I'm just waiting for ONE major artist (Madonna, Phil Collins,
Elton John, etc.) to publically refuse to resign with the RIAA
and to go to a pure Internet-based distribution system and
playing concerts. Once one bails, the RIAA is going to fold like
a house of cards. Don't know if we'll see a major artist bail in
2003, 2004, or 2005... but it will happen. It'll be fun to watch.
Lots of people have mentioned Prince, but Frank Zappa was the
first as far as I can tell. Moreover, he lamented the absence of
a medium that allowed "consumers" to buy music direct from the
artist. If I could be bothered I would quote the relevent
paragraphs from his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, but
it doesn't have an index.
Snow White was omitted by accident. With regards
as to why Robin Hood wasn't mentioned, it is
for the same reason I never mentioned "Sword in the
Stone".
Not to to forget that Atlantis and The Lion King were heavily "inspired" from coyprighted Japanaese animation works.
You said it yourself, those films are copyrighted. The
list was of films that were adapted from works in the public
domain.
The complete list of Disney films that were adaptations of works
in the public domain.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Alice In Wonderland
Beauty and the Beast
Cindarella
Hunchback of NotreDame
Jonny Appleseed
Jungle Book
Kidnapped
The Little Mermaid
Mulan
Paul Bunyon
Pinocchio
Sleeping Beauty
Sleepy Hollow
By the way. Steamboat Willie aka Mickey was lifted from a Buster Keaton film.
The Buster Keaton movie, Steamboat Bill, was not in the public
domain. However Steamboat Willie was a parody of the film, which
constitutes fair use of the copyrighted work.
Hmn. I didn't know that the version of SecuROM included with NWN
did all of that...
The retail version didn't, but one or two patches from a couple
of months ago did (v1.21 and 1.22 IIRC). The latest version,
1.25, employs a less intrusive SecuROM (it at all, I haven't
checked).
AFAICT/R, they didn't remove the SecuROM code, but reverted to an
older version. You're right though, the newer version of SecuROM
deliberately checked to see if certain CD drives (ie. CDRs) were
present. Also, upon initialisation, it scanned the registry to
see if certain programs were installed. Offensive programs
included most well known virtual drive software -- all the more
annoying because NWN CDs had a nasty habit of cracking.
As Slashdot readers/posters, we have a habit of focusing on our
fair use rights. I should point out that preventing a game to be
successfully executed because of the mere presence of a
particular CDR drive, is not a prevention of "fair use" but a
prevention of "use".
Allowing the government to attach tracking devices to all
citizens would prevent a few crimes, too, I think. Should we all
go downtown to get our implants tomorrow?
No need. Pretty much everyone will own a mobile phone one day and
they do the same job (don't know about the US, but it is a
legal requirement for all mobile phones sold in the UK to contain
GPS hardware). The really clever thing about this of course, is
that they've managed to find a way to reduce our liberty,
convince us that it's a good idea, and make money at the same
time. That's quite impressive.
Don't get me started on double-clicking -- one of the stupidest
GUI design decisions in Microsoft's less-than-illustrious career.
I'm pretty confident Microsoft didn't invent double clicking. I
have a copy of Amiga Workbench that predates Windows 1.0 which
uses the double click mechanism for it's desktop... and I can't
believe it was an original thought then. If I could be bothered,
I'd look up information on the Xerox Alto to see if the concept
was around then.
The unfortunate part of that, however, is the fact that so many actually guilty criminals have used these technicalities to get around the system. How many times have police officers (only human, etc..) bungled a search warrant, or mis-timed (or forgotten) miranda rights (even though so many criminals know them by heart), or DNA, photographic, video, or other evidence either becomes tarnished (human error, etc.), or inadmissable due to some legal technicality?
How do you know if they're guilty if the evidence
is tarnished? Upon what basis is the guilt
supposed?
Of course, the other end of the spectrum isn't perfect either. There have been stories too numerous to comprehend of innocent people who've spent decades in prison.
True. Don't forget either, that a lot
of these false imprisonments were a direct result
of various legal safeguards (technicalities if you prefer) being flouted. All to often, the prosecution starts with a presumption of guilt.
No system is perfect (one person's utopia is another person's dystopia, etc..), but I think the North American justice system is overdue for a significant overhaul.
I would tend to agree, but I don't think weakening
the rights of the innocent (we're innocent
until proven guilty don't forget) is the way to go. In the UK there is serious consideration that
the Double Jeopardy rule should be abolished! I
personally find this sort of talk mildly disturbing.
Question: In what way specifically, do you think
the legal system should be altered.
So what we have here is a case of the US government overstepping
their bounds, but it led to the capture and arrest of a genuine
criminal. This is certainly a tough one.
I'm all for dropping
some of the technicalities that allow so many criminals to go
free, but then we'd only find ourselves in need of people to
police the police, so to speak.
These "technicalities" aren't just there to make like life
awkward for the prosecution, they're safeguards against the
possible abuse of the system.
Ask yourself this question: What would you rather have, a justice
system where only some of the guilty people are punished but no
innocent people; or, all the guilty people are punished but
consequently some of the innocent people are too. Personally I
want to live in a world where the first model is prevelant.
. Of course, there's a possible third answer: all the guilty
people are punished, and none of the innocent people, but I view
that as an unlikely scenario.
Same with programs like The Gimp. If your PC is factory installed
with Linux, Gimp is probably included, and it will work fine for
anyone that can point and click. But do you really think your
average end-user is going to jump through all the hoops required
to download, install and set up all the stuff they need to run
The Gimp on Windows? Do you?
I recently had the need for an image processor in a Windows
environment and looked for a suitable Gimp binary.
I was pleasantly surprised to find this setup exe
which installs all required dlls in a satisfactory way.
Nothing difficult about it at all and certainly not
more so than any other program the "average end-user" may need
to install.
Maybe the Hollywood execs thought they were 'honoring' Christoper
Reeve by having an actor with nearly the same last name play
Reeve's most memorable role.;-P
I wouldn't be that surprised. A friend of mine teaches english to
5th and 6th graders, and insists "i before e except after c" is a
rigid rule to be adhered to without fail
So in your friend's world of the strange, "science" is spelt
"sceince"? That is truly bizarre.
I can understand how height or weight might get past the common
sense filter, but misspelling eight in accordance with this rule
would be serious cause for concern. A friend of mine, Neil,
habours a pathological hatred for this rule for obvious reasons
and as you may have guessed, I don't like it iether.
In many pictures, shadows don't line up. Clearly, the pics were
taken in a studio and there were many light sources. Well, if
there were many light sources, there would be many shadows.
Multiple lights don't necessarily mean multiple shadows. If
you've ever been to a TV studio, you will see literally dozens of
lights and yet you won't see multiple shadows. The TV studio
conclusion stems not from the irregular shadows, but from the
observation that there are parts of the "scene" that should be in
shadow but are clearly filled in by secondary light sources. It
is at this point however, that the Apollo believers will point
out that both the Earth and the Moon itself are suitable sources
of ambient light.
While I'm here, I should question the assertion that this mission
will prove the Apollo landings. I honestly fail to see how. The
Lunar conspiracy has never been concerned with whether Earthling
hardware has been sent to the moon, it is an expression of
disbelief that man can be sent to the moon and be bought back
alive (in the words of JFK). Finding some ancient spacecraft
would prove nothing IMO.
I should also point out that I don't find any of the conspiracy
theories credible; but then again, I'm not in business of
believing anything just because I read it in a book or saw it on
TV.
The word "piracy" has been applied to plagiarism and copyright
violation for over two hundred years. Edward Gibbon uses it in
this sense in his Memoirs of My Life, first published in 1796:
I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work, without
betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was
exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely
adequate to the demand; and the bookseller's property was twice
invaded by the pirates of Dublin. My book was on every table, and
almost on every toilette.
Please allow me humbly to suggest that, when a meaning has been
in common usage for hundreds years, it is the people who try to
remove this meaning that are guilty of revising the English
language for their own purposes.
Etymologically, you are absolutely correct. However, the modern
meaning of the word "piracy" (when used in this context) refers
to actions that aren't strictly copyright violations. For example
circumnavigating region encoding on DVDs is covered by fair use
rights and is thus not a "copyright violation" but is "piracy"
none-the-less.
It seems that it is the RIAA's intention to criminilise (in the
minds of the public as well as the government) actions that would
otherwise not be considered "crimes" if "copyright violation" was
used in favour of "piracy". As mentioned by Sanity in the
original post, this is literally new-speak.
The only way I can
play the game I bought on the machine which which
I bought (both legally) is to use one of the noCD
cracks.
Use of these noCD cracks incidentally, is not
illegal. After all, I bought the game not for
the CDs but for the data on the CDs.
I fail to see how the DMCA is allowed
to restrict my rights in this regard.
(FWIW, it can't, as I don't live in the USA
but I expect the EU to toe the party line
any time now.)
About half way down, this page mentions "Bravo, a WYSIWYG text editor".
not that this is particularly desirable anyway.
I actually agree with this. I can see the attraction of these
word-processor thingies:-) but I've always seemed to spend more
time fiddling with the appearance of the document than it's
content. Something like TeX on the other hand allows me to leave
the appearance to the program.
As of a few months ago, he was working with
Amiga in some capacity creating the Sheep
language. Any old Amiga users out there
might remember AmigaE which Wouter also
created.
Actually, yes. The Soviet Union sent many unmanned probes to the
moon and retreived moon rocks in the process. This
page
details the Soviet Luna program.
Notice that the last mission in this series was Luna 24 that
returned a "lunar sample" in 1976. Also notice that that last
NASA mission to land on the moon (and to bring back samples) was
1972. So the Soviet missions were more recent, although I'm not
sure what significance that has.
I've read an understood your reply but I don't think you
completely disagree with me. Notice how I acknowledge that
a screenplay needs to be adapted (for narrative reasons) from the
source material.
To clarify, I suppose I was lamenting those films that alter the
original source to such an extent that the original point of the
story is completely lost. For example, the film adaptataion of
the Asimov story, The Bicentennial Man, is so completely wide of
the mark it may well have been called "Yet another lacklustre
attempt at a mainstream science fiction movie". In that specific
case it hardly seems worth the effort of licencing the rights to
the original work.
An opposite example would be Lermann's adaptation of
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. While it is superficially not in
the spirit of Shakespeare's work at all, the central point of the
story has not been lost.
A movie that takes a good book and changes nothing won't be a
good movie, it will just be an aid for people with numb
imaginations.
Fair comment. But I have to ask: why bother making a film of a
book if you're going to change it? Why not just make a film in
the vain of the book in question? A case of milking the cash cow
I suppose (*). Moreover, if a film maker is inspired by a
particular book, how does he know that during adaptation he isn't
removing those very elements that made the book special and
inspired him in the first place?
* Contentious point: Would FOTR have been as successful if it
wasn't associated with Tolkien? If Jackson had a generic Fantasy
movie would it be as well thought of as the film he did make?
Personally, I suspect not.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of people have mentioned Prince, but Frank Zappa was the first as far as I can tell. Moreover, he lamented the absence of a medium that allowed "consumers" to buy music direct from the artist. If I could be bothered I would quote the relevent paragraphs from his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, but it doesn't have an index.
He beamed the device he was using in his anti-matter experiment, not the anti-matter itself.
Indeed.
You said it yourself, those films are copyrighted. The list was of films that were adapted from works in the public domain.
The copyright duration at the time of Steamboat Bill (1928) was 56 years. This period was set in 1909.
Steamboat Bill was published in 1928. Steamboat Willie was published in the same year.
The complete list of Disney films that were adaptations of works in the public domain.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Alice In Wonderland
Beauty and the Beast
Cindarella
Hunchback of NotreDame
Jonny Appleseed
Jungle Book
Kidnapped
The Little Mermaid
Mulan
Paul Bunyon
Pinocchio
Sleeping Beauty
Sleepy Hollow
The Buster Keaton movie, Steamboat Bill, was not in the public domain. However Steamboat Willie was a parody of the film, which constitutes fair use of the copyrighted work.
The retail version didn't, but one or two patches from a couple of months ago did (v1.21 and 1.22 IIRC). The latest version, 1.25, employs a less intrusive SecuROM (it at all, I haven't checked).
AFAICT/R, they didn't remove the SecuROM code, but reverted to an older version. You're right though, the newer version of SecuROM deliberately checked to see if certain CD drives (ie. CDRs) were present. Also, upon initialisation, it scanned the registry to see if certain programs were installed. Offensive programs included most well known virtual drive software -- all the more annoying because NWN CDs had a nasty habit of cracking.
As Slashdot readers/posters, we have a habit of focusing on our fair use rights. I should point out that preventing a game to be successfully executed because of the mere presence of a particular CDR drive, is not a prevention of "fair use" but a prevention of "use".
No need. Pretty much everyone will own a mobile phone one day and they do the same job (don't know about the US, but it is a legal requirement for all mobile phones sold in the UK to contain GPS hardware). The really clever thing about this of course, is that they've managed to find a way to reduce our liberty, convince us that it's a good idea, and make money at the same time. That's quite impressive.
I never said the Amiga 1000 predates Windows 1.0, I said, I have a copy of Workbench that predates Windows 1.0... Subtle difference :-)
I'm pretty confident Microsoft didn't invent double clicking. I have a copy of Amiga Workbench that predates Windows 1.0 which uses the double click mechanism for it's desktop... and I can't believe it was an original thought then. If I could be bothered, I'd look up information on the Xerox Alto to see if the concept was around then.
True. Don't forget either, that a lot of these false imprisonments were a direct result of various legal safeguards (technicalities if you prefer) being flouted. All to often, the prosecution starts with a presumption of guilt.
I would tend to agree, but I don't think weakening the rights of the innocent (we're innocent until proven guilty don't forget) is the way to go. In the UK there is serious consideration that the Double Jeopardy rule should be abolished! I personally find this sort of talk mildly disturbing.
Question: In what way specifically, do you think the legal system should be altered.
These "technicalities" aren't just there to make like life awkward for the prosecution, they're safeguards against the possible abuse of the system.
Ask yourself this question: What would you rather have, a justice system where only some of the guilty people are punished but no innocent people; or, all the guilty people are punished but consequently some of the innocent people are too. Personally I want to live in a world where the first model is prevelant.
. Of course, there's a possible third answer: all the guilty people are punished, and none of the innocent people, but I view that as an unlikely scenario.
I recently had the need for an image processor in a Windows environment and looked for a suitable Gimp binary. I was pleasantly surprised to find this setup exe which installs all required dlls in a satisfactory way. Nothing difficult about it at all and certainly not more so than any other program the "average end-user" may need to install.
Not forgetting of course, George Reeves, who played Superman in an early Superman TV series. George Reeves
So in your friend's world of the strange, "science" is spelt "sceince"? That is truly bizarre.
I can understand how height or weight might get past the common sense filter, but misspelling eight in accordance with this rule would be serious cause for concern. A friend of mine, Neil, habours a pathological hatred for this rule for obvious reasons and as you may have guessed, I don't like it iether.
Multiple lights don't necessarily mean multiple shadows. If you've ever been to a TV studio, you will see literally dozens of lights and yet you won't see multiple shadows. The TV studio conclusion stems not from the irregular shadows, but from the observation that there are parts of the "scene" that should be in shadow but are clearly filled in by secondary light sources. It is at this point however, that the Apollo believers will point out that both the Earth and the Moon itself are suitable sources of ambient light.
While I'm here, I should question the assertion that this mission will prove the Apollo landings. I honestly fail to see how. The Lunar conspiracy has never been concerned with whether Earthling hardware has been sent to the moon, it is an expression of disbelief that man can be sent to the moon and be bought back alive (in the words of JFK). Finding some ancient spacecraft would prove nothing IMO.
I should also point out that I don't find any of the conspiracy theories credible; but then again, I'm not in business of believing anything just because I read it in a book or saw it on TV.
Etymologically, you are absolutely correct. However, the modern meaning of the word "piracy" (when used in this context) refers to actions that aren't strictly copyright violations. For example circumnavigating region encoding on DVDs is covered by fair use rights and is thus not a "copyright violation" but is "piracy" none-the-less.
It seems that it is the RIAA's intention to criminilise (in the minds of the public as well as the government) actions that would otherwise not be considered "crimes" if "copyright violation" was used in favour of "piracy". As mentioned by Sanity in the original post, this is literally new-speak.
void swap(int&A,int&B){A^=B^=A^=B;}
Don't you mean "write"? I can surely "access a variable more than once between sequence points."
You can, but you can't modify a variable and then read it (not reliably anyway), which is what the statement does.
I bet it will work on every modern compiler.
Irrelevent. The standard says it's undefined.
>> If you think I'm wrong, could you tell me what legitimate purpose the DMCA serves?
> It makes it harder to obtain software cracks off the internet, which decreases copyright infringement.
Recent versions of Neverwinter Nights for Windows will not work on my machine because of an overly zealous CD protection scheme.
The only way I can play the game I bought on the machine which which I bought (both legally) is to use one of the noCD cracks.
Use of these noCD cracks incidentally, is not illegal. After all, I bought the game not for the CDs but for the data on the CDs.
I fail to see how the DMCA is allowed to restrict my rights in this regard. (FWIW, it can't, as I don't live in the USA but I expect the EU to toe the party line any time now.)
AFAIK, the Alto had a GUI but wasn't WYSIWYG,
:-) but I've always seemed to spend more
time fiddling with the appearance of the document than it's
content. Something like TeX on the other hand allows me to leave
the appearance to the program.
http://www.spies.com/~aek/xerox.html
About half way down, this page mentions "Bravo, a WYSIWYG text editor".
not that this is particularly desirable anyway.
I actually agree with this. I can see the attraction of these word-processor thingies
Of course, the Mac was the first computer to accurately display fonts on screen (WYSIWYG)
Surely, that accolade belongs to the Xerox Alto.
As of a few months ago, he was working with Amiga in some capacity creating the Sheep language. Any old Amiga users out there might remember AmigaE which Wouter also created.
Only for "hosted" implementations of C. Freestanding implemenations can declare return type as void and may even ommit main() completely.
Has anybody but NASA been to the moon lately?
Actually, yes. The Soviet Union sent many unmanned probes to the moon and retreived moon rocks in the process. This page details the Soviet Luna program.
Notice that the last mission in this series was Luna 24 that returned a "lunar sample" in 1976. Also notice that that last NASA mission to land on the moon (and to bring back samples) was 1972. So the Soviet missions were more recent, although I'm not sure what significance that has.
I have to completely disagree with you
I've read an understood your reply but I don't think you completely disagree with me. Notice how I acknowledge that a screenplay needs to be adapted (for narrative reasons) from the source material.
To clarify, I suppose I was lamenting those films that alter the original source to such an extent that the original point of the story is completely lost. For example, the film adaptataion of the Asimov story, The Bicentennial Man, is so completely wide of the mark it may well have been called "Yet another lacklustre attempt at a mainstream science fiction movie". In that specific case it hardly seems worth the effort of licencing the rights to the original work.
An opposite example would be Lermann's adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. While it is superficially not in the spirit of Shakespeare's work at all, the central point of the story has not been lost.
A movie that takes a good book and changes nothing won't be a good movie, it will just be an aid for people with numb imaginations.
Fair comment. But I have to ask: why bother making a film of a book if you're going to change it? Why not just make a film in the vain of the book in question? A case of milking the cash cow I suppose (*). Moreover, if a film maker is inspired by a particular book, how does he know that during adaptation he isn't removing those very elements that made the book special and inspired him in the first place?
* Contentious point: Would FOTR have been as successful if it wasn't associated with Tolkien? If Jackson had a generic Fantasy movie would it be as well thought of as the film he did make? Personally, I suspect not.