Fortunately, patents are time-limited (and cross your fingers they'll
continue to be). By the time anyone finds a use for most of these, the
patents will have expired. In fact, why not just patent all of them now
to start the clock running, so that by the time I get old and actually
need one of these genes to extend my life or whatever, we'll be over and
done with this nonsense, and I won't have to pay some extortionary fee
for it.
nstead of full disclosure we should go to a blind disclosure system. Donations are all anonymous in such a way that not only do the candidates not know who gave money but neither will anyone else.
Then I can tell my congressman that I gave him $10,000 and he wouldn't have any way of knowing if It were true.
But you can tell him that he can expect to see a $10,000 (or
$17,523) contribution added to his "blind" coffers
tomorrow.
Re:This sort of thing...
on
RIAA Sues a Child
·
· Score: 4, Informative
theft includes not only property but also theft of services
This still doesn't cover copyright infringement.
Theft of services means you agreed to have someone
perform a service for you, like a doctor's examination, and that
person expended their time and labor
fulfilling that agreement. When you skip out on paying them,
that is theft of service.
In the case of theft of service, the doctor has expended
time and physical
labor performing the service specifically for you, and there is
external, independent evidence that that's the case. You have
interacted with the person performing the service.
In the case of copyright infringement, there isn't necessarily any
interaction with the copyright owner. The copyright owner has no way of
even knowing about the infringement without snooping into your private
life to uncover it.
Here's yet another way to look at it: service is a limited, finite
resource. The doctor has limited time. The theatre you sneak into has
limited seats. Like physical property, theft of service is taking away
something the provider had (time, physical space to rent, etc.) and no
longer has as a result of the theft. Copyright infringement, on the
other hand, involves an infinite, unlimited resource. In and of itself,
the act of making a copy has absolutely no effect on
the copyright owner and deprives the copyright owner of nothing
that the owner had before the infringement took place.
So, theft is truely the wrong word for this act and
very misleading. That isn't to say that, because of its constant
use in the wrong sense, it will not come to acquire that meaning
(since language ultimately depends on common usage), but
currently it is a biased and purposely misleading word when used
to describe copyright infringement.
All of the above, by the way, has nothing to do with the ethics
or legality of copyright infringement. That is an entirely
different issue. But it is important to distinguish it from
theft before such discussions even begin, if those discussions
are going to be rational.
So, if I want to reuse some code from a GPL'ed web application (that has
this new "download source code" button) for my own GPL'ed application, even
if it's just borrowing a few lines of code from some utility routine and
even if my own application is completely unrelated, I'll now be forced
to install a "download source code" button in my new unrelated
application?
Or if not, what prevents: 1. Fork GPLed web app w/ button into GPLed
web app w/out button. Make source code available, of course. 2. Another
party now takes forked code (which is identical to first web app but w/out
button), and ports it to their own web app w/out button and w/out
releasing source code. Is this a violation or not?
Sorry, I am very confused. Either that, or the new GPL 3 is going to make
reuse of GPLed code a pain by forcing me to program in certain features, like adding
a thousand lines of code for a "download source"
button to a
hundred-line little GPLed utility that I write (that borrows 10
lines from the original web app with the "download source" button,
which seems to proprogate virally). To me, this seems to
defeat the purpose of the GPL by making it rather
awkward to reuse code, possibly impossible if the new app
doesn't lend itself well to a "download source" button (what if
the app has no user interface?).
Another thing to look at is Metamath
music, which is interesting in a different way.
It is the raw,
unadorned piano music generated
directly by
mathematical proofs, very faithful to the actual mathematics.
I have never understood why
fundamentalist religious right-wingers consider
embryos to be human beings. It is certainly not mentioned in the
Bible, which supposedly provides the foundation for their
beliefs.
An early embryo does not have even a single functioning neuron, so
certainly it can't have any kind of conscious existence, and it
is a far stretch to say that it has a "soul".
The reasoning seems to be that it has the "potential" for becoming
a human being. But
once cloning is perfected, every cell in our bodies will have the
potential for becoming a human being, no different from
an identical twin. So every time we shed a few skin cells, we
are discarding millions of potential human beings.
In this sense, a pre-neuron embryo is no different from any other
mass of tissue in our bodies.
Perhaps we should take these people's reasoning to its logical
conclusion, and forbid the destruction of any tissue at all
from our bodies. To which senator should I mail my feces for preservation?
My problem with "non-commercial" CC licenses is that the term
"commercial use" is rather vague and hard to interpret in a lot of
cases. Sure, it's obvious when you are offering the specific licensed
item for sale. But in subtle, indirect ways almost everything we do (on
the web at least) involves commerce in some way or form. Suppose an ISP
puts a Google ad on a personal page in exchange for a free personal web
site that you're posting the licensed item on? Suddenly it becomes
"commercial use." Someone, somewhere may be profiting indirectly from the
licensed item.
Suppose I want to use some of it (with proper acknowledgement, of
course) in an open-source GPL'ed project that I've volunteered my time
for. Oops, the GPL allows its software to be used by a commercial
company, no can do. Sometimes I might be able to
get permission, but often the hassle just isn't worth it.
Overall, I get nervous using "non-commercial" material; it's one
more thing to worry about. Usually I just avoid it
altogether for my own use in a creative project.
The author provides no objective evidence of improvement. Instead,
we get: "The tone had been slightly light(?). Modification increased the body(?) of
the tone--for example, a guitar sound that previously was all string now
includes the wood of the instrument. The stock unit had a bit of
congestion(?) on dynamic passages, especially evident on massed strings.
Not anymore; the top and bottom ends are detailed(?), extended, and
inviting(?). The soundstage, that is, the virtual placements of the
instruments that you hear in front of you, was originally very
good--definitely not an in-your-face kind of sound that you would
normally expect from a cheap player. Nevertheless, modification added
an ease(?) and presence(?) to the sound; a liquidity(?) that was not there
before."
I added "(?)" after terms which, sorry for my ignorance, would have
no idea how to measure objectively. (I was tempted to put one after "soundstage",
but I guess it could mean stereo separation, so
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
And I suppose "wood" is bass but not sure.)
It is possible there was an improvement. But from this kind of
babble I can't tell. It is very possible he wants it to be better
and thus perceives it to be so.
An improvement in audio or video, if any, can be measured objectively
with appropriate instrumentation. If the author had done this, he would
have determined which, if any, of the capacitors he's boosting have a
measurable effect, saving a lot of work. Instead he seems to be on
this mantra of blindly replacing them all in hopes of an improvement.
At a very minimum, without instrumentation, there should be a blind
test comparing a modified and unmodified unit by a third party.
And just what are the author's qualifications? "Robert McNeice is a
business and information-technology consultant for the financial
services industry. He is an audiophile and occasional tweaker." I
suppose he could be an EE, but if so he needs to go back to school to
learn how science works.
This reeks of the kind of subjective nonsense you see with the
high-end audio bs with its $600 cables. Shame on the IEEE (an otherwise
respectible organization for electrical engineers) for publishing this crap.
Oh really? "Rightfully theirs"? I dare you to say that to the face
of a musician or an artist or an author. I dare you.
Music is not created in a vacuum. Musicians build on a vast heritage,
from the inventors of musical instruments and the musical theory behind
them, to the inventors of the electronics they use, to all of the music
created before them that they've listened to throughout their lives, even perhaps to
a snippet of code that maybe I wrote at some point in my
life that is part of their mixing software, who knows. Certainly there
is an important sense in which they are creative, and they deserve to be
compensated for it, but in the big picture perhaps they are adding 1%,
if that, on top of all the elements that ultimately make up what you
hear.
One can make analogous arguments for authors, artist, photographers,
etc. An author only needs a pencil and paper, you say? Deny the author language, education, and all the books he or she has
read throughout his or her life and see what happens.
While "rightfully theirs" is perhaps a bit strong, it is all to easy
to overlook the heritage and infrastucture that enables them to do what
they do, not just technically, but as an integral and usually
unacknowledged part of their creation.
Even going a step further and trying to tame my example... let's say I
can get into your house while you're away on vacation. I live there for
the two weeks your away. I sleep in your bed. Watch TV. Use your
computer, toothbrush, whatever. Before I leave I clean up after myself
and leave a few dollars to cover the cost of the utilities. Would you
accept this as ok?
No. This is physical trespassing and most importantly a serious
invasion of my privacy. It affects me very directly.
On the other hand, if someone reproduces my work without my knowledge
it doesn't affect me in any way at all. Certainly they don't invade
my privacy.
In order to even find out whether someone is reproducing my work
(assuming they aren't openly selling it to the public), I must butt
into their lives and invade their privacy. To me that is
unethical. It is none of my business.
The only way someone reproducing my work could affect me - assuming I
otherwise would have no knowledge of it - is by deciding to pay me, in
which case they would affect me in a positive way. There is no
way they could affect me in a negative way if I have no knowledge
of what they are doing. It is really a hard stretch of the imagination
to call that theft; to me it is illogical and falls in the same category
as "thought crimes".
After mulling over what I just wrote, I now see the light and suddenly
understand why you hold your point of view: you have successfully
been brainwashed, and they have won.
If I can steal from you, beat you, murder you and you have never done
anything for me... does the same principle apply, because I have the
power to do these things?
Why does everyone pick such ridiculous counterarguments? It certainly
doesn't help to convince me of your viewpoint.
When you steal from, beat, murder someone you have directly, forcefully, and physically intruded into their
lives and physically
changed their lives against their will.
When you infringe someone's copyright, you are not directly affecting
their lives in any way whatsoever. You have taken nothing from them.
What they posess after you've made your copy is exactly what they
possessed before you made the copy. In terms of how it affects them,
there is absolutely no difference among (a) you made a copy and didn't
pay them, (b) you didn't make a copy and didn't pay them, or (c) you
never even existed in the first place. Unless they butt into your
life and intrude on your privacy, they have no way of distinguishing
between (a) and (b) because either one affects them in exactly the same
way. This is just plain common sense.
Regardless of the legality or morality of (a),
don't you see how your counterexample is not only
qualitatively different, but is so far off base as
to be absurd?
The analogy doesn't hold up. To compare ad-blocking with something
that could do the same in newspapers doesn't even make sense.
Actually, a better analogy (although they wouldn't use it) would
be those women's fashion magazines that are like 90% full-page
glossy ads. Normally I don't read these, but occasionally some article
mentioned
on the cover of my girlfriend's magazine might catch my eye.
First I have to flip through two dozen ad pages, with no
page numbers, before I can find the table of contents.
Of course the exact title doesn't match what's on the cover,
but usually I'm able to figure it out. Once I get the page
number it's on, finding it is another adventure. Most of the
pages are ads with no page numbers, requiring me to flip through
quite a few to find the actual article.
Heck, if I were idly rich and interested in those mags, I might
even pay a "human ad blocker" to tear out all the ad pages and leave only
the content.
As a man, fashion mags don't affect me much.
But National Geographic
(a "non-profit" corp.) is starting to suffer from this kind of ad
creep. In the old days the table of contents was on the cover. Now
there are several ad pages, with no page numbers, before the table of
contents. Following that are dozens of pages of blurb-type features
heavily mixed with ads and with no page numbers. In a recent issue,
"Page 1" starts one-third of the way into the magazine! At least once
the main content starts is it contiguous without ads, but who knows how
long that will last.
His name will forever be engraved in the J-K flip-flop.
This is probably an urban legend.
More likely it was the
initials of
John J. Kardash,
who in the 1950's arbitrarily
used his initials on these pins on his
blueprints, and it stuck.
I have a dozen or so VMS TK50 tapes that I haven't discarded because
they have all of my wonderful programs I wrote in the 1980's, that
otherwise will be lost forever. (They were never transferred because
the system died prematurely and it was decided it wasn't worthwhile to
revive it - long story.)
Over the years I've occasionally looked at transfer services,
but it's not worth it to me to pay $500 or so to transfer programs that at
this point have little or no monetary value. But I would still like to
have them for historical or sentimental reasons, and also to have my
collection of debugged subroutines that I worked out years ago handily
available to me. (I'd probably release them to GPL since I own the
copyrights, although it's not clear they would be of general interest.
But surprisingly, a few subroutines/algorithms that didn't get lost have gone
through various generations of being translated to different languages
and live on in various programs.)
Any suggestions for a cheap way to get the data off these tapes?
Ah, Google, the hype of the new millenium. I've posted on the
valuation of this company, that defies all
common sense, a number of times. But what
struck a chord back in April
was the way the/. readers fawned over and praised
the sacrifice made by the
egalitarian, visionary leaders who decided to
set an example and pay themselves
a token salary of only $1 a year, when they
could have easily paid themselves much more! As if this makes one iota of
difference in their billions (courtesy of the suck^H^H^Hinvestors). My
response.
> The nice thing would have been if some government had funded him.
First of all, "government" can't fund anything because government
doesn't generate its own revenue through voluntary means. What
government can do is FORCE people to hand over THEIR savings to support
the project.
There are many scientific research projects that have no immediate
commercial payback, if any at all, such as particle physics,
astronomy, etc.
While I won't argue that the government should support Gentoo in
particular, how do you decide what the government should support?
Or are you proposing that all government-funded
scientific research should be dropped?
On the one hand I dislike involuntary taxes,
but on the other hand to me it would be shame if these went unfunded (or
unreliably and intermittently funded by rich sponsors on a whim).
From a
selfish point of view, unfortunately
life is way too short, and if there is any chance
of gaining deeper insight into, say, the fundamental nature of reality
and the universe before I die, government support is the only realistic
solution I see.
To me, a society where the view is that one's only purpose
is to maximize profits and accumulate money seems
pointless and empty.
Why bother to live at all? My drive is a burning
desire to learn and discover new things; it
provides life with excitement and meaning.
OK, I'll also dup my comment made there, that no one probably read
because it was posted too late - as is this comment (: . I can't spend my life
reading slashdot 10 times a day...
Since "intellectual property" is being
treated by the law more and more as if it were physical
property, then perhaps it should be taxed like physical property (real
estate tax, etc.) too. An interesting discussion of this can be found at Copyright Term Reform/Taxation.
I doubt the movement to reduce copyright terms will have any effect, so this seems like the
next best thing, which (because it would mean more
revenue for the government) might have a
tiny chance in
hell of actually happening. The idea of yet more
taxes doesn't particularly thrill me in
and of itself,
but read this article and see what you think.
This idea has been thought of before.
Read
Copyright Term Reform/Taxation for
a somewhat more reasoned discussion than
what you will find under this slashdot thread.
I guess not, otherwise this would be a nonissue.
It is unbelievable that in this day and age a company
the size of Citigroup would ship unencrypted tapes.
Geez, it is trivial to do and a no-brainer.
Really, whoever is in charge of IT security policy
there is an idiot and should be fired immediately
and any security credentials (like CISSP) stripped so he/she
can't pull another fast one on some other
company. This is the height of absurdity and
irresponsibility.
While the parent's post is meant to be humorous, it makes a
subtle but serious a point.
Increasing enforcement penalties is absolutely, positively the WRONG
approach. It will have absolutely no effect on terrorists, who operate
outside of the law anyway. If anything, by making their product even
"more" illegal, the serious infringers will be able to sell at higher
prices because there will be fewer marginal infringers to compete with,
increasing their profits even more.
If profits from
copyright infringement is funding terrorism, the solution
is simple: abolish copyright, thus eliminating the profit
motive. This would solve this "problem" once and
for all, instantly and miraculously.
Sure, some people may suffer financially for a while as a
consequence, but in times like these no sacrifice is too great when done
to better Homeland Security's fight agains terrorism. Perhaps we could
just abolish copyright "temporarily", as a wartime measure, with the
promise to reinstate it once the war against terrorism is won.
Temporarily
suspending copyright law to fight terrorism
is the best solution, and probably the only solution, to completely
eliminate the profits from piracy that fund terrorism.
On Windows, a truly wonderful and overlooked text editor, with REXX
underneath, is KEDIT from Mansfield.
Among its GUI editing features I find essential for everyday work are
(1) an underlying model where the screen is a giant xy plane of
characters, like a paint program, rather than a sequence of
varying-length lines - if I click on column 50 after the end of a
30-character-long line, the cursor sticks there and I can start typing -
I don't have to type spaces or tabs to get to column 50; and (2)
seamless block cut and paste - even when the block goes beyond the
end-of-line.
I have tried many editors, commercial and not, including Emacs with
various macros, in an attempt to emulate these simple features, and
although some come close, there's always some problem where they just
don't quite hack it, because their underlying model of how lines are
treated is just too deeply embedded in the fundamental design. I just
can't deal with anything that's almost, but not quite there; a text editor
exactly like I want is crucial to my existence since it's where I spend
90% of my time. As far as I know, this product has 0 bugs; at least
I have not found one in many years of use.
On the other hand, I dislike the company that owns it.
The product is annoyingly expensive ($159) and despite the price, they haven't
updated it in years - for example, there is no scroll wheel support. I
don't even know if the company is actively doing anything except acting
as a shell to sell this product. They have 0 interest in porting
it to Linux or anything else; I have asked and even offered to help
them port it.
Sadly, for me this is the one final piece that I need to go full time
to a Linux desktop. Over the years I have tried to get it run
under Wine; it "almost works" but eventually craps out. (I haven't
tried in a couple of years; time to do that again.)
People will probably respond with a list of
editors claimed implement the GUI features I mentioned. This happened the last time (a few years ago) I posted about this; I tried them
all and they all came up short for one reason or
another. But list them again, and I'll try them
again!
Who said anything about a post-it note on your desk? Are you
an idiot? And everyone else here who keeps
bringing this up over and over? Sheesh.
You keep the piece of paper - or probably a
business-card sized card - in your wallet,
dumbass, where
you keep your credit cards.
(Or do you tape your credit cards to your
terminal for handy reference?) Just as your credit cards don't get
seen by anyone you don't show them to, neither will your passwords.
The only risk is if your wallet gets stolen, but you will know that
pretty quickly, and you can change all your passwords in that case,
just like you will change all your credit card numbers.
We have over a dozen servers all running Windows...
We have 10+ years of expertise (well, 4 people with at least 6 year each)
It takes 4 people to run 12+ servers (each probably dedicated to a single
task, as usually recommended for Windows)? Glad it's your company's money,
not mine. I guess it helps the unemployment picture though.
Tip: without Javascript, you can click on
"Print Page". It shows the whole article at
once, which is much more pleasant to read anyway
than having to click "next page" for an
indeterminate (they don't tell you) number of future pages.
Slashdot Mirror
Fortunately, patents are time-limited (and cross your fingers they'll continue to be). By the time anyone finds a use for most of these, the patents will have expired. In fact, why not just patent all of them now to start the clock running, so that by the time I get old and actually need one of these genes to extend my life or whatever, we'll be over and done with this nonsense, and I won't have to pay some extortionary fee for it.
Then I can tell my congressman that I gave him $10,000 and he wouldn't have any way of knowing if It were true.
But you can tell him that he can expect to see a $10,000 (or $17,523) contribution added to his "blind" coffers tomorrow.
This still doesn't cover copyright infringement.
Theft of services means you agreed to have someone perform a service for you, like a doctor's examination, and that person expended their time and labor fulfilling that agreement. When you skip out on paying them, that is theft of service.
In the case of theft of service, the doctor has expended time and physical labor performing the service specifically for you, and there is external, independent evidence that that's the case. You have interacted with the person performing the service.
In the case of copyright infringement, there isn't necessarily any interaction with the copyright owner. The copyright owner has no way of even knowing about the infringement without snooping into your private life to uncover it.
Here's yet another way to look at it: service is a limited, finite resource. The doctor has limited time. The theatre you sneak into has limited seats. Like physical property, theft of service is taking away something the provider had (time, physical space to rent, etc.) and no longer has as a result of the theft. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, involves an infinite, unlimited resource. In and of itself, the act of making a copy has absolutely no effect on the copyright owner and deprives the copyright owner of nothing that the owner had before the infringement took place.
So, theft is truely the wrong word for this act and very misleading. That isn't to say that, because of its constant use in the wrong sense, it will not come to acquire that meaning (since language ultimately depends on common usage), but currently it is a biased and purposely misleading word when used to describe copyright infringement.
All of the above, by the way, has nothing to do with the ethics or legality of copyright infringement. That is an entirely different issue. But it is important to distinguish it from theft before such discussions even begin, if those discussions are going to be rational.
Or if not, what prevents: 1. Fork GPLed web app w/ button into GPLed web app w/out button. Make source code available, of course. 2. Another party now takes forked code (which is identical to first web app but w/out button), and ports it to their own web app w/out button and w/out releasing source code. Is this a violation or not?
Sorry, I am very confused. Either that, or the new GPL 3 is going to make reuse of GPLed code a pain by forcing me to program in certain features, like adding a thousand lines of code for a "download source" button to a hundred-line little GPLed utility that I write (that borrows 10 lines from the original web app with the "download source" button, which seems to proprogate virally). To me, this seems to defeat the purpose of the GPL by making it rather awkward to reuse code, possibly impossible if the new app doesn't lend itself well to a "download source" button (what if the app has no user interface?).
Another thing to look at is Metamath music, which is interesting in a different way. It is the raw, unadorned piano music generated directly by mathematical proofs, very faithful to the actual mathematics.
An early embryo does not have even a single functioning neuron, so certainly it can't have any kind of conscious existence, and it is a far stretch to say that it has a "soul".
The reasoning seems to be that it has the "potential" for becoming a human being. But once cloning is perfected, every cell in our bodies will have the potential for becoming a human being, no different from an identical twin. So every time we shed a few skin cells, we are discarding millions of potential human beings.
In this sense, a pre-neuron embryo is no different from any other mass of tissue in our bodies.
Perhaps we should take these people's reasoning to its logical conclusion, and forbid the destruction of any tissue at all from our bodies. To which senator should I mail my feces for preservation?
Suppose I want to use some of it (with proper acknowledgement, of course) in an open-source GPL'ed project that I've volunteered my time for. Oops, the GPL allows its software to be used by a commercial company, no can do. Sometimes I might be able to get permission, but often the hassle just isn't worth it.
Overall, I get nervous using "non-commercial" material; it's one more thing to worry about. Usually I just avoid it altogether for my own use in a creative project.
The author provides no objective evidence of improvement. Instead, we get: "The tone had been slightly light(?). Modification increased the body(?) of the tone--for example, a guitar sound that previously was all string now includes the wood of the instrument. The stock unit had a bit of congestion(?) on dynamic passages, especially evident on massed strings. Not anymore; the top and bottom ends are detailed(?), extended, and inviting(?). The soundstage, that is, the virtual placements of the instruments that you hear in front of you, was originally very good--definitely not an in-your-face kind of sound that you would normally expect from a cheap player. Nevertheless, modification added an ease(?) and presence(?) to the sound; a liquidity(?) that was not there before."
I added "(?)" after terms which, sorry for my ignorance, would have no idea how to measure objectively. (I was tempted to put one after "soundstage", but I guess it could mean stereo separation, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. And I suppose "wood" is bass but not sure.)
It is possible there was an improvement. But from this kind of babble I can't tell. It is very possible he wants it to be better and thus perceives it to be so.
An improvement in audio or video, if any, can be measured objectively with appropriate instrumentation. If the author had done this, he would have determined which, if any, of the capacitors he's boosting have a measurable effect, saving a lot of work. Instead he seems to be on this mantra of blindly replacing them all in hopes of an improvement.
At a very minimum, without instrumentation, there should be a blind test comparing a modified and unmodified unit by a third party.
And just what are the author's qualifications? "Robert McNeice is a business and information-technology consultant for the financial services industry. He is an audiophile and occasional tweaker." I suppose he could be an EE, but if so he needs to go back to school to learn how science works.
This reeks of the kind of subjective nonsense you see with the high-end audio bs with its $600 cables. Shame on the IEEE (an otherwise respectible organization for electrical engineers) for publishing this crap.
Music is not created in a vacuum. Musicians build on a vast heritage, from the inventors of musical instruments and the musical theory behind them, to the inventors of the electronics they use, to all of the music created before them that they've listened to throughout their lives, even perhaps to a snippet of code that maybe I wrote at some point in my life that is part of their mixing software, who knows. Certainly there is an important sense in which they are creative, and they deserve to be compensated for it, but in the big picture perhaps they are adding 1%, if that, on top of all the elements that ultimately make up what you hear.
One can make analogous arguments for authors, artist, photographers, etc. An author only needs a pencil and paper, you say? Deny the author language, education, and all the books he or she has read throughout his or her life and see what happens.
While "rightfully theirs" is perhaps a bit strong, it is all to easy to overlook the heritage and infrastucture that enables them to do what they do, not just technically, but as an integral and usually unacknowledged part of their creation.
No. This is physical trespassing and most importantly a serious invasion of my privacy. It affects me very directly.
On the other hand, if someone reproduces my work without my knowledge it doesn't affect me in any way at all. Certainly they don't invade my privacy.
In order to even find out whether someone is reproducing my work (assuming they aren't openly selling it to the public), I must butt into their lives and invade their privacy. To me that is unethical. It is none of my business.
The only way someone reproducing my work could affect me - assuming I otherwise would have no knowledge of it - is by deciding to pay me, in which case they would affect me in a positive way. There is no way they could affect me in a negative way if I have no knowledge of what they are doing. It is really a hard stretch of the imagination to call that theft; to me it is illogical and falls in the same category as "thought crimes".
After mulling over what I just wrote, I now see the light and suddenly understand why you hold your point of view: you have successfully been brainwashed, and they have won.
Why does everyone pick such ridiculous counterarguments? It certainly doesn't help to convince me of your viewpoint.
When you steal from, beat, murder someone you have directly, forcefully, and physically intruded into their lives and physically changed their lives against their will.
When you infringe someone's copyright, you are not directly affecting their lives in any way whatsoever. You have taken nothing from them. What they posess after you've made your copy is exactly what they possessed before you made the copy. In terms of how it affects them, there is absolutely no difference among (a) you made a copy and didn't pay them, (b) you didn't make a copy and didn't pay them, or (c) you never even existed in the first place. Unless they butt into your life and intrude on your privacy, they have no way of distinguishing between (a) and (b) because either one affects them in exactly the same way. This is just plain common sense.
Regardless of the legality or morality of (a), don't you see how your counterexample is not only qualitatively different, but is so far off base as to be absurd?
Actually, a better analogy (although they wouldn't use it) would be those women's fashion magazines that are like 90% full-page glossy ads. Normally I don't read these, but occasionally some article mentioned on the cover of my girlfriend's magazine might catch my eye. First I have to flip through two dozen ad pages, with no page numbers, before I can find the table of contents. Of course the exact title doesn't match what's on the cover, but usually I'm able to figure it out. Once I get the page number it's on, finding it is another adventure. Most of the pages are ads with no page numbers, requiring me to flip through quite a few to find the actual article.
Heck, if I were idly rich and interested in those mags, I might even pay a "human ad blocker" to tear out all the ad pages and leave only the content.
As a man, fashion mags don't affect me much. But National Geographic (a "non-profit" corp.) is starting to suffer from this kind of ad creep. In the old days the table of contents was on the cover. Now there are several ad pages, with no page numbers, before the table of contents. Following that are dozens of pages of blurb-type features heavily mixed with ads and with no page numbers. In a recent issue, "Page 1" starts one-third of the way into the magazine! At least once the main content starts is it contiguous without ads, but who knows how long that will last.
This is probably an urban legend. More likely it was the initials of John J. Kardash, who in the 1950's arbitrarily used his initials on these pins on his blueprints, and it stuck.
Over the years I've occasionally looked at transfer services, but it's not worth it to me to pay $500 or so to transfer programs that at this point have little or no monetary value. But I would still like to have them for historical or sentimental reasons, and also to have my collection of debugged subroutines that I worked out years ago handily available to me. (I'd probably release them to GPL since I own the copyrights, although it's not clear they would be of general interest. But surprisingly, a few subroutines/algorithms that didn't get lost have gone through various generations of being translated to different languages and live on in various programs.)
Any suggestions for a cheap way to get the data off these tapes?
Ah, Google, the hype of the new millenium. I've posted on the valuation of this company, that defies all common sense, a number of times. But what struck a chord back in April was the way the /. readers fawned over and praised
the sacrifice made by the
egalitarian, visionary leaders who decided to
set an example and pay themselves
a token salary of only $1 a year, when they
could have easily paid themselves much more! As if this makes one iota of
difference in their billions (courtesy of the suck^H^H^Hinvestors). My
response.
First of all, "government" can't fund anything because government doesn't generate its own revenue through voluntary means. What government can do is FORCE people to hand over THEIR savings to support the project.
There are many scientific research projects that have no immediate commercial payback, if any at all, such as particle physics, astronomy, etc. While I won't argue that the government should support Gentoo in particular, how do you decide what the government should support? Or are you proposing that all government-funded scientific research should be dropped?
On the one hand I dislike involuntary taxes, but on the other hand to me it would be shame if these went unfunded (or unreliably and intermittently funded by rich sponsors on a whim). From a selfish point of view, unfortunately life is way too short, and if there is any chance of gaining deeper insight into, say, the fundamental nature of reality and the universe before I die, government support is the only realistic solution I see.
To me, a society where the view is that one's only purpose is to maximize profits and accumulate money seems pointless and empty. Why bother to live at all? My drive is a burning desire to learn and discover new things; it provides life with excitement and meaning.
Since "intellectual property" is being treated by the law more and more as if it were physical property, then perhaps it should be taxed like physical property (real estate tax, etc.) too. An interesting discussion of this can be found at Copyright Term Reform/Taxation. I doubt the movement to reduce copyright terms will have any effect, so this seems like the next best thing, which (because it would mean more revenue for the government) might have a tiny chance in hell of actually happening. The idea of yet more taxes doesn't particularly thrill me in and of itself, but read this article and see what you think.
This idea has been thought of before. Read Copyright Term Reform/Taxation for a somewhat more reasoned discussion than what you will find under this slashdot thread.
I guess not, otherwise this would be a nonissue. It is unbelievable that in this day and age a company the size of Citigroup would ship unencrypted tapes. Geez, it is trivial to do and a no-brainer. Really, whoever is in charge of IT security policy there is an idiot and should be fired immediately and any security credentials (like CISSP) stripped so he/she can't pull another fast one on some other company. This is the height of absurdity and irresponsibility.
While the parent's post is meant to be humorous, it makes a subtle but serious a point.
Increasing enforcement penalties is absolutely, positively the WRONG approach. It will have absolutely no effect on terrorists, who operate outside of the law anyway. If anything, by making their product even "more" illegal, the serious infringers will be able to sell at higher prices because there will be fewer marginal infringers to compete with, increasing their profits even more.
If profits from copyright infringement is funding terrorism, the solution is simple: abolish copyright, thus eliminating the profit motive. This would solve this "problem" once and for all, instantly and miraculously.
Sure, some people may suffer financially for a while as a consequence, but in times like these no sacrifice is too great when done to better Homeland Security's fight agains terrorism. Perhaps we could just abolish copyright "temporarily", as a wartime measure, with the promise to reinstate it once the war against terrorism is won.
Temporarily suspending copyright law to fight terrorism is the best solution, and probably the only solution, to completely eliminate the profits from piracy that fund terrorism.
Among its GUI editing features I find essential for everyday work are (1) an underlying model where the screen is a giant xy plane of characters, like a paint program, rather than a sequence of varying-length lines - if I click on column 50 after the end of a 30-character-long line, the cursor sticks there and I can start typing - I don't have to type spaces or tabs to get to column 50; and (2) seamless block cut and paste - even when the block goes beyond the end-of-line.
I have tried many editors, commercial and not, including Emacs with various macros, in an attempt to emulate these simple features, and although some come close, there's always some problem where they just don't quite hack it, because their underlying model of how lines are treated is just too deeply embedded in the fundamental design. I just can't deal with anything that's almost, but not quite there; a text editor exactly like I want is crucial to my existence since it's where I spend 90% of my time. As far as I know, this product has 0 bugs; at least I have not found one in many years of use.
On the other hand, I dislike the company that owns it. The product is annoyingly expensive ($159) and despite the price, they haven't updated it in years - for example, there is no scroll wheel support. I don't even know if the company is actively doing anything except acting as a shell to sell this product. They have 0 interest in porting it to Linux or anything else; I have asked and even offered to help them port it.
Sadly, for me this is the one final piece that I need to go full time to a Linux desktop. Over the years I have tried to get it run under Wine; it "almost works" but eventually craps out. (I haven't tried in a couple of years; time to do that again.)
People will probably respond with a list of editors claimed implement the GUI features I mentioned. This happened the last time (a few years ago) I posted about this; I tried them all and they all came up short for one reason or another. But list them again, and I'll try them again!
You keep the piece of paper - or probably a business-card sized card - in your wallet, dumbass, where you keep your credit cards. (Or do you tape your credit cards to your terminal for handy reference?) Just as your credit cards don't get seen by anyone you don't show them to, neither will your passwords. The only risk is if your wallet gets stolen, but you will know that pretty quickly, and you can change all your passwords in that case, just like you will change all your credit card numbers.
It takes 4 people to run 12+ servers (each probably dedicated to a single task, as usually recommended for Windows)? Glad it's your company's money, not mine. I guess it helps the unemployment picture though.
Tip: without Javascript, you can click on "Print Page". It shows the whole article at once, which is much more pleasant to read anyway than having to click "next page" for an indeterminate (they don't tell you) number of future pages.