Yeah right, they sure seem to have made Hollywood and Publishers honest. PS: How come they own most the copyrights and not the creators?
Because you're looking only at music. Not at the plethora of real written work and real art.
Music can be called a science, it's so well understood and managed, and it takes so many folks to do it.
Plus, the big name musicians sell their songs, and so _everyone_ does.
The fact that they intermingle tends to show why they are so unworkable. 99% of what we speak, read, and know was copied from somewhere else. Also if getting rid of copyrights causes one person to loose a million worth of IP, but gains them access to trillion worth of IP - then that is a net gain.
Bullocks.
If you remove copyright, then you remove the encouragement to distribute the "IP" in the first place. Sure, it may still be created, but who's going to bother or publish it--or promote it to more than a very small audience?
The intermingling of patents and copyright, save in wacked areas like software, is simply not a problem. If a science-fiction book describes a brilliant new idea but not how it could be done, and someone figures out how to do that while the copyright is still in place, the patent is valid and the copyright is as well. (Copyrights expressly do not cover patentable or unpatentable ideas.)
Sorry, but distribution of talent or skill doesn't even closely resemble the distribution of wealth. Infact, some would argue that there's an inverse relationship.
Bullocks. Those that argue a point like that are just bitching about their bad luck.
The fact is, simple skill _never_ gives reward. Luck, preseverence, and a certain level of acumen (to give the market what it wants) are required for success.
That is wrong, and the proof is all the writers and artists who wrote stuff before copyrights became common. (eg Mozart)
Mozart, Leonardo, and any of their contemporaries are bad choices.
In the days before recordings, Mozart could make all the money he needed through patrons of his live performances, which were the only way to hear the music, and Mozart was the best one to play his music (duh.)
Leonardo and other artists of his era were "one-shot" artists, who created a physical work that simply could not be copied. He didn't have to worry about pictures or photocopies of his paintings, and the only way to get a copy of something he did was to have a hack copy it (often badly).
Move past gutenberg and napster to today, and the primary method of compensation for creation of art is purchasing a mass-produced copy of the art. Most musicians lose money on their tours for several years, and if not for the sales from CDs and singles they'd simply not ever make money.
That is a great argument for using things like digital certificates instead of imposed centralized record keeping, but not a good one for copyrights, sorry.
Information is information is information. Either it can be controlled and restricted, or it cannot. Either we arbitrarily divide up information and secure each type on its own merits, or we don't.
(PS copyright law does not protect database information in the US)
Actually, it does. Take your phone book and copy it, and you're committing copyright infringement.
Why do so many corporations think they can ignore laws they don't like (i.e. the first amendment)
Corproations aren't the government. Corporations can and do abridge the freedom of speech through contracts all the friggin' time.
Now, if it's unfair and unreasonable, the offended citizen can go to court and get the corp smacked for all sorts of things like discrimination and fraud and unfair practices--but "first amendement violation" isn't one of them.
1st off, the moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact that not everybody can use something at the same time, not from monopolies granted by a king in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy
The moral and historical foundation of copyright derives from artists not being businessmen, and needing to be protected from scams, fraudlent deals, and meanspirited publication.
We, as a civilization, have an interest in encouraging the advancement of science (patents) and art (copyright). The fact that they tend to intermingle and co-inspire just strengthens the argument.
Of course, these things should be put in perspective, reviewed, and revised. 90 years after I'm dead is too long for my heirs to have my copyright--just look at what Tolkien's children have done. (I love the movies--and they wouldn't have gotten made if Tolkien hadn't sold the movie rights when he was still alive.)
2nd, copyrights are a fraud in that they don't help creators that much. Often you'll hear it cried from the rooftops that the artist is king and that anybody who finds a need to copy is a self centered brat that offers nothing of value to society. Perhaps this is intentional as to distract from the fact that for every artist that makes it big, 10000 are in dirt poverty.
Most of the ten thousand in "dirt poverty" are such because they suck. A small fraction are there because they haven't done anything worthy yet. An even smaller percentage is there because they haven't found the right publisher yet.
I would love to be published (working on it right now, actually) but I love even more to have so many books written every year that I could read everything I have the whimsy to and never run out of new things to read.
Were it not for the possiblity of copyright, very very few of these authors would have bothered to show anyone a copy of their book--and even less would be published or in print.
Since peoples activities have a natural limit in supply and demand, and not information, it is the activities that should be equated to market value and not information.
Without copyright, there would be no reason to post-pay unsigned authors, and the only people writing or creating would be in-house paid staff--who would, judging on history, produce crap and be paid in kind.
4th, information is so easy to copy and manipulate that we are quickly reaching a point where either all of it must be controlled or none of it. The copyright industries know that and so should you.
Kindly tell me your home address, date of birth, full name, Social Security number, credit card number, expiration date, bank number, place of employment, parent's full names, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, and when you're going to be out of the house for the next week and where the valuables are.
We need to have some control of information. The proper way to adjust copyright is not to abandon it, but to mvoe it from a one-copy-no-moremodel to a right-to-have-as-many-copies-as-you-want model.
Apart from that, I see no reason for copyrights to survive the author.
Publication of work by an author with a terminal illness / tragic death.
If i'm dying and I have one more book to write, I want to be able to make sure that my publisher can profit from its sale even if I die earlier than expected--and so has no reason to say "assign us your copyright or we won't publish."
Oddly enough, I just thought of a Rather Good reason to transfer copyrights to movie studios and record lables: to encourage re-use amongst the artists within said studios / labels.
IMO, there should definitly be mandatory license fees for derivitive works of music or movies--let someone file for a deriviation claim, but limit them to a certain fee (maybe a certain gross percentage of the artist's income.)
So, I guess what I'm asking, off-topic, is why the hell is Disney not re-issuing movies that were actually very good, instead of releasing crap every 4 months?
Because there's a certain set cost for showing a film in theatres, and only a rare re-release actually makes money. Fantasia was updated recently, and AFAIK it bombed.
If you want to see a classic, your choices are Disney TV, VHS, or DVD... or you could rally for digital theatres, which could reduce the cost of a release and allow for profitable small-market (like, one-theater) releases.
One of the most amazing things Einstein said is that there is NO SUCH THING as "simultaneous" events. Such a concept would require that there be an absolute reference time frame a la Newton.
Picking an absolute reference is easy, but it'd be complex, as we'd be forever locally correcting for relative speed, distance, and time dilation.
Of COURSE there are simultaneous events--we just have neither the math nor the instruments to tell which events are simultaneous.
f you have a couple of observers watching events happen, be they signal flares, radio waves or even detonating alarm clocks, they will in general NOT agree on WHEN the events occur.
Only if they're physically far apart for the speed-of-light delay to outrace their local reaction time.
Even more spooky, even if you correct for the speed-of-light delay between the observers and the events, their observed time intevals will still not match up.
Well, yeah. That's because all three points are in motion, and you need to correct for red-shift / blue-shift as well.
Also, when have we have the combination of accuracy / distance to test this, anyway? Even opposite sides of the planet can't be more than a light-second away, which would be well within the margin of human error for timing an event--and the moon can't be much more that that, but I don't know of any astrological observations from the moon...
The "altered mental state" you refer to among physicists is not a convenient falsehood or an approximation to make the calculations easier to grasp. It's what the universe is really like... more amazing and harder to understand than anything else in our lives.
That's religion talking, not science. The difference between an absolute universe and a subjective universe is one that we, as of yet, cannot test or verify.
Science limiting itself to local subjective reference isn't any more "correct" than absolute measurements, just as picking the sun as the center of the local universe is any more correct than picking the center of the Earth or the Moon or the city of Rome. It's just simpler, and so that's what parsimony tells Science to use.
Unfortunately, a lot of scientists become or start out as atheists, and have a hard time seperating their religious views from their scientific observations. (An atheist scientist saying "there is no God" is making a religious statement; if he said "we have no evidence for God" or "God is unproven" or didn't menton the great fuzzy one at all, _then_ he's scientific.)
And that includes RPGs.:)
Hey, you're a GURPS player, aren't you! That or rolemaster...;)
no frame of reference is any more "correct" than any other when it comes to measuring time and space.
That's because we're always in motion, and don't have the equipment to measure an absolute (i.e., relative to the universe as a whole) reference. And even if we did, we'd stick to local references for the same reason we have heliocentric models of the solar system--it's just simpler this way, and lets the Smart Folk focus on things other than unnecessary abstraction/correction.
Both are correct. Neither one is more correct than the other because neither frame of reference is any better or more provable than the other. That's special relativity
That's a fancy way of saying "no information can travel faster than light."
When clock A looks at Clock B and sees 8:58, and it knows that clock B is two light-minutes away, clock A knows that clock B _should_ say 9:00 and if we were to instantly go from B to A that we would see 9:00.
The speed of time is flexible, but that's not "wacky"--that is, one moment always follows the next. If the sun vanishes now, it doesn't vanish eight minutes later "for us," we just only notice it eight minutes later.
There really really is an objective reality and an absolute time frame & spaital system--but it's not labled, and we have no way to see it, so those that "get" astrology tend to ignore the fact that we're just dealing with what we can percieve, and that causes a lot of wannabes and confused students to harp to a nonsense idea that blab all kinds of nonsensical statements when it comes to the topic.
If we have a colony in the outer reaches of the solar system that explodes, and it takes two days for the "we're exploding" message to get to Earth, we would properly mark the anniversary on the date of the explosion, not the date that we recieved the transmission.
I think Microsoft is scared. they are running from the Linux/Open Source Communinity while trying to figure out how to live by the "if you cant beat em, join em" Business Plan.
Did you even read this? Palladium is as much a step away from the "copy any bit you want" PC we have today as the original Macintosh was from "CLI and only CLI."
20$ says Bill gates will see how bad the TCPA is, and scrap it, like he did with Microsoft Bob. Or at least I can hope... (Is this going to be the first on topic post??)
You mean Palladium, right? I know you do...
(y'know, I have to wonder why no Linux security-freak has decided to take up TCPA for their own projects...)
There would be no clue that anything happened to the sun until 8 minutes after it happened.
Unless we suddenly shift orbits 8 minutes before we see the sun go "blink."
For one thing, if gravity was instananeous it could conceivably be used to send information anywhere in the universe with zero ping time.
No. If Gravity is instantaenous, it's not a force, it's a property. (besides which, if we _could_ alter gravity, it'd be a bitch to find a sensor to pick up the minute graivty vibrations.)
Unfortunately, the notion of energy (and indirectly, matter) moving at infinite velocity seems to violate the entire theory of relativity. Moving you from here to another galaxy instantly certainly seems to violate the theory of relativity.
No, it'd just be in a differenet paradigm. If you achieve instant transmission you're not moving at instant velocity--you're taking a shortcut.
Just because no force can travel faster than c doesn't mean that time is all wacky.
If you take two syncronized clocks, travel for one light-minute in opposite diretions at equal speeds, and then smash one of the clocks when it reads 9:00 a.m., the other clock can know that it lots its twin when IT says "9:00 a.m.", not when it says 9:02 a.m.
*sigh* Of course, if you really understood it, you'd be correcting stuck up physicists, not harassing/. (Oh, wait, they understand it to--they just use an altered thinking state because it makes it easier to focus.)
Yep. Well, not that I really _want_ to spend 20%, but there isn't really a "how to negotiate your manuscript contract" book that isn't essentially "get an agent."
In Digital Copyright Litman mentions, in particular, that an entire mailing list of copyright lawyers and scholars couldn't come up with a binding legal way to release a work into the public domain
Well, yeah. If you want something done, you need to hire one lawyer and only go to others for advice. And sometimes new legal mechanisms need non-lawyers (like Stallman) to bring them about.
A sworn statement releasing the item into the public domain should be enough, and the only way to undo that would be to challenge the validity of the contract--but it should stand up as well as an author's will.
And if that doesn't work--setting up a foundation to administer, print, and release into the public domain your works should be enough of a mechanism. You might even be able to find a library that'd be willing to take on the obligation.
You are aware that there is no legal infrastructure to "commit" your works to the Public Domain?
Any work worth the money can be made public domain simply through making public witnessed statements that can be brought up in court.
An inquiry into the library of congress should suffice; I'd imagine that they'res a form and a fee, and then they'll hold your proof of copyright forever.
Oh, and there is always your will--which, unless they manage to toss it all out, should suffice to let the works enter the public domain.
However, since whenever you publish something you sign all your copyrights over to the publisher, the decision is out of your hands, and your post no longer makes sense.
Er, no. Maybe for songs, maybe for software, maybe for boring mindless work-for-hire crap and tripe that no one will want to read in fifty years...
But for literary works of all sizes, and all real art, the author/artist almost never loses their copyright.
And even those who lose their copyright to the music industry can (and have) go to court to get them back.
Don't be an idiot. How many people, do you think, will buy stock if it means all their personal assets can be taken for the company's debts? That's what getting rid of corporations means.
If stocks go away, they'll simply be replaced in the market by bonds issued by the companies--which makes more sense anyway, as most "stockowners" are all but meaningless.
But the few that remain will sit up and pay close attention, as their "divine right" is suddenly directly linked to what the company does.
That will work great unless you want to have your work actually published. Publishers these days require that you sign over any copyright on your work to them, and they aren't going to release anything into the public domain before they are forced to.
Are you talking about Labels, Studios, or Publishers?
Publishers publish books. If it's non-fiction, then it might as well be (and very likely is) work-for-hire. Fiction, even short fiction, is almost entirely per-publication rights.
This, of course, is because the popular authors only work that way, and if publishers started treating them badly the authors would simply replace them with a new publisher they formed.
The fact that the RIAA (and to a lesser extent the MPAA) is a bunch of jackbooted thugs can be traced to their drug-addled high-rolling history, and is hardly a fair measure to judge the system they exploit on.
If you think otherwise, please start naming names. Yes, RIAA is a bunch of thugs that should be give over to grunge fans clothed only in "I killed Kurt (sp) Cobain" T-shirts, but that doesn't mean that everyone else is.
You need an agent? hmm...glorified view of being an author possibly..
Ok, "need" isn't really true. But "could use the advice of someone who actually knows the market and has a vested interest in seing me get money" sounds true.
Plus, agents know publishers, and publishers have money--which is something I don't have, or else I could actually try self-publishing.
(Also, like I said the manuscript is done. Contact me off/. if you want to know more.)
To anyone who says publishers aren't needed, I'd advise them to try a job at a publishing shop for a short time, and see how they like the work.
They're not.
Editors, typesetters, and printers are--but not publishers. They're just the ones with the money and the sales acumen.
Everything needs polishing up, but the bulk of any creative work that worth the money is in the artist themselves; if not, then the bloomin' editor should be writing the books themselves, and getting all the credit and all the money.
Of course, the number of people needed only inrcreases the further we get aweay from paint-on-canvass. Authors need typesetters and proofreaders and editors. Video game progammers need coders and coders and coders. And musicians need sound technicians and someone who understands the best ways to get the sound and energy of a live performance onto tape/CD.
My manuscript is done. I need an agent, a printer, a marketer, an editor, and a typesetter. The first one I might be able to find on my own--but the last four I'm going to need to go through a publisher for unless I suddenly win the lottery.
Suppose I don't write mega-super-uber blockbuster bestsellers, and my work (like 99% of all authors' work) remains steadily mid-list after I die
Sheesh.
It's yours to do with as you wish. If you're married, give your copyright to your wife for a term of up to her life and then have it go to public domain. You (or I) could give away copyright at any time, for any reason--and a competetent lawyer could handle setting up a life-estate copyright deal to protect your wife, nonadult children, and the publication of your final works (which, after all, are the three reasons why "life plus" is in the copyright code at all.)
So don't tell the kids that the war of 1812 was about invading Canada and that the US lost, oh no it was about Britain impressing alleged US citizens and ended in a draw.
1812, like most wars, was about a lot of things. Invading canada was no more the "main cause" of the war than outrage over impressed sailors. The real reason, as with most secular wars, was poliitcs and trade. And it was a "draw"--neither side really wanted the war, and the war didn't solve anything. (The US didn't lose land, the US didn't get forced into a treaty, and the US certainly didn't wake up one day and think "lets invade canada." So, they wound up just where they started, with a few less patriots and a few more heros.)
When it comes to the civil war pretend that the South was unjustly attacked by the North, forget about the fact that the war was started by the South and was all about extending slavery to Texas and the Californias.
Every textbook I ever read on the Civil War blames the south for starting the war. The closest I've ever come to seeing a defense of the South was the "states rights" and "economic ruin" arguments.
(The Civil War wasn't about trade, but it was a civil war, and so wound up being fought for just about the same reason all other civl wars are fought: succession of power. The final straw that led to the Confederacy was Lincon getting elected without so much as a single Southern vote.)
As for Edison and Tesla: light bulbs and record players are rather boring, and the specifics of their invention are far less interesting (and important) than the socal changes and alterations they bought about.
'coures, I don't see much wrong in making childhood a safe haven as much as possible; "grown-up" books and news articles seem so hell-bent on making Earth seem like a haven of hypocrites and liars and cheats that some balance can't help but be a good thing.
There is no way they'd be able to pass legislation requiring computers to have DRM. They'd have to prove computers have no other use besides playing media. Not even the RIAA can bribe enough politicians for that.
Er, no. They'd have to prove that one of the primary uses of a computer is playing media, and illegally copying said media.
DRM doesn't mean "DRM programs only on the PC." It means "DRM'd files become DRM only."
This is a problem, and it does need an answer. One answer is to lock down the PC; the other is a new copyright model. One guess which one most people would prefer.
What difference does it make to them if there's that kind of legislation anyway? They're doing everything they can to restrict their CDs to DRM players as it is.
Most personal computers in America will be replaced in the next three years, with virtually all the rest being replaced in the three years after that. If they get the DRM regulation on all new PCs now, by the time the hardware is everywhere they can simply drop the old format and embrace the new DRM-only format wholesale.
Hacking the current CD schema won't cut it; a whole new format (or even a differnet physical media) needs to be devised, or their worries will be a lot bigger than the analog hole.
Then wouldn't that just defeat the purpose of TCPA, we can all just get developer boxs
No. Trusted Computing means that the computer is trusted by a content distributor to handle their files. You don't need to download metallica from RIAAster to test to make sure that your custom MP3 player works.
A "developer box" would be one that's untrusted, and doesn't bother to be tested because it's being changed so much. Just like development boxes in real software shops are.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah right, they sure seem to have made Hollywood and Publishers honest. PS: How come they own most the copyrights and not the creators?
Because you're looking only at music. Not at the plethora of real written work and real art.
Music can be called a science, it's so well understood and managed, and it takes so many folks to do it.
Plus, the big name musicians sell their songs, and so _everyone_ does.
The fact that they intermingle tends to show why they are so unworkable. 99% of what we speak, read, and know was copied from somewhere else. Also if getting rid of copyrights causes one person to loose a million worth of IP, but gains them access to trillion worth of IP - then that is a net gain.
Bullocks.
If you remove copyright, then you remove the encouragement to distribute the "IP" in the first place. Sure, it may still be created, but who's going to bother or publish it--or promote it to more than a very small audience?
The intermingling of patents and copyright, save in wacked areas like software, is simply not a problem. If a science-fiction book describes a brilliant new idea but not how it could be done, and someone figures out how to do that while the copyright is still in place, the patent is valid and the copyright is as well. (Copyrights expressly do not cover patentable or unpatentable ideas.)
Sorry, but distribution of talent or skill doesn't even closely resemble the distribution of wealth. Infact, some would argue that there's an inverse relationship.
Bullocks. Those that argue a point like that are just bitching about their bad luck.
The fact is, simple skill _never_ gives reward. Luck, preseverence, and a certain level of acumen (to give the market what it wants) are required for success.
That is wrong, and the proof is all the writers and artists who wrote stuff before copyrights became common. (eg Mozart)
Mozart, Leonardo, and any of their contemporaries are bad choices.
In the days before recordings, Mozart could make all the money he needed through patrons of his live performances, which were the only way to hear the music, and Mozart was the best one to play his music (duh.)
Leonardo and other artists of his era were "one-shot" artists, who created a physical work that simply could not be copied. He didn't have to worry about pictures or photocopies of his paintings, and the only way to get a copy of something he did was to have a hack copy it (often badly).
Move past gutenberg and napster to today, and the primary method of compensation for creation of art is purchasing a mass-produced copy of the art. Most musicians lose money on their tours for several years, and if not for the sales from CDs and singles they'd simply not ever make money.
That is a great argument for using things like digital certificates instead of imposed centralized record keeping, but not a good one for copyrights, sorry.
Information is information is information. Either it can be controlled and restricted, or it cannot. Either we arbitrarily divide up information and secure each type on its own merits, or we don't.
(PS copyright law does not protect database information in the US)
Actually, it does. Take your phone book and copy it, and you're committing copyright infringement.
Why do so many corporations think they can ignore laws they don't like (i.e. the first amendment)
Corproations aren't the government. Corporations can and do abridge the freedom of speech through contracts all the friggin' time.
Now, if it's unfair and unreasonable, the offended citizen can go to court and get the corp smacked for all sorts of things like discrimination and fraud and unfair practices--but "first amendement violation" isn't one of them.
1st off, the moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact that not everybody can use something at the same time, not from monopolies granted by a king in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy
The moral and historical foundation of copyright derives from artists not being businessmen, and needing to be protected from scams, fraudlent deals, and meanspirited publication.
We, as a civilization, have an interest in encouraging the advancement of science (patents) and art (copyright). The fact that they tend to intermingle and co-inspire just strengthens the argument.
Of course, these things should be put in perspective, reviewed, and revised. 90 years after I'm dead is too long for my heirs to have my copyright--just look at what Tolkien's children have done. (I love the movies--and they wouldn't have gotten made if Tolkien hadn't sold the movie rights when he was still alive.)
2nd, copyrights are a fraud in that they don't help creators that much. Often you'll hear it cried from the rooftops that the artist is king and that anybody who finds a need to copy is a self centered brat that offers nothing of value to society. Perhaps this is intentional as to distract from the fact that for every artist that makes it big, 10000 are in dirt poverty.
Most of the ten thousand in "dirt poverty" are such because they suck. A small fraction are there because they haven't done anything worthy yet. An even smaller percentage is there because they haven't found the right publisher yet.
I would love to be published (working on it right now, actually) but I love even more to have so many books written every year that I could read everything I have the whimsy to and never run out of new things to read.
Were it not for the possiblity of copyright, very very few of these authors would have bothered to show anyone a copy of their book--and even less would be published or in print.
Since peoples activities have a natural limit in supply and demand, and not information, it is the activities that should be equated to market value and not information.
Without copyright, there would be no reason to post-pay unsigned authors, and the only people writing or creating would be in-house paid staff--who would, judging on history, produce crap and be paid in kind.
4th, information is so easy to copy and manipulate that we are quickly reaching a point where either all of it must be controlled or none of it. The copyright industries know that and so should you.
Kindly tell me your home address, date of birth, full name, Social Security number, credit card number, expiration date, bank number, place of employment, parent's full names, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, and when you're going to be out of the house for the next week and where the valuables are.
We need to have some control of information. The proper way to adjust copyright is not to abandon it, but to mvoe it from a one-copy-no-moremodel to a right-to-have-as-many-copies-as-you-want model.
Check this journal for suggestions
Apart from that, I see no reason for copyrights to survive the author.
Publication of work by an author with a terminal illness / tragic death.
If i'm dying and I have one more book to write, I want to be able to make sure that my publisher can profit from its sale even if I die earlier than expected--and so has no reason to say "assign us your copyright or we won't publish."
Oddly enough, I just thought of a Rather Good reason to transfer copyrights to movie studios and record lables: to encourage re-use amongst the artists within said studios / labels.
IMO, there should definitly be mandatory license fees for derivitive works of music or movies--let someone file for a deriviation claim, but limit them to a certain fee (maybe a certain gross percentage of the artist's income.)
So, I guess what I'm asking, off-topic, is why the hell is Disney not re-issuing movies that were actually very good, instead of releasing crap every 4 months?
Because there's a certain set cost for showing a film in theatres, and only a rare re-release actually makes money. Fantasia was updated recently, and AFAIK it bombed.
If you want to see a classic, your choices are Disney TV, VHS, or DVD... or you could rally for digital theatres, which could reduce the cost of a release and allow for profitable small-market (like, one-theater) releases.
One of the most amazing things Einstein said is that there is NO SUCH THING as "simultaneous" events. Such a concept would require that there be an absolute reference time frame a la Newton.
:)
;)
Picking an absolute reference is easy, but it'd be complex, as we'd be forever locally correcting for relative speed, distance, and time dilation.
Of COURSE there are simultaneous events--we just have neither the math nor the instruments to tell which events are simultaneous.
f you have a couple of observers watching events happen, be they signal flares, radio waves or even detonating alarm clocks, they will in general NOT agree on WHEN the events occur.
Only if they're physically far apart for the speed-of-light delay to outrace their local reaction time.
Even more spooky, even if you correct for the speed-of-light delay between the observers and the events, their observed time intevals will still not match up.
Well, yeah. That's because all three points are in motion, and you need to correct for red-shift / blue-shift as well.
Also, when have we have the combination of accuracy / distance to test this, anyway? Even opposite sides of the planet can't be more than a light-second away, which would be well within the margin of human error for timing an event--and the moon can't be much more that that, but I don't know of any astrological observations from the moon...
The "altered mental state" you refer to among physicists is not a convenient falsehood or an approximation to make the calculations easier to grasp. It's what the universe is really like... more amazing and harder to understand than anything else in our lives.
That's religion talking, not science. The difference between an absolute universe and a subjective universe is one that we, as of yet, cannot test or verify.
Science limiting itself to local subjective reference isn't any more "correct" than absolute measurements, just as picking the sun as the center of the local universe is any more correct than picking the center of the Earth or the Moon or the city of Rome. It's just simpler, and so that's what parsimony tells Science to use.
Unfortunately, a lot of scientists become or start out as atheists, and have a hard time seperating their religious views from their scientific observations. (An atheist scientist saying "there is no God" is making a religious statement; if he said "we have no evidence for God" or "God is unproven" or didn't menton the great fuzzy one at all, _then_ he's scientific.)
And that includes RPGs.
Hey, you're a GURPS player, aren't you! That or rolemaster...
no frame of reference is any more "correct" than any other when it comes to measuring time and space.
That's because we're always in motion, and don't have the equipment to measure an absolute (i.e., relative to the universe as a whole) reference. And even if we did, we'd stick to local references for the same reason we have heliocentric models of the solar system--it's just simpler this way, and lets the Smart Folk focus on things other than unnecessary abstraction/correction.
Both are correct. Neither one is more correct than the other because neither frame of reference is any better or more provable than the other. That's special relativity
That's a fancy way of saying "no information can travel faster than light."
When clock A looks at Clock B and sees 8:58, and it knows that clock B is two light-minutes away, clock A knows that clock B _should_ say 9:00 and if we were to instantly go from B to A that we would see 9:00.
The speed of time is flexible, but that's not "wacky"--that is, one moment always follows the next. If the sun vanishes now, it doesn't vanish eight minutes later "for us," we just only notice it eight minutes later.
There really really is an objective reality and an absolute time frame & spaital system--but it's not labled, and we have no way to see it, so those that "get" astrology tend to ignore the fact that we're just dealing with what we can percieve, and that causes a lot of wannabes and confused students to harp to a nonsense idea that blab all kinds of nonsensical statements when it comes to the topic.
If we have a colony in the outer reaches of the solar system that explodes, and it takes two days for the "we're exploding" message to get to Earth, we would properly mark the anniversary on the date of the explosion, not the date that we recieved the transmission.
They didn't need to. Linux doesn't need hardware help to be secure. A properly configured Windows box (newer versions) doesn't need it either.
You seem to think that security is an absolute thing, rather than a never-ending qualitive bit.
Linux is not magically secure--it and windows can be improved through all manner of devices and programs, and this will be so for a long, long time.
I think Microsoft is scared. they are running from the Linux/Open Source Communinity while trying to figure out how to live by the "if you cant beat em, join em" Business Plan.
Did you even read this? Palladium is as much a step away from the "copy any bit you want" PC we have today as the original Macintosh was from "CLI and only CLI."
20$ says Bill gates will see how bad the TCPA is, and scrap it, like he did with Microsoft Bob. Or at least I can hope... (Is this going to be the first on topic post??)
You mean Palladium, right? I know you do...
(y'know, I have to wonder why no Linux security-freak has decided to take up TCPA for their own projects...)
There would be no clue that anything happened to the sun until 8 minutes after it happened.
Unless we suddenly shift orbits 8 minutes before we see the sun go "blink."
For one thing, if gravity was instananeous it could conceivably be used to send information anywhere in the universe with zero ping time.
No. If Gravity is instantaenous, it's not a force, it's a property. (besides which, if we _could_ alter gravity, it'd be a bitch to find a sensor to pick up the minute graivty vibrations.)
Unfortunately, the notion of energy (and indirectly, matter) moving at infinite velocity seems to violate the entire theory of relativity. Moving you from here to another galaxy instantly certainly seems to violate the theory of relativity.
No, it'd just be in a differenet paradigm. If you achieve instant transmission you're not moving at instant velocity--you're taking a shortcut.
And they're all right. Ain't relativity grand?
/. (Oh, wait, they understand it to--they just use an altered thinking state because it makes it easier to focus.)
Just because no force can travel faster than c doesn't mean that time is all wacky.
If you take two syncronized clocks, travel for one light-minute in opposite diretions at equal speeds, and then smash one of the clocks when it reads 9:00 a.m., the other clock can know that it lots its twin when IT says "9:00 a.m.", not when it says 9:02 a.m.
*sigh* Of course, if you really understood it, you'd be correcting stuck up physicists, not harassing
Yep. Well, not that I really _want_ to spend 20%, but there isn't really a "how to negotiate your manuscript contract" book that isn't essentially "get an agent."
In Digital Copyright Litman mentions, in particular, that an entire mailing list of copyright lawyers and scholars couldn't come up with a binding legal way to release a work into the public domain
Well, yeah. If you want something done, you need to hire one lawyer and only go to others for advice. And sometimes new legal mechanisms need non-lawyers (like Stallman) to bring them about.
A sworn statement releasing the item into the public domain should be enough, and the only way to undo that would be to challenge the validity of the contract--but it should stand up as well as an author's will.
And if that doesn't work--setting up a foundation to administer, print, and release into the public domain your works should be enough of a mechanism. You might even be able to find a library that'd be willing to take on the obligation.
You are aware that there is no legal infrastructure to "commit" your works to the Public Domain?
Any work worth the money can be made public domain simply through making public witnessed statements that can be brought up in court.
An inquiry into the library of congress should suffice; I'd imagine that they'res a form and a fee, and then they'll hold your proof of copyright forever.
Oh, and there is always your will--which, unless they manage to toss it all out, should suffice to let the works enter the public domain.
However, since whenever you publish something you sign all your copyrights over to the publisher, the decision is out of your hands, and your post no longer makes sense.
Er, no. Maybe for songs, maybe for software, maybe for boring mindless work-for-hire crap and tripe that no one will want to read in fifty years...
But for literary works of all sizes, and all real art, the author/artist almost never loses their copyright.
And even those who lose their copyright to the music industry can (and have) go to court to get them back.
Don't be an idiot. How many people, do you think, will buy stock if it means all their personal assets can be taken for the company's debts? That's what getting rid of corporations means.
If stocks go away, they'll simply be replaced in the market by bonds issued by the companies--which makes more sense anyway, as most "stockowners" are all but meaningless.
But the few that remain will sit up and pay close attention, as their "divine right" is suddenly directly linked to what the company does.
That will work great unless you want to have your work actually published. Publishers these days require that you sign over any copyright on your work to them, and they aren't going to release anything into the public domain before they are forced to.
Are you talking about Labels, Studios, or Publishers?
Publishers publish books. If it's non-fiction, then it might as well be (and very likely is) work-for-hire. Fiction, even short fiction, is almost entirely per-publication rights.
This, of course, is because the popular authors only work that way, and if publishers started treating them badly the authors would simply replace them with a new publisher they formed.
The fact that the RIAA (and to a lesser extent the MPAA) is a bunch of jackbooted thugs can be traced to their drug-addled high-rolling history, and is hardly a fair measure to judge the system they exploit on.
If you think otherwise, please start naming names. Yes, RIAA is a bunch of thugs that should be give over to grunge fans clothed only in "I killed Kurt (sp) Cobain" T-shirts, but that doesn't mean that everyone else is.
You need an agent? hmm...glorified view of being an author possibly..
/. if you want to know more.)
Ok, "need" isn't really true. But "could use the advice of someone who actually knows the market and has a vested interest in seing me get money" sounds true.
Plus, agents know publishers, and publishers have money--which is something I don't have, or else I could actually try self-publishing.
(Also, like I said the manuscript is done. Contact me off
Publishers are needed, no question about it, but saying that they actually "cook the meal" is absurd, IMHO.
Oddly enough, a cooking analogy makes sense. The artists is the chef; the publisher is the restaurant.
To anyone who says publishers aren't needed, I'd advise them to try a job at a publishing shop for a short time, and see how they like the work.
They're not.
Editors, typesetters, and printers are--but not publishers. They're just the ones with the money and the sales acumen.
Everything needs polishing up, but the bulk of any creative work that worth the money is in the artist themselves; if not, then the bloomin' editor should be writing the books themselves, and getting all the credit and all the money.
Of course, the number of people needed only inrcreases the further we get aweay from paint-on-canvass. Authors need typesetters and proofreaders and editors. Video game progammers need coders and coders and coders. And musicians need sound technicians and someone who understands the best ways to get the sound and energy of a live performance onto tape/CD.
My manuscript is done. I need an agent, a printer, a marketer, an editor, and a typesetter. The first one I might be able to find on my own--but the last four I'm going to need to go through a publisher for unless I suddenly win the lottery.
What, are Corporations not allowed any rights, because public opinion says they're evil?
If we tossed out coropate personhood, they'd be run just like unincorporated business are--as a partnership among their stockholders.
Worked fine for hundreds of years, no reason we can't (not "shouldn't", "can't") go back to it.
Suppose I don't write mega-super-uber blockbuster bestsellers, and my work (like 99% of all authors' work) remains steadily mid-list after I die
Sheesh.
It's yours to do with as you wish. If you're married, give your copyright to your wife for a term of up to her life and then have it go to public domain. You (or I) could give away copyright at any time, for any reason--and a competetent lawyer could handle setting up a life-estate copyright deal to protect your wife, nonadult children, and the publication of your final works (which, after all, are the three reasons why "life plus" is in the copyright code at all.)
So don't tell the kids that the war of 1812 was about invading Canada and that the US lost, oh no it was about Britain impressing alleged US citizens and ended in a draw.
1812, like most wars, was about a lot of things. Invading canada was no more the "main cause" of the war than outrage over impressed sailors. The real reason, as with most secular wars, was poliitcs and trade. And it was a "draw"--neither side really wanted the war, and the war didn't solve anything. (The US didn't lose land, the US didn't get forced into a treaty, and the US certainly didn't wake up one day and think "lets invade canada." So, they wound up just where they started, with a few less patriots and a few more heros.)
When it comes to the civil war pretend that the South was unjustly attacked by the North, forget about the fact that the war was started by the South and was all about extending slavery to Texas and the Californias.
Every textbook I ever read on the Civil War blames the south for starting the war. The closest I've ever come to seeing a defense of the South was the "states rights" and "economic ruin" arguments.
(The Civil War wasn't about trade, but it was a civil war, and so wound up being fought for just about the same reason all other civl wars are fought: succession of power. The final straw that led to the Confederacy was Lincon getting elected without so much as a single Southern vote.)
As for Edison and Tesla: light bulbs and record players are rather boring, and the specifics of their invention are far less interesting (and important) than the socal changes and alterations they bought about.
'coures, I don't see much wrong in making childhood a safe haven as much as possible; "grown-up" books and news articles seem so hell-bent on making Earth seem like a haven of hypocrites and liars and cheats that some balance can't help but be a good thing.
There is no way they'd be able to pass legislation requiring computers to have DRM. They'd have to prove computers have no other use besides playing media. Not even the RIAA can bribe enough politicians for that.
Er, no. They'd have to prove that one of the primary uses of a computer is playing media, and illegally copying said media.
DRM doesn't mean "DRM programs only on the PC." It means "DRM'd files become DRM only."
This is a problem, and it does need an answer. One answer is to lock down the PC; the other is a new copyright model. One guess which one most people would prefer.
What difference does it make to them if there's that kind of legislation anyway? They're doing everything they can to restrict their CDs to DRM players as it is.
Most personal computers in America will be replaced in the next three years, with virtually all the rest being replaced in the three years after that. If they get the DRM regulation on all new PCs now, by the time the hardware is everywhere they can simply drop the old format and embrace the new DRM-only format wholesale.
Hacking the current CD schema won't cut it; a whole new format (or even a differnet physical media) needs to be devised, or their worries will be a lot bigger than the analog hole.
Then wouldn't that just defeat the purpose of TCPA, we can all just get developer boxs
No. Trusted Computing means that the computer is trusted by a content distributor to handle their files. You don't need to download metallica from RIAAster to test to make sure that your custom MP3 player works.
A "developer box" would be one that's untrusted, and doesn't bother to be tested because it's being changed so much. Just like development boxes in real software shops are.