I wrote a little program that solves for how many moves it takes to move a knight on a chessboard from one location to another. This program brings XP to its knees! I can't do SQUAT when this is running in XP. In Linux, KDE runs as though nothing is happening. Sure, in both cases I have 100% processor usage, but thanks to Linux's great multitasking, I can run other applications and Linux will divide the processor usage among those tasks appropriately.
Did you try lowering your knight_program's priority below normal? Explorer et all apparantly run at that priority, and if something of equal priority hogs resources, everything slows down.
But that's really beside the question. Speed isn't just about multitasking--the responsiveness of the UI and the speed of launching new processes--including human time--is what really makes Linux slow down for me. Then again, I have yet to optimize the system & learn Linux, so it might very well be equal...
I love *nix! Now I just have to wait for NWN and UT2003 for Linux and I shall be happy!
Ah, see what happens when you don't ask your geek friends for help setting the machine up?;-)
Hey, last time a geek friend tried to set up another geek friend's PC, it bogged down and nothing went right. Much better to set it up meself, and get the geek friends to tell me what I did wrong.
As far as WINE goes, I've never really gotten too interested in setting it up honestly. If I want games it's easier to either get the linux binaries (if available) or to just boot into Windows for that.
Games? It's all about office, man. Linux hasn't got squat that compares to MS Word for word processing--there's always some feature wrong, or it loads too slow, or it doesen't read Word docs, or the #%!%@ing spellchecker doesn't know at @#%!%#ing em-dash from a %!#%!#%T "m".
Second, if I assume that all the available reports of King Richard are more or less true, they fit; if I assume they are mistakes or hallucinations or fabrications, I've got a very big puzzle on my hands - a huge conspiracy? Mass hallucination?
Tall tales, myth, a lie told by the English King. Take your pick. There are all sorts of stories from the same time period and from the same base of sources that are no longer taken to be true.
If I were to change the King from Richard to Arthur, I doubt that you would make the claim that Arthur was a real historical figure--despite that history was taught as if he were a Real Person for hundreds of years.
If I assume that all the available reports of the Christian god are more or less true, not only don't fit each other (is this an angry or loving diety? how to I reconcile the Quakers with Oral Roberts? not to mention all the biblical contradictions [webster.sk.ca]),
The page you just listed has a rather atrocious style, and makes claims every bit as wild--if not wilder--as the zealots who give my religion a bad scientific reputation. Not to mention that it fails to see the obvious answer that doesn't discredit the message: Hebrew as a language is relatively limited (or was limited at the time), lacking concepts and words that mankind simply did not understand at the time, and God has changed his message over time.
Just a quibble. A better rebuttal is below.
they contradict equally reliable reports about Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, et cetera deities; while if I assume they are instances of mistaking subjective mystical experiences for objective phenomena, I can explain all of them consistently.
The Jewish & Islamic claims are about the same guy, Shinto (AFAIK) makes no claims regarding the Jews or the Creator, Hindus no doubt heard of early monotheism and adapted their religion to explain it (ever hear of Brahmin?), and Bhuddism was largely a rebellion against Hindu, but nevertheless does not contradict God's existance. (At the very least, He'd be the first spirit to imagine reality.)
From a purely scientific standpoint, inconsitent details about a Thing do not discret the thing's actual existance. There might be serious dissent as to if Richard the Lionhearted was a homosexual or not, but such claims don't discredit his existance.
A dramatic majority of human beings, even just counting those alive today, believe in some form of superior creator deity who either dictated holy texts to the people of Earth or performed events that inspired the holy writings.
Rejection of this evidence--and the general scientific prejudict against religion--is nothing more than a continuance of a religious conflict dating back to the dawn of science, when early scientists threw the baby out with the bathwater so as to continue their research.
Oh, and no one's ever seriously made the claim that Elvis clones run around stealing socks. No one has seriously claimed to see them, meet them, or get a message from them.
It wasn't a "rejection of God" until someone else proposed the existence of god.
It was still a religious choice. Your religion--specifically, the belief structure you use to explain the unknown and the creation of the world--is apparantly "Science."
I have no problem, religious or otherwise, with people who's religious choice is science. A religion based on doubt has several good charactersitcs that I wish were more prevalent in my own faith.
But it's arrogant and self-righeous for someone whose religion is science to claim that they don't have a religion, and that their choice of an unproven* scientific theory over a religious explination of the same events is based on science and not personal perference.
The burden of proof on religion is always with the individual, no matter their religous claim. We all must find what we believe, and why we believe it. If I can convince you to believe what I believe, I do not remove the burden of proof from your shoulders as to your own religion; I've simply altered your claim to match mine.
Which one? I find your claim hard to believe considering that there are literally thousands of different variations of 'gods' that have been worshipped throughout human history.
There have been thousands of different ideas of what God is, and even more ways to worship Him. But many of these describe the same being.
If God exists, then all references to the same All-powerful creator of the world are references to the same thing. It doesn't matter if Christians and Jews and Muslims kill each other over whether or not God drinks beer and eats pork; He's still the same objective being.
If we take the singular form of God to its linquistic extreme--that being a reference to simply a singular being of great power who looks over human beings while hiding Himself from us--our number of possible instances of evidence for His existance increases dramatically.
The assertion wasn't "there's a bunch of evidence that proves I'm right about what I say God is like." It was "there's evidence that God exists."
Nope. A theory must explain the evidence, make testable predictions, and be falsifiable. "God exists" fails on the last two.
"existance is older than the sum of human memory & was created through random chance" fails on the last two as well.
If we were to find a rock on Mars, engraved in pefect English, which said "I created all that there is in the year -1800 BC, signed God", or some other obvious proof, it would be discarded as either a human hoax or as an alien prank. It would not falsify the "no god" theory.
Therefore, it is not a theory.
By the scientific term, no. But in the colloquial sense, it sure as hell is. Common language lets "theory" stand for any idea that can explain observed facts.
Well, as I said before this probably has more to do with your individual optimizations. Have Tom or I look at the machine. There are _STABLE_ tweaks that most systems don't do in order to insure vanilla hardware compatability. I've found that if hdparm isn't tweaked properly the hard disk access time, and therefore any apps that do any sort of I/O work, are slowed dramatically.
Ah, see what happens when by geek friends leave me to set the damn thing up by myself?
Any help would be most appreciated, mon ami. Esepcially if you can help me get WINE setp...
Apple's first advantage is OS X. It's UNIX, which means that it blows Windows out of the water, performance-wise.
No, it doesn't. Not the fact that it's UNIX, that is.
I've seen Linux--as UNIX is OS X, probably more--crawl on things that Windows _on the same machine_ has no problem with.
Sure, KDE could be to blame. Being on a higher partition could be to blame--but if UNIX automatically "blew windows out of the water", I should either not notice the difference or actually see a LINUX-slanted improvement.
'course, OS X _is_ faster than Windows, or at least it seems that way. An UNIX is more stable, and probably IS faster in a few specific or low-overhead (GUI et al) apps (note: I just haven't had the chance to see this firsthand, so I won't claim to know that it is.), but being UNIX doesn't automatically grant you a speed boost over Windows or anything else.
I'd love to know how "protecting the children" came to be associated with "censoring what youth can be made aware of". I'd personally say that a nationwide attempt at suppression and lying would damage, not "protect" a child.
Suppression is good, lies are not.
It should be a parent's decision of how and when to inform their children about the serious events in the world. Especially young children.
If they want to let the child surf the web carefree at age 6, it's between them & God & the department of social services.
"safe for kids" is a lowest-common-denominator idea, which is the only practical way to do it. If you want your children to go to an R-rated movie, you should have to take them. If you want your children to know what happened on Sept. 11 2001, you should be the one to add your own context.
Or, if not you, then someone who knows your child and can phrase the message in a reasonable way--a schoolteacher, a relative, a specially hired counselor or a trusted religious teacher. Anyone except the sensationalist news media that rides more on shocking-to-adult value than anything else.
A.kids.us domain is a great idea, and I wholeheartedly support it. I might even see if I can set up a roleplaying.kids.us domain... gotta talk to BWR about that one.
The hypothetical, perhaps could be worded better, but I said, "What would be the absolute best thing for a starving artist who wants to distribute internet only and can't afford to lose revenue to copying?" The key words were "distribute internet only" -- no stores. This might be desirable for an artist who can't attract a label, or doesn't want to put up with their nonsens
Get a website, with a Paypal or other online-transaction account, and distribute MP3s of a set qualitiy with a distinct requiremnet that redistribution must include a reference back to the website. Include it in the name and ID3 tags of the MP3. Ask for donations on the website.
The artist can even go to a local CD-press and get a run of albums to sell from said website.
Note that this IS a tax and it DOES affect poor more than the rich
Oh, come off it.
The REAL poor can't afford computers--and they're likelier to purchase bottom-shelf five-times-used PCs and keep them forever, while it's the well-off that "upgrade" by replacing the entire machine.
You might as well say that cigarette taxes effect the poor more than the rich--when they really target SMOKERS, and not the rich or the poor.
he fun part is how this shows how completely stupid any and every politician is.. "we dont want consumers to pay to clean this up! we're gonna make the companies pay for it!" translation:"the companies are going to raise the price of every PC by $200.00 to cover the cost of disposal...oh and added $$$ for administrative fees...
If the consumer has to conduct a seperate transaction to properly dispose of thier PC, _it won't get done._
The government doesn't care if the PC makers pass on their recycling costs or eat the charge as a charitable tax write-off... they want the PCs to recycle, and binding the _purchase_ and _disposal_ transcations is the most sure way to see it get done.
That was the most nonsensical rant I've ever heard. Creationist beleifs have ablsolutely nothing to do with ethics. In fact, no religious construct does. Ethics is a science based on reason, not blind faith.
Real Ethics are based more on experience than reason. Man can reason his way into all kinds of unethical behavior, and only experience shows us which ethics are untenable.
Your parent-poster was referring to "absolute ethics"--that is, that something can be good in and of itself, with no justification. "Moral ethic" is a better word for it.
I believe in absolute ethics, which hapilly goes right along with my religion. The only possible source of absolute ethics I can think of is the so-called 'human nature'--and even that gets us into unethical behavior.
(Don't believe me on absolute ethics? Then explain to me why it's considered unethicial to kill a living human child that will never be able to produce anything in society.)
"God wasn't the creator" is not a presupposition. It's the default hypothesis until evidence sways us otherwise. NOT believing a theory yet is the default, and in the case for God, the ones who say "yes, god exists" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.
There is as much evidence--that is, legal evidence, not scientific evidence--for the existance of God as there is that there was a King Richard of England who fought in a war called the Crusades. The theory that (a) God exists is just as sound as the theory that existance is older than the sum of human memory & created through random chance.
Science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and proven--and it's impossible to prove that a being that can read every human thought and takes action only through apparant random chance does or does not exist.
Your rejection of God Almighty is a religious choice, not a scientific conclusion. Don't pretend it is, or you're as bad a zealot as the church officials that burnt witches or excommunicated early scientists.
Finally, I imagine I'll add you to my "enemies list" (hate that term - it's just a kill file) here at slashdot.
1: it's "foes list" not "enemies." All the "dot" settings start with an F. (Friend/Fan/Foe/Freak)
2: It's not a killfile. It's a non-anonymous automatic user-indictaed moderation setting with notification of jounrals of those you add to the "friend" list. You can set whatever value you want for it in your settings.
By art I think the law encompasses both copyrightable "fixed" stuff and performances, etc. So copyright plucks out part of the whole.
But art is a bit more than just the sum of its material worth. Anyone can buy 5,000 lbs of marble--but a statue made from 5,000 lbs is a bit more. (Then again, I'm not ENTIRELY sure that copyright is or ever has been applied to statues...)
As for innovation, I think of that as synonymous with creativity. Innovative, creative, similar? And the copyright -- it's a double-edged sword, limiting use of other people's work while also forcing people to come up with something new, to innovate. Just another way of looking at it.
Ahh, semantics...
What's the book about? Why don't you just post it here?;-)
It's a fantasy novel. I'm sure as hell not going to post it here (well, I will when it goes to print, however it goes to print.) It's in the review/looking for an agent stage... like I said, if you want more, e-mail me off slashdot.
ANYWAY, this all started with "Copyright does NOT protect innovation." I disagree. I've thought of being a writer, but sure as heck wouldn't/couldn't publish work for free for a living.
I'm a writer with a finished novel looking for a publisher. (interested in looking it over? e-mail me.)
I have no intention of publishing it for free except as a last-ditch effort to generate a groundswell of publicity--and even then I'm going to rely on copyright law to maximize my slice of the theoretical pie that my artistic work generates.
I was also the one who said "copyright doesn't protect innovation," and I stand by that remark. Art is universally a sharing of innovations and ideas, and the chilling effect of protecting those innovations is vastly outweighted by the worth of the variety of different implementations of said idea.
Like I said, copyright protects ART, not innovation.
There are only a finite number of words in the English language and a finite ways to combine them into a poem with three phrases of five, seven, and five syllables
That "finite" is a rather large number. Especially when factoring in linquistic evolution.
But more to the point, the same principles that apply to software (which is a MUCH smaller set than even the shortest poetic theme) can save you. If you can prove that you didn't sample the extant copywritten work, you've done a "clean room" bit and can get off, if not scott-free, at least without losing your shirt in the matter.
It's possible to get sued for a coincidence and lose
It's possible be get sued for a burglar breaking into somone else's house and being wounded and lose.
There may be only 50,000 possible melodies--but there are at least 500 years of public domain prior art. And Disney et all seem unlikely to win another extension even if the 1997 extension survives.
In short, the odds of filling the "entire space of art" within a theoretical 150 year copyright maximum are about as good as the odds that O.J. Simpson's freak unrelated genetic & physical twin randomly decided to commit two murders and blame O.J., all the while escaping any attention from anyone at all, even in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Show me the innovation in a song, poem, or book. We'll do a patent search _on the innovation_, and then get a patent on it.
Songs, poems, and books are _works of art_, not _innovations_. Thinking them in the same block as the rules we have for protecting inventions or distinguishing company names is a fallicy; as RMS says, the branches of "IP" have so little in common that it's not a good idea to think of them together at all.
Copyright protects innovation within art, patents protects innovation within science.
Then explain to me why I can do exactly what tolkien did--create a hero's journey based on a plehtora of old earth traditions and stories wherein a meek hero succeeds through chance over an evil Archvillian--, thus stealing Tolkien's "innovation", and Tolkien LLC can't do a darn thing about it?
Copyright simply elevates art on part with real goods: you can't partake of the art without permission of the artist, just like you can't take a shopkeeper's wares without his permission.
Patents protect real-world inventions, because real-world inventions are heck of a lot more valuable and useful in everyday life than simple artistic innovations. A world full of innovative reality is good. An ART world full of innovations is just, well, jumpy and faddish.
Disney the copyright nut received many of its stories from Hans Christian Andersen, Grimm tales, and so on -- public domain.
We, as a society, decided somewhere along the line that new tellings of old stories is a Good Thing Worth Protection--and so the Telling is covered by copyright, while the Story itself is free for all.
GUI -- microsoft stole from apple stole from xerox. We're probably better off they got away from it. The look and feel thing was novel and shaky from the start. Other models [haledorr.com] are probably superior to copyright.
The ideas used to setup each GUI should not be protected by copyright. The actual form of each one is, but that is (and should be) about it.
Music -- Patent? Trademark? Really? Enforcement of copyright and, lately, interferance with illegal duplication, are the usuall routes.
If I make an innovation in music--for example, by creating a new instrument or band organization--my innovation should not be protected by copyright. Unless I get a patent, anyone should be able to take my innovation and use it in THEIR music.
Each song, and each performance of a song, is a work of art, and therefore justly protected by copyright. But they're not innovations; they're ART!
Copyright does, and is supposed to, encourage artists (like Tolkien) to create art.
It is NOT supposed to protect innovation the way patents are; using the word "innovation" to describe what copyright protects is worse than using "theft" to describe the act of copyright infringement.
Copyright does NOT protect innovation. Look at Tolkien & how just about every "innovation" he made has been swiped by the fantasy genre. Same thing for the GUI, same thing for music, etc, etc.
PATENTS protect ideas, innovations, and inventions. Copyright should be pared back by whatever means necessary so it can stop doing the job of Patents (or trademarks!).
How many Linux users do you know? And if they want it, why don't they just get it?
The majority of my computer-using circle of friends qualifies as a "Linux user." Those that don't have one yet mostly plead poverty as their reason for not having one yet.
Just don't make sweeping remarks on the entire Linux user base based on your own personal views, ok?
I didn't. I offered personal experinece that corellated someone else's assertion.
Don't let your zealotry put words in my mouth, ok?
Slashdot Mirror
I wrote a little program that solves for how many moves it takes to move a knight on a chessboard from one location to another. This program brings XP to its knees! I can't do SQUAT when this is running in XP. In Linux, KDE runs as though nothing is happening. Sure, in both cases I have 100% processor usage, but thanks to Linux's great multitasking, I can run other applications and Linux will divide the processor usage among those tasks appropriately.
Did you try lowering your knight_program's priority below normal? Explorer et all apparantly run at that priority, and if something of equal priority hogs resources, everything slows down.
But that's really beside the question. Speed isn't just about multitasking--the responsiveness of the UI and the speed of launching new processes--including human time--is what really makes Linux slow down for me. Then again, I have yet to optimize the system & learn Linux, so it might very well be equal...
I love *nix! Now I just have to wait for NWN and UT2003 for Linux and I shall be happy!
Wasn't the UT2003 Linux client included on-CD?
Ah, see what happens when you don't ask your geek friends for help setting the machine up? ;-)
Hey, last time a geek friend tried to set up another geek friend's PC, it bogged down and nothing went right. Much better to set it up meself, and get the geek friends to tell me what I did wrong.
As far as WINE goes, I've never really gotten too interested in setting it up honestly. If I want games it's easier to either get the linux binaries (if available) or to just boot into Windows for that.
Games? It's all about office, man. Linux hasn't got squat that compares to MS Word for word processing--there's always some feature wrong, or it loads too slow, or it doesen't read Word docs, or the #%!%@ing spellchecker doesn't know at @#%!%#ing em-dash from a %!#%!#%T "m".
And hey, aren't you supposed to be working?
Second, if I assume that all the available reports of King Richard are more or less true, they fit; if I assume they are mistakes or hallucinations or fabrications, I've got a very big puzzle on my hands - a huge conspiracy? Mass hallucination?
Tall tales, myth, a lie told by the English King. Take your pick. There are all sorts of stories from the same time period and from the same base of sources that are no longer taken to be true.
If I were to change the King from Richard to Arthur, I doubt that you would make the claim that Arthur was a real historical figure--despite that history was taught as if he were a Real Person for hundreds of years.
If I assume that all the available reports of the Christian god are more or less true, not only don't fit each other (is this an angry or loving diety? how to I reconcile the Quakers with Oral Roberts? not to mention all the biblical contradictions [webster.sk.ca]),
The page you just listed has a rather atrocious style, and makes claims every bit as wild--if not wilder--as the zealots who give my religion a bad scientific reputation. Not to mention that it fails to see the obvious answer that doesn't discredit the message: Hebrew as a language is relatively limited (or was limited at the time), lacking concepts and words that mankind simply did not understand at the time, and God has changed his message over time.
Just a quibble. A better rebuttal is below.
they contradict equally reliable reports about Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, et cetera deities; while if I assume they are instances of mistaking subjective mystical experiences for objective phenomena, I can explain all of them consistently.
The Jewish & Islamic claims are about the same guy, Shinto (AFAIK) makes no claims regarding the Jews or the Creator, Hindus no doubt heard of early monotheism and adapted their religion to explain it (ever hear of Brahmin?), and Bhuddism was largely a rebellion against Hindu, but nevertheless does not contradict God's existance. (At the very least, He'd be the first spirit to imagine reality.)
From a purely scientific standpoint, inconsitent details about a Thing do not discret the thing's actual existance. There might be serious dissent as to if Richard the Lionhearted was a homosexual or not, but such claims don't discredit his existance.
A dramatic majority of human beings, even just counting those alive today, believe in some form of superior creator deity who either dictated holy texts to the people of Earth or performed events that inspired the holy writings.
Rejection of this evidence--and the general scientific prejudict against religion--is nothing more than a continuance of a religious conflict dating back to the dawn of science, when early scientists threw the baby out with the bathwater so as to continue their research.
Oh, and no one's ever seriously made the claim that Elvis clones run around stealing socks. No one has seriously claimed to see them, meet them, or get a message from them.
It wasn't a "rejection of God" until someone else proposed the existence of god.
It was still a religious choice. Your religion--specifically, the belief structure you use to explain the unknown and the creation of the world--is apparantly "Science."
I have no problem, religious or otherwise, with people who's religious choice is science. A religion based on doubt has several good charactersitcs that I wish were more prevalent in my own faith.
But it's arrogant and self-righeous for someone whose religion is science to claim that they don't have a religion, and that their choice of an unproven* scientific theory over a religious explination of the same events is based on science and not personal perference.
The burden of proof on religion is always with the individual, no matter their religous claim. We all must find what we believe, and why we believe it. If I can convince you to believe what I believe, I do not remove the burden of proof from your shoulders as to your own religion; I've simply altered your claim to match mine.
Which one? I find your claim hard to believe considering that there are literally thousands of different variations of 'gods' that have been worshipped throughout human history.
There have been thousands of different ideas of what God is, and even more ways to worship Him. But many of these describe the same being.
If God exists, then all references to the same All-powerful creator of the world are references to the same thing. It doesn't matter if Christians and Jews and Muslims kill each other over whether or not God drinks beer and eats pork; He's still the same objective being.
If we take the singular form of God to its linquistic extreme--that being a reference to simply a singular being of great power who looks over human beings while hiding Himself from us--our number of possible instances of evidence for His existance increases dramatically.
The assertion wasn't "there's a bunch of evidence that proves I'm right about what I say God is like." It was "there's evidence that God exists."
Nope. A theory must explain the evidence, make testable predictions, and be falsifiable. "God exists" fails on the last two.
"existance is older than the sum of human memory & was created through random chance" fails on the last two as well.
If we were to find a rock on Mars, engraved in pefect English, which said "I created all that there is in the year -1800 BC, signed God", or some other obvious proof, it would be discarded as either a human hoax or as an alien prank. It would not falsify the "no god" theory.
Therefore, it is not a theory.
By the scientific term, no. But in the colloquial sense, it sure as hell is. Common language lets "theory" stand for any idea that can explain observed facts.
Well, as I said before this probably has more to do with your individual optimizations. Have Tom or I look at the machine. There are _STABLE_ tweaks that most systems don't do in order to insure vanilla hardware compatability. I've found that if hdparm isn't tweaked properly the hard disk access time, and therefore any apps that do any sort of I/O work, are slowed dramatically.
Ah, see what happens when by geek friends leave me to set the damn thing up by myself?
Any help would be most appreciated, mon ami. Esepcially if you can help me get WINE setp...
Apple's first advantage is OS X. It's UNIX, which means that it blows Windows out of the water, performance-wise.
No, it doesn't. Not the fact that it's UNIX, that is.
I've seen Linux--as UNIX is OS X, probably more--crawl on things that Windows _on the same machine_ has no problem with.
Sure, KDE could be to blame. Being on a higher partition could be to blame--but if UNIX automatically "blew windows out of the water", I should either not notice the difference or actually see a LINUX-slanted improvement.
'course, OS X _is_ faster than Windows, or at least it seems that way. An UNIX is more stable, and probably IS faster in a few specific or low-overhead (GUI et al) apps (note: I just haven't had the chance to see this firsthand, so I won't claim to know that it is.), but being UNIX doesn't automatically grant you a speed boost over Windows or anything else.
I'd love to know how "protecting the children" came to be associated with "censoring what youth can be made aware of". I'd personally say that a nationwide attempt at suppression and lying would damage, not "protect" a child.
.kids.us domain is a great idea, and I wholeheartedly support it. I might even see if I can set up a roleplaying.kids.us domain... gotta talk to BWR about that one.
Suppression is good, lies are not.
It should be a parent's decision of how and when to inform their children about the serious events in the world. Especially young children.
If they want to let the child surf the web carefree at age 6, it's between them & God & the department of social services.
"safe for kids" is a lowest-common-denominator idea, which is the only practical way to do it. If you want your children to go to an R-rated movie, you should have to take them. If you want your children to know what happened on Sept. 11 2001, you should be the one to add your own context.
Or, if not you, then someone who knows your child and can phrase the message in a reasonable way--a schoolteacher, a relative, a specially hired counselor or a trusted religious teacher. Anyone except the sensationalist news media that rides more on shocking-to-adult value than anything else.
A
The hypothetical, perhaps could be worded better, but I said, "What would be the absolute best thing for a starving artist who wants to distribute internet only and can't afford to lose revenue to copying?" The key words were "distribute internet only" -- no stores. This might be desirable for an artist who can't attract a label, or doesn't want to put up with their nonsens
Get a website, with a Paypal or other online-transaction account, and distribute MP3s of a set qualitiy with a distinct requiremnet that redistribution must include a reference back to the website. Include it in the name and ID3 tags of the MP3. Ask for donations on the website.
The artist can even go to a local CD-press and get a run of albums to sell from said website.
Note that this IS a tax and it DOES affect poor more than the rich
Oh, come off it.
The REAL poor can't afford computers--and they're likelier to purchase bottom-shelf five-times-used PCs and keep them forever, while it's the well-off that "upgrade" by replacing the entire machine.
You might as well say that cigarette taxes effect the poor more than the rich--when they really target SMOKERS, and not the rich or the poor.
he fun part is how this shows how completely stupid any and every politician is.. "we dont want consumers to pay to clean this up! we're gonna make the companies pay for it!" translation:"the companies are going to raise the price of every PC by $200.00 to cover the cost of disposal...oh and added $$$ for administrative fees...
If the consumer has to conduct a seperate transaction to properly dispose of thier PC, _it won't get done._
The government doesn't care if the PC makers pass on their recycling costs or eat the charge as a charitable tax write-off... they want the PCs to recycle, and binding the _purchase_ and _disposal_ transcations is the most sure way to see it get done.
That was the most nonsensical rant I've ever heard. Creationist beleifs have ablsolutely nothing to do with ethics. In fact, no religious construct does. Ethics is a science based on reason, not blind faith.
Real Ethics are based more on experience than reason. Man can reason his way into all kinds of unethical behavior, and only experience shows us which ethics are untenable.
Your parent-poster was referring to "absolute ethics"--that is, that something can be good in and of itself, with no justification. "Moral ethic" is a better word for it.
I believe in absolute ethics, which hapilly goes right along with my religion. The only possible source of absolute ethics I can think of is the so-called 'human nature'--and even that gets us into unethical behavior.
(Don't believe me on absolute ethics? Then explain to me why it's considered unethicial to kill a living human child that will never be able to produce anything in society.)
"God wasn't the creator" is not a presupposition. It's the default hypothesis until evidence sways us otherwise. NOT believing a theory yet is the default, and in the case for God, the ones who say "yes, god exists" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.
There is as much evidence--that is, legal evidence, not scientific evidence--for the existance of God as there is that there was a King Richard of England who fought in a war called the Crusades. The theory that (a) God exists is just as sound as the theory that existance is older than the sum of human memory & created through random chance.
Science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and proven--and it's impossible to prove that a being that can read every human thought and takes action only through apparant random chance does or does not exist.
Your rejection of God Almighty is a religious choice, not a scientific conclusion. Don't pretend it is, or you're as bad a zealot as the church officials that burnt witches or excommunicated early scientists.
Finally, I imagine I'll add you to my "enemies list" (hate that term - it's just a kill file) here at slashdot.
1: it's "foes list" not "enemies." All the "dot" settings start with an F. (Friend/Fan/Foe/Freak)
2: It's not a killfile. It's a non-anonymous automatic user-indictaed moderation setting with notification of jounrals of those you add to the "friend" list. You can set whatever value you want for it in your settings.
By art I think the law encompasses both copyrightable "fixed" stuff and performances, etc. So copyright plucks out part of the whole.
;-)
But art is a bit more than just the sum of its material worth. Anyone can buy 5,000 lbs of marble--but a statue made from 5,000 lbs is a bit more. (Then again, I'm not ENTIRELY sure that copyright is or ever has been applied to statues...)
As for innovation, I think of that as synonymous with creativity. Innovative, creative, similar? And the copyright -- it's a double-edged sword, limiting use of other people's work while also forcing people to come up with something new, to innovate. Just another way of looking at it.
Ahh, semantics...
What's the book about? Why don't you just post it here?
It's a fantasy novel. I'm sure as hell not going to post it here (well, I will when it goes to print, however it goes to print.) It's in the review/looking for an agent stage... like I said, if you want more, e-mail me off slashdot.
Is the postman suddenly a crappy book?
:)
The postman WAS a crappy book. The movie was, IMO, simply better.
(And, as I said, LOTR lost a lot when it went to the screen--but most of what it lost was the stuff that sucked.)
ANYWAY, this all started with "Copyright does NOT protect innovation." I disagree. I've thought of being a writer, but sure as heck wouldn't/couldn't publish work for free for a living.
I'm a writer with a finished novel looking for a publisher. (interested in looking it over? e-mail me.)
I have no intention of publishing it for free except as a last-ditch effort to generate a groundswell of publicity--and even then I'm going to rely on copyright law to maximize my slice of the theoretical pie that my artistic work generates.
I was also the one who said "copyright doesn't protect innovation," and I stand by that remark. Art is universally a sharing of innovations and ideas, and the chilling effect of protecting those innovations is vastly outweighted by the worth of the variety of different implementations of said idea.
Like I said, copyright protects ART, not innovation.
There are only a finite number of words in the English language and a finite ways to combine them into a poem with three phrases of five, seven, and five syllables
That "finite" is a rather large number. Especially when factoring in linquistic evolution.
But more to the point, the same principles that apply to software (which is a MUCH smaller set than even the shortest poetic theme) can save you. If you can prove that you didn't sample the extant copywritten work, you've done a "clean room" bit and can get off, if not scott-free, at least without losing your shirt in the matter.
It's possible to get sued for a coincidence and lose
It's possible be get sued for a burglar breaking into somone else's house and being wounded and lose.
There may be only 50,000 possible melodies--but there are at least 500 years of public domain prior art. And Disney et all seem unlikely to win another extension even if the 1997 extension survives.
In short, the odds of filling the "entire space of art" within a theoretical 150 year copyright maximum are about as good as the odds that O.J. Simpson's freak unrelated genetic & physical twin randomly decided to commit two murders and blame O.J., all the while escaping any attention from anyone at all, even in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Show me the innovation in a song, poem, or book. We'll do a patent search _on the innovation_, and then get a patent on it.
Songs, poems, and books are _works of art_, not _innovations_. Thinking them in the same block as the rules we have for protecting inventions or distinguishing company names is a fallicy; as RMS says, the branches of "IP" have so little in common that it's not a good idea to think of them together at all.
Copyright protects innovation within art, patents protects innovation within science.
Then explain to me why I can do exactly what tolkien did--create a hero's journey based on a plehtora of old earth traditions and stories wherein a meek hero succeeds through chance over an evil Archvillian--, thus stealing Tolkien's "innovation", and Tolkien LLC can't do a darn thing about it?
Copyright simply elevates art on part with real goods: you can't partake of the art without permission of the artist, just like you can't take a shopkeeper's wares without his permission.
Patents protect real-world inventions, because real-world inventions are heck of a lot more valuable and useful in everyday life than simple artistic innovations. A world full of innovative reality is good. An ART world full of innovations is just, well, jumpy and faddish.
Disney the copyright nut received many of its stories from Hans Christian Andersen, Grimm tales, and so on -- public domain.
We, as a society, decided somewhere along the line that new tellings of old stories is a Good Thing Worth Protection--and so the Telling is covered by copyright, while the Story itself is free for all.
GUI -- microsoft stole from apple stole from xerox. We're probably better off they got away from it. The look and feel thing was novel and shaky from the start. Other models [haledorr.com] are probably superior to copyright.
The ideas used to setup each GUI should not be protected by copyright. The actual form of each one is, but that is (and should be) about it.
Music -- Patent? Trademark? Really? Enforcement of copyright and, lately, interferance with illegal duplication, are the usuall routes.
If I make an innovation in music--for example, by creating a new instrument or band organization--my innovation should not be protected by copyright. Unless I get a patent, anyone should be able to take my innovation and use it in THEIR music.
Each song, and each performance of a song, is a work of art, and therefore justly protected by copyright. But they're not innovations; they're ART!
Copyright does, and is supposed to, encourage artists (like Tolkien) to create art.
It is NOT supposed to protect innovation the way patents are; using the word "innovation" to describe what copyright protects is worse than using "theft" to describe the act of copyright infringement.
Copyright does NOT protect innovation. Look at Tolkien & how just about every "innovation" he made has been swiped by the fantasy genre. Same thing for the GUI, same thing for music, etc, etc.
PATENTS protect ideas, innovations, and inventions. Copyright should be pared back by whatever means necessary so it can stop doing the job of Patents (or trademarks!).
How many Linux users do you know? And if they want it, why don't they just get it?
The majority of my computer-using circle of friends qualifies as a "Linux user." Those that don't have one yet mostly plead poverty as their reason for not having one yet.
Just don't make sweeping remarks on the entire Linux user base based on your own personal views, ok?
I didn't. I offered personal experinece that corellated someone else's assertion.
Don't let your zealotry put words in my mouth, ok?