Even if we assume that obviously people should own the bit patterns they create, there's the question of whether they should own them for several generations years after they die.
A genetic algorithm does not require sexual reproduction anymore than ordinary evolution does. I think we can all agree that there are asexual organisms that evolve, yes?
Actually, that's a good point. What happens to copyright lengths if, in the next few decades, medical science achieves clinical immortality or something close to it? Bonno wanted forever minus a day; how about eternity plus 70 years?
My take on it is that the phrase 'limited time' means finite, quantifiable, and above all, known. If I copyright something tomorrow, nobody on this planet, not even myself, knows when that copyright will expire. It might be 70 years, or Congress could pass one retroactive extension act after another and it'll last for all time. When the answer to "How long will my copyright last" is "I don't know", then it ain't limited.
...for running a search engine. And then claiming damages in the amount of 0.25% of the GDP of the entire planet. In fact, I have yet to hear of them actually going after someone for downloading off of P2P. Instead they just lash out at anyone handy for inane reasons and make themselves look like idiots in the process. Remember, this guy who claims that they have the artists' interests at heart works for the same group that tried to get that 'work for hire' clause rammed through Congress a few years back.
I'd be shocked and amazed if the response rate were as high as 0.1%. I've received literally hundreds of thousands of spams and don't ever recall actually following up on more than one or two, and certainly didn't actually part with money with any of them. I'd wager that spammers get monetary returns on no more than a couple per million emails.
Not necessarily. You can never really know the effects of an advertising campaign. If a company spends $X on spam and their business suddenly increases by 10%, was the spam useless? Most people would think so, but a corporate advertising exec? They might think it's worth the money and irritation on the off chance that it's actually bringing in revenue.
Like I said, it is a vanishingly small percentage of bands that made their money entirely off of record sales, even before P2P. A CD can be copied, and easily. There simply is no way to stop it without destroying the usefulness of the systems they run on. Accept that. Files will be copied over computer networks as long as both computers, networks, and files exist. The only hope a band has is to make money from performances in which they sell the uncopyable experience, or to sell their stuff online, which beats P2P in guaranteed selection, quality, and transfer speed.
That's the whole purpose of the body of law. To put what's "right" and "wrong" into a book, so that it's written down somewhere.
Nonsense. The basis of criminal law is "Do no harm". The basis of civil law is "live up to your agreements". You get grey areas when the existence of harm or an existing agreement is debatable (abortion, assisted suicide, file sharing, etc), but those two are basically the underlying assumptions or axioms upon which laws should be made. Though it sounds callous, 'right and wrong' (which is more or less a gut feeling) coinciding with 'legal and illegal' (which you consult a lawyer about) is basically a side effect on those rare occasions when the system is working well.
Notice that this makes it fairly easy to pick out very bad laws. If no harm or contract violation can be seen but the law is still throwing people in prison, then you have yourself a bad law. Case in point, the recent SCotUS decision on state anti-sodomy laws. They decided that there was no social benefit to judging people (even married hetero couples in some states) before a court for doing the dirty in a different manner than they themselves would have chosen. The DMCA assumes that any and all reverse-engineering will lead to a contract violation, i.e., obtaining a work without paying for it, which is obviously bullshit. And at no point has pot been shown to be dangerous enough (indeed, shown to be dangerous at all) to warrant the billions of dollars sunk into keeping it illegal.
And then if someone tries to bring religion into the matter, then you've got people claiming that something is 'spiritually harmful', which basically gives them carte blanche to make anything illegal since you can never prove that it isn't actually a Bad Thing.
I find the following two maxims useful when considering a law: "Never give an order unless you are prepared to deal with it being disobeyed".
"To desire the ends requires that you desire the means".
Unless Congress is truly prepared to turn half the population, including basically every techie in existence, into criminals, they have no business trying to make laws that would do exactly that. Online file transfers are not going away, so if Congress really wants it to disappear, they'd better be willing to gut the IT industry and sit in the 20th century for all eternity. If neither of these choices appeals, then they need to shut the hell up and let the market sort things out on its own.
So tell me, would any of these new laws bought and paid for by the RIAA help out your friends? Could your friends afford to hire lawyers to go after people who broke these laws? Would your friends pay companies to scour P2P networks to find people sharing their music? Do your friends think that all their life's problems would be solved if only they could dictate to the last detail, like the omniscient god-emporer view in Civilization, how, where, and when their music could ever be used by anyone other than themselves, and be capable of inflicting swift and devastating punishment on anyone they _suspect_ of disobeying Their Will?
I highly doubt it. The DMCA, the SSSCA, the Internet Vigilante bill, all the lawsuits and draconian proposals, the bribes to Congress and the 'tipoffs' to the FBI, all of them are are done by and for wealthy people or large corporations, most of which feed on their previous works or those of others. I.e., the aforementioned elite. Your friends do not qualify and so will _never_ benefit from the copyright changes which are so loudly claiming to help them. A garage musician gains nothing by having his copyrights extended an additional twenty years after his death. An indie band gains nothing by being able to bring ridiculous lawsuits against college students running search engines. Your friend the sound engineer most definitely gains nothing by having so many restrictions placed on his PC that he can't even do his job without paying a fortune in 'Restricted DSP Technology' licensing fees. This is the sort of crap that the execs are trying to push on _everyone_, and it has absolutely nothing to do with protecting '9 to 5 musicians'.
Furthermore, to claim that piracy is killing off musicians' profits is crap. The vast majority of bands have never made a significant profit off their CD sales. They got it from performances and concerts; the CDs and shared files are advertisement.
Right. So if I go around the country decrying sexism, racism, and gay-ism (?) and demanding tolerance for everyone, but then turn out to be a raging anti-semite, I'm not a hypocrite either? "After all, I never explicitly said it was bad to hate jews".
Bennett's a schmuck, a nosy busybody. The only difference between him and your stereotypical self-righteous gossip-monger is he gets paid an awful lot to do it.
Well, in my work on perfecting antigravity I've made a few discoveries that might assist you. My neighbor has been developing her telekinetic abilities; I'll see if she has any insights.
It's tricky. Oppenheim's nuts if he thinks everyone believes copying IP is legal. Few make that mistake. But it has gotten to the point where the law is as obsolete as the technology it's protecting. The publishers' entire business model is based on the difficulties in moving high-quality bits around. Which, as you pointed out, is no longer something you need an RIAA for.
Now, copyright infringment is illegal. Fine. But in 5 short years P2P services have gone from brand new to being used by double-digit percentages of the entire population of this country. A hundred million people may not be right, but you can't simply tell them they're wrong and throw the lot of them in prison. If a law is being ignored by nearly everyone, it says more about the law than the people breaking it.
They can lay me off because business sucks, in which case I get unemployment benefits but no chance to sue them. Or they can fire my ass which gives me no benefits but the opportunity to take them to court if it wasn't righteous? Interesting. Sounds kinda appropriate, actually, at least on pay scales not too far in excess of unemployment benefits or in locations where the standard of living isn't ridiculously high.
Sure, but the number is essentially useless. The kinetic energy of a single particle is usually all over the place and may bear little resemblance to the actual temperature. It's like knowing that that a person is a Republican. It tells you absolutely no information about political stance of the people around him. He might be fairly representative of the general population or he could be a minor right-wing freak, you simply have no way of knowing. The best you might manage is a percentage probability that the temperature of the system is within X% of your tiny sample.
Reminds me of the old trick question you use to catch kids: "What weighs more: a kilogram of bricks or a kilogram of feathers?"
Oddly enough, if you ask, "Which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?", the correct answer is the feathers. Gold is generally measured in troy ounces, which are just about equivalent to ordinary ounces, but there's only 12 of them per pound, compared to 16 for anything else.
This idea has been suggested here before. Usually revolves around getting the first decade or two for free, then a small annual fee which doubles every year, adjusted for inflation (this is critical!). Anything not generating dosh gets dumped ASAP. Anything bringing in some small revenue could be held an extra decade or so (1st extra decade costs $2K). A real moneymaker could keep its owner able to hold the copyright for over 40 years (2 extra decades costs $2M). But there's probably no single work of art in this world that kept its owner so rich that they could afford a third decade.
The upside to this is that when hydrogen cars finally take off, using a dedicated O2 tank won't be anywhere near as problematic. And LO2 is one of the cheapest industrial fluids you can buy.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if we assume that obviously people should own the bit patterns they create, there's the question of whether they should own them for several generations years after they die.
A genetic algorithm does not require sexual reproduction anymore than ordinary evolution does. I think we can all agree that there are asexual organisms that evolve, yes?
Actually, that's a good point. What happens to copyright lengths if, in the next few decades, medical science achieves clinical immortality or something close to it? Bonno wanted forever minus a day; how about eternity plus 70 years?
My take on it is that the phrase 'limited time' means finite, quantifiable, and above all, known. If I copyright something tomorrow, nobody on this planet, not even myself, knows when that copyright will expire. It might be 70 years, or Congress could pass one retroactive extension act after another and it'll last for all time. When the answer to "How long will my copyright last" is "I don't know", then it ain't limited.
I'll bet you that 99% of the people here on /. who know the origin of the word do so from the exact same source.
I wonder if I could just tape the prepaid envelope to a brick and get them to pay through the nose. Is there a weight limit per item on these or what?
I'd be shocked and amazed if the response rate were as high as 0.1%. I've received literally hundreds of thousands of spams and don't ever recall actually following up on more than one or two, and certainly didn't actually part with money with any of them. I'd wager that spammers get monetary returns on no more than a couple per million emails.
Not necessarily. You can never really know the effects of an advertising campaign. If a company spends $X on spam and their business suddenly increases by 10%, was the spam useless? Most people would think so, but a corporate advertising exec? They might think it's worth the money and irritation on the off chance that it's actually bringing in revenue.
Like I said, it is a vanishingly small percentage of bands that made their money entirely off of record sales, even before P2P. A CD can be copied, and easily. There simply is no way to stop it without destroying the usefulness of the systems they run on. Accept that. Files will be copied over computer networks as long as both computers, networks, and files exist. The only hope a band has is to make money from performances in which they sell the uncopyable experience, or to sell their stuff online, which beats P2P in guaranteed selection, quality, and transfer speed.
Nonsense. The basis of criminal law is "Do no harm". The basis of civil law is "live up to your agreements". You get grey areas when the existence of harm or an existing agreement is debatable (abortion, assisted suicide, file sharing, etc), but those two are basically the underlying assumptions or axioms upon which laws should be made. Though it sounds callous, 'right and wrong' (which is more or less a gut feeling) coinciding with 'legal and illegal' (which you consult a lawyer about) is basically a side effect on those rare occasions when the system is working well.
Notice that this makes it fairly easy to pick out very bad laws. If no harm or contract violation can be seen but the law is still throwing people in prison, then you have yourself a bad law. Case in point, the recent SCotUS decision on state anti-sodomy laws. They decided that there was no social benefit to judging people (even married hetero couples in some states) before a court for doing the dirty in a different manner than they themselves would have chosen. The DMCA assumes that any and all reverse-engineering will lead to a contract violation, i.e., obtaining a work without paying for it, which is obviously bullshit. And at no point has pot been shown to be dangerous enough (indeed, shown to be dangerous at all) to warrant the billions of dollars sunk into keeping it illegal.
And then if someone tries to bring religion into the matter, then you've got people claiming that something is 'spiritually harmful', which basically gives them carte blanche to make anything illegal since you can never prove that it isn't actually a Bad Thing.
I find the following two maxims useful when considering a law:
"Never give an order unless you are prepared to deal with it being disobeyed".
"To desire the ends requires that you desire the means".
Unless Congress is truly prepared to turn half the population, including basically every techie in existence, into criminals, they have no business trying to make laws that would do exactly that. Online file transfers are not going away, so if Congress really wants it to disappear, they'd better be willing to gut the IT industry and sit in the 20th century for all eternity. If neither of these choices appeals, then they need to shut the hell up and let the market sort things out on its own.
I highly doubt it. The DMCA, the SSSCA, the Internet Vigilante bill, all the lawsuits and draconian proposals, the bribes to Congress and the 'tipoffs' to the FBI, all of them are are done by and for wealthy people or large corporations, most of which feed on their previous works or those of others. I.e., the aforementioned elite. Your friends do not qualify and so will _never_ benefit from the copyright changes which are so loudly claiming to help them. A garage musician gains nothing by having his copyrights extended an additional twenty years after his death. An indie band gains nothing by being able to bring ridiculous lawsuits against college students running search engines. Your friend the sound engineer most definitely gains nothing by having so many restrictions placed on his PC that he can't even do his job without paying a fortune in 'Restricted DSP Technology' licensing fees. This is the sort of crap that the execs are trying to push on _everyone_, and it has absolutely nothing to do with protecting '9 to 5 musicians'.
Furthermore, to claim that piracy is killing off musicians' profits is crap. The vast majority of bands have never made a significant profit off their CD sales. They got it from performances and concerts; the CDs and shared files are advertisement.
Bennett's a schmuck, a nosy busybody. The only difference between him and your stereotypical self-righteous gossip-monger is he gets paid an awful lot to do it.
No kidding! Since I learned how to levitate, it's gotten me out of all sorts of troublesome situations!
Well, in my work on perfecting antigravity I've made a few discoveries that might assist you. My neighbor has been developing her telekinetic abilities; I'll see if she has any insights.
Now, copyright infringment is illegal. Fine. But in 5 short years P2P services have gone from brand new to being used by double-digit percentages of the entire population of this country. A hundred million people may not be right, but you can't simply tell them they're wrong and throw the lot of them in prison. If a law is being ignored by nearly everyone, it says more about the law than the people breaking it.
They can lay me off because business sucks, in which case I get unemployment benefits but no chance to sue them. Or they can fire my ass which gives me no benefits but the opportunity to take them to court if it wasn't righteous? Interesting. Sounds kinda appropriate, actually, at least on pay scales not too far in excess of unemployment benefits or in locations where the standard of living isn't ridiculously high.
Sure, but the number is essentially useless. The kinetic energy of a single particle is usually all over the place and may bear little resemblance to the actual temperature. It's like knowing that that a person is a Republican. It tells you absolutely no information about political stance of the people around him. He might be fairly representative of the general population or he could be a minor right-wing freak, you simply have no way of knowing. The best you might manage is a percentage probability that the temperature of the system is within X% of your tiny sample.
I'm not slow. Really!
Oddly enough, if you ask, "Which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?", the correct answer is the feathers. Gold is generally measured in troy ounces, which are just about equivalent to ordinary ounces, but there's only 12 of them per pound, compared to 16 for anything else.
What's hillarious is that the name space for IPv6 is so friggin huge that this idea is not entirely without merit.
It is not necessary to have a nuke to make an EMP.
This idea has been suggested here before. Usually revolves around getting the first decade or two for free, then a small annual fee which doubles every year, adjusted for inflation (this is critical!). Anything not generating dosh gets dumped ASAP. Anything bringing in some small revenue could be held an extra decade or so (1st extra decade costs $2K). A real moneymaker could keep its owner able to hold the copyright for over 40 years (2 extra decades costs $2M). But there's probably no single work of art in this world that kept its owner so rich that they could afford a third decade.
The upside to this is that when hydrogen cars finally take off, using a dedicated O2 tank won't be anywhere near as problematic. And LO2 is one of the cheapest industrial fluids you can buy.
That's gotta get expensive in terms of replacement soccer balls.
Yes, worst case for Quicksort is O(n^2). As I recall, this requires that the data is already sorted but in the opposite order you want.