We know this, because you are a thoughtful and well-read person who, as it happens, was just a short while ago down at the library, 'dipping' into the very subject under discussion; (despite the fact that it happens to be a subject you dislike so much that you got rid of all your books regarding, and which you rudely bash people on the web for bringing up.)
The key item is that my girlfriend is interested in UFO's so, although I'm heartly sick of the topic I find that I do have to keep up with some reading just to be able to debate the issue at home.
no responsible basis upon which to declare anything regarding UFOs, let alone declare that the whole subject is bunk.
In a technical sense it is impossible to prove that UFO's (by which I mean alien-directed craft) are bunk since it is impossibile to prove that every bright light in the sky is not an alien craft.
However, when every case that has enough detail to make any decision one way or another falls apart and when every photograph turns out to be faked (often badly) for years on end, it really becomes quite tedious to hear people going on about how the next book/film/demented eye-witness will prove that this is going on - no, really this is the one, I kid you not...
I grew up assuming that UFO's were real and in the 70's I was a real nut on the subject but I started looking at the cases in detail and one by one the "sure thing" cases that I thought were air-tight evidence evaporated and by the mid 80's I had to re-evaluate what was going on. There are lots of perfectly intelligent people that appear to have lapses of judgement (I'll never forget the woman that spoke at a convention and described going to sleep and then aliens came into her room and took her away through the walls of the house "It was like a dream" she said! Quite.), stupid people that don't know what they're talking about, and (the majority) crooked or poor people that want to make a quick buck/be on TV/be locally famous (the Peruvian guy that got radiation burns over most of his body but strangely got better before being photographed stands out here).
There are lots of reasons for UFO reports but, contrary to normal belief, there is not a small residue that can't be explained away. There are some that can't be called one way or another but given how many are bunk the reasonable approach is to assume they're not world-shattering events. Extraordinary claims and all that...
But some, I discovered, is not.
Well, I assume you have a case in mind; what is it?
But I've got to say that you haven't impressed me at all so far.
I think that is inescapable. This really is a matter of faith and no one shifts from one side of the fence to the other except by their own efforts. What could I possibly say in a message that would change your mind? I could perhaps talk you out of one particular case but what of the hundreds of others? That would be a very long thread indeed. And what proof could you give me that a case is absolutely real?
Reusing Microsoft's copyrighted BIOS code and patching it to mod the box is a copyright infringement.
No, it's not. If I write all over a book I own, or even one I don't own for that matter, it's not copyright infingement and neither is changing a BIOS, so long as I don't give or sell the result to you. Of course, in the real world MS can pay a lawyer to argue the case for 5000 years and you can't so the truth has little to do with it.
I mean, I can check out the ClearType algorithm for myself, and it's very sound and rigorously defined. What's the new one? Which journals has it been published in? Or is it just a hack?
Or you could just look at the result, DUH!.
If for some reason you think the theory is more important than the result, read the source code.
Let's start with a couple of the better known cases, and let's stay within the bounds of military sightings during the period of Blue Book. I'll let you pick.
If you really, really, want to then you pick; I haven't held on to my UFO books since I smelt the coffee in about 1988, although I do dip into stuff at the library (I read some Tim Good stuff a couple of months ago). But if you want to pick something I'll go over the "evidence". But, it is pointless; It's quite obvious that nothing could convince you to change your mind.
I know a lot of the movies available for download couldn't have been ripped from DVD since they're up for download before the film is even released on DVD (or at times before it's even released in the theatres!)
Oh, don't go confusing him with facts! That'll just ruin the entire tone of the debate...
Rather than debate these details I'd rather suggest that the lesson on both sides of the Atlantic is that money buys too much access to the law-makers. I can't see that these differences in electoral and governmental theory have played out in either country to a practical improvement in the people's involvement in and representation by the government of the day.
Almost all politicians are crooks at heart and any system that involves them is doomed to become corrupt over time no matter how well designed it is initially. "Who watches the watchmen?" is the eternal question in representative democracy and the answer is always "no one" in the long run.
It happens than I don't think that the American system is better even in theory but it is not important anymore as both systems have now failed utterly from their ideals; neither Americans or Britons have any real involvement in what are becoming two of the the world's greatest Plutocracies.
Like it or not, 'DVD Jon' and his work, DeCSS, do aid
No. Bitwise copying is for piracy; DeCSS is really, really, really, REALLY crap for piracy. It's for playback.
No matter how many times "the man" says DeCSS is for piracy, it just isn't true. DeCCS is to copying what roller skates are to theft: it is possible that you could find someone trying it but it's a useless way to go about it.
Plus, in most countries CSS itself is actually an illegal proce-fixing mechanism backed by an equally illegal cartel.
With royal prerogative (ie without Parliament's approval) he can ratify treaties and declare war.
That's true; but day to day power is less, I think. It has grown, however, mainly at the expense of the monarch but also simply because we've not had any really tight elections for quite some time (1974 was a majority of 3 and 1992 was the only other majority under 30 since 1964) and that reduces the power of dissenters within the ruling party and strengthens the leadership. With a majority of more than 160 Blair's leadership is very strong and centralised.
the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Not exactly earth-shattering, though, is it? I still think the Bishop of London's better, too. He looks like he could take on a few of Satan's minions down the east-end! "Oh, no! It's da Bishop!" Sorry, drifted off there.
I wonder, do Britons care very much about who their MPs are? Do they go to the polls thinking about how great Tony Blair is but hating the labor MP candidate for their district and vote for him anyway because he's labor and they want Blair for PM?
It's wrong to generalise.
But I'll do it anyway.
I think most people here do vote on party lines although it might be truer to say that they vote on policy lines. If the party supports a policy they like then people will vote for it, especially if they think the leader of the party will push that policy. So, if the PM is kicked out by the party mid-term as happened to Thatcher, people might still be happy if the policies are still what they want (not in that particular case, however).
In some places the individiual candidate matters, particularly in marginal seats, but the reality is that no one likes politicians and most of them are as dull as the next so it usually doesn't matter. The issue of who the leader of the party is very mixed. Currently Blair is pretty well hated but Labour are seen as better than the other options while the Labour MPs themselves can't decide if the bloodbath unleased by giving him the boot would leave them in power and none of them want to start the experiment. Iraq is the first time I've seen Blair under any real pressure from public opinion but, again, there are no obvious alternatives in the other parties so I doubt that he'll have any trouble joining in the attack when the time comes.
My guess would be that given the strength of the parties in Britain your individual MP wouldn't matter all that much, since they're almost always vote the party line which is mostly directed by the PM.
This is quite true of all the parties, not just the governing one that the PM belongs to: each party has its "whips" which tell the sheep, er...MPs how to vote. The whips have a lot of power since being dropped by the party at the next election for being a trouble maker is normally a one-way ticket to palookaville (sp?) since the voters will just vote for your faceless replacement. Again, there are a few exceptions but they are very, very rare indeed.
many people deliberately split their vote between President and congress
It is worth noting that the PM has very reduced powers compared to the President so this doesn't make as much sense over here; there's no real way in which the PM's power needs to be balanced by putting a different party in opposition to it. There are more differences in the two systems than most PMs would like, I think.
Which is fair enough in a party system. The US system doen't fill me with excitement at the idea of having a separate election. If we'd don it that way then Thatcher would have stayed in power for ANOTHER two years before we could kick her out. It makes no more sense to vote for PM than it would to vote for leader of the opposition or chancellor of the exchequer. They are all just cabinet posts and the pary can fill them as it sees fit.
Labour leader ('elected' mostly by the unions)
Labour leader is elected by the Labour MP's and Blair wouldn't get many union votes today if they did have any say in it.
at least Americans had an election for President, where you could vote for or against Bush; Britain did not hold one in the first place!
Why do you think this is a big deal? We voted (or not) for parties in the full knowledge of who their leaders were and those leaders were a substantial factor in the way people voted.
Oh really? Dozens, you say? As in at least 24 books?
I am going to go out on a limb here and call you a liar.
I used to follow this stuff in detail, I meant "dozens" as in "more than 24". That you simply can not entertain the possibility that anyone could have looked at the evidence and not believed simply shows how little evidence is important to your faith. I'm going to go out on a limb here and call you an idiot.
And further, going to a UFO convention, if indeed you have even done that,
Several.
then I would suggest that simply having had contact with a lunatic fringe,
I avoid the lunatic fringe. The people I met were calm, normal, fairly sensible people that had no idea what they were talking about and very little in the way of judgement. But decent enough, if deluded.
You are a good little boy, holding the party line and entrenching your own ignorance like so. Many gold stickers for you, son. --Your laziness and fear are exemplary!
Yes, Quite. I grew up in the assuming that there were aliens involved and that at least some of the claims held water: I tried to prove it both to people I knew and to myself. I have learnt to think outside my conditioning and come to realise that the whole UFO thing is bunk. I seems to me that you are the one stuck in a rut.
Shall the subjective definition of one individual (one ardently opposed to the act, apparently) control our construction of the term?
That's better than the bought opinion of any number of people that don't care one way or the other about what's right.
Your definition would shift as science prolongs the human life span, you know.
As does the current one: life+x
More importantly, I regard my suggestion not as the "right" solution but the point where it is unreasonable to argue that something has not gone wrong. My personal preference is for "life of creator or 50 years, whichever is longer".
Is that what "limited" means? Or is it a second extension, or a series of extensions, that you find unreasonable?
The worst aspect of Bono is the retro-active nature but also, "Limited" can not mean "extended every time it is about to run out". That just isn't limited.
Patently obvious? Are you an originalist?
What do you mean by "originalist"?
Do you think the Framers intended for copyrights to never be extended?
Clearly they exected that there might be a future need to, but it is also difficult to imagine that people that were thinking in terms of 14 years could have intended an extension to well over 100 years.
How can you in your second paragraph argue for the intent of the Framers and in your first paragraph adopt a definition that clearly was not the intent of the Framers?
The Framers stated that they wanted a limit; they made the mistake of not defining their term and I am mearly suggesting a fix; I don't see that as a contradiction.
The issue is whether the legislation is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
If the constitution is a legal document, dealing with the limits of the law, then it is entirely reasonable to allow the judicial branch to clear up ambiguities in the language or, more importantly, to prevent abuse of those ambiguities. But, is that it is also entirely reasonable to allow the people, through their representatives to do that job too. The problem is that the elected representatives are corrupt, which ranges far beyond the copyright issue but, hey, that's politicians for you.
In reality, money talks and it really matters very little what the constitution says one way or the other on this or any subject, it is really just a historical document now. In the words of Cornelius Vanderbilt: 'What do I care about the law? Haint I got the power?'.
The book you have been assigned, I believe, is Richard M. Dolan's "UFOs and the National Security State."
Oh, fuck, not another one. Listen, I've read dozens of these "books". I've watched the fake movies, I read the magazines and I've been to the UFO conventions and listened to the "eye-witnesses".
It's bullshit.
There are no aliens visiting us and there's no Santa either.
I will: any period such that the average newborn baby at the start of the period will not be alive at the end of the period is not in any real or socially useful sense limited.
It is patently obvious, given how short the original period was, that the framers of the constitution did not mean the current "as long as the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign contributions keep rolling in" system. It is a mistake in the constitution but that doesn't mean that no one should fix the mistake.
This is a good example of trademark abuse: there is no intent or reasonable possibility that anyone was being deceived by this useage mearly that the logo was being used to make it clear what was being discussed. There is no reason to call this an abuse of the trademark and another good reason why trademark law should be rewritten.
If it isn't fraud then I don't give a flying fuck how much you paid your designer to draw the logo, all that's happening is that someone is spreading the word about the value of your invention and you should be paying for that, not suing them.
Why is it that intellectual propery hardly ever seems to involve an intellect?
Right. Xerox, I get. Let's try the other two: I'm going to kleenex my nose then go hoover the rug. No, that doesn't work.
Work or not, they are commonly used. Hoover fought for years to resist becoming a verb and their defeat has stood as a warning for all trademarks ever since; kleenexing your nose is not so common, particularly in the UK, but I have heard it. People, eh?
I think you should have been replying to the orginal poster; I don't think there's any point in boycotting any DRM stuff: chips or consumer items. We're going to get DRM whether we want it or not and the suppliers (MPAA, RIAA etc) will make damn sure that the only options are DRM or no digital content/DVD/Music/whatever at all.
It it the clear intention of Hollywood and the Whitehouse that this would mean doing without a computer of any kind. Sounds like a fun future, doesn't it. This is the reality of consummer capitalism: the public is free to choose from the options the plutocrats set out for them, whether it is computer chips or presidents. In the later case, of course, they sometime have to fiddle the figures a bit if you're tedious enough to pick the wrong one but the reality is that a choice of two nobodies suits them much more than a real choice of people that might actually try to do a good job.
The people who whine about Macs costing too much and going too slow just don't understand the difference between luxury (Mac) and utility (PC).
Of course, the reason the Mac isn't the utility AND luxury option is that Apple priced themselves out of the market in the 80's by taking exactly that elitist attitude. Didn't really work as a business model, did it? Will Apple still be here in 5 years? Maybe. Will IBM and MS? Yep.
Slashdot Mirror
TWW
Or lets say it was Swan, form the UK, who beat Edison hands down, forcing Edison to go into partnership with him in the Edison Swan Electric Light Co.
Don't pride yourself on ignorance, pride yourself on facts.
How ironic.
TWW
The key item is that my girlfriend is interested in UFO's so, although I'm heartly sick of the topic I find that I do have to keep up with some reading just to be able to debate the issue at home.
no responsible basis upon which to declare anything regarding UFOs, let alone declare that the whole subject is bunk.
In a technical sense it is impossible to prove that UFO's (by which I mean alien-directed craft) are bunk since it is impossibile to prove that every bright light in the sky is not an alien craft.
However, when every case that has enough detail to make any decision one way or another falls apart and when every photograph turns out to be faked (often badly) for years on end, it really becomes quite tedious to hear people going on about how the next book/film/demented eye-witness will prove that this is going on - no, really this is the one, I kid you not...
I grew up assuming that UFO's were real and in the 70's I was a real nut on the subject but I started looking at the cases in detail and one by one the "sure thing" cases that I thought were air-tight evidence evaporated and by the mid 80's I had to re-evaluate what was going on. There are lots of perfectly intelligent people that appear to have lapses of judgement (I'll never forget the woman that spoke at a convention and described going to sleep and then aliens came into her room and took her away through the walls of the house "It was like a dream" she said! Quite.), stupid people that don't know what they're talking about, and (the majority) crooked or poor people that want to make a quick buck/be on TV/be locally famous (the Peruvian guy that got radiation burns over most of his body but strangely got better before being photographed stands out here).
There are lots of reasons for UFO reports but, contrary to normal belief, there is not a small residue that can't be explained away. There are some that can't be called one way or another but given how many are bunk the reasonable approach is to assume they're not world-shattering events. Extraordinary claims and all that...
But some, I discovered, is not.
Well, I assume you have a case in mind; what is it?
But I've got to say that you haven't impressed me at all so far.
I think that is inescapable. This really is a matter of faith and no one shifts from one side of the fence to the other except by their own efforts. What could I possibly say in a message that would change your mind? I could perhaps talk you out of one particular case but what of the hundreds of others? That would be a very long thread indeed. And what proof could you give me that a case is absolutely real?
TWW
No, it's not. If I write all over a book I own, or even one I don't own for that matter, it's not copyright infingement and neither is changing a BIOS, so long as I don't give or sell the result to you. Of course, in the real world MS can pay a lawyer to argue the case for 5000 years and you can't so the truth has little to do with it.
TWW
Or you could just look at the result, DUH!.
If for some reason you think the theory is more important than the result, read the source code.
TWW
If you really, really, want to then you pick; I haven't held on to my UFO books since I smelt the coffee in about 1988, although I do dip into stuff at the library (I read some Tim Good stuff a couple of months ago). But if you want to pick something I'll go over the "evidence". But, it is pointless; It's quite obvious that nothing could convince you to change your mind.
TWW
Apart from you and me, I wonder how many others on /. have that album? It was the last APP album I bought.
TWW
Oh, don't go confusing him with facts! That'll just ruin the entire tone of the debate...
TWW
Almost all politicians are crooks at heart and any system that involves them is doomed to become corrupt over time no matter how well designed it is initially. "Who watches the watchmen?" is the eternal question in representative democracy and the answer is always "no one" in the long run.
It happens than I don't think that the American system is better even in theory but it is not important anymore as both systems have now failed utterly from their ideals; neither Americans or Britons have any real involvement in what are becoming two of the the world's greatest Plutocracies.
TWW
No. Bitwise copying is for piracy; DeCSS is really, really, really, REALLY crap for piracy. It's for playback.
No matter how many times "the man" says DeCSS is for piracy, it just isn't true. DeCCS is to copying what roller skates are to theft: it is possible that you could find someone trying it but it's a useless way to go about it.
Plus, in most countries CSS itself is actually an illegal proce-fixing mechanism backed by an equally illegal cartel.
TWW
That's true; but day to day power is less, I think. It has grown, however, mainly at the expense of the monarch but also simply because we've not had any really tight elections for quite some time (1974 was a majority of 3 and 1992 was the only other majority under 30 since 1964) and that reduces the power of dissenters within the ruling party and strengthens the leadership. With a majority of more than 160 Blair's leadership is very strong and centralised.
the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Not exactly earth-shattering, though, is it? I still think the Bishop of London's better, too. He looks like he could take on a few of Satan's minions down the east-end! "Oh, no! It's da Bishop!" Sorry, drifted off there.
Still, I don't see major reforms any time soon.
No, turkeys don't usually vote for christmas!
TWW
It's wrong to generalise.
But I'll do it anyway.
I think most people here do vote on party lines although it might be truer to say that they vote on policy lines. If the party supports a policy they like then people will vote for it, especially if they think the leader of the party will push that policy. So, if the PM is kicked out by the party mid-term as happened to Thatcher, people might still be happy if the policies are still what they want (not in that particular case, however).
In some places the individiual candidate matters, particularly in marginal seats, but the reality is that no one likes politicians and most of them are as dull as the next so it usually doesn't matter. The issue of who the leader of the party is very mixed. Currently Blair is pretty well hated but Labour are seen as better than the other options while the Labour MPs themselves can't decide if the bloodbath unleased by giving him the boot would leave them in power and none of them want to start the experiment. Iraq is the first time I've seen Blair under any real pressure from public opinion but, again, there are no obvious alternatives in the other parties so I doubt that he'll have any trouble joining in the attack when the time comes.
My guess would be that given the strength of the parties in Britain your individual MP wouldn't matter all that much, since they're almost always vote the party line which is mostly directed by the PM.
This is quite true of all the parties, not just the governing one that the PM belongs to: each party has its "whips" which tell the sheep, er...MPs how to vote. The whips have a lot of power since being dropped by the party at the next election for being a trouble maker is normally a one-way ticket to palookaville (sp?) since the voters will just vote for your faceless replacement. Again, there are a few exceptions but they are very, very rare indeed.
many people deliberately split their vote between President and congress
It is worth noting that the PM has very reduced powers compared to the President so this doesn't make as much sense over here; there's no real way in which the PM's power needs to be balanced by putting a different party in opposition to it. There are more differences in the two systems than most PMs would like, I think.
TWW
Which is fair enough in a party system. The US system doen't fill me with excitement at the idea of having a separate election. If we'd don it that way then Thatcher would have stayed in power for ANOTHER two years before we could kick her out. It makes no more sense to vote for PM than it would to vote for leader of the opposition or chancellor of the exchequer. They are all just cabinet posts and the pary can fill them as it sees fit.
Labour leader ('elected' mostly by the unions)
Labour leader is elected by the Labour MP's and Blair wouldn't get many union votes today if they did have any say in it.
at least Americans had an election for President, where you could vote for or against Bush; Britain did not hold one in the first place!
Why do you think this is a big deal? We voted (or not) for parties in the full knowledge of who their leaders were and those leaders were a substantial factor in the way people voted.
TWW
I am going to go out on a limb here and call you a liar.
I used to follow this stuff in detail, I meant "dozens" as in "more than 24". That you simply can not entertain the possibility that anyone could have looked at the evidence and not believed simply shows how little evidence is important to your faith. I'm going to go out on a limb here and call you an idiot.
And further, going to a UFO convention, if indeed you have even done that,
Several.
then I would suggest that simply having had contact with a lunatic fringe,
I avoid the lunatic fringe. The people I met were calm, normal, fairly sensible people that had no idea what they were talking about and very little in the way of judgement. But decent enough, if deluded.
You are a good little boy, holding the party line and entrenching your own ignorance like so. Many gold stickers for you, son. --Your laziness and fear are exemplary!
Yes, Quite. I grew up in the assuming that there were aliens involved and that at least some of the claims held water: I tried to prove it both to people I knew and to myself. I have learnt to think outside my conditioning and come to realise that the whole UFO thing is bunk. I seems to me that you are the one stuck in a rut.
TWW
That's better than the bought opinion of any number of people that don't care one way or the other about what's right.
Your definition would shift as science prolongs the human life span, you know.
As does the current one: life+x
More importantly, I regard my suggestion not as the "right" solution but the point where it is unreasonable to argue that something has not gone wrong. My personal preference is for "life of creator or 50 years, whichever is longer".
Is that what "limited" means? Or is it a second extension, or a series of extensions, that you find unreasonable?
The worst aspect of Bono is the retro-active nature but also, "Limited" can not mean "extended every time it is about to run out". That just isn't limited.
Patently obvious? Are you an originalist?
What do you mean by "originalist"?
Do you think the Framers intended for copyrights to never be extended?
Clearly they exected that there might be a future need to, but it is also difficult to imagine that people that were thinking in terms of 14 years could have intended an extension to well over 100 years.
How can you in your second paragraph argue for the intent of the Framers and in your first paragraph adopt a definition that clearly was not the intent of the Framers?
The Framers stated that they wanted a limit; they made the mistake of not defining their term and I am mearly suggesting a fix; I don't see that as a contradiction.
The issue is whether the legislation is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
If the constitution is a legal document, dealing with the limits of the law, then it is entirely reasonable to allow the judicial branch to clear up ambiguities in the language or, more importantly, to prevent abuse of those ambiguities. But, is that it is also entirely reasonable to allow the people, through their representatives to do that job too. The problem is that the elected representatives are corrupt, which ranges far beyond the copyright issue but, hey, that's politicians for you.
In reality, money talks and it really matters very little what the constitution says one way or the other on this or any subject, it is really just a historical document now. In the words of Cornelius Vanderbilt: 'What do I care about the law? Haint I got the power?'.
The people haven't a look in.
TWW
Oh, fuck, not another one. Listen, I've read dozens of these "books". I've watched the fake movies, I read the magazines and I've been to the UFO conventions and listened to the "eye-witnesses".
It's bullshit.
There are no aliens visiting us and there's no Santa either.
Get over it.
TWW
I will: any period such that the average newborn baby at the start of the period will not be alive at the end of the period is not in any real or socially useful sense limited.
It is patently obvious, given how short the original period was, that the framers of the constitution did not mean the current "as long as the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign contributions keep rolling in" system. It is a mistake in the constitution but that doesn't mean that no one should fix the mistake.
TWW
It was in 1776
TWW
If it isn't fraud then I don't give a flying fuck how much you paid your designer to draw the logo, all that's happening is that someone is spreading the word about the value of your invention and you should be paying for that, not suing them.
Why is it that intellectual propery hardly ever seems to involve an intellect?
TWW
Work or not, they are commonly used. Hoover fought for years to resist becoming a verb and their defeat has stood as a warning for all trademarks ever since; kleenexing your nose is not so common, particularly in the UK, but I have heard it. People, eh?
TWW
No one is asking us.
TWW
It it the clear intention of Hollywood and the Whitehouse that this would mean doing without a computer of any kind. Sounds like a fun future, doesn't it. This is the reality of consummer capitalism: the public is free to choose from the options the plutocrats set out for them, whether it is computer chips or presidents. In the later case, of course, they sometime have to fiddle the figures a bit if you're tedious enough to pick the wrong one but the reality is that a choice of two nobodies suits them much more than a real choice of people that might actually try to do a good job.
TWW
Apple dreams of being as well-off as BMW or Mercedes. The computer market is not the same as the car market.
TWW
Of course, the reason the Mac isn't the utility AND luxury option is that Apple priced themselves out of the market in the 80's by taking exactly that elitist attitude. Didn't really work as a business model, did it? Will Apple still be here in 5 years? Maybe. Will IBM and MS? Yep.
TWW
If you don't know why by now, you haven't been paying attention.
TWW