Actually, Spiderman 1 made quite a bit of sense. It was Spiderman 2 that threw my suspension of disbelief out the window, and it was due to a slight flaw that they could have made mention of the origin of in the movie: why did his powers wane?
I don't remember reading about that back in my comic-book days, so it wasn't "fresh" in the mind of at least this (ex-) comic-book reader.
By the way, have you given up on your ad hominem-style debating technique? Good on you! (It's true that you get more flies with honey than vinegar, that is, if flies are what you're after.)
OK, third strike and you're out. I won't continue this thread beyond this post, because you completely fail to understand how to argue effectively. Argue the idea, not the individual: my motives do not matter one bit, because I am stating the facts of law and history and the court decisions that led to the current state of being. "Ad hominem" is Latin, follow this link to see other debating fallacies.
I am not a pirate, although a) you won't believe me, and b) whether I am or not does not change the fact that copyright is currently eternal, which goes completely against the reason that copyright was created, which was to give a temporary monopoly on the ability to sell copies of the work in question.
Public domain was never a privilege. Public domain is the natural state of things; copyright is an artificial human restriction which does not exist in nature.
Let's examine the Berne Convention. Article 7 states that a work will be protected for life of author plus 50 years. So don't even attempt to state that the public domain doesn't matter, because it is specifically written into the very document which you're using to defend your position!
The entire Berne Convention starts here. It appears that this was written into law around 1967, which means that even if an author died the day after it was ratified, their works will not hit the public domain until 2017. Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1968; I would bet money that his written works will not be placed into the public domain in 2018, but that's 13 years in the future. Here's a list of authors who died in 1968, and whose works I never expect to see in the public domain.
Copyright did not exist a few hundred years ago. The Earth got along fine without it, and we'll get along fine without it in the future as well. This restriction on sharing of information is necessarily temporary, unless we decided to kill all the humans, and then copyright won't matter anyway. But if we decide to let the race survive, we'll hit nanotechnology within 20 years, and then all material goods will be free (the cost of sunlight + dirt), so there won't be any incentive to restrict copying (the producer crying over "loss of profit" is a silly motive when the producer can just create the items that they would have used that money to purchase -- so, in effect, money will be obsolete in 20 years).
You're not thinking far enough into the future, nor are you recalling history. You're fun to play with but I'm done, since obviously we're not convincing each other (I think I'm doing a better job of providing evidence, and you refuse to stop calling me names, so it's obvious we're just going to have to disagree to disagree).
Limited time is a technicality? Please tell me what information source you're getting this from. (And you never responded to why you think that copyright law is both moral and ethical.)
I'm concerned that you don't care about public domain; you are showing evidence of your earlier attack on me, which is that you do not fully understand copyright law, and the give-and-take nature of the rights and responsibilities of both sides (those being: the publisher who is being given a government-granted monopoly on the ability to sell duplicates; and the public, which is having a right removed from them, that being the right to freely duplicate ideas).
In stating that "Public domain is a priveledge not a right", you are showing your ignorance (actual or feigned, I have no idea) of the origins of copyright law.
You are correct that physical property does not normally become public property (and I can give examples of imminent domain that show that statement to also be false). However, you have to define the term "intellectual property" because there are three different laws: patent, trademark, and copyright. These all have various different terms, lengths, required actions (trademark holders must actively defend a trademark, but the other two can be ignored in general and prosecuted on a case-by-case basis), and punishments (some criminal, others just civil). But for the sake of brevity I will assume you were talking about copyright law when you used that ambiguous term.
I should not "be grateful" that works enter the public domain, because it's not happening ever again thanks to the "we'll extend it for 20 years, every 19 years" Disney mentality.
And, yet again, I am neither going to rise to the bait of your ad hominem attack on me that I am too cheap, nor will I respond in kind.
As to reality being distorted, you have shown evidence that you do not fully understand copyright law, nor the delicate balance that our country's founders created when they implemented it, and how that balance has been ruthlessly destroyed in the last few decades, to the point that nothing will ever again enter the public domain.
The funniest part about this entire thread is that, if you did the research and read up on the laws and the Constitution, you would undertand that I'm not expressing opinions here. I'm expressing fact. Thus calling into question my maturity, morality, or cheapness does nothing to further your argument; instead, it makes people think that perhaps you're intentionally misunderstanding the situation and are being paid by the copyright cartels to make people think that, in America, they have priviledges and everything else is illegal--when, in fact, the Constitution explicitly states that all rights not enumerated to the government are reserved by the states (and, by extension, the people).
In other words, we started this country under the assumption that you can do whatever the fuck you want, except for "these certain things." These days, most people think that what you stated is correct; that we no longer have any rights at all, instead everything is illegal except "these few things."
Copyright law is neither moral nor ethical. Please defend your statement.
Copyright law is, in fact, a social contract that authors and creators will receive monopoly status on the sale of their works for a limited time and then their works enter the public domain, and can be copied and remixed freely.
Nothing that was created since 1923 will ever end up in the public domain. How is this moral and ethical?
My maturity has absolutely fucking nothing to do with the facts in this case and our ability to argue them, and it is an ad hominem attack to bring it up. I won't respond in kind.
Also, being mature and understanding the law are orthogonal, so you're not even making sense. I'm sure there are some who agree with the shit that you're typing, but then they apparently don't have mod points since your comment is now flamebait.
I don't think there's anything wrong with varying prices and I don't defend the 99c price point. What I object to is the record companies trying to dictate the retail price.
Exactly. And also, I find it interesting that the "industry representative" is stating that different songs have different intrinsic value--but never states that, for some songs, that value is less than 99c, sometimes approaching 0c, and that this music should also be charged appropriately.
Blockbuster is doing something similar with their "no late fees". A movie rental is something like $4.75 (which seems a bit high, but anyway), and on the receipt it says "if you return it within 15 days, no late fee; if you keep it after 15 days then we charge you $5.05 and you own the movie."
So for under $10, one can own a just-released DVD.
So, let me guess, you would have sympathized with the Nazis and turned in the Jews? Or, you would have helped the feds find the Underground Railroad?
Legal != moral != ethical (although those last two are fairly close).
We have many, many laws that aren't at all moral or ethical; they were purchased by individuals or (more these days) corporations for whom they would benefit. We have too many laws these days, and we really need a "code review" and subsequent purging (of the laws, that is, not people; although we should fire some of the "representatives" that might still be in office who were responsible for creating these immoral and unethical laws).
You're not kidding. If memory serves it took something like 15 years for "E.T." to come to video from the theater. I believe it even had three runs at the theater before they released it.
Not at all. I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, and came to the conclusion that "free will" just gives you the ability to choose a solution which is less optimal than the most optimal solution that you know about.
Which can then be expressed in several ways. On the good, it gives you the ability to "play", to try out many different competing solutions to determine for yourself which is the most optimal, in a certain situation.
On the bad, it means that a more rigorous decision-making structure may be more competitive than humans, in certain situations (like space exploration, where "playing" could leave you stranded).
Personally, I'm very much in favor of "too much intelligence." I love that the Pak could see the outcome and act immediately; however, they were still too tribal. Once I achieve super-intelligence I'm leaving here. I'll fly out to another star and begin setting up a Dyson Sphere. It's partly play, since I've never done it before and will be learning as I go. But it's also vitally necessary, as by capturing the EM radiation from the star and saving it in batteries on the outside of the Dyson Sphere, and then rationing that energy, we can effectively increase the life of the universe; by doing this we increase the amount of time that it will take to achieve heat death, which is uniform temperature and pressure throughout the universe. (Life requires deltas in order to continue surviving, so the heat death will be the true death of all life, unless we find a way to manipulate sub-atomic particles and obtain energy from them, or suck it in from another universe or find a doorway to a younger universe.)
But then, that's just me. I'm sure there are some for whom "more intelligence" would be "too much" because they'd end up being just as tribal as the Pak, and perhaps end up killing the entire race so that they'd have no "competition".
Not sure I'd want Tree of Life, though. Nanotechnology seems like it'll provide all the benefits, but without the drawbacks (dying when I have no children, especially since I currently have none).
Oh, and also, above where I say "I'm leaving here", with nanotechnology I'll be able to create avatars and send them to do my bidding, with full neural links between them and my "home base" (which will be a large quantity of thinking matter protected very well, and likely distributed as well among the planets, asteroids, and ultimately around other stars and galaxies). So even though "I" will leave to set up the Dyson Sphere, "I" will also stick around and perhaps run for office (we need fewer laws, and I think that's something that people would rally around).
They may not have check-in rights, but they should get viewing rights, because there is no credible (legal, management, or technical) reason to prohibit them from doing so.
Here's one, which has legal and management aspects but is overridingly a security concern: so that less code walks away when the developer leaves.
Programming is exactly like all other professions: you have a limited amount of time to get things the way you want them. The great part about programming is that many portions can be automated, and once automated the computer does it for the rest of eternity.
As with other science fields, it's all about standing on the shoulders of giants. I predominantly write Perl, which some look down on, but if I'm able to create in a few hours what took C/C++ developers over a year to produce, who's the idiot?
I don't think everyone needs to know Perl; it's tough to read other people's code (which sometimes includes "me 6 months ago"). However, the tools are helping reduce the amount of knowledge required to get started, and that can only be a good thing.
Back in my mom's day, she used punch cards. I'm sure there were technology-worshipping luddites like yourself back then, who decried the advance of non-machine languages. Tough titties.
(PS The site defaults just changed; it's still TABx4 + Space to preview, but it's now TABx5 + Space to submit instead of TABx3 + Space. Thinking it through, I prefer the new way, since if I missed one of the tabs I wouldn't post by accident, it would just be on the drop-down "HTML Formatted".)
Or, are the politicos enacting an entirely different drama where the industry is their hapless whipping boy and the sincerity of their intentions to "save the children" need to be questioned altogether?
My take on political speech is that any time anybody asks you to "think of the children" they're really asking you to stop thinking, and agree with them that their restriction is palatable.
Thank you! I had forgotten this song by The Refreshments, which I used to own on cassette before the fire. (It's about relationships, and that the machinations that always happen at the end to keep people together tend to generally be wasted effort, like moving furniture around on a sinking ship.)
In other words, you're lying about what capitalism really is.
Capitalism (in fact, any interaction with humans) contains a plethora of lies. It's your job to wade through them and make a good trade, and be productive.
This is not much different from any other economic philosophy. Just, in capitalism, the rules are pretty much laid out from the get-go.
And dropping bombs on a country that hasn't attacked or threatened our "homeland" is... love? At least China is violating treaties without killing people...
Release schedules should only be to either implement beneficial features or to resolve any outstanding issues that benefit the user base as a whole.
So, assume the scenario: every release fixes exactly one bug (or adds exactly one feature). (And: no release adds a new bug or removes an existing feature.)
Is this an acceptable release schedule? If so, why, and if not, why not? (It sounds like it fits your definition, literally, but not exactly spiritually.)
[...] industrialization of, say, the Asteroid Belt may provide a lot of resources.
We'll most likely never see the society of "belters" that Larry Niven wrote about. Why? Because it'll take something like 50-100 years to develop that society, and we'll pass through the singularity in 20-30 years, negating the importance of belt mining.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't remember reading about that back in my comic-book days, so it wasn't "fresh" in the mind of at least this (ex-) comic-book reader.
By the way, have you given up on your ad hominem-style debating technique? Good on you! (It's true that you get more flies with honey than vinegar, that is, if flies are what you're after.)
Sorry if I offended. Please read to the end (the other party has, apparently, stopped insulting me).
I am not a pirate, although a) you won't believe me, and b) whether I am or not does not change the fact that copyright is currently eternal, which goes completely against the reason that copyright was created, which was to give a temporary monopoly on the ability to sell copies of the work in question.
Public domain was never a privilege. Public domain is the natural state of things; copyright is an artificial human restriction which does not exist in nature.
Let's examine the Berne Convention. Article 7 states that a work will be protected for life of author plus 50 years. So don't even attempt to state that the public domain doesn't matter, because it is specifically written into the very document which you're using to defend your position!
The entire Berne Convention starts here. It appears that this was written into law around 1967, which means that even if an author died the day after it was ratified, their works will not hit the public domain until 2017. Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1968; I would bet money that his written works will not be placed into the public domain in 2018, but that's 13 years in the future. Here's a list of authors who died in 1968, and whose works I never expect to see in the public domain.
Copyright did not exist a few hundred years ago. The Earth got along fine without it, and we'll get along fine without it in the future as well. This restriction on sharing of information is necessarily temporary, unless we decided to kill all the humans, and then copyright won't matter anyway. But if we decide to let the race survive, we'll hit nanotechnology within 20 years, and then all material goods will be free (the cost of sunlight + dirt), so there won't be any incentive to restrict copying (the producer crying over "loss of profit" is a silly motive when the producer can just create the items that they would have used that money to purchase -- so, in effect, money will be obsolete in 20 years).
You're not thinking far enough into the future, nor are you recalling history. You're fun to play with but I'm done, since obviously we're not convincing each other (I think I'm doing a better job of providing evidence, and you refuse to stop calling me names, so it's obvious we're just going to have to disagree to disagree).
I'm concerned that you don't care about public domain; you are showing evidence of your earlier attack on me, which is that you do not fully understand copyright law, and the give-and-take nature of the rights and responsibilities of both sides (those being: the publisher who is being given a government-granted monopoly on the ability to sell duplicates; and the public, which is having a right removed from them, that being the right to freely duplicate ideas).
In stating that "Public domain is a priveledge not a right", you are showing your ignorance (actual or feigned, I have no idea) of the origins of copyright law.
You are correct that physical property does not normally become public property (and I can give examples of imminent domain that show that statement to also be false). However, you have to define the term "intellectual property" because there are three different laws: patent, trademark, and copyright. These all have various different terms, lengths, required actions (trademark holders must actively defend a trademark, but the other two can be ignored in general and prosecuted on a case-by-case basis), and punishments (some criminal, others just civil). But for the sake of brevity I will assume you were talking about copyright law when you used that ambiguous term.
I should not "be grateful" that works enter the public domain, because it's not happening ever again thanks to the "we'll extend it for 20 years, every 19 years" Disney mentality.
And, yet again, I am neither going to rise to the bait of your ad hominem attack on me that I am too cheap, nor will I respond in kind.
As to reality being distorted, you have shown evidence that you do not fully understand copyright law, nor the delicate balance that our country's founders created when they implemented it, and how that balance has been ruthlessly destroyed in the last few decades, to the point that nothing will ever again enter the public domain.
The funniest part about this entire thread is that, if you did the research and read up on the laws and the Constitution, you would undertand that I'm not expressing opinions here. I'm expressing fact. Thus calling into question my maturity, morality, or cheapness does nothing to further your argument; instead, it makes people think that perhaps you're intentionally misunderstanding the situation and are being paid by the copyright cartels to make people think that, in America, they have priviledges and everything else is illegal--when, in fact, the Constitution explicitly states that all rights not enumerated to the government are reserved by the states (and, by extension, the people).
In other words, we started this country under the assumption that you can do whatever the fuck you want, except for "these certain things." These days, most people think that what you stated is correct; that we no longer have any rights at all, instead everything is illegal except "these few things."
Copyright law is, in fact, a social contract that authors and creators will receive monopoly status on the sale of their works for a limited time and then their works enter the public domain, and can be copied and remixed freely.
Nothing that was created since 1923 will ever end up in the public domain. How is this moral and ethical?
My maturity has absolutely fucking nothing to do with the facts in this case and our ability to argue them, and it is an ad hominem attack to bring it up. I won't respond in kind.
Also, being mature and understanding the law are orthogonal, so you're not even making sense. I'm sure there are some who agree with the shit that you're typing, but then they apparently don't have mod points since your comment is now flamebait.
Exactly. And also, I find it interesting that the "industry representative" is stating that different songs have different intrinsic value--but never states that, for some songs, that value is less than 99c, sometimes approaching 0c, and that this music should also be charged appropriately.
So for under $10, one can own a just-released DVD.
Legal != moral != ethical (although those last two are fairly close).
We have many, many laws that aren't at all moral or ethical; they were purchased by individuals or (more these days) corporations for whom they would benefit. We have too many laws these days, and we really need a "code review" and subsequent purging (of the laws, that is, not people; although we should fire some of the "representatives" that might still be in office who were responsible for creating these immoral and unethical laws).
You're not kidding. If memory serves it took something like 15 years for "E.T." to come to video from the theater. I believe it even had three runs at the theater before they released it.
Which can then be expressed in several ways. On the good, it gives you the ability to "play", to try out many different competing solutions to determine for yourself which is the most optimal, in a certain situation.
On the bad, it means that a more rigorous decision-making structure may be more competitive than humans, in certain situations (like space exploration, where "playing" could leave you stranded).
Personally, I'm very much in favor of "too much intelligence." I love that the Pak could see the outcome and act immediately; however, they were still too tribal. Once I achieve super-intelligence I'm leaving here. I'll fly out to another star and begin setting up a Dyson Sphere. It's partly play, since I've never done it before and will be learning as I go. But it's also vitally necessary, as by capturing the EM radiation from the star and saving it in batteries on the outside of the Dyson Sphere, and then rationing that energy, we can effectively increase the life of the universe; by doing this we increase the amount of time that it will take to achieve heat death, which is uniform temperature and pressure throughout the universe. (Life requires deltas in order to continue surviving, so the heat death will be the true death of all life, unless we find a way to manipulate sub-atomic particles and obtain energy from them, or suck it in from another universe or find a doorway to a younger universe.)
But then, that's just me. I'm sure there are some for whom "more intelligence" would be "too much" because they'd end up being just as tribal as the Pak, and perhaps end up killing the entire race so that they'd have no "competition".
Not sure I'd want Tree of Life, though. Nanotechnology seems like it'll provide all the benefits, but without the drawbacks (dying when I have no children, especially since I currently have none).
Oh, and also, above where I say "I'm leaving here", with nanotechnology I'll be able to create avatars and send them to do my bidding, with full neural links between them and my "home base" (which will be a large quantity of thinking matter protected very well, and likely distributed as well among the planets, asteroids, and ultimately around other stars and galaxies). So even though "I" will leave to set up the Dyson Sphere, "I" will also stick around and perhaps run for office (we need fewer laws, and I think that's something that people would rally around).
Here's one, which has legal and management aspects but is overridingly a security concern: so that less code walks away when the developer leaves.
Programming is exactly like all other professions: you have a limited amount of time to get things the way you want them. The great part about programming is that many portions can be automated, and once automated the computer does it for the rest of eternity.
As with other science fields, it's all about standing on the shoulders of giants. I predominantly write Perl, which some look down on, but if I'm able to create in a few hours what took C/C++ developers over a year to produce, who's the idiot?
I don't think everyone needs to know Perl; it's tough to read other people's code (which sometimes includes "me 6 months ago"). However, the tools are helping reduce the amount of knowledge required to get started, and that can only be a good thing.
Back in my mom's day, she used punch cards. I'm sure there were technology-worshipping luddites like yourself back then, who decried the advance of non-machine languages. Tough titties.
(PS The site defaults just changed; it's still TABx4 + Space to preview, but it's now TABx5 + Space to submit instead of TABx3 + Space. Thinking it through, I prefer the new way, since if I missed one of the tabs I wouldn't post by accident, it would just be on the drop-down "HTML Formatted".)
Threatening one's own people is very different from threatening other countries, which one does not have as direct control over.
Thought so, but you're so far above me that I worded it as a question so as not to offend. ;-) G'day mate!
Hang on, why not talk to your fucking supervisor when they're paying you and you've got "nothing going on"?
My take on political speech is that any time anybody asks you to "think of the children" they're really asking you to stop thinking, and agree with them that their restriction is palatable.
Thank you! I had forgotten this song by The Refreshments, which I used to own on cassette before the fire. (It's about relationships, and that the machinations that always happen at the end to keep people together tend to generally be wasted effort, like moving furniture around on a sinking ship.)
Capitalism (in fact, any interaction with humans) contains a plethora of lies. It's your job to wade through them and make a good trade, and be productive.
This is not much different from any other economic philosophy. Just, in capitalism, the rules are pretty much laid out from the get-go.
And dropping bombs on a country that hasn't attacked or threatened our "homeland" is ... love? At least China is violating treaties without killing people...
Just curious, why are you doubling the inner forward slashes?
Samba is two syllables, plow is one. You fail. ;-)
Nice. (I consider myself a Protector, although I've yet to eat Tree-of-Life.)
So, assume the scenario: every release fixes exactly one bug (or adds exactly one feature). (And: no release adds a new bug or removes an existing feature.)
Is this an acceptable release schedule? If so, why, and if not, why not? (It sounds like it fits your definition, literally, but not exactly spiritually.)
I just re-read Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Excellent literature.
We'll most likely never see the society of "belters" that Larry Niven wrote about. Why? Because it'll take something like 50-100 years to develop that society, and we'll pass through the singularity in 20-30 years, negating the importance of belt mining.