Since Opera was once I good browser I had installed it on a device I own. It seemed OK for a while, but then I got flooded with tourism ads for China. The "notices" would respawn as quickly as I could delete them. Uninstall was the only remedy. Now I will not have anything to do with Opera in any OS.
This sounds like they are about to start the mindless updating for the sake of updating that has ruined Firefox. Can some other group be persuaded to fork the current Thunderbird? Wouldn't an integrated email client be a good addition to the Libre Office suite, for example?
No, it's not a non-issue, but it's a different kind of issue than most people realize. Remember the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and the propaganda they pumped out last decade about how Linux and Open Source in general was a parasite on the tech industry, was enabling all sorts of illegal activities (such as terrorism - of course!), and attempted to publish a book claiming Linus Torvald's didn't really invent the Linux kernel? Microsoft was (and still is!) a major funder of this propaganda mill.
Think about the possible implications of a story like this: Could it generate calls to change the way the Linux kernel and programs that run under it are written? And now MS have their hooks sunk deeply into the kernel dev team. The SCO gambit (also funded by MS) failed, spectacularly. And the Astroturf de Tocqueville gambit failed, though not quite as spectacularly. And now we have MS "cooperating" in the development of Linux. And up pops a story that may justify an overhaul of Linux to make it controllable by MS Windows. Well, surprise, surprise! This "change of attitude" by MS is looking more and more like a subtler strategy to seize control of Linux rather than outright destroy it.
If enough of us ask nicely, or not so nicely, the FTC might sue them.
Send your complaints about Microsoft's unfair and unethical behavior to: antitrust@ftc.gov
This is the official address for reporting antitrust violations. I think trying to leverage the near universal presence of old versions of Windows on PCs worldwide to force acceptance of the new version qualifies as abuse of market position. The FTC might agree with enough public comment/complaint. People who have experienced the "involuntary upgrade" problem are likely to be especially influential. If you know anyone who has experienced this, pass that address along to them.
Steven Spielberg claimed to have done something similar. He claimed to have occupied an unused office on the Universal Studios lot by simply dressing in a suit, carrying a brief case, and bluffing his way past the security guards. But his story kept growing and growing. A clear sign of fabrication. So it was finally debunked by snopes. But even his tallest tale didn't claim to have lived on the lot full time. And now this kid has gone one better than the tall tale, actually living inside the corporate complex of a major tech company.
Gates also admitted he himself was in the habit of "gaining the benefits of software authors' time, effort, and capital without paying them"...
Bricklin sent waves of laughter through the auditorium by reading a passage from Lammers' interview with Bill Gates in which the young Microsoft founder explained that his work on different versions of Microsoft's BASIC compiler was shaped by looking at how other programmers had gone about the same task. Gates went on to say that young programmers don't need computer science degrees: "The best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems."
Bricklin finished reading Gates' words and announced, with an impish smile, "This is where Gates and [Richard] Stallman agree!"
Source: Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers (1986), ISBN 0914845713
"...the best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system." -- Bill Gates.
Thank you. I wanted to post a similar rant to my own story, but you've said nearly everything I wanted to say.:)
* They are exploiting genetic knowledge purely for immediate profit without regard for the long-term consequences. Check.
* The consequences of their profit-mania will be passed on for not just a few years or even generations, but essentially for the rest of the existence of life on earth. Check.
Also, they are turning centuries of common law (and common sense) tradition upside down by suing people for getting their land polluted with their mistakes. It's incredible that sheer volume of money can turn logic around like that. We desperately need someone with money to step up and try to defend basic human rights. You're not a thief if someone dumps their "property" on you. Especially if that "property" is actually detrimental to your welfare.
Oh, and this is actually much worse than Nazi experiments. The Nazis had no knowledge of genetics and whatever ugly things they did to people wouldn't get passed on to later generations and become a permanent part of the biosphere.
the extreme regimentation brought on by 'No Child Left Behind" is finally drawing a backlash? It seems to me that this is a predictable result of dropping 'inefficient' parts of the school day like recess and drugging students who can't sit still and goggle unblinkingly at the teacher for the required 6 hours a day. Remember this story from a few months ago? Remember the horror stories elsewhere about schools requiring kids to be drugged in order to stay in school? Can you yell me that being forced to sit still and listen to the same inane lessons six hours a day, and getting drugged if you don't/can't, doesn't encourage dropping out?
The problem as ever is not: "If you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear." but rather "if your government never does anything wrong you have nothing to fear".
This is the angle you need to take with your wife and/or anyone else who spouts that sneaky ad hominem argument. (Yes, that's an ad hominem, or ad feminem as the case may be. It translates to "If you are afraid of law enforcement getting increased powers you must be a criminal.")
Did the Portland Attorney Brandon Mayfield do anything 'wrong'?
PORTLAND, Ore. - Offering a rare public apology, the FBI admitted mistakenly linking an American lawyer's fingerprint to one found near the scene of a terrorist bombing in Spain, a blunder that led to his imprisonment for two weeks.
Did the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes do anything 'wrong'?
LONDON - British police on Sunday defended a policy of shooting to kill suspected suicide bombers after shooting dead a Brazilian electrician by mistake in the hunt for London's bombers.
Brazil has demanded an explanation from Britain after police searching for four men suspected of trying to bomb London's transport system last Thursday shot Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, at an Underground train station in south London.
It's a simple matter to dig up many, many other cases of law enforcement making awful mistakes and also cases of outright corruption and criminality. Officers of the law are human, too. They make mistakes. They can be corrupt. The law is designed to protect us against them as much as against criminals. Good officers know this and follow the law. It's the others that we have to fear. And it's a simple matter for anyone to dig up lots of local examples of why this is the case. Next time you have to argue with anyone who says 'if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear' you should have a sheaf of references to stupid mistakes and outright corruption by police in your local jurisdiction so they can recognize the personal threat in it.
Never mind the old equation of college and recreational drugs, the parents' old tiptoe through pot and peyote. A new generation is arriving at university heavily armed with prescriptions for Zoloft, Dexedrine, Paxil and Prozac. Xanax, Adderall, Cylert and Ritalin. And it's not about weekend benders. It's about ADD, anxiety, OCD and depression.
Officials say that today that about 40 percent of American college students are on psychoactive drugs. Everybody knows the number is huge. But what exactly does it mean? Up next On Point: the Medicated Generation goes to college.
---
And maybe the reason for the increasing levels of usage is that they are learning this from their days in grade school?
This year some six million children in the U.S.--one in eight-- will take Ritalin. With 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. consumes 85 percent of this drug. Have we considered the consequences?
and...
Despite their stubborn refusal to medicate their children with Ritalin, these other countries do not lag behind the United States in academic performance. On the contrary: according to the most recent studies, France, Germany, and Japan continue to maintain their traditional lead over the United States in tests of math and reading ability. ---
This article dates to 2000, but it's about the very same crisis that we've been hearing about more and more the last few years. Children are being medicated in order to get them to sit still in school (where 'unproductive' things like things like recess are being cut in favor of more cramming). Maybe a whole generation has been raised to think of 'learning' as something you need drugs to accomplish. And now we are beginning to see the consequences.
You're refering to the (original) Battlestar Galactica law suit aren't you?
That's the most famous example. There are many, many others. He actually sued the US Government (or was it Ronald Reagan personally?) to stop the use of the term 'Star Wars' for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Too bad it was the media, who named it that, not Reagan.:) There have been many suits against non-movie things, as well. Books, toys, etc.
Hobbit" is something that Tolkien thought up. So that term can be protected with copyrights or trademarks.
No, actually. The name 'hobbit' has been found in older sources.
The similarity of hobbit with the names of some of the creatures of British folklore has been noted - some country sprites and brownies are called Hobs and Hobthrusts, and there exists a story of more sinister creatures called Hobyahs. Hob itself is a common word for "rustic". It is therefore hardly surprising that hobbit actually appears in a long list of bogies published in 1895. The list can be found in Dr. James Hardy's edition of The Denhem Tracts, a collection of folklore writings by Michael Aislabie Denhem, published in two volumes (1892 and 1895) by the Folklore Society in London.
The Annotated Hobbit (Ed. Douglas Anderson), page 5
But that doesn't stop the Tolkien Estate from behaving as if they own the word and many others that Tolkien himself borrowed from other sources...
As far as the Tolkien Estate (a corporation of lawyers whose sole reason for existence is to 'defend' Tolkien's copyrights) is concerned, he did copyright his ideas. And everything else in the books even if he didn't invent it. They sued TSR multiple times over things like 'orc' event though the word is much, much older than Tolkien. The name Gandalf is well known to be from the Eldar Eddas, but some guy trying to make a living as a clown named Gandalf got sued and sued and sued until he finally had to cave in and pay some sort of 'license' fee to the Tolkien Estate. The details of all these cases are always locked up by 'non-disclosure' clauses so they can maximize their profits by using whatever legal argument is expedient to win (i.e. to avoid getting hit with an 'estoppel' from another case) regardless of actual consistency and justice.
In actual fact the Tolkien Estate is doing its level best to stop the fantasy literature genre. Sort of like George Lucas thinking that he invented science fiction and suing everyone he spots making too much money. Both genres are just too big for megalomaniacs or greedy corporations to stop.
The reason for this is more than 'apathy', it's active suppression. The major news outlets that aren't actually controlled by the same people who are behind Diebold and its ilk are intimidated by the constant barrage of 'media bias' attacks from the segment of the media that is allied with Diebold & Co. There is a perfectly good book that documents the theft of our last several elections by Mark Crispin Miller, just published a few months ago. But he can't get PBS or NPR (specifically WHYY) to let him appear and promote it. I have submitted stories on this but only get rejected. Can anyone figure how to get this information about censorship onto the main page of slashdot?
It is safe to say that WHYY and the rest of the public media gang are simply scared to death of uttering the book's title on the airwaves. They know that the neocons will jump up all over their asses claiming liberal bias. Maybe even launch one of their infamous letter writing campaigns. The Republican game plan of unrelenting bullshit, that steady grinding away day in day out -- it works. They have managed to wear down those media they don't already control from the top, make them either doubt themselves or make them damned afraid of repercussions. We can well imagine what the GOP assault on public radio and television has created around places like WHYY. Hell, if they can get Bill Moyers they can get anybody. Right?
It's censorship by intimidation. Large numbers of people are never going to hear about htis book because they don't search Amazon.com for new books about election fraud or by Mark Crispin Miller on a regular basis. They rely on the mass media to keep them informed, and it isn't working anymore. I also agree with his suggestion to contact WHYY directly and let them know that their fear of 'conservatives' reactions will attract the wrath of lots of 'liberals' whom they depend on for their funding at least as much as corporations or the government: By the way, if you wanna give WHYY hell personally, the phone number is (215) 351-1200. Email is talkback@whyy.org
Yes and no. He predicted that they would produce quantum singularities at CERN (in Europe) rather than a US accelerator lab. But he did say "it will puzzle them for a while, and then they'll figure it out." which seems rather close to what has happened -- IF they have got the right answer for this puzzle now.
That this would happen at a different place than predicted raises some interesting questions, though. Since the 'theory' of time travel given by John Titor states that the 'many worlds' idea is correct and every world line is necessarily unique, this can be interpreted as either confirmation or refutation. Due to this 'fudge factor' of differing time lines I don't think the question of truth or falsity of Titor's story can ever be ultimately resolved unless a hoaxer comes forward with some clear proof of being 'Titor'.
even when you flip past newspaper ads.. you still see them. you might even read them through if you're bored. but with popup blockers it's as if those pages were totally removed, you never see whats on them and you never get temptation to even read what they're even advertising.
that said.. i don't think popup / ad blockers will do anything drastic to anything. the adverts just change their form and creep into the stories themselfs.
There is a very important difference. The advertisers don't know that you didn't pay attention to the ads they paid for on television or in a magazine. These are mass media where individual contact and response can only be indirectly measured. Browsing websites is an individual activity and the site itself knows if you blocked the ads -- unless ad-blockers get smarter and download ads without displaying them. Yes, I know the 'ad-block' extension for Mozilla and Firefox has an option to do just that, but how many people actually use it? Some of us still use that creaky old access method called dialup and for us blocking without downloading is the whole point, it saves bandwidth. And as online advertising gets more and more extravagant with embedded flash and even.AVI or Quicktime files, even broadband users might feel the need to conserve their own bandwidth. This awareness that some people block advertising has and will continue to bring about countermeasures and an 'arms race' between ad-pushers and ad-blockers.
Thanks for the hint. Wanting to see the details, I managed to get another HTML validator to actually return a result. Apparently Slashdot has only blocked http://validator.w3.org/checklink -- not http://valet.webthing.com/page/ or http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ -- Yet.:) I'm sure they will now that I've posted this information. But anyway:
The results were mostly complaints about using features not available in this version of HTML. Slashdot sends a Doctype claiming HTML 3.2 compatibility. Gee, imagine that telling the Gecko engine to use rules for one version of HTML and then feeding it another version could cause errors??? Deh!:p
Since I already use Proxomitron a thought hit me -- why not replace the wrong Doctype declaration with a newer one? It's certainly easy to do. I am no expert so I had no idea what version of HTML would support those features. I could only take a wild guess and swap in the 4.0 Doctype from the validator site.:) So I setup a filter to do this, and I then turned OFF the 'redraw' macro that I have been using (also via Proxomitron) to correct the table bug just to see how things would render. So far, after only a dozen or so page renders I haven't seen the classic 'slashdot bug' table problems. The color scheme is screwed, as well as some other minor features of the page design. I supposed there are all sorts of other errors being cause by my arbitrary switching of the Doctype, but the infamous 'Slashdot bug' where tables overlap doesn't seme to occur anymore. Yes, it seems to be true that Slashdot HTML code is at fault here.
Let's hope they get motivated to coordinate their Doctype and their HTML code.
Actually, he doesn't have to be 'honest' -- just looking out for his own interests like all politicians do. Poland is still a 'developing' economy in many ways and he must have thought through the implications, or possibly even looked at the example of the US system, and realized that software patents will lock in the 'status quo' and make it impossible for startup software companies to get anywhere. Just as happens in the US, any new company would be absorbed by the 'big players' through legal manipulation. Since none of the current giants of software are located in Poland, he would clearly see some benefit to his own country's economy, and therefore possibly to himself as a politician living in and representing that economy, in preserving the chance for new startup software companies in Poland to succeed.
That's because many sites (including Salon.com and the New York Times) give free access to otherwise paid-access articles if the Referer: header is http://news.google.com/
If you have a proxy which can tamper with headers -- *cough*Proxomitron*cough* you can read this and many other articles on many different sites without the registration hassles by forcing your Referer: to be http://news.google.com/ all the time.
50 years after the death of the author for printed works. That's the standard Berne Convention definition. It might be different for music given the recent publicity about Elvis' first single going public domain. But don't worry, there are always legal tricks that someone can come up with to retain control of a cash cow like LotR. Revised editions with minor textual changes were published in the late sixties, for example, and it's those that are being reprinted in every possible cover style today.
And right now some law firm could be tracking down every use of the phrase 'Murphy's law' on behalf of the family of Capt. Edward A. Murphy and some other law firm could be tracking down every use of 'Spoonerism' for the family of The Reverend W. A. Spooner... They'll get to Furphy sooner or later, as well.
This is the insanity that the concept of 'Intellectual Property' has condemned us to. When will the public get fed-up enough to rebel and prod the Congress to moderate the law?
Slashdot Mirror
Since Opera was once I good browser I had installed it on a device I own. It seemed OK for a while, but then I got flooded with tourism ads for China. The "notices" would respawn as quickly as I could delete them. Uninstall was the only remedy. Now I will not have anything to do with Opera in any OS.
This sounds like they are about to start the mindless updating for the sake of updating that has ruined Firefox. Can some other group be persuaded to fork the current Thunderbird? Wouldn't an integrated email client be a good addition to the Libre Office suite, for example?
No, it's not a non-issue, but it's a different kind of issue than most people realize. Remember the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and the propaganda they pumped out last decade about how Linux and Open Source in general was a parasite on the tech industry, was enabling all sorts of illegal activities (such as terrorism - of course!), and attempted to publish a book claiming Linus Torvald's didn't really invent the Linux kernel? Microsoft was (and still is!) a major funder of this propaganda mill.
Think about the possible implications of a story like this: Could it generate calls to change the way the Linux kernel and programs that run under it are written? And now MS have their hooks sunk deeply into the kernel dev team. The SCO gambit (also funded by MS) failed, spectacularly. And the Astroturf de Tocqueville gambit failed, though not quite as spectacularly. And now we have MS "cooperating" in the development of Linux. And up pops a story that may justify an overhaul of Linux to make it controllable by MS Windows. Well, surprise, surprise! This "change of attitude" by MS is looking more and more like a subtler strategy to seize control of Linux rather than outright destroy it.
If enough of us ask nicely, or not so nicely, the FTC might sue them.
Send your complaints about Microsoft's unfair and unethical behavior to: antitrust@ftc.gov
This is the official address for reporting antitrust violations. I think trying to leverage the near universal presence of old versions of Windows on PCs worldwide to force acceptance of the new version qualifies as abuse of market position. The FTC might agree with enough public comment/complaint. People who have experienced the "involuntary upgrade" problem are likely to be especially influential. If you know anyone who has experienced this, pass that address along to them.
Steven Spielberg claimed to have done something similar. He claimed to have occupied an unused office on the Universal Studios lot by simply dressing in a suit, carrying a brief case, and bluffing his way past the security guards. But his story kept growing and growing. A clear sign of fabrication. So it was finally debunked by snopes. But even his tallest tale didn't claim to have lived on the lot full time. And now this kid has gone one better than the tall tale, actually living inside the corporate complex of a major tech company.
Gates also admitted he himself was in the habit of "gaining the benefits of software authors' time, effort, and capital without paying them"...
Bricklin sent waves of laughter through the auditorium by reading a passage from Lammers' interview with Bill Gates in which the young Microsoft founder explained that his work on different versions of Microsoft's BASIC compiler was shaped by looking at how other programmers had gone about the same task. Gates went on to say that young programmers don't need computer science degrees: "The best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems."
Bricklin finished reading Gates' words and announced, with an impish smile, "This is where Gates and [Richard] Stallman agree!"
Source: Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers (1986), ISBN 0914845713
"...the best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system."
-- Bill Gates.
Thank you. I wanted to post a similar rant to my own story, but you've said nearly everything I wanted to say. :)
* They are exploiting genetic knowledge purely for immediate profit without regard for the long-term consequences. Check.
* The consequences of their profit-mania will be passed on for not just a few years or even generations, but essentially for the rest of the existence of life on earth. Check.
Also, they are turning centuries of common law (and common sense) tradition upside down by suing people for getting their land polluted with their mistakes. It's incredible that sheer volume of money can turn logic around like that. We desperately need someone with money to step up and try to defend basic human rights. You're not a thief if someone dumps their "property" on you. Especially if that "property" is actually detrimental to your welfare.
Oh, and this is actually much worse than Nazi experiments. The Nazis had no knowledge of genetics and whatever ugly things they did to people wouldn't get passed on to later generations and become a permanent part of the biosphere.
Boxing. Your punch has 150 pounds of force behind it. Your opponent weighs 30 pounds in the moon's gravity. Hilarity ensues.
:)
And so do you.
It might be even more hilarious than you were expecting.
the extreme regimentation brought on by 'No Child Left Behind" is finally drawing a backlash? It seems to me that this is a predictable result of dropping 'inefficient' parts of the school day like recess and drugging students who can't sit still and goggle unblinkingly at the teacher for the required 6 hours a day. Remember this story from a few months ago? Remember the horror stories elsewhere about schools requiring kids to be drugged in order to stay in school? Can you yell me that being forced to sit still and listen to the same inane lessons six hours a day, and getting drugged if you don't/can't, doesn't encourage dropping out?
Biometric ID Cards ready for Trial in the UK -- Re:What's the problem?
The problem as ever is not: "If you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear." but rather "if your government never does anything wrong you have nothing to fear".
This is the angle you need to take with your wife and/or anyone else who spouts that sneaky ad hominem argument. (Yes, that's an ad hominem, or ad feminem as the case may be. It translates to "If you are afraid of law enforcement getting increased powers you must be a criminal.")
Did the Portland Attorney Brandon Mayfield do anything 'wrong'?
FBI apologizes to lawyer held in Madrid bombings (MSNBC)
Did the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes do anything 'wrong'?
U.K. police defend shoot-to-kill after mistake
It's a simple matter to dig up many, many other cases of law enforcement making awful mistakes and also cases of outright corruption and criminality. Officers of the law are human, too. They make mistakes. They can be corrupt. The law is designed to protect us against them as much as against criminals. Good officers know this and follow the law. It's the others that we have to fear. And it's a simple matter for anyone to dig up lots of local examples of why this is the case. Next time you have to argue with anyone who says 'if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear' you should have a sheaf of references to stupid mistakes and outright corruption by police in your local jurisdiction so they can recognize the personal threat in it.
Exactly, but I would have phrased it in synch with the headline:
Microsoft market share to get even tighter.
but not the fact of usage.
Onpoint 09/2002: College Students and Psychoactive Medication
Never mind the old equation of college and recreational drugs, the parents' old tiptoe through pot and peyote. A new generation is arriving at university heavily armed with prescriptions for Zoloft, Dexedrine, Paxil and Prozac. Xanax, Adderall, Cylert and Ritalin. And it's not about weekend benders. It's about ADD, anxiety, OCD and depression.
Officials say that today that about 40 percent of American college students are on psychoactive drugs. Everybody knows the number is huge. But what exactly does it mean? Up next On Point: the Medicated Generation goes to college.
---
And maybe the reason for the increasing levels of usage is that they are learning this from their days in grade school?
Better Living through Chemistry? (Dr. Leonard Sax)
This year some six million children in the U.S.--one in eight-- will take Ritalin. With 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. consumes 85 percent of this drug. Have we considered the consequences?
and...
Despite their stubborn refusal to medicate their children with Ritalin, these other countries do not lag behind the United States in academic performance. On the contrary: according to the most recent studies, France, Germany, and Japan continue to maintain their traditional lead over the United States in tests of math and reading ability.
---
This article dates to 2000, but it's about the very same crisis that we've been hearing about more and more the last few years. Children are being medicated in order to get them to sit still in school (where 'unproductive' things like things like recess are being cut in favor of more cramming). Maybe a whole generation has been raised to think of 'learning' as something you need drugs to accomplish. And now we are beginning to see the consequences.
You're refering to the (original) Battlestar Galactica law suit aren't you?
That's the most famous example. There are many, many others. He actually sued the US Government (or was it Ronald Reagan personally?) to stop the use of the term 'Star Wars' for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Too bad it was the media, who named it that, not Reagan.
Hobbit" is something that Tolkien thought up. So that term can be protected with copyrights or trademarks.
No, actually. The name 'hobbit' has been found in older sources.
The similarity of hobbit with the names of some of the creatures of British folklore has been noted - some country sprites and brownies are called Hobs and Hobthrusts, and there exists a story of more sinister creatures called Hobyahs. Hob itself is a common word for "rustic". It is therefore hardly surprising that hobbit actually appears in a long list of bogies published in 1895. The list can be found in Dr. James Hardy's edition of The Denhem Tracts, a collection of folklore writings by Michael Aislabie Denhem, published in two volumes (1892 and 1895) by the Folklore Society in London.
The Annotated Hobbit (Ed. Douglas Anderson), page 5
But that doesn't stop the Tolkien Estate from behaving as if they own the word and many others that Tolkien himself borrowed from other sources...
As far as the Tolkien Estate (a corporation of lawyers whose sole reason for existence is to 'defend' Tolkien's copyrights) is concerned, he did copyright his ideas. And everything else in the books even if he didn't invent it. They sued TSR multiple times over things like 'orc' event though the word is much, much older than Tolkien. The name Gandalf is well known to be from the Eldar Eddas, but some guy trying to make a living as a clown named Gandalf got sued and sued and sued until he finally had to cave in and pay some sort of 'license' fee to the Tolkien Estate. The details of all these cases are always locked up by 'non-disclosure' clauses so they can maximize their profits by using whatever legal argument is expedient to win (i.e. to avoid getting hit with an 'estoppel' from another case) regardless of actual consistency and justice.
In actual fact the Tolkien Estate is doing its level best to stop the fantasy literature genre. Sort of like George Lucas thinking that he invented science fiction and suing everyone he spots making too much money. Both genres are just too big for megalomaniacs or greedy corporations to stop.
The reason for this is more than 'apathy', it's active suppression. The major news outlets that aren't actually controlled by the same people who are behind Diebold and its ilk are intimidated by the constant barrage of 'media bias' attacks from the segment of the media that is allied with Diebold & Co. There is a perfectly good book that documents the theft of our last several elections by Mark Crispin Miller, just published a few months ago. But he can't get PBS or NPR (specifically WHYY) to let him appear and promote it. I have submitted stories on this but only get rejected. Can anyone figure how to get this information about censorship onto the main page of slashdot?
Mark Crispin Miller's Blog
The story on his blog noting Joe Bageant's recent essay on his inability to get airtime on WHYY's "Fresh Air"
Joe Bageant is a journalist and recently a very popular blogger of the plight of the 'redneck' culture in the neo-con political machine. His most recent essay is specifically about the refusal of WHYY to allow Mark Crispin Miller to appear on Fresh Air or otherwise promote his book -- Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them) He hits tha nail on the head:
It is safe to say that WHYY and the rest of the public media gang are simply scared to death of uttering the book's title on the airwaves. They know that the neocons will jump up all over their asses claiming liberal bias. Maybe even launch one of their infamous letter writing campaigns. The Republican game plan of unrelenting bullshit, that steady grinding away day in day out -- it works. They have managed to wear down those media they don't already control from the top, make them either doubt themselves or make them damned afraid of repercussions. We can well imagine what the GOP assault on public radio and television has created around places like WHYY. Hell, if they can get Bill Moyers they can get anybody. Right?
It's censorship by intimidation. Large numbers of people are never going to hear about htis book because they don't search Amazon.com for new books about election fraud or by Mark Crispin Miller on a regular basis. They rely on the mass media to keep them informed, and it isn't working anymore. I also agree with his suggestion to contact WHYY directly and let them know that their fear of 'conservatives' reactions will attract the wrath of lots of 'liberals' whom they depend on for their funding at least as much as corporations or the government:
By the way, if you wanna give WHYY hell personally, the phone number is (215) 351-1200. Email is talkback@whyy.org
If you are using Windows, you can install Quicktime Alternative. Get it from http://www.free-codecs.com/
Funny how even Darth Vader succumbs to putting Ads by Google in his blog...
Hey, hasn't he already been clear enough about having gone over to the Dark Side?
Yes and no. He predicted that they would produce quantum singularities at CERN (in Europe) rather than a US accelerator lab. But he did say "it will puzzle them for a while, and then they'll figure it out." which seems rather close to what has happened -- IF they have got the right answer for this puzzle now.
That this would happen at a different place than predicted raises some interesting questions, though. Since the 'theory' of time travel given by John Titor states that the 'many worlds' idea is correct and every world line is necessarily unique, this can be interpreted as either confirmation or refutation. Due to this 'fudge factor' of differing time lines I don't think the question of truth or falsity of Titor's story can ever be ultimately resolved unless a hoaxer comes forward with some clear proof of being 'Titor'.
even when you flip past newspaper ads.. you still see them. you might even read them through if you're bored. but with popup blockers it's as if those pages were totally removed, you never see whats on them and you never get temptation to even read what they're even advertising.
that said.. i don't think popup / ad blockers will do anything drastic to anything. the adverts just change their form and creep into the stories themselfs.
There is a very important difference. The advertisers don't know that you didn't pay attention to the ads they paid for on television or in a magazine. These are mass media where individual contact and response can only be indirectly measured. Browsing websites is an individual activity and the site itself knows if you blocked the ads -- unless ad-blockers get smarter and download ads without displaying them. Yes, I know the 'ad-block' extension for Mozilla and Firefox has an option to do just that, but how many people actually use it? Some of us still use that creaky old access method called dialup and for us blocking without downloading is the whole point, it saves bandwidth. And as online advertising gets more and more extravagant with embedded flash and even
Thanks for the hint. Wanting to see the details, I managed to get another HTML validator to actually return a result. Apparently Slashdot has only blocked http://validator.w3.org/checklink -- not http://valet.webthing.com/page/ or http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ -- Yet. :) I'm sure they will now that I've posted this information. But anyway:
:p
:) So I setup a filter to do this, and I then turned OFF the 'redraw' macro that I have been using (also via Proxomitron) to correct the table bug just to see how things would render. So far, after only a dozen or so page renders I haven't seen the classic 'slashdot bug' table problems. The color scheme is screwed, as well as some other minor features of the page design. I supposed there are all sorts of other errors being cause by my arbitrary switching of the Doctype, but the infamous 'Slashdot bug' where tables overlap doesn't seme to occur anymore. Yes, it seems to be true that Slashdot HTML code is at fault here.
The results were mostly complaints about using features not available in this version of HTML. Slashdot sends a Doctype claiming HTML 3.2 compatibility. Gee, imagine that telling the Gecko engine to use rules for one version of HTML and then feeding it another version could cause errors??? Deh!
Since I already use Proxomitron a thought hit me -- why not replace the wrong Doctype declaration with a newer one? It's certainly easy to do. I am no expert so I had no idea what version of HTML would support those features. I could only take a wild guess and swap in the 4.0 Doctype from the validator site.
Let's hope they get motivated to coordinate their Doctype and their HTML code.
Actually, he doesn't have to be 'honest' -- just looking out for his own interests like all politicians do. Poland is still a 'developing' economy in many ways and he must have thought through the implications, or possibly even looked at the example of the US system, and realized that software patents will lock in the 'status quo' and make it impossible for startup software companies to get anywhere. Just as happens in the US, any new company would be absorbed by the 'big players' through legal manipulation. Since none of the current giants of software are located in Poland, he would clearly see some benefit to his own country's economy, and therefore possibly to himself as a politician living in and representing that economy, in preserving the chance for new startup software companies in Poland to succeed.
That's because many sites (including Salon.com and the New York Times) give free access to otherwise paid-access articles if the Referer: header is http://news.google.com/
If you have a proxy which can tamper with headers -- *cough*Proxomitron*cough* you can read this and many other articles on many different sites without the registration hassles by forcing your Referer: to be http://news.google.com/ all the time.
50 years after the death of the author for printed works. That's the standard Berne Convention definition. It might be different for music given the recent publicity about Elvis' first single going public domain. But don't worry, there are always legal tricks that someone can come up with to retain control of a cash cow like LotR. Revised editions with minor textual changes were published in the late sixties, for example, and it's those that are being reprinted in every possible cover style today.
And right now some law firm could be tracking down every use of the phrase 'Murphy's law' on behalf of the family of Capt. Edward A. Murphy and some other law firm could be tracking down every use of 'Spoonerism' for the family of The Reverend W. A. Spooner... They'll get to Furphy sooner or later, as well.
Not to mention McDonald's absurd claim of trademark on the 'Mc' prefix!
This is the insanity that the concept of 'Intellectual Property' has condemned us to. When will the public get fed-up enough to rebel and prod the Congress to moderate the law?