the EU which recently passed a law, not unlike the ones in the USA, which prohibit ripping from media that you already own for personal use.
Nope. Cross the pond and come to America--it's not criminal infringement unless its for "commercial gain." (as in, "I don't want to pay for it.")
Re:Excuse me? You do get repetitive marks in Word.
on
The War Of The Word
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· Score: 1
The link is "Track Changes", and it's not what we're talking about.
WordPerfect's "reveal codes" feature opens a non-WYSIWYG window, with WP's formatting codes clearly visible. It's similar to HTML markup--when you tell WP to bold text, it inserts a "start bold" and "end bold" tag, and when you turn off bold text, it moves you to the end of the tag--or just deletes the tags it just inserted, or inserts "end bold" and "start bold" tags around the bold text you're selecting.
The link you pointed to details use of the "Track Changes" feature that every modern (i.e., post-1995) word processor has. It's not turned on by default, and it's a sign of an incompetent user that it wasn't turned off and cleaned out the old marks.
WP's poor design is that it doesn't simplify redundant formatting tags. This is contrasted in MS Word's poor design, in that the file format is too easy to corrupt and impossible to read without a converter.
I always have my Word set up to show all hidden characters but it still doesn't show all codes.
Yes, it does. Word doesn't do HTMLish markup. Each document is a binary file with a heiarchal organization of sections, pages, paragraphs, words, characters--with a drawing canvas, layers, and sections thrown in to make it hard.
The formatting for each word is stored in that "word" object, the formatting for each paragraph stored in the "paragraph" object, etc, etc.
And it's a sign of poor design that you can get repetitive marks in Wordperfect (or Frontpage, or Dreamweaver, or any other GUI editor) at all.
If you aren't joking, then I humbly submit that Hinduism is "better" than Christianity based on the same logic, and that [Roman Catholicism is] "better" than [the Baptist Denominations] because there are more of them.
Note the corrections. A religion is not people.
Catholics aren't any better than baptists, but if I have to choose between them as markets, then the one with more money is obviously the better choice.
Oh, and when the followers of Islam outnumber the follwers of Christianity (and it will happen sooner than later), then Islam will suddenly become "better" than Christianity.
Don't get your hopes up. Islamists keep killing each other, and Christian missionaries are still converting people.
By this poster's logic, George Lucas is the greatest author to ever live.
Filmmaker, not author.
And, really, when we get right down to it, sales ARE our only solid measure of quality. So, if _Lucas_ has sold more tickets than any other filmaker--then, yes, he is the greatest.
That said, I wasn't discussing people, I was discussing works. And, by a lot of measurements (gross sales, cultural impact, extant fanbase, number of fans), Star Wars is "the best movie series EvAR!"
Actually, it's not that far off. "Light-year" is a unit of space-time, and so is "light-parsec." So you can use it to measure length against a set unit of time, or time against a set unit of length.
But yeah, Lucas probably just stumbled onto that one by accident.
If the USA was going to classify something, they would classify ALL of it--and they sure as heck wouldn't announce the completion of a test model of something better than what they have classified.
A perfect example of this was stealth. For years it was totally classified, and when the new very-deadly B2 was rolled out, we announced the whole shebang to the whole wide world.
Is it "wise" to have faith in something that is without evidence?
Depends. Do you mean "wise" as in "scientfically sound" or "wise" as in 'native wisdom.'
A good example of this would be "alternative medicine." It isn't scientifically proven, but for centuries what are common remedies now were things taken essentially without evidence, and we called it wisdom--telling the truth without justification.
What about the fact that some books in the original version of the bible are excluded?
There aren't any. Or, rather, there wasn't an "original version of the bible." The Jews solidiated their holy books about 500 BC, and the Christians solidified their bible at (IIRC) the Council of Trent.
There were plenty of LISTS of holy books before that, but no actual "bible." The creation of the bible was the act of priests gathering to solidify what was to be "canon" and what was to be "non-canon" out of a great number of holy books.
If your only source of this wisdom is the Bible, you truly are on shakey ground.
And this is christians have such an emphasis on either the priesthood or personal relationships with God. The Bible is only enough to show you who and what God is; we are left to find Him, and all good things, on our own.
Oh, and (IMO) the Bible isn't supposed to be "true." It's supposed to be the "word of God." Assuming that an Almighty being who can kill, idolaze, and steal can't lie is intellectually childish--and after some three thousand years of development, judeo-christian-islamic religion is anything but intellectually immature.
Additionally, time dilation is well demonstrated, and it definitely would allow the creation of time machines (something I morally object to:-) if faster than light travel were possible.
Sheesh. Let me paraphrase our 100 year old counterparts: "the atomic decay we call 'radiaton' is very well demonstrated. If this so called 'fission' device could be built, it would definitly destroy the entire planet."
Our theories simply do not work if somehow we can move faster than light. A more likely explanation to "what happens if I move FTL?" is "you start skipping through space", not "you move backwards in objective-time."
(The effect of increasing speed is a dilation of subjective-time. Theoretical "objective time" [i.e., time as measured by the steady expansion of the universe] stays the same in all instances--we just never have a chance to partake of it, as the sum of human history and experience is all a variety of subjective time.)
meaning, if i own the album in CD form, and have a copy of it in mp3 format, can i give the mp3 version to people who also already own the album in CD form?
"maybe."
You certainly can't run a business that does that--it's exactly what MP3.com tried doing.
AFAIK, it's a technical violation of copyright, and doing it for someone else is as bad if they have the CD or if they don't.
But if I brought an iPod over to your house, saw your had the CDs, and gave you the MP3s from my iPod for the songs you've got--no one would care, copyright infringement or not.
(That said--it's not THAT hard to rip your own MP3s. iTunes can do it automatically, and at least a dozen other programs can do the same thing.)
If I'm downloading copies of song which I already own on CD, then I'm not infringing, am I?
YES YOU ARE.
MP3.COM got taken to court (the US Supreme Court) for doing exactly that, and they lost.
Every last one of those files on a P2P network that isn't either Public Domain or expressly authorized by its owner to be freely traded (or even just freely traded on P2P networks) is illegal. Downloading or sharing them is a tort (i.e., they can sue you) and a crime (i.e., the government can fine you and/or throw you in jail).
RIAA stopping P2P traffic isn't guilty-until-proven-innocent. It's stopping a tort in progress.
but I think there's some law somewhere that says you do not have the right to change the format of media you own
I am not a lawyer.
But I know that you're wrong. "Format shifting" is Fair Use--so long as you don't share it. If it wasn't, how would you ever legally put MP3s on your PC?
I remember a similar article where the guy was complaining about Linux, but he really meant to complain about Gnome.
Gnome is, for all intents and purposes, a part of "Linux". And Linux is in quotes because it's simply a colloquial abbreviation for "Linux based operating systems."
Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, and Mozilla are all "part" of the thing people call Linux--just like MS Office, IE, et al are part of that thing people call Windows.
Is it now actually the case that in the US the law is too expensive for people to use? This is how it appears from the stories I read on/. and elsewhere.
It's not "too expensive." It's just "expensive." You can always get a lawyer--quite literally, if you can't afford one, you can get one. Even in civil suits. In each case, talk to the presiding judge and say "I'm poor, I need help."
That said--any passing student of game theory can appreciate why it would be a very bad idea to insinuate us from the cost of doing justice. If you take $500 from me and don't do what I paid you for, I don't want to spend more than $500 getting it back.
It's proprietary alright, but could you explain the horrible and wretched parts?
quote wikipedia:
"RTF is a poorly standardised format with incompatibilities reported even between different Microsoft applications, and tends to be rarely used for document distribution."
A particular 10-page heavily-formatted word document on my HDD is about 200 kb. Saved as RTF, the file format doubles--and the formatting looks even worse when OOo reads it.
RTF is a horrible, wretched standard. And it's proprietary, to boot. (Don't believe me? Point me to the standard.)
HTML is an OK format--but, aside from size and some annoying conversion errors, DOC is good enough, too.
My preferred collaborative document exchange format is OOo's file format. The program's free, the file size is small, and it's editable. (For "I'm sending you this file", PDFs work rather nicely.)
However, when OOo files don't work, DOC works just fine.
Is it fair to ask then why (if Christ's Kingdom isn't established yet) Christians have been fighting at all?
Almost exclusively for temporal concerns--such as "Ceaser told me to" or "these invaders are trying to kill us" or "we can't get to the holy land to pray anymore."
The way to attack a slippery slope argument if you don't agree with it is to point out that X does not necessarily lead to Y, and when you do that, you are engaging in the practice of shooting down an argument by shooting down one of it's premises - which is a method that works even on valid arguments. (Which the slippery slope argument IS.)
1: I did "shoot down" the premise.
2: Every argument, even the logically wrongheaded ones, are "valid." The logical fallicies are just very easy ones to refute.
Are you familiar with the logical fallicy called "Slippery Slope?"
The argument about whether or not these can be used against you is lost (or won, depending on your POV). The next argument will be either "should these be required on all new cars" or "should taking these be standard procedure", and after both of those, mabye, we'll argue about retrofitting old cars.
But you're not required to install an airbag on your 1960s muscle car, so don't expect to be forced to install a black box, either.
Slashdot Mirror
BUT this seem to cut off the air supply of some of the "Pro" versions.
They don't. Neither the 72 nor the 31 has that most essential feature in a palm--the Universal Connector.
I can't buy a Zire 72 and give my 71 to my wife, or buy her a 31, because the cradle, keyboard, and car charger all won't work.
And anyone who would buy a Tungsten knows that they'll be updated in about six months--probably with OS 6, to boot.
the EU which recently passed a law, not unlike the ones in the USA, which prohibit ripping from media that you already own for personal use.
Nope. Cross the pond and come to America--it's not criminal infringement unless its for "commercial gain." (as in, "I don't want to pay for it.")
The link is "Track Changes", and it's not what we're talking about.
WordPerfect's "reveal codes" feature opens a non-WYSIWYG window, with WP's formatting codes clearly visible. It's similar to HTML markup--when you tell WP to bold text, it inserts a "start bold" and "end bold" tag, and when you turn off bold text, it moves you to the end of the tag--or just deletes the tags it just inserted, or inserts "end bold" and "start bold" tags around the bold text you're selecting.
The link you pointed to details use of the "Track Changes" feature that every modern (i.e., post-1995) word processor has. It's not turned on by default, and it's a sign of an incompetent user that it wasn't turned off and cleaned out the old marks.
WP's poor design is that it doesn't simplify redundant formatting tags. This is contrasted in MS Word's poor design, in that the file format is too easy to corrupt and impossible to read without a converter.
I always have my Word set up to show all hidden characters but it still doesn't show all codes.
Yes, it does. Word doesn't do HTMLish markup. Each document is a binary file with a heiarchal organization of sections, pages, paragraphs, words, characters--with a drawing canvas, layers, and sections thrown in to make it hard.
The formatting for each word is stored in that "word" object, the formatting for each paragraph stored in the "paragraph" object, etc, etc.
And it's a sign of poor design that you can get repetitive marks in Wordperfect (or Frontpage, or Dreamweaver, or any other GUI editor) at all.
No.
IE is evil because it's buggy, non-standards compliant, and when it crashes, it crashes your "shell."
Gecko in Linux wouldn't be any of that.
If you aren't joking, then I humbly submit that Hinduism is "better" than Christianity based on the same logic, and that [Roman Catholicism is] "better" than [the Baptist Denominations] because there are more of them.
Note the corrections. A religion is not people.
Catholics aren't any better than baptists, but if I have to choose between them as markets, then the one with more money is obviously the better choice.
Oh, and when the followers of Islam outnumber the follwers of Christianity (and it will happen sooner than later), then Islam will suddenly become "better" than Christianity.
Don't get your hopes up. Islamists keep killing each other, and Christian missionaries are still converting people.
You dirty elitist bastard. ;)
You pay more for the fine French Restaurant, right? Then they make better _meals_.
But if a McDonalds makes more total than that French Restaurant, then they're a better _Restaurant_.
By this poster's logic, George Lucas is the greatest author to ever live.
Filmmaker, not author.
And, really, when we get right down to it, sales ARE our only solid measure of quality. So, if _Lucas_ has sold more tickets than any other filmaker--then, yes, he is the greatest.
That said, I wasn't discussing people, I was discussing works. And, by a lot of measurements (gross sales, cultural impact, extant fanbase, number of fans), Star Wars is "the best movie series EvAR!"
Do Christians use different standards of judging craft than non-Christians?
Nope. We use units sold or dollars grossed, just like everyone else.
And by THOSE measures, "Left Behind" is Shakesphere.
Actually, it's not that far off. "Light-year" is a unit of space-time, and so is "light-parsec." So you can use it to measure length against a set unit of time, or time against a set unit of length.
But yeah, Lucas probably just stumbled onto that one by accident.
Ok, you're a tinfoil hat guy.
If the USA was going to classify something, they would classify ALL of it--and they sure as heck wouldn't announce the completion of a test model of something better than what they have classified.
A perfect example of this was stealth. For years it was totally classified, and when the new very-deadly B2 was rolled out, we announced the whole shebang to the whole wide world.
Is it "wise" to have faith in something that is without evidence?
Depends. Do you mean "wise" as in "scientfically sound" or "wise" as in 'native wisdom.'
A good example of this would be "alternative medicine." It isn't scientifically proven, but for centuries what are common remedies now were things taken essentially without evidence, and we called it wisdom--telling the truth without justification.
What about the fact that some books in the original version of the bible are excluded?
There aren't any. Or, rather, there wasn't an "original version of the bible." The Jews solidiated their holy books about 500 BC, and the Christians solidified their bible at (IIRC) the Council of Trent.
There were plenty of LISTS of holy books before that, but no actual "bible." The creation of the bible was the act of priests gathering to solidify what was to be "canon" and what was to be "non-canon" out of a great number of holy books.
If your only source of this wisdom is the Bible, you truly are on shakey ground.
And this is christians have such an emphasis on either the priesthood or personal relationships with God. The Bible is only enough to show you who and what God is; we are left to find Him, and all good things, on our own.
Oh, and (IMO) the Bible isn't supposed to be "true." It's supposed to be the "word of God." Assuming that an Almighty being who can kill, idolaze, and steal can't lie is intellectually childish--and after some three thousand years of development, judeo-christian-islamic religion is anything but intellectually immature.
Additionally, time dilation is well demonstrated, and it definitely would allow the creation of time machines (something I morally object to :-) if faster than light travel were possible.
Sheesh. Let me paraphrase our 100 year old counterparts: "the atomic decay we call 'radiaton' is very well demonstrated. If this so called 'fission' device could be built, it would definitly destroy the entire planet."
Our theories simply do not work if somehow we can move faster than light. A more likely explanation to "what happens if I move FTL?" is "you start skipping through space", not "you move backwards in objective-time."
(The effect of increasing speed is a dilation of subjective-time. Theoretical "objective time" [i.e., time as measured by the steady expansion of the universe] stays the same in all instances--we just never have a chance to partake of it, as the sum of human history and experience is all a variety of subjective time.)
meaning, if i own the album in CD form, and have a copy of it in mp3 format, can i give the mp3 version to people who also already own the album in CD form?
"maybe."
You certainly can't run a business that does that--it's exactly what MP3.com tried doing.
AFAIK, it's a technical violation of copyright, and doing it for someone else is as bad if they have the CD or if they don't.
But if I brought an iPod over to your house, saw your had the CDs, and gave you the MP3s from my iPod for the songs you've got--no one would care, copyright infringement or not.
(That said--it's not THAT hard to rip your own MP3s. iTunes can do it automatically, and at least a dozen other programs can do the same thing.)
If I'm downloading copies of song which I already own on CD, then I'm not infringing, am I?
YES YOU ARE.
MP3.COM got taken to court (the US Supreme Court) for doing exactly that, and they lost.
Every last one of those files on a P2P network that isn't either Public Domain or expressly authorized by its owner to be freely traded (or even just freely traded on P2P networks) is illegal. Downloading or sharing them is a tort (i.e., they can sue you) and a crime (i.e., the government can fine you and/or throw you in jail).
RIAA stopping P2P traffic isn't guilty-until-proven-innocent. It's stopping a tort in progress.
but I think there's some law somewhere that says you do not have the right to change the format of media you own
I am not a lawyer.
But I know that you're wrong. "Format shifting" is Fair Use--so long as you don't share it. If it wasn't, how would you ever legally put MP3s on your PC?
I remember a similar article where the guy was complaining about Linux, but he really meant to complain about Gnome.
Gnome is, for all intents and purposes, a part of "Linux". And Linux is in quotes because it's simply a colloquial abbreviation for "Linux based operating systems."
Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, and Mozilla are all "part" of the thing people call Linux--just like MS Office, IE, et al are part of that thing people call Windows.
Is it now actually the case that in the US the law is too expensive for people to use? This is how it appears from the stories I read on /. and elsewhere.
It's not "too expensive." It's just "expensive." You can always get a lawyer--quite literally, if you can't afford one, you can get one. Even in civil suits. In each case, talk to the presiding judge and say "I'm poor, I need help."
That said--any passing student of game theory can appreciate why it would be a very bad idea to insinuate us from the cost of doing justice. If you take $500 from me and don't do what I paid you for, I don't want to spend more than $500 getting it back.
It's proprietary alright, but could you explain the horrible and wretched parts?
quote wikipedia:
"RTF is a poorly standardised format with incompatibilities reported even between different Microsoft applications, and tends to be rarely used for document distribution."
A particular 10-page heavily-formatted word document on my HDD is about 200 kb. Saved as RTF, the file format doubles--and the formatting looks even worse when OOo reads it.
RTF is a horrible, wretched standard. And it's proprietary, to boot. (Don't believe me? Point me to the standard.)
HTML is an OK format--but, aside from size and some annoying conversion errors, DOC is good enough, too.
My preferred collaborative document exchange format is OOo's file format. The program's free, the file size is small, and it's editable. (For "I'm sending you this file", PDFs work rather nicely.)
However, when OOo files don't work, DOC works just fine.
Is it fair to ask then why (if Christ's Kingdom isn't established yet) Christians have been fighting at all?
Almost exclusively for temporal concerns--such as "Ceaser told me to" or "these invaders are trying to kill us" or "we can't get to the holy land to pray anymore."
you forgot the next part.
"What? Ok, forget you. I'm getting a Sattelite Dish. Cancel my subscription; you're not geting another dime from me."
The way to attack a slippery slope argument if you don't agree with it is to point out that X does not necessarily lead to Y, and when you do that, you are engaging in the practice of shooting down an argument by shooting down one of it's premises - which is a method that works even on valid arguments. (Which the slippery slope argument IS.)
1: I did "shoot down" the premise.
2: Every argument, even the logically wrongheaded ones, are "valid." The logical fallicies are just very easy ones to refute.
That's where this is headed, and I don't like it.
Are you familiar with the logical fallicy called "Slippery Slope?"
The argument about whether or not these can be used against you is lost (or won, depending on your POV). The next argument will be either "should these be required on all new cars" or "should taking these be standard procedure", and after both of those, mabye, we'll argue about retrofitting old cars.
But you're not required to install an airbag on your 1960s muscle car, so don't expect to be forced to install a black box, either.
I suggest that you look at it again.
I've been planning on it.
The I-can't-use-this issues are gone. However, there are still issues that remain.
I'll post a new JE soon on it.