As an advertiser, I'd much prefer you--a person who believes he makes informed, intelligent, deliberate decisions for himself--to have an emotional association between my product and something good. And have no conscious awareness of how that association got there.
And that way, there's essentially no objective, quantifiable way to measure why you bought what you bought, so I can claim success in my campaign without having to ever actually justify anything! After all, each person who buys Jif does so because of my ad, of course, and those who don't wouldn't have anyway...
I can see why you'd want clients to focus on the inttangible.:)
So, does intuit track your usage? probably. That is exactly what we used it for.
Um, that makes it spyware -- and that makes your company a dealer in spyware. It's particularly irksome because (a) they started running a service (which can costs cycles, for example) and (b) they didn't tell anyone. That makes it wrong... The company should be up-front about whatever resources they intend to consume. I know that I'm less likely to buy something that installs a spyware module, even if it's "only" to track legitimate usage.
This is how it works. I'm sorry, you do not count as much as an entity representing thousands of people.
Oh, BS. There's no reason to believe that Microsoft really "represents" the interests of the people it employs. It represents the interest of the top management, or -- if you are really magnaminous -- of the shareholders. Each of those Microsoft employees and investors has exactly the same right to vote (and to donate time, energy, or money) as I do -- but they have no greater right just because they work for Microsoft or own its stock.
It'd be nice if we'd all remember that corporations are not people -- not even the oft-misquoted Taney decisions say that they are -- and they have fewer rights than the individual. Or at least, they do under the theory of government to which we allegedly subscribe.
Instead, I see that as providing a valuable public service, for example to enable those working for legitimate political change to communicate among themselves without fear of reprisal.
Don't you see? Organizing for "political change" means that you oppose the guys in power... which means, ipso facto, that you are are a terrorist.
Certainly that's how the minions of Bush the Younger seem to feel.
Re:Crichton isn't really an SF author
on
Prey
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Blockquoth the poster:
if you didn't read Jurassic Park (sp?) and come away with an appreciation for how arrogent engineers (and particularly programmers) can be
Funny, I read Jurassic Park and came away an appreciation of how lame an author can be when he picks up a buzzword (chaos, in JP and nanotech here) but doesn't really have a clue what it means.
BTW, I mean lame in many senses: uncool and "marked by stiffness" and "lacking needful or desirable substance".
For Pete's sake, WTF does the Soviet Union have to do with Amnesty International.
OK, we'll leave aside that the two are connected, at least, by the fact that the former kept showing up on the latter's lists. The point that I was making -- which, I have to say, I don't think was unreasonably subtle -- is that you can't claim that Amnesty International is wonderful based solely on what they write in their mission statement. As an example as to why, I offered the USSR and its constitution.
Look, Amnesty International might or might not be genuinely interested in promoting human rights, or in promoting their own egos, or whatever. I happen to think they are -- usually -- the good guys. But in any event, you can't make the determination based solely on their mission statement. For Pete's sake, the constitution of the Soviet Union was one of the most expansive and forward-thinking documents of human history. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a repressive nasty government.
It's good that they say all the right things, but it isn't enough.
Fortunately, we do have big-label artists worth hearing. Eminem is always perceptive and interesting, and Tori Amos is dependably good. Most big music stores let you listen to CDs before you buy, so just head over to the New Releases and poke around until you find that happy medium: a big-name, mainstream musician that you like.
Huh. I had no idea that tps12 was an alias for Hilary Rosen...
But Poindexter, national security adviser in the Reagan administration,
later convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra diversion of monies and coverup. Poindexter's conviction was overturned on appeal -- but don't let that fool you into thinking the appeal court cleared him. Instead of dismissing the conviction, they ordered a new trial. Luckily for the Admiral, President Bush the First pardoned him, obviating the retrial.
This is the sort of shady character we want implementing any sort of information system?? Have we decided that the only way to beat felons, thugs, and barbarians is to hire some of our own?
A format doesn't begin mass market acceptance until the fanatic audiophiles buy into it at the beginning
No. A format doesn't begin mass market acceptance until the big record labels decide to stop accepting buybacks of the old medium. That's how CDs became "mass market": record stores stopped shelving vinyl because the record companies stopped buying back unsold copies. At that point, every vinyl album that didn't move became undigetible inventory, and it didn't make sense to buy many or even any.
So PhysicsGenius made a mistake on a publication date, does that in anyway invalidate his thesis about this book?
Um, it certainly invalidates this part of his thesis:
Plus it seems like a lot of the ambience was stolen from Star Wars (Tatooine anyone?).
If the refutation of a proferred example doesn't weaken a thesis, then of course, a valid example itself cannot strengthen it... and that's just silly: The point of an argument is not the stating of an opinion, bald and without elaboration. It's the marshalling of fact and logic to support your point. Choice of a poor example -- one betraying a certain sloppiness in research -- most definitely does impugn the whole effort, and rightly so.
It's a show filmed in America, yet there are British cars all over the place.
This would insightful and informative, if only it were true... Both Scrapheap ChallengeandJunkyard Wars are filmed in the same junkyard, which happens to be located in England (near London, I think...) Oh, and for the other naysayers: It's a set but it's also a junkyard... it's part of a functioning and open junkyard, but they've walled off q section. And *sigh* yes, they do stock the yard a little.
Please explain to me, a non-physicist, how increasing power will do anything but make you fly faster in the same direction and at the same altitude you were already flying at.
Well, if you apply more forward thrust, you increase the speed differential of the air flowing over the airfoil... Bernoulli should say that this increases your lift and so you go up.
Does that make me a bank? Should I be federally regulated? Whats the difference if PayPal does it on a large scale?
Oh, that's just silly. The difference lies entirely in the scale. Or are you saying Chase Manhattan should be allowed to run just like you, if they stop calling themselves a bank? You are taking a small example between people who know each other and extrapolating way beyond belief to a situation wherein the whole process is institutionalized and commercialized.
become so entwined with a series of contracts so complex--incluing a contract with the reader
We are approaching this anyway, because of the lunacy of intellectual "property"... Except now, one has little option but to deal with the huge publishers and distributors. It's not entirely clear to me that less creative output -- but by those who actually really really care -- would necessarily be a bad trade.
"Reasons other than money" are, as far as the law concerns, still money. If you and I make a contract where I mow your yard, it doesn't matter if you agree to pay me or you just agree to go to church on sunday--it's still a contract.
Yes... but a lot of people devote a lot of time to open source projects without any contract between them. They do it to show off, or to drive forward a program they use themselves, or just from the goodness of their hearts. They neither derive nor demand compensation and they do not create in hope of reward.
I only offer this because I'm tired of hearing how, if there were no copyrights, no one would ever create anything. That's simply untrue: human creativity predated the copyright regime and will undoubtedly last past it, too. More significantly, people today continue to create without direct or even indirect payoff.
We can debate whether the copyright laws achieve their stated goals -- to promote science and the arts -- and we can debate whether they do so with maximum efficiency or whether some other system might do better. But it's clear that copyright, patent, etc. are not absolutely required -- despite what is so often argued.
Just so you know, any GUI that needs people to "get used to it" is bad design and doesn't take into consideration human factors and usability.
Are you saying that the design that is easy for beginners to learn is automatically well-suited to the needs of advanced users? I think this is simply not true -- certainly not in every instance. Sometimes programs are hard to use because they are complex and subtle -- because the task they perform is complex and subtle.
where ownership consequently resides until it is transferred elsewhere... communal ownership of private creation.
I think you've missed the point; I just can't tell if that's on purpose or not. The editorial's author was arguing that there is no such thing as intellectual "property" -- that ideas cannot be owned and so it is silly to argue where or when "ownership" resides. Intellectual output belongs to the public domain because assigning an owner is, at heart, contradictory.
As for "communal ownership of private creation": No one is going after your private creation. In fact, if someone did, copyright law wouldn't help you. Copyright law applies to things "published" -- made, in principle, available to a public, wide audience. (Admittedly, the Berne Convention has fuzzed this a bit.) As long as you keep your ideas to yourself, no one can "steal" them, because they're locked in your head.
But as soon as they are communicated, they are no longer "yours". They enter meme-space and become, in essence, independent of you. Copyright attempts to secure to you, for a limited time, the right to control use of the work, but it doesn't really restore any "ownership" because you don't really have any to begin with.
It is this insistence on treating intellectual output as "property" that leads to the increasingly draconian contortions through which we are dragged by the Content Cartel. But ideas are like the genie: Vast, powerful, mysterious -- and impossible to force back into the bottle.
No, people do not work long hard hours for free, for social recognition.
Some do, some times.
'The fact that they got there first' shows that they were spurred to work hard at developing the device, because of the rewards offered.
Or it shows they were lucky. Or underhanded. Or a host of other reasons they might be first. And of course copyrights and patents provide incentive -- that's the purpose. But it's a huge stretch to turn "let's offer incentives for people to create" into "the creation of an idea is in fact the creation of property".
You can have copyright and patent law and still not have the farce of intellectual "property". How do I know? Because the US had such a system for a good 170 years.
Copyrights (and patents, but not trademarks) exist so the creators of new ideas / written works CAN make money, and thus are encouraged to keep on making new things.
OK, that's true. If I invented something today, and couldn't have any assurance of recouping my investment of time and money that wen[sic] into making the invention, I would have little to no incentive to keep working on a project.
I would think the Open Source model stands as a direct contradiction of this assertion. Sometimes, at least, people offer creative contributions without seeking any chance of monetary reward. It simply isn't true that the only value is economic value -- sometimes things happen for reasons other than money.
When 'the public' thinks it has a right to the product of my effort, then they can try and pry it out of my mind.
When 'the inventor' thinks he has a right to have the full weight of the legal system back him in his attempt to maintain exclusive control over his idea, he can try and invent his own government. The argument is not whether you can "own" ideas, because the clear fact is that you cannot. An invention you dream up but do not make is useless. A book you write but do not publish is pointless. Once you've sold your device, or published your book, or performed your song, it's out there and nothing you can do can take it back.
Copyright is an attempt to secure an artificial monopoly to authors precisely because there is no natural monopoly. It uses the force of the courts to prevent others from using your work. Indeed, one could argue that it calls upon the State to intervene to provide business to you that the natural forces of the market would normally not provide. Hmmm, that sounds remarkably "collectivist" to me; or at least, communist.
Slashdot Mirror
And that way, there's essentially no objective, quantifiable way to measure why you bought what you bought, so I can claim success in my campaign without having to ever actually justify anything! After all, each person who buys Jif does so because of my ad, of course, and those who don't wouldn't have anyway...
I can see why you'd want clients to focus on the inttangible.
and
Um, that makes it spyware -- and that makes your company a dealer in spyware. It's particularly irksome because (a) they started running a service (which can costs cycles, for example) and (b) they didn't tell anyone. That makes it wrong... The company should be up-front about whatever resources they intend to consume. I know that I'm less likely to buy something that installs a spyware module, even if it's "only" to track legitimate usage.
Oh, BS. There's no reason to believe that Microsoft really "represents" the interests of the people it employs. It represents the interest of the top management, or -- if you are really magnaminous -- of the shareholders. Each of those Microsoft employees and investors has exactly the same right to vote (and to donate time, energy, or money) as I do -- but they have no greater right just because they work for Microsoft or own its stock.
It'd be nice if we'd all remember that corporations are not people -- not even the oft-misquoted Taney decisions say that they are -- and they have fewer rights than the individual. Or at least, they do under the theory of government to which we allegedly subscribe.
Don't you see? Organizing for "political change" means that you oppose the guys in power
Certainly that's how the minions of Bush the Younger seem to feel.
Funny, I read Jurassic Park and came away an appreciation of how lame an author can be when he picks up a buzzword (chaos, in JP and nanotech here) but doesn't really have a clue what it means.
BTW, I mean lame in many senses: uncool and "marked by stiffness" and "lacking needful or desirable substance".
OK, we'll leave aside that the two are connected, at least, by the fact that the former kept showing up on the latter's lists. The point that I was making -- which, I have to say, I don't think was unreasonably subtle -- is that you can't claim that Amnesty International is wonderful based solely on what they write in their mission statement. As an example as to why, I offered the USSR and its constitution.
It's good that they say all the right things, but it isn't enough.
Huh. I had no idea that tps12 was an alias for Hilary Rosen...
later convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra diversion of monies and coverup. Poindexter's conviction was overturned on appeal -- but don't let that fool you into thinking the appeal court cleared him. Instead of dismissing the conviction, they ordered a new trial. Luckily for the Admiral, President Bush the First pardoned him, obviating the retrial.
This is the sort of shady character we want implementing any sort of information system?? Have we decided that the only way to beat felons, thugs, and barbarians is to hire some of our own?
No. A format doesn't begin mass market acceptance until the big record labels decide to stop accepting buybacks of the old medium. That's how CDs became "mass market": record stores stopped shelving vinyl because the record companies stopped buying back unsold copies. At that point, every vinyl album that didn't move became undigetible inventory, and it didn't make sense to buy many or even any.
Um, it certainly invalidates this part of his thesis:
If the refutation of a proferred example doesn't weaken a thesis, then of course, a valid example itself cannot strengthen it... and that's just silly: The point of an argument is not the stating of an opinion, bald and without elaboration. It's the marshalling of fact and logic to support your point. Choice of a poor example -- one betraying a certain sloppiness in research -- most definitely does impugn the whole effort, and rightly so.
This would insightful and informative, if only it were true... Both Scrapheap Challenge and Junkyard Wars are filmed in the same junkyard, which happens to be located in England (near London, I think...) Oh, and for the other naysayers: It's a set but it's also a junkyard... it's part of a functioning and open junkyard, but they've walled off q section. And *sigh* yes, they do stock the yard a little.
Well, if you apply more forward thrust, you increase the speed differential of the air flowing over the airfoil... Bernoulli should say that this increases your lift and so you go up.
Oh, that's just silly. The difference lies entirely in the scale. Or are you saying Chase Manhattan should be allowed to run just like you, if they stop calling themselves a bank? You are taking a small example between people who know each other and extrapolating way beyond belief to a situation wherein the whole process is institutionalized and commercialized.
PayPal is much more a bank than a friend.
Wow. That point of view is just terrifying.
Maybe not novels -- but one of the textbooks I considered for my class comes with the equivalent of an end-user license agreement. Yippee.
I thought we both agreed that some people would continue to create and even publish even without direct compensation.
That's a matter of opinion, I guess.
We are approaching this anyway, because of the lunacy of intellectual "property"... Except now, one has little option but to deal with the huge publishers and distributors. It's not entirely clear to me that less creative output -- but by those who actually really really care -- would necessarily be a bad trade.
Yeah, and the EULA seems to indicate they can log your use of any programs, not just theirs...
Yes... but a lot of people devote a lot of time to open source projects without any contract between them. They do it to show off, or to drive forward a program they use themselves, or just from the goodness of their hearts. They neither derive nor demand compensation and they do not create in hope of reward.
I only offer this because I'm tired of hearing how, if there were no copyrights, no one would ever create anything. That's simply untrue: human creativity predated the copyright regime and will undoubtedly last past it, too. More significantly, people today continue to create without direct or even indirect payoff.
We can debate whether the copyright laws achieve their stated goals -- to promote science and the arts -- and we can debate whether they do so with maximum efficiency or whether some other system might do better. But it's clear that copyright, patent, etc. are not absolutely required -- despite what is so often argued.
Are you saying that the design that is easy for beginners to learn is automatically well-suited to the needs of advanced users? I think this is simply not true -- certainly not in every instance. Sometimes programs are hard to use because they are complex and subtle -- because the task they perform is complex and subtle.
I think you've missed the point; I just can't tell if that's on purpose or not. The editorial's author was arguing that there is no such thing as intellectual "property" -- that ideas cannot be owned and so it is silly to argue where or when "ownership" resides. Intellectual output belongs to the public domain because assigning an owner is, at heart, contradictory.
As for "communal ownership of private creation": No one is going after your private creation. In fact, if someone did, copyright law wouldn't help you. Copyright law applies to things "published" -- made, in principle, available to a public, wide audience. (Admittedly, the Berne Convention has fuzzed this a bit.) As long as you keep your ideas to yourself, no one can "steal" them, because they're locked in your head.
But as soon as they are communicated, they are no longer "yours". They enter meme-space and become, in essence, independent of you. Copyright attempts to secure to you, for a limited time, the right to control use of the work, but it doesn't really restore any "ownership" because you don't really have any to begin with.
It is this insistence on treating intellectual output as "property" that leads to the increasingly draconian contortions through which we are dragged by the Content Cartel. But ideas are like the genie: Vast, powerful, mysterious -- and impossible to force back into the bottle.
What about the Class that contains anything that is a Class?
Some do, some times.
Or it shows they were lucky. Or underhanded. Or a host of other reasons they might be first. And of course copyrights and patents provide incentive -- that's the purpose. But it's a huge stretch to turn "let's offer incentives for people to create" into "the creation of an idea is in fact the creation of property".
You can have copyright and patent law and still not have the farce of intellectual "property". How do I know? Because the US had such a system for a good 170 years.
I would think the Open Source model stands as a direct contradiction of this assertion. Sometimes, at least, people offer creative contributions without seeking any chance of monetary reward. It simply isn't true that the only value is economic value -- sometimes things happen for reasons other than money.
When 'the inventor' thinks he has a right to have the full weight of the legal system back him in his attempt to maintain exclusive control over his idea, he can try and invent his own government. The argument is not whether you can "own" ideas, because the clear fact is that you cannot. An invention you dream up but do not make is useless. A book you write but do not publish is pointless. Once you've sold your device, or published your book, or performed your song, it's out there and nothing you can do can take it back.
Copyright is an attempt to secure an artificial monopoly to authors precisely because there is no natural monopoly. It uses the force of the courts to prevent others from using your work. Indeed, one could argue that it calls upon the State to intervene to provide business to you that the natural forces of the market would normally not provide. Hmmm, that sounds remarkably "collectivist" to me; or at least, communist.