Since when is posting the facts flamebait or trolling? The only semi-informed posts I have seen on this topic have gotten scorched for saying the truth.
If you know anything about music copyright law, you know that the Harry Fox agency has an open and shut case against web sites that "publish" sheet music.
If posters think that music publishers should not have the right to be the only source of sheet music for a song they own, then that is a *good* and *different* point. But the fact is they do have that right, and Harry Fox is just protecting that right. If you don't like it, then get the law changed--I'll help you..
If you transcribe a song for yourself or your band mates to jam on, then that is fair use, if you publish the tabulature on the Web, you are publishing the sheet music and, like it or not, your are infringing on someone else's rights.
It is easy to pretend that you are fighting the System and the Man, but the reality is the music copyrights are most needed by small powerless musicians to protect themselves against the large corporations. For example, these assocated music copyright laws are the only thing that help early black musicians recover part of the huge amount of revenues they generated for the companies that screwed them.
If you want to take away these rights, what recourse do the individual, non-corporate musicians have when MegaLabel wants to absorb all music into there online database that you have to pay to subscribe to? As an independent musician, I wouldn't want some large corporation making money off of me, and I would want to be able to stop that from happening, but without those laws, I couldn't.
The point of Krugman's op-ed piece is that he sides with the technoskeptics, who say that previous technological revolutions were "a bigger deal" than the present digital revolution. His proof of this is that he personally would much rather be able to take a hot shower, drive a car, or use electric lights than be able to download a particular document off of the internet.
Krugman, you jackass, you wasted my time with an op-ed piece that reads like a sixth-grader's attempt at a report for social studies class. First, you talk about something you saw on tv, them you parrot two other authors' work, as if by the mere act of regurgitation, you personally have somehow added insight into the matter. Then you talk about tv some more.
If you strip out the intellectual theft and piggybacking from his article, all you are left with is this pointy-headed professor's description of his own tv viewing habits, namely:
"The new PBS mini-series "1900 House," which started last week, follows a modern British family that has agreed to spend three months living in a London townhouse that has been carefully de-modernized... I was WORRIED [emphasis added] about the concept: would it turn out to be exploitation TV with a highbrow veneer, sort of "Survivor" meets "Upstairs, Downstairs"? "
WORRIED!? Good job, Paulie, you just keep thinking those deep thoughts of yours, maybe next you can *worry* about who is leaving the cast of ER.
I can see it now, sprawled out on the couch, scratching his ass with one hand and scribbling out an article onto a legal pad with his Cheetos-stained fingers while watching Britney Spears on MTV, desperately struggling to come up with something, anything, to meet his NY Times deadline.
Here is why this pseudocerebral clown is a jackass (nothing personal):
"On the other side are economists and historians who compare our current roster of new technologies with the transforming technologies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and find our latest gizmos relatively trivial by comparison."
Just as a light bulb is trivial compared to starving to death for lack of agriculture, the motor car is trivial compared to dying from exposure from lack of shelter, etc. Clearly people will address their most vital and pressing needs first. Shelter, clothing, food, personal safety, etc., and so on up the scale of achievements until you get to truly worthless things like the Krugman article.
Obviously, if someone is given the choice between (a.) electricity and (b.) no electricity yet having a computer that requires electricity to operate and is useless without it, nine (possibly eight) out ten people will opt for the electrical service. Similarly, choosing between NOT dying of a disease or dying from the disease, but getting a new laser printer a few months after you die, most, possibly all, would choose to NOT die of a disease and forego the posthumous laser printer.
Basic needs are met first--even I have heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and I am fairly ignorant. (I hope this posting proves that.)
So the cool stuff like jet packs and fiberoptic neural implants happen after you master motorized land transportation and light bulbs. And, duh, giving up your jet pack (and commuting to work by hovercraft instead) is NEVER going to be "as big a deal" as if your world had no plumbing and everyone had to defecate were they stood. (Paints a pretty picture, don't it?) So what is more amazing- a jet pack or a toilet? Of course that's a stupid question, but that's my point. I hate when lusers waste my time and can't even be entertaining.
Krugman, even your closing attempt at wry insight, "the future is not what it used to be" is a frigging ripoff-- you frigging [alleged] plagiarist. Here's why you fear the future, anyone can go to a search engine and find out in ten seconds that:
"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be." -- Paul Valery (1871-1945) Nice attribution.
Hey, I just thought of something original, too, "E=mc^2"...Where's MY freakin' Nobel Prize????
So, to summarize, I guess my point is that I was somewhat disappointed with the article.
I really enjoy Slashdot and appreciate the input and various perspectives people offer.
I am somewhat of a newbie so I feel good that I finally have something to contribute to this forum, since I have some direct experience with Philip Greenspun and his work.
I stumbled across his web site and I thought it was very interesting. I emailed him and asked to sit in on his upcoming 6.916 class (Web Application Development) at MIT. He never wrote back. (Later at the intermission of a lecture he was giving, he checked his email messages--over 7000 messages received during a two week period.) I showed up on the first day of class and he said I was welcome to audit the class. I didn't have to plead my case, which was good because there was absolutely nothing for him to gain by accomodating my request. I was offered a user account, access to servers, help from TAs, help from Ars Digita staff(!), etc, etc. Please note that I am not an MIT student, I just walked in off the street.
One thing I have to say is that Phil not arrogant but is, in fact, hilarious. I crack up constantly during class. What some may take to be arrogance is honesty and humor. In fact, I would say that Phil is actually a very humble and self-deprecating person. I have seen this firsthand over the course of months during his interactions with students, TAs, and people attending his outside (free) lecture events.
I get the sense that some people feel he is pushing one set of tools over another, but he is not an evangelist for any particular server, database, scripting language or whatever. This is very obvious in class. The point is to use what is appropriate and available for the job at hand. Why and how he arrived at a particular architecture is very well and plainly laid out in his writing, and he frequently points out the shortcomings of various components of the present architecture.
One big thing I think some people are missing is that he is offering a proven open source toolkit for constructing the software part of heavy duty web site for free. I once worked at a dotcom that spent tons of money for crapware to do what ACS will do. I work as a web developer at a huge mutual fund company that is also spending tons of money to implement a system that I already know will suck. For anyone who wants to start or expand a dotcom or dotorg, it is like Phil has written you check for a million dollars.
Maybe ACS isn't for you, but if it meets your needs, why start from scratch and reinvent the wheel? If you are that religious about your components then just check out the ACS data model, it is all out there in the open, and just take what you want to use.
Slashdot Mirror
If posters think that music publishers should not have the right to be the only source of sheet music for a song they own, then that is a *good* and *different* point. But the fact is they do have that right, and Harry Fox is just protecting that right. If you don't like it, then get the law changed--I'll help you..
If you transcribe a song for yourself or your band mates to jam on, then that is fair use, if you publish the tabulature on the Web, you are publishing the sheet music and, like it or not, your are infringing on someone else's rights.
It is easy to pretend that you are fighting the System and the Man, but the reality is the music copyrights are most needed by small powerless musicians to protect themselves against the large corporations. For example, these assocated music copyright laws are the only thing that help early black musicians recover part of the huge amount of revenues they generated for the companies that screwed them.
If you want to take away these rights, what recourse do the individual, non-corporate musicians have when MegaLabel wants to absorb all music into there online database that you have to pay to subscribe to? As an independent musician, I wouldn't want some large corporation making money off of me, and I would want to be able to stop that from happening, but without those laws, I couldn't.
Wow, it really is shocking, reminds me of the amphibious landing craft from Saving Private Ryan, circa 1940's but not as advanced.
Talk about old school.
The point of Krugman's op-ed piece is that he sides with the technoskeptics, who say that previous technological revolutions were "a bigger deal" than the present digital revolution. His proof of this is that he personally would much rather be able to take a hot shower, drive a car, or use electric lights than be able to download a particular document off of the internet.
... I was WORRIED [emphasis added] about the concept: would it turn out to be exploitation TV with a highbrow veneer, sort of "Survivor" meets "Upstairs, Downstairs"? "
...Where's MY freakin' Nobel Prize????
Krugman, you jackass, you wasted my time with an op-ed piece that reads like a sixth-grader's attempt at a report for social studies class. First, you talk about something you saw on tv, them you parrot two other authors' work, as if by the mere act of regurgitation, you personally have somehow added insight into the matter. Then you talk about tv some more.
If you strip out the intellectual theft and piggybacking from his article, all you are left with is this pointy-headed professor's description of his own tv viewing habits, namely:
"The new PBS mini-series "1900 House," which started last week, follows a modern British family that has agreed to spend three months living in a London townhouse that has been carefully de-modernized
WORRIED!? Good job, Paulie, you just keep thinking those deep thoughts of yours, maybe next you can *worry* about who is leaving the cast of ER.
I can see it now, sprawled out on the couch, scratching his ass with one hand and scribbling out an article onto a legal pad with his Cheetos-stained fingers while watching Britney Spears on MTV, desperately struggling to come up with something, anything, to meet his NY Times deadline.
Here is why this pseudocerebral clown is a jackass (nothing personal):
"On the other side are economists and historians who compare our current roster of new technologies with the transforming technologies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and find our latest gizmos relatively trivial by comparison."
Just as a light bulb is trivial compared to starving to death for lack of agriculture, the motor car is trivial compared to dying from exposure from lack of shelter, etc. Clearly people will address their most vital and pressing needs first. Shelter, clothing, food, personal safety, etc., and so on up the scale of achievements until you get to truly worthless things like the Krugman article.
Obviously, if someone is given the choice between (a.) electricity and (b.) no electricity yet having a computer that requires electricity to operate and is useless without it, nine (possibly eight) out ten people will opt for the electrical service. Similarly, choosing between NOT dying of a disease or dying from the disease, but getting a new laser printer a few months after you die, most, possibly all, would choose to NOT die of a disease and forego the posthumous laser printer.
Basic needs are met first--even I have heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and I am fairly ignorant. (I hope this posting proves that.)
So the cool stuff like jet packs and fiberoptic neural implants happen after you master motorized land transportation and light bulbs. And, duh, giving up your jet pack (and commuting to work by hovercraft instead) is NEVER going to be "as big a deal" as if your world had no plumbing and everyone had to defecate were they stood. (Paints a pretty picture, don't it?) So what is more amazing- a jet pack or a toilet? Of course that's a stupid question, but that's my point. I hate when lusers waste my time and can't even be entertaining.
Krugman, even your closing attempt at wry insight, "the future is not what it used to be" is a frigging ripoff-- you frigging [alleged] plagiarist. Here's why you fear the future, anyone can go to a search engine and find out in ten seconds that:
"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."
-- Paul Valery (1871-1945)
Nice attribution.
Hey, I just thought of something original, too, "E=mc^2"
So, to summarize, I guess my point is that I was somewhat disappointed with the article.
I am somewhat of a newbie so I feel good that I finally have something to contribute to this forum, since I have some direct experience with Philip Greenspun and his work.
I stumbled across his web site and I thought it was very interesting. I emailed him and asked to sit in on his upcoming 6.916 class (Web Application Development) at MIT. He never wrote back. (Later at the intermission of a lecture he was giving, he checked his email messages--over 7000 messages received during a two week period.) I showed up on the first day of class and he said I was welcome to audit the class. I didn't have to plead my case, which was good because there was absolutely nothing for him to gain by accomodating my request. I was offered a user account, access to servers, help from TAs, help from Ars Digita staff(!), etc, etc. Please note that I am not an MIT student, I just walked in off the street.
One thing I have to say is that Phil not arrogant but is, in fact, hilarious. I crack up constantly during class. What some may take to be arrogance is honesty and humor. In fact, I would say that Phil is actually a very humble and self-deprecating person. I have seen this firsthand over the course of months during his interactions with students, TAs, and people attending his outside (free) lecture events.
I get the sense that some people feel he is pushing one set of tools over another, but he is not an evangelist for any particular server, database, scripting language or whatever. This is very obvious in class. The point is to use what is appropriate and available for the job at hand. Why and how he arrived at a particular architecture is very well and plainly laid out in his writing, and he frequently points out the shortcomings of various components of the present architecture.
One big thing I think some people are missing is that he is offering a proven open source toolkit for constructing the software part of heavy duty web site for free. I once worked at a dotcom that spent tons of money for crapware to do what ACS will do. I work as a web developer at a huge mutual fund company that is also spending tons of money to implement a system that I already know will suck. For anyone who wants to start or expand a dotcom or dotorg, it is like Phil has written you check for a million dollars.
Maybe ACS isn't for you, but if it meets your needs, why start from scratch and reinvent the wheel? If you are that religious about your components then just check out the ACS data model, it is all out there in the open, and just take what you want to use.