bite me.
If you find an artist who is with a label that is not with the RIAA that you like, buy their CDs. Then, send a simple letter to them (or more likely, the PR department of the label) saying "I just bought your album, and I want to thank you for not being a member of the RIAA, which is doing this and that. I am happy to support you."
Only takes a moment, and if nothing else makes someone feel good for not being part of the conglomerate.
Slashdot Mirror
Star Trek fans don't flesh out throwaway comments into things of vast significance in the Star Trek universe.
Dude, you've clearly not seen what I do for fun.
Why Warp Works, (or doesn't work).
Star Trek Computers
Born and raised a Trekie.
I think to a certain degree software should be patentable. If you go out and develop new, innovative, and suddenly popular software - you should have a time when you don't have to worry about being deluged with copycats. That being said, a more intelligent idea might be to have time limits with variance per the item being copyrighted.
Notice what you just said there? "... certain software should be patentable... variance per the item being copyrighted." That is precisely the problem.
Patents and Copyrights are NOT the same thing! One is for an invention. One is for a creative work. They strike a different balance between protection and allowing copycats for very specific, good reasons. The confusing of the two is precisely why we have such a problem in the copyright world right now; the PTB have convinced people that copyright should be treated with the same exclusivity as patents, whichis nonsense.
Please don't bow to the pressure from the media and confuse the two. It only hurts you, me, and us.
I don't play many Blizzard games... someone care to tell me what this means?
This is the equivalent of Hawkins/Dubinsky/Collings leaving Palm to found Handspring in 1998. Or Alan Cox saying he's bored with Red Hat and going to do something else. (Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.)
I'm wondering what is happening with Chris Metzin. Wasn't he a mover and shaker in the Warcraft/Starcraft arena? (All the artwork is credited to him in the manuals, and didn't he help with the story line?)
So if virus writers and spammers are the same folks (or even just partners), that makes life so much easier. Only one group of people to have publically drawn and quartered. Saves time and money (and cleanup costs).
"The IBM infidels are not in Utah! And if they are, we are driving them back, and they are falling before us! We cannot be defeated by the infidel Penguinistas! The people of Unix will never fall to the Linux infidels!"
*glances over shoulder, sees 500 IBM lawyers licking their lips and advancing, carrying briefcases, with black crows taking off before them.*
"As I was saying, the IBM infidels are not here, and if they are, we are driving them back, and they are falling before us!"
At the rate we're going, Ford won't be allowed to take apart Chevys to see how they work... McDonald's employees will be jailed when they eat at Burger King... and software engineers who look at competitor's interfaces will be blinded with hot irons.
OK, who the heck modded this Funny? There's nothing funny about the world that we're building for ourselves, where the very act of thought becomes illegal because it's based on some other thought. I want a +1 Scary, or +1 Orwellian-But-True. That would be more accurate than +1 Funny.
I don't want to see any replies to this post. Get away from Slashdot and do something other than whine, or you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
Are you still here? Stop reading and start acting!
Why are you surprised? When the term "Hollywood liberal" refers to members and associates of the MPAA and RIAA, and the "D" before many congressmen's names refers to "Disney", I don't particularly perceive the Democrat party as one championing my rights to listen to the music I have purchased.
And I don't particularly perceive the Republican party as one championing my rights to a fair trial before being jailed, my right to not have my citizenship stripped from me without cause, or investigating corporate misconduct.
This isn't a partisan issue. Both parties are corrupt almost to the core. It's a matter of finding the few good needles in both haystacks and rallying around them, in the hopes that they'll turn both of their parties around and actually do something decent for a change. (A pipe dream, perhaps, but it's that or suicide, and I rather like having me around.)
From the web site:
* "openMosix terminal server" - uses PXE, DHCP and tftp to boot linux clients via the network.
No CDrom drive/harddisk/floppy needed for the clients
* openMosix autodiscovery - new nodes automatically join the cluster (no configuration needed)
* Clustermanagement tools - openMosix userland/openMosixview
* Every node has rootaccess to every other node via ssh/RSAkeys
* MFS/dfsa support
* Every node can run full blown X (PC-room/demo setup) or console only (more memory available)
Aside from the "every node has root access" bit, am I way out in left field thinking that this would make a good computer lab system? Just start up the clients and they pull from the Knoppix central server and you're done. No need to have floppies, or even to bother locking down a system. The student does something screwy to the PC, hit reset and you're back to fresh configuration.
Or am I missing something completely here?
How exactly are Slashdot users supposed to crash their systems by viewing something with IE? Who the hell on Slashdot uses IE? Posers!
This goes beyond having the fox guard the henhouse. This is giving the fox a fork, knife, and napkin and saying "bon appatite".
If you support George W. Bush, you're supporting corporate totalitarianism the world over. Sorry, I normally don't hold voters personally responsible for the people they vote for, but in the past 3 years I've come to the conclusion that I cannot in good conscience NOT condemn anyone who supports the current fascist regime in the US, either here in the US or abroad.
I'd even back Ralph Nader of George W. Bush, and I hate Nader with a passion.
Eeek! No no no, no plywood!
:-) I've not tried the cheaper knockoffs like Radio Shack's stuff, but I've heard from other patients that those work fine too.
A LOT of fan-based filters use a plywood backing to support the fan. The problem is that often plywood is made using a glue that contains, get this, formaldahyde. Guess what is a major alergen for a lot of people? That's right, formaldahyde, which these filters blow into the air as quickly as their fans can handle. (Source: My allergist who has been in the business for about 40 years.)
I once got a HEPA filter at home that apparently had a plywood backing. I'm allergic to about a dozen airborn allergen, ranging from dust to pets to trees. I could only sort of breathe before I got the filter. With the filter on, I was in constant misery. If I turned it off, 12 hours later I could breathe again. No kidding. Avoid any air filter that uses plywood in its construction.
I have 2 of the Ionic Breeze air filters now myself, one for the living room / computer room and one for my bedroom. I don't know what Consumer Reports said about them, but they work fine for me. I clean them about once a week, which involves wiping them down with a wet paper towel and getting globs of black ugly stuff coming off of it; black ugly stuff that I would be breathing otherwise. My nose seems to notice the difference.
Honestly, your best bet is to ask your doctor for a referral to a good allergist, and ask them what they recommend. Ask 2 or 3, in fact. Given the number of people who are allergic to dust, and that cat hair and dust are the same as far as your computer's concerned, they'll probably give you some really good answers.
One other thing: Make sure your computer room is a smoke free area. The tar in cigarette smoke is even more lethal to a computer than it is to you, and that's saying a great deal.
It took all of us (literally) years to compile and create all of these gnomes.
It took you years to compile GNOME? Dude, you need a faster computer.
My work address is my home address, too. Does that mean I can sue him for sending me spam on safety grounds?
If you run an extortion business, expect to have people with guns hanging around. Deal. If you run a drug dealing business, expect to have crazy drug addicts knocking on your door. Deal. If you fence stolen goods, expect to have theives around you often. Deal.
If you are going to send spam, don't complain when you get it back. Deal. Sorry, I've got no sympathy.
I have to say, um, wow. :-) How exactly did you write said XSLT scripts, and what tools did you use to generate XML representations of the MySQL database? And most of all is it open source? :-)
The above qualifies as "neato cool reason why XML does not suck in my book.
I don't know why this went through the theaters so quickly, but it was an excellent film. Yes, it's yet another old radioshow/comic book adapted for the big screen, but those have a tendency to be rather well done. :-) (See also: Spiderman, Batman (the first one), Superman, X-Men, etc.) Highly recommended rental.
Actually, the EFF says [eff.org] that, post 9/11, email is better than snail mail for this sort of thing. The delay resulting from security checking makes snail mail, in their opinion, a less useful option than email and faxes for activism.
Snailmail works IF it's sent to the local office. Sending mail to a DC office will take about 6 months to get through the anthrax checks, but I've sent stuff to a local campaign office and not only has it arrived quickly but I've gotten responses back within 2 weeks.
(The above statement is according to my own congressentitty, with whom I have spoken on that same issue.)
Just how am I supposed to debug this thing when it crashes (into a windshield)?
Good: Knoppix CDs that boot themselves and then let you write to a small section of the CD, so that you can keep a permanent record of the files you write in the computer lab.
Bad (and the likely goal): CDRs that have DRM features written at the beginning of the disk to keep you from writing "untrusted" content to the rest of it. Watch these replace normal CDRs and hurt the CD remixing industry. (While the RIAA collects a higher piracy tax on them anyway.)
That's really multiple questions rolled into one there. :-)
:-) The question isn't *should* you think in black boxes, it's at what level do you modularize. THAT'S the tricky part.
:-) Experience will only get you so far. At some point, you HAVE to know the Why in addition to the How. And of course, the Why is useless without the How. It took me a while to wrap my head around C memory handling, but once I did (and it was one of those lightbulb moments), my code got a LOT better and a LOT cleaner. I was tutoring someone in C++ at one point, and he simply couldn't grasp arrays and iterative loops until I explained it to him in terms of memory offsets. (Another lightbulb moment.) Of course, neither of us could have had any idea what the theory actually meant unless we'd actually written something so that we could apply the theory in our minds, and then go back and REapply it to the problem.
1) Blackboxes. You have to code in a black box. Well, either that or write the entire system, from the OS through the UI, in binary. I'd advise against it.
In general I'd say that everyone on a project should have a cursory understanding of every other part of the project. The UI guy doesn't have to know SQL, but he should know the basics of an RDBMS, and know that, say, user login information and their preferences are stored in separate areas. And vice-versa, the DB guy shouldn't have to worry about details like what color the widgets are going to be, but he should know that the user is expected to access both their login information and preferences at the same time 90% of the time, because that means combining the two will not only speed up access (fewer joins) but will result in less processing to format correctly, which means fewer opportunities for bugs. (Just as an example.) Making sure that everyone has that cursory understanding of the whole system, and that things are "chunked" properly, is the job of a good manager.
2) Theory vs. Practice. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
That's a problem of the educational system. They don't integrate theory and practice enough. They do all theory, and then you get out into the real world and do all practice, and the two never meet. If they did, we'd have better programmers and better programs.
Further up in this thread, I saw two rather interesting posts. One said basically "stop being about characters and give me a setting and history and culture!" The other said "Screw this, give me characters that keep changing and getting challenged!" If the fan base can't make up its mind, how is Berman going to? :-)
That said, Nemesis was a HORRID movie. I rank it as the worst Trek movie, and yet another reason that Berman needs to be as far from Trek as possible.
For my part, Trek is not about characters, or setting. It's about questions of morality. It's not an accurate representation of the future. Here is Trek in a nutshell, as Roddenberry saw it: Humanity has finally achieved nirvana, a perfect future in which we HAVE solved all our problems. Now use that as a MIRROR to examine other cultures and in them, we see ourselves. In so doing, we can ask the questions, we can stop and think, we can challenge our own morality and consider questions of the universe.
There WAS character development in TNG. But it was very very subtle. Compare any of the characters in season 1 to what they were like in season 7. They changed a great deal, but it was so subtle that you didn't really see it in any given episode, which is far more realistic. (Data babbling in Season 1 to Data as almost human in Season 7, Riker going from the young upstart to the "seasoned" officer, Picard in anything, etc. Of course, it helps that TNG had a SUPERB cast from the get-go.) Compare that to DS9 or (ugh) Voyager where they tried to make big moving character changes the central focus, and it failed more often than not. There were exceptions, like "Duet" (DS9), but for the most part it just didn't work.
I'm in a group that every month gets together to watch an episode or two of Trek and then use that as a springboard for social/moral/ethical/political/religious discussion and debate. You can't do that with any other show. It's just not there. And you an only rarely do that with DS9 or Voyager (and it usually involves the holo-doc, Voyager's only good actor). Roddenberry knew how to make people think. Berman doesn't. Berman is trying to be Babylon 5, which is a completely different branch of Sci-Fi. (As is Star Wars. They're all three different areas that can't be directly compared.)
Berman couldn't even keep from destroying the best villan ever created; the Borg. The original Borg were scary, because that is where we are headed! Technology permiates our lives more and more, we wear more and more of it on our bodies, we're starting to put it inside our bodies..... the Borg IS our future. To see that end result coming back on us is SCARY! Berman turned them into the slime zombies from Planet X. (The queen was the beginning of the end for the Borg, utterly rediculous idea.)
Star Trek is not about realism. It's about thinking. It's about morality. It's about hope. It's about looking at another and in the process seeing something of yourself. It's about growing. It's about learning. Star Trek is a thinking man's show.
It's too bad that Berman isn't a thinking man.
No, giving the copyright industry what they want for even a one year copyright term is not acceptable. DRM is itself immoral, for any length of time. If I buy a DVD that is encrypted (pretend for a moment that there's no DeCSS), and the copyright expires a year later.... I still have to get a decryption system from the content provider. That means I'm still at Disney's beck and call. That still means that historians viewing this period of history will not be able to view any of our encrypted art.
Saying that what's inside the box is free and public does not work when the box is locked and the key costs $1000. That is not free (in either meaning of the word).
Firstly, the administrative costs of Internet Sales Taxes would eat up any profits involved, unless it were (a) strictly Federal or (b) so staggerinly high that it would wipe-out the online sales market.
Secondly, sales tax is a horrible way to raise money anyway. Of the three forms of taxation (income, property, sales aka "outgo"), it is the most regressive (meaning impacts the middle class more than the upper class and the lower class more than the middle class). A sales tax discourages purchasing. Sales tax HURTS the economy more than any other form of taxation.
If the states wanted to raise taxes to get more money, they should be looking at the income tax, specifically at the upper-end. Income tax may reduce spending (since people have less to spend), but unlike sales tax it does not also discourage spending as well. If taxation is the only answer, then at least tax the right thing! Sales tax only hurts the economy more.
"But my income tax is too high already!" Only because the current federal income tax system (state income tax is typically around 2-3% compared to the up to 33% federal) is effectively regressive. If we didn't give upper-class income brackets all sorts of effective loopholes to reduce their income (eg, Congress just declared the capital gains tax to be zero, eliminating BILLIONS of dollars of federal income, and returning money to the people in the country who are in the least need of additional cash), because, and this is the important part, different income levels tend to get their income from different sources, and those sources are taxed differently.
You want to raise more money through taxes? Fine. All income from any source whatsoever is treated the same. Wage, stock options, capital gains, everything. Then impose a staggered, progressive income tax on it, without any loopholes or exemptions or "business deductables". Then drop the percentage rate from where it is now by, say, 25%.
Then eliminate all sales tax, Internet or otherwise.
Not only will 90% of the population have MORE money to spend (stimulating the economy), it will reduce the cost of operations for the IRS and for state tax agencies (reducing the budget), and still give the government (at various levels) more money to play with to fund social programs or invasions of other countries (whichever they're in the mood for this week).
Internet Sales Tax? No. Let's not have an Internet sales tax. Let's not have a sales tax at all. There are far less damaging ways for governments to raise money, and they involve smaller (and cheaper) armies of accountants to do it.
I read ebooks. I buy ebooks. I pay for them. I only buy unencrypted, public format ebooks. Anyone else can bite me.
If you find an artist who is with a label that is not with the RIAA that you like, buy their CDs. Then, send a simple letter to them (or more likely, the PR department of the label) saying "I just bought your album, and I want to thank you for not being a member of the RIAA, which is doing this and that. I am happy to support you."
Only takes a moment, and if nothing else makes someone feel good for not being part of the conglomerate.