To be fair: Can you be sure that the DVD or Blu-Ray that you buy today will still work in 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? Given that DVDs are only 16 years old, we don't really know how they'll hold up in 30 years' time.
At least there are some who decide to sell plastic. There are other studios who don't sell DVDs of their shows and don't offer them on Netflix (or any other streaming service). In this case, selling streaming rights to Netflix is found money. The content isn't earning money in anything other way (and may be available online via pirates anyway) so why not let Netflix stream it legally and generate some revenue (even if it isn't much)?
"I have a right to free speech and so everyone should be forced to read my speech. Modding me to -1 hides my post and thus infringes my free speech rights. Thus, I insist that Slashdot moderators automatically mod my comments to +5 or I'll sue!"
Hook them up so that they receive an electric shock if a predetermined inbox goes above 50 messages. Give them access to a mouse and monitor so they can delete incoming e-mails. Then, publish the e-mail address on the Internet (including on Facebook, Twitter, etc) and let nature take its course.
No, it's Schmuck. A literal translation of schmuck is "penis" but it's considered an especially vulgar term and has come to mean an "obnoxious, contemptible or detestable person, or one who is stupid or foolish." (Wikipedia)
I use Google Voice for my main phone number and their phone-spam-filter capability is a selling point to me. I can see the numbers that called me, but they don't actually ring my phone if they're telephone spammers.
How much is the CD/DVD tax? How much would it cost to go down to the local copyright holder's office and prove you're using those discs only for your own personally created content? I'm guessing the former costs less than the latter which creates an incentive to just pay the tax and not complain. (Not saying people shouldn't complain, but that they won't bother complaining in great enough numbers to make a difference.)
The same thing happened with Y2K. A lot of people worked very hard to prevent a giant mess and were successful. Since a catastrophe didn't happen, people assume it was all hype and no substance. Would it have ended civilization as we know it? No. Would it have led to a period of great chaos which could have sent the economy reeling (the markets hate chaos)? Yes.
If you work hard enough at averting a crisis, you inevitably get people who second guess whether your efforts averted the crisis or whether the crisis averted itself and you're just trying to claim credit.
I say likely because, while all of the signs of Asperger's fit me perfectly, I haven't gotten a formal diagnosis. I'm not planning on getting one either because a) it's expensive, b) it wouldn't make any difference for me, and c) it wouldn't make any difference to my son who was diagnosed with Asperger's.
Obsessing can be good or bad. If you keep at something until it succeeds, it's a small dose of obsession. However, you probably haven't let it consume you and were able to switch to other tasks as needed. People with Asperger's simply can't switch tasks at the drop of a hat. This can lead to situations in work/school/life where you can't cope because your brain won't let you switch tasks. I've learned how to deal with this over the years. My son needs a lot of help with this (including pre-setting so it's not just dropped on him out of the blue).
A small bit of social awkwardness might be fine, but people with Asperger's don't understand social conventions. Think of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. While they'll never admit that he has Asperger's (it'd make laughing at his antics socially inappropriate), it's quite clear that he has it. He has trouble recognizing sarcasm, he takes things literally, he will monopolize the conversation with no regard for a back-and-forth flow, he needs time to decompress after social situations (the recent episode where Howard and Raj try to figure out what he does in a room), etc. My son acts much the same way. He'll take jokes as literal, he'll talk your eat off about every tiny detail in his latest video game based on being asked "do you like video games", he needs time to decompress from time to time, etc. I have trouble with this also, but have obviously had more time to work out what the social rules are for differing situations.
By the way, I don't think of having Asperger's as having "something wrong with me." My son and I do have to work a lot harder on things that neuro-typical people find easy. Then again, there are a lot of things that are difficult for neuro-typicals that we find easy to do.
Exactly. If only children of anti-vaccination parents got the diseases, I'd say this was the parents' personal call and keep the government out of it. But when a parent says "I'm not vaccinating my kids", they expose other kids (too young to get the vaccine, vaccine didn't "take", or has a valid medical condition keeping them from getting the vaccine) as well as senior citizens who grew up pre-vaccines to the disease. People DIE because of this. All caps just seems too small to emphasize this. If you don't vaccinate your kid, you might be responsible for someone else's baby dying.
And, even if you are heartless and don't care about anyone else's kids, get your kids vaccinated. To quote Penn and Teller: Even if vaccines caused autism - WHICH THEY DON'T - but even if they did, it would be much better for your child to get autism than to DIE from the disease.
(Note: I'm a parent of a child with autism, albeit high functioning autism, and I likely have autism myself.)
What's more aggravating is when they invite you to prove them wrong, PLEASE prove them wrong, I don't want this to be true and don't want to fear this. Then someone does, and that same person just ignore them.
And then, when you do prove them wrong, they move the goalpost (the "reason" why they think vaccines cause Autism) and then tell you that you need to prove them wrong again. If you refuse at any point, they take it as a sign that they've won. No, anti-vax proponents, you can't just think up wilder and wilder explanations as to why/how vaccines cause autism and claim that everyone else needs to disprove you or you are correct. It is up to you to present evidence. Real, testable evidence. (And, no, "thinking of something in your head" or "listing something that goes into vaccines at some point in the process" isn't real, testable evidence.)
Once the term expires NO-ONE can use the material to make a profit.
That's kind of the opposite of the Public Domain. The Public Domain says "you can use this for whatever you want to use it for." You're proposing "you can use this for anything you want, but you can't make any money off of it." This can also get into all kinds of legal wrangling. Are ads on your website - intended to cover costs - profit makers? Can you make derivative works and profit off them?
We should go back to the original system. 14 years plus a one time (non-automatic) renewal of 14 years. We can grandfather in existing works with a system designed to slowly move them into Public Domain status if their 28 years are up. Say, every 5 years release a decade's worth of material starting with the oldest items. (Assuming we start with the 1930s, it would be 45 years before present day items exit copyright. Plenty of time for copyright owners to milk the last remaining drops of copyright-fueled income from them.) The 14+14 system would mean that orphaned works would never be a problem for more than 14 years.
I agree on the different damages figures (for non-commercial piracy... i.e. you weren't selling DVDs of the pirated films), but that's a different matter entirely. If we could get the 14+14 reenacted and had to hold off on the damages reform, I'd still consider it a huge win.
we usually discard computer equipment long before it stops working, simply because it's more efficient to replace it with something much faster that probably costs and weighs less too.
We also sometimes discard items that could be replaced because replacing them is "less work." My laptop computer was recently experiencing power issues. (It wouldn't recognize that it was plugged in to charge.) My first instinct was "replace it and buy a new one." I fought off that instinct and actually (*gasp*) opened up my laptop. I identified the problem and fixed it. When it reoccurred due to something else (bad power cord), I bought a new one. When the battery was dying, I bought a new one. Yes, I spent money on those last 2 items and, yes, opening a laptop isn't a skill everyone has, but too many people respond to "X has a problem" with "throw X away and but a new X" instead of "how can I fix X?".
To be fair, no two people on the spectrum are the same, even if they both have Asperger's. Think of a social situation as an obstacle course. A neuro-typical person can navigate it with ease. Someone with Asperger's would be equivalent to navigating the course while relying on crutches. They can do many of the things that non-spectrum people do, but it might take them longer, takes much more effort, and some of the obstacles may prove too much for them. Meanwhile, the people with Autism (of the non-high functioning variety) would be in wheelchairs in this analogy. They might be able to navigate one or two obstacles with a lot of work and some help, but they're never going to complete the course anywhere near when a neuro-typical would.
Meanwhile, if you pitted two Asperger's Syndrome people against each other, you'd find that they'd each navigate the course differently. One might sail through one obstacle while the other had a lot of problems with it. Then the other might find a second obstacle easy when the first person couldn't manage it at all.
35. I'm admittedly "self-diagnosed", but only because my son was diagnosed (by a doctor) and reading up on Asperger's clicked with everything I've gone through my whole life. I've always blamed being "socially stunted" on being bullied a lot, but all of my hard work on improving my socialization skills post-high school only got me so far. It's clear that, while bullying might have been a factor, something else was at play and all of the things I read (and the things my son does) reminds me of myself. I don't intend to go for a professional diagnosis because A) it wouldn't make a difference to how I cope with situations, B) it wouldn't help my son any, and C) it's expensive.
It's not that people with Asperger's are anti-social. In fact, many with Asperger's *WANT* to be social. We just don't know how. (Yes, I have Asperger's as does my son.) Think of it as if you suddenly landed on an alien planet with strange and complex customs and social norms. You would likely find simple things in this world funny, but others wouldn't see why. You would commit social blunders that even a "normal" child born in the alien world wouldn't do. Over time, you might be able to slowly learn how to blend in socially, but it would be a chore. You'd constantly have to remind yourself just what to do in each situation.
Merely remembering them isn't enough. You need to remember and put them into effect on a split second basis. You could manage it, and might even appear "normal", for periods of time, but it would be taxing and you'd need downtime to relax. So you'd be constantly torn between "want to socialize" and "socializing is hard and tiring."
Actually, people with Asperger's can have trouble context switching. My son (diagnosed with Asperger's earlier this year), will get involved in an activity and needs to be preset about when it is time to change. If it is on a schedule or if he is preset, he can cope. But dropping the task he's currently interested in and insisting he do some other task (especially one he might not be as interested in) is a recipe for a meltdown.
Of course, you need to do that sort of thing in the business world, but don't confuse Asperger's with ADHD (which is really "chasing the shiny stuff").
God clearly created the Universe exactly how it is last Thursday at 2:15pm. Obviously you failed his test. (Oh and don't listen to those who say it was last Thursday at 3:27am. Those heathens!)
If there is a creator god, he/she/it is vastly more complex and unknowable in light of everything we know about the universe. it would have to encompass everything we know about physical reality. And if people can't include reality in their religious beliefs, it's not the states job to pay for funding their version of it.
This is what amazes me about the young earth creationists. Let's assume for a second that there is a god and he's responsible for the creation of the entire Universe. Given what we knew of the Universe 2,000 years ago, that would have been impressive. Given what we know of the Universe today? Mindbogglingly impressive. If anything, all this just *increases* the power and planning abilities of a deity-in-charge by a billion-fold (if not more). Instead, they cling to their small-god views and instead claim that god is some sort of malicious practical joker. I like to think that, somewhere, God is looking down on them and taking serious offense to how they are portraying Him.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh sure. Focus on the pasta and ignore those of us who believe in the Flying Pizza Monster.
Personally, I've been thinking of converting to the religion of the Munching Cookie Monster.
Philadelphia Roll
(And now I'm hungry for sushi.)
To be fair: Can you be sure that the DVD or Blu-Ray that you buy today will still work in 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? Given that DVDs are only 16 years old, we don't really know how they'll hold up in 30 years' time.
At least there are some who decide to sell plastic. There are other studios who don't sell DVDs of their shows and don't offer them on Netflix (or any other streaming service). In this case, selling streaming rights to Netflix is found money. The content isn't earning money in anything other way (and may be available online via pirates anyway) so why not let Netflix stream it legally and generate some revenue (even if it isn't much)?
If this spammer were on Slashdot:
"I have a right to free speech and so everyone should be forced to read my speech. Modding me to -1 hides my post and thus infringes my free speech rights. Thus, I insist that Slashdot moderators automatically mod my comments to +5 or I'll sue!"
Hook them up so that they receive an electric shock if a predetermined inbox goes above 50 messages. Give them access to a mouse and monitor so they can delete incoming e-mails. Then, publish the e-mail address on the Internet (including on Facebook, Twitter, etc) and let nature take its course.
No, it's Schmuck. A literal translation of schmuck is "penis" but it's considered an especially vulgar term and has come to mean an "obnoxious, contemptible or detestable person, or one who is stupid or foolish." (Wikipedia)
I use Google Voice for my main phone number and their phone-spam-filter capability is a selling point to me. I can see the numbers that called me, but they don't actually ring my phone if they're telephone spammers.
Don't worry. There's an installment plan. One hundredth of infinity paid on a monthly basis for 100 months.
How much is the CD/DVD tax? How much would it cost to go down to the local copyright holder's office and prove you're using those discs only for your own personally created content? I'm guessing the former costs less than the latter which creates an incentive to just pay the tax and not complain. (Not saying people shouldn't complain, but that they won't bother complaining in great enough numbers to make a difference.)
The same thing happened with Y2K. A lot of people worked very hard to prevent a giant mess and were successful. Since a catastrophe didn't happen, people assume it was all hype and no substance. Would it have ended civilization as we know it? No. Would it have led to a period of great chaos which could have sent the economy reeling (the markets hate chaos)? Yes.
If you work hard enough at averting a crisis, you inevitably get people who second guess whether your efforts averted the crisis or whether the crisis averted itself and you're just trying to claim credit.
I say likely because, while all of the signs of Asperger's fit me perfectly, I haven't gotten a formal diagnosis. I'm not planning on getting one either because a) it's expensive, b) it wouldn't make any difference for me, and c) it wouldn't make any difference to my son who was diagnosed with Asperger's.
Obsessing can be good or bad. If you keep at something until it succeeds, it's a small dose of obsession. However, you probably haven't let it consume you and were able to switch to other tasks as needed. People with Asperger's simply can't switch tasks at the drop of a hat. This can lead to situations in work/school/life where you can't cope because your brain won't let you switch tasks. I've learned how to deal with this over the years. My son needs a lot of help with this (including pre-setting so it's not just dropped on him out of the blue).
A small bit of social awkwardness might be fine, but people with Asperger's don't understand social conventions. Think of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. While they'll never admit that he has Asperger's (it'd make laughing at his antics socially inappropriate), it's quite clear that he has it. He has trouble recognizing sarcasm, he takes things literally, he will monopolize the conversation with no regard for a back-and-forth flow, he needs time to decompress after social situations (the recent episode where Howard and Raj try to figure out what he does in a room), etc. My son acts much the same way. He'll take jokes as literal, he'll talk your eat off about every tiny detail in his latest video game based on being asked "do you like video games", he needs time to decompress from time to time, etc. I have trouble with this also, but have obviously had more time to work out what the social rules are for differing situations.
By the way, I don't think of having Asperger's as having "something wrong with me." My son and I do have to work a lot harder on things that neuro-typical people find easy. Then again, there are a lot of things that are difficult for neuro-typicals that we find easy to do.
Exactly. If only children of anti-vaccination parents got the diseases, I'd say this was the parents' personal call and keep the government out of it. But when a parent says "I'm not vaccinating my kids", they expose other kids (too young to get the vaccine, vaccine didn't "take", or has a valid medical condition keeping them from getting the vaccine) as well as senior citizens who grew up pre-vaccines to the disease. People DIE because of this. All caps just seems too small to emphasize this. If you don't vaccinate your kid, you might be responsible for someone else's baby dying.
And, even if you are heartless and don't care about anyone else's kids, get your kids vaccinated. To quote Penn and Teller: Even if vaccines caused autism - WHICH THEY DON'T - but even if they did, it would be much better for your child to get autism than to DIE from the disease.
(Note: I'm a parent of a child with autism, albeit high functioning autism, and I likely have autism myself.)
And then, when you do prove them wrong, they move the goalpost (the "reason" why they think vaccines cause Autism) and then tell you that you need to prove them wrong again. If you refuse at any point, they take it as a sign that they've won. No, anti-vax proponents, you can't just think up wilder and wilder explanations as to why/how vaccines cause autism and claim that everyone else needs to disprove you or you are correct. It is up to you to present evidence. Real, testable evidence. (And, no, "thinking of something in your head" or "listing something that goes into vaccines at some point in the process" isn't real, testable evidence.)
Classic Saying: If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide.
ITU's Version: We've done nothing provably wrong if we've hidden it well enough.
That's kind of the opposite of the Public Domain. The Public Domain says "you can use this for whatever you want to use it for." You're proposing "you can use this for anything you want, but you can't make any money off of it." This can also get into all kinds of legal wrangling. Are ads on your website - intended to cover costs - profit makers? Can you make derivative works and profit off them?
We should go back to the original system. 14 years plus a one time (non-automatic) renewal of 14 years. We can grandfather in existing works with a system designed to slowly move them into Public Domain status if their 28 years are up. Say, every 5 years release a decade's worth of material starting with the oldest items. (Assuming we start with the 1930s, it would be 45 years before present day items exit copyright. Plenty of time for copyright owners to milk the last remaining drops of copyright-fueled income from them.) The 14+14 system would mean that orphaned works would never be a problem for more than 14 years.
I agree on the different damages figures (for non-commercial piracy... i.e. you weren't selling DVDs of the pirated films), but that's a different matter entirely. If we could get the 14+14 reenacted and had to hold off on the damages reform, I'd still consider it a huge win.
Lately, they've put Dory from Finding Nemo in charge of Voyager's orders: "Just keep swimming... Just keep swimming..."
We also sometimes discard items that could be replaced because replacing them is "less work." My laptop computer was recently experiencing power issues. (It wouldn't recognize that it was plugged in to charge.) My first instinct was "replace it and buy a new one." I fought off that instinct and actually (*gasp*) opened up my laptop. I identified the problem and fixed it. When it reoccurred due to something else (bad power cord), I bought a new one. When the battery was dying, I bought a new one. Yes, I spent money on those last 2 items and, yes, opening a laptop isn't a skill everyone has, but too many people respond to "X has a problem" with "throw X away and but a new X" instead of "how can I fix X?".
To be fair, no two people on the spectrum are the same, even if they both have Asperger's. Think of a social situation as an obstacle course. A neuro-typical person can navigate it with ease. Someone with Asperger's would be equivalent to navigating the course while relying on crutches. They can do many of the things that non-spectrum people do, but it might take them longer, takes much more effort, and some of the obstacles may prove too much for them. Meanwhile, the people with Autism (of the non-high functioning variety) would be in wheelchairs in this analogy. They might be able to navigate one or two obstacles with a lot of work and some help, but they're never going to complete the course anywhere near when a neuro-typical would.
Meanwhile, if you pitted two Asperger's Syndrome people against each other, you'd find that they'd each navigate the course differently. One might sail through one obstacle while the other had a lot of problems with it. Then the other might find a second obstacle easy when the first person couldn't manage it at all.
35. I'm admittedly "self-diagnosed", but only because my son was diagnosed (by a doctor) and reading up on Asperger's clicked with everything I've gone through my whole life. I've always blamed being "socially stunted" on being bullied a lot, but all of my hard work on improving my socialization skills post-high school only got me so far. It's clear that, while bullying might have been a factor, something else was at play and all of the things I read (and the things my son does) reminds me of myself. I don't intend to go for a professional diagnosis because A) it wouldn't make a difference to how I cope with situations, B) it wouldn't help my son any, and C) it's expensive.
It's not that people with Asperger's are anti-social. In fact, many with Asperger's *WANT* to be social. We just don't know how. (Yes, I have Asperger's as does my son.) Think of it as if you suddenly landed on an alien planet with strange and complex customs and social norms. You would likely find simple things in this world funny, but others wouldn't see why. You would commit social blunders that even a "normal" child born in the alien world wouldn't do. Over time, you might be able to slowly learn how to blend in socially, but it would be a chore. You'd constantly have to remind yourself just what to do in each situation.
Merely remembering them isn't enough. You need to remember and put them into effect on a split second basis. You could manage it, and might even appear "normal", for periods of time, but it would be taxing and you'd need downtime to relax. So you'd be constantly torn between "want to socialize" and "socializing is hard and tiring."
Actually, people with Asperger's can have trouble context switching. My son (diagnosed with Asperger's earlier this year), will get involved in an activity and needs to be preset about when it is time to change. If it is on a schedule or if he is preset, he can cope. But dropping the task he's currently interested in and insisting he do some other task (especially one he might not be as interested in) is a recipe for a meltdown.
Of course, you need to do that sort of thing in the business world, but don't confuse Asperger's with ADHD (which is really "chasing the shiny stuff").
God clearly created the Universe exactly how it is last Thursday at 2:15pm. Obviously you failed his test. (Oh and don't listen to those who say it was last Thursday at 3:27am. Those heathens!)
This is what amazes me about the young earth creationists. Let's assume for a second that there is a god and he's responsible for the creation of the entire Universe. Given what we knew of the Universe 2,000 years ago, that would have been impressive. Given what we know of the Universe today? Mindbogglingly impressive. If anything, all this just *increases* the power and planning abilities of a deity-in-charge by a billion-fold (if not more). Instead, they cling to their small-god views and instead claim that god is some sort of malicious practical joker. I like to think that, somewhere, God is looking down on them and taking serious offense to how they are portraying Him.