The new age healers I've known are 1) nice people who want to help you, and 2) honest about what they can and can't do.
Don't forget that many people voluntarily give money to their church every sunday, and are happy to do so, and feel that it's the right thing to do. You could call that "taking money from people by lying to them," but you're ignoring that people are getting spiritual fulfillment and moral satisfaction from it. It's the same thing with spiritual healing. A lot of people do feel better afterwords, and in fact feel better served by spiritual healing than from whatever treatment a doctor gives them. Bear in mind that I'm talking about treatment for things like chronic pain and headaches, not cancer or infectious diseases.
...homeopathy or magical crystals or other new age clapp trap...
Most homeopathy and new age healing methods don't actually make scientific claims (in part because they can't), they're spiritual endeavors that depend to a great degree on the belief of the "patient." If you put your "faith" in science and hard data, then, yeah, avoid new age healing. But there's nothing wrong with spiritual fulfillment and/or the placebo effect.
Yeah, there are frauds out there who claim they can cure cancer with magic charms, and that's dangerous. But most new agey healers deal with things like joint pain, chronic pain, headaches, and other ailments that are likely stress and/or posture related, and so really just need belief by the patient that they've been healed, or some kind of spiritual fulfillment. Sometimes there are things that pills or surgery can't fix.
The real mumbo jumbo is astrology, because it does make scientific claims.
The U.S. is much more similar to China than it cares to admit.
You know, a while ago the US had a prolonged bout of civil disobedience. Just like China, a frequently jailed US dissident won the Nobel peace prize. There's now a national holiday in his honor.
There may be some similarities, but I'd say there are some differences too.
the write-by-numbers approach with its rote opposing opinions and seemingly spineless journalistic waffling can remind readers not to get too caught up in the latest theory du jour.
Yes, god forbid that the public suddenly become interested in science. It might one day break their hearts.
It's always nice to point out mainstream journalism's failings,
Yes.
but it's really only useful if it has a message attached.
No.
Some suggestion on how to fix the system, other wise it's simply mockery.
Mockery is useful. Bare naked ridicule of the status quo can be useful. Bonus if it's funny, as TFA is.
The problem with adding how to fix the system is that you could be dead wrong. Or shortsided. Or partisan, or dumb. Just clearly pointing out what the problem is is extremely important.
This guy isn't saying he has the answer. I respect that. He's helping shape the debate. I respect that too.
that is what has been plaguing the entire gaming industry since the late 90s: graphics over gameplay.
People have been saying that since the beginning of time.* And yet, there is still a gaming industry; people who were raised on the "old classics" (whether "classic" is defined as pacman, tetris, mario, wolfenstein 3d, warcraft, quake, fallout, halflife, counterstrike, god of war, etc.) still play games (if they have time) and still love gaming. I play a ton of TF2 now, and, yes, there has been constant innovation in terms of gameplay over the past 20 years of FPS multiplayer. Name the genre,** and there are examples of modern games in that genre that are both graphically superior and have at least some innovative gameplay features that make them at least arguably "better" games than the classics.
And that's only looking at mainstream games. As you've pointed out, there are plenty of casual games - and more importantly, indie games - that focus on gameplay over graphics. And it's always been that way. Casual and indie gaming is not a new phenomenon, except on consoles. There have always been casual and indie games on the PC.
* beginning of time = when I was born, in the 80's. ** exception: space flight sims. I really miss Tie Fighter...
The stunt is in shutting down suddenly, without warning, and, apparently, in the middle of a sale. If this was planned, it's a stunt. They could have announced ahead of time, even just a day or a week ahead of time, that they'd be shutting down for a period before reopening. Hell, they could have announced ahead of time that they were shutting down permanently, and probably gotten some kind of fire-sale/goodbye-sale revenue.
Doing this suddenly produces shock and probably some panic from long-time customers, and that's why, if it was planned, it's a stunt.
Hurd did not cause HP to cease to exist as a corporate entity. Hurd did not cause all of HP's going concern value to evaporate.
In other words, Hurd is an excellent example of how not having corporate capital punishment* encourages the recycling of aggressive/ruthless executives from one company to another. If executives' criminal behavior did cause massive loss to shareholders, I think the 'old boy' network would disappear in a hurry. People value their money a lot more than they value the friend of friend of a friend.
* I'm not saying that HP should have been executed because of Hurd's behavior.
the psychopaths responsible for the decisions, will find a way out, leaving their customary trail of destruction and misery after them: they will manipulate their way out of the to-be-killed corporation that they corrupted and abused, and into a leading position in another company.
Imagine you're on the board of directors of company x. Suppose the CEO of company y, known to be ruthless and to dramatically increase profits, -
but also known to have caused the "execution" of company y, i.e., caused the immediate liquidation of company y, meaning that all of company y's "going concern" value is lost and only the value of its liquid assets are recovered by shareholders,
- wants to be the CEO of your company, company x. Would you want him to be your CEO?
The imposition of an actual "death penalty" for criminal corporations would have an enormous impact on the way business is run in this country... because people would lose money as a result of criminal behavior by a company they have invested in.
I would guess we all probably fall into two camps- either dramatically underestimating or dramatically overestimating the level of information stored in the profile. Without better specifics in the hands of the populace about the level of personal details, it doesn't seem to me that a fair level of regulation can possibly be drafted by public officials.
Yes.
An easy regulation that doesn't require google or other online businesses to change their business model (much) would be to simply require them to release all collected data on a user to that user on request (while also making sure that the information is provided securely and confidentially). Attach some kind of civil (rather than criminal, which would probably go to far) penalty, and allow users to sue, either as a class action, or individually. This scheme wouldn't prevent Google from collecting data, but would allow users to understand what data they're giving over, and what kind of uses it can be put to. Google already has the privacy dashboard, but I'm thinking much more granular stuff, including, as others have pointed out, what data about you is collected from your email contacts, etc.
Then, users have the real potential to understand whether or not they want to use the service. It also encourages businesses not to abuse their gathered data. Thus, the market could possibly self-regulate to meet the that magical equilibrium where all parties are as close as possible to maximizing utility. Either no further regulation would be necessary, or the regulation would at least be better informed and more likely to be efficient
I wasn't suggesting you could only have one or the other. I was asking which you prefer.
My point was that open access is a better solution than net neutrality. Net neutrality has downsides. If there was actually a market for ISPs, if there was meaningful choice - you could chose between: -a completely neutral ISP -an ISP that maintains strong security over its network (e.g., inspects packets for known malicious content) -an ISP that prioritizes multimedia streaming -an ISP that prioritizes gaming -an ISP that prioritizes VoIP -an ISP for casual users (like AOL) -an ISP that prioritizes users' privacy (e.g., keeps no logs)
etc.
If there really was a dynamic ISP market, I would probably argue against net neutrality.
Which would you rather have - choice, or net neutrality?
I favor "open access" over net neutrality. Open access means telecom providers have to allow other ISPs to use their infrastructure. In fact, I would really prefer de-integrating (disintegrating?) telecom service from telecom infrastructure. I would have no problem with comcast, shitty company that it is, owning half of the cable infrastructure in the US, if all of the content services were run by competing companies.
So, if I could choose between having choice, versus enforced net neutrality, I would choose choice.
But, of course, you're right - there is no choice, and so this article is bullshit.
It doesn't matter that it is technically rather simple to perform, many great works of art are not necessarily difficult in technique, but their value comes from the unique and meaningful perspective of the artist. In this particular case, I have to say that these are some of the most inspired, evocative, and meaningful photo manipulations I have ever seen or am ever likely to see.
Perhaps this is most meaningful photo-manipulation you'll ever see... but I really doubt that's true. The photoshopping here is amateurish, and a detriment, I think, to what could be a very powerful set of artwork. Had the artist managed to blend together the photographs to create a single imagine, rather than two rather obviously layered images, the "ghosts of the past" effect would be much more striking. The artist could have conveyed much more subtle and penetrating messages.
Take this image for example. The impact here is seeing these WWII soldiers walking down an otherwise modern street. A technically proficient photo editor would not have, for example, cut off the legs of the foremost soldier, nor allowed the soldiers in the distance to the right fade out. On top of that, I think it would have been much more striking if the present showed through the past as well - the soldiers on the sidewalk passing by modern road signs, for instance. A similar kind of modification would have transformed this image from intriguing to shocking. The image that comes closest to successfully blending the past and present is this image, except for the tree on the right that fazes out, and the poor blending with the sky.
On the other hand, this image came very close to being absolutely striking, but the decision to partially fade out the car the soldiers are walking by is a tragic mistake. If the car were fully present, the soldiers would look like they were walking around the cars in the parking lot - conveying a powerful message that we tend to move history around our conveniences, rather than respect the weight of the ages. Similarly, this image would have been visually and emotionally arresting, if the artist had been willing to let the flag poles stay in the foreground rather than blend away and back again; and had taken more care with the soldier's legs, and the hard edges in between the second and third pole.
As they are now, these photographs do draw attention to the history of places, and are a worth a look. They are not, however, art-gallery material. And the key difference is not the artistic ambition, but the lack of technical ambition.
Naturally, this is all my artistic opinion, and I understand that we might have different tastes. I just want to emphasize that technical proficiency , or lack thereof, can make or break art... and I think it broke it in this case. If this artist is comfortable handing his work off to a master printmaker, I think this body of work could turn into something really powerful.
Here is an example of some less serious but way better done manipulations of historic photos. Seriously, check this stuff out.
Throwing away mod points! Sorry to everyone I've modded up in this article...
It' s almost 3 times more expensive than what the French can get, without even trying to be cost-effective.
The reason that nuclear power is expensive has very little to do with efficiency of electricity production - it's well known that, once up and running, nuke plants produce energy cheaply (see comment further down the page by HiddenCamper).
The reason nuclear power is expensive is the cost of capital. Nuclear plants cost billions and billions of dollars to build, and take upwards of 10 years (or more!) to go from initial funding to actual production. In large part, the delay has to do with the regulatory process.* Huge initial investment + long time before any return is possible = enormous cost of capital.
The financial markets have never liked nuclear power.** It's expensive, and fossil fuels are cheap. From the beginning, the federal government has had to offer up enormous incentives and guarantees to get the financial markets to go along with financing nuclear power. And the government should continue to encourage nuclear investment, because an electric infrastructure based around nuclear power would be great for this country. It'd just also be expensive.
* I'm a far left liberal, essentially a socialist. But I recognize that regulations aren't always good.
** for a college research project, I once indexed and coded all the mentions of "nuclear energy" in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal between 1945 and 1975. On the categories of security, safety, financial, and environmental, more than half of all the articles coded "negative" were in the category financial. The negative financial press started in 1955 and contented steadily throughout the 60s and early 70s. Between 1970 and 1975, 89% of the articles about nuclear energy were negative, mostly concerning the financing of nuclear power (but also a fair about of negative articles on environmental and safety issues). The last nuclear power plant built in the US (not including the recent attempts to build new ones) was built in 1977.
...it is entirely within the realm of possibility the the governing administration creates a culture and a wider political will that either enables or prevents these types of actions. For example, under GWB some functionary several layers away from the white house could probably get away with enacting faith based traffic laws, under Obama maybe not so likely.
Honestly, I don't think this issue falls neatly along the democrat/republican partisan divide. As much as I want "my side" (liberal democrats) to actually be on my side (against expansive copyright law), I really don't think they are. Republicans, as a class at least, aren't either.
Conceptually, I frame this issue as government regulations preventing commercial entities from trampling individual liberty through sheer market power. Surely "liberals," or at least "progressives," would be on my side! But I cannot deny that Democrats, including Obama, are in the pocket of Hollywood/big media on these issues. There have been too many Obama political appointees that come straight from the RIAA and MPAA.
So, no, I really don't think this is a result of Obama's influence on public policy. If anything, this is a result of constant, tireless effort on the part of the EFF and other electronic liberty advocacy organizations. We, the slashdot-type people, have to wake up and realize that republican/democratic party differences do not divide us when it comes to technology/internet policy. Not just copyright, but information privacy, net neutrality, etc.
it looks like the Obama Administration finally got something right in regards to copyright and fair use/first sale.
I'm an Obama supporter, but Obama had nothing to do with this. The Copyright Office is a part of the Library of Congress, which is a creature of Congress. The new exemptions were recommended by the Registrar of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, who has been in office since 1994. Her boss, the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, has been in office since 1987.
The DMCA only really applies when you distribute copies after circumventing copy protection. If you keep them to yourself, you are operating within the bounds of fair use and the legal protections for reverse engineering and interoperability.
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Fair use, arguably, does not apply to section 1201. Fair use, as codified at 17 U.S.C. 107, reads:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Note that section 1201 is a prohibition against circumvention of a technological measure, while fair use is a defense against infringement. If you don't think there's a difference, you're not a lawyer;)
The new rule holds that amateur creators do not violate the DMCA when they use short excerpts from DVDs in order to create new, noncommercial works for purposes of criticism or comment if they believe that circumvention is necessary to fulfill that purpose.
However, the video makers may be still be infringing copyrights if their use of the video from the DVD is not fair use.
The important part here, I think, is that noncommercial video producers will be able to defend against both a DMCA anti-circumvention suit and a normal infringement suit with a fair use defense. Used to be that the DMCA anti-circumvention rule arguably wasn't subject to the fair use doctrine as codified at 17 U.S.C. 107; since the new exemption is very close to the rules for fair use, a successful fair use defense would very likely also defeat a DMCA claim.
An example of a noncommercial, commentary or criticism use of a copyrighted video that is not fair use might be the inclusion of a few minutes of video for a movie that hasn't yet been released. Under Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, the Supreme Court found that a review containing a few important excerpts of a book that had not yet been released was a copyright infringement and did not have a fair use defense. This could easily be extended to movie reviews (at least, for direct to DVD movies).
The copyright office's exemptions absolutely have the effect of changing what is legal, because the DMCA says so.
True. The DMCA, as codified, states at 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(D):
The Librarian shall publish any class of copyrighted works for which the Librarian has determined, pursuant to the rulemaking conducted under subparagraph (C), that noninfringing uses by persons who are users of a copyrighted work are, or are likely to be, adversely affected, and the prohibition contained in sub-paragraph (A) shall not apply to such users with respect to such class of works for the ensuing 3-year period.
So, the Librarian of Congress can exempt any class of works from this section of the DMCA, based on a regulatory rule-making process, which is defined in 1201(a)(1)(C). Which I won't quote, but you can read for yourself here.
This is not a right. This is an exception to a law. You don't now have a "right to jailbreak your iphone." Instead, Apple no longer has the right to sue you for jailbreaking your phone - or, more accurately, I think, you now have a defense against such a suit (you'd still have to hire a lawyer to deal with the suit).
The way the government historically gains power is to grant you rights you already have, then modify them later.
The DMCA took away your personal liberty (I wouldn't call it a "right") to access copyrighted information that was "secured" by DRM. The government didn't give you the right and then modify it; it just straight took away personal liberty.
I think the more important issue with their research was that they didn't actually download the files and examine the contents. Apparently, they just looked at file names, and determined whether or not the content was infringing.
Overall, we classified ten of the 1021 files, or approximately 1%, as likely non-infringing, This result should be interpreted with caution, as we may have missed some non-infringing files, and our sample is of files available, not files actually downloaded.
If, as they say, the files may never be downloaded, then how does that contribute to the bittorrent protocol's level of piracy? If the torrent contains junk or mislabeled files, it likewise shouldn't be counted as "infringing." Some files may be labeled with commercial music or movie titles, but only contain a snippet of copied content, perhaps enough to count as fair use... hell, a whole movie or song might qualify as fair use, depending on how it's used. For example, ironically, academic researchers downloading otherwise infringing torrents for the purpose of studying piracy rates may actually be fair use.
They recognize the limits of their study. But I think they understate (or evade) the importance of actually downloading and examining the content of the torrent. Ultimately, the only way to know if certain materials are infringing is for the owner of the copyright to attest that the copier doesn't have permission, and for a court to rule that the copier wasn't engaged in fair use.
Slashdot Mirror
The new age healers I've known are 1) nice people who want to help you, and 2) honest about what they can and can't do.
Don't forget that many people voluntarily give money to their church every sunday, and are happy to do so, and feel that it's the right thing to do. You could call that "taking money from people by lying to them," but you're ignoring that people are getting spiritual fulfillment and moral satisfaction from it. It's the same thing with spiritual healing. A lot of people do feel better afterwords, and in fact feel better served by spiritual healing than from whatever treatment a doctor gives them. Bear in mind that I'm talking about treatment for things like chronic pain and headaches, not cancer or infectious diseases.
...homeopathy or magical crystals or other new age clapp trap...
Most homeopathy and new age healing methods don't actually make scientific claims (in part because they can't), they're spiritual endeavors that depend to a great degree on the belief of the "patient." If you put your "faith" in science and hard data, then, yeah, avoid new age healing. But there's nothing wrong with spiritual fulfillment and/or the placebo effect.
Yeah, there are frauds out there who claim they can cure cancer with magic charms, and that's dangerous. But most new agey healers deal with things like joint pain, chronic pain, headaches, and other ailments that are likely stress and/or posture related, and so really just need belief by the patient that they've been healed, or some kind of spiritual fulfillment. Sometimes there are things that pills or surgery can't fix.
The real mumbo jumbo is astrology, because it does make scientific claims.
The U.S. is much more similar to China than it cares to admit.
You know, a while ago the US had a prolonged bout of civil disobedience. Just like China, a frequently jailed US dissident won the Nobel peace prize. There's now a national holiday in his honor.
There may be some similarities, but I'd say there are some differences too.
Mod up. Great point.
the write-by-numbers approach with its rote opposing opinions and seemingly spineless journalistic waffling can remind readers not to get too caught up in the latest theory du jour.
Yes, god forbid that the public suddenly become interested in science. It might one day break their hearts.
It's always nice to point out mainstream journalism's failings,
Yes.
but it's really only useful if it has a message attached.
No.
Some suggestion on how to fix the system, other wise it's simply mockery.
Mockery is useful. Bare naked ridicule of the status quo can be useful. Bonus if it's funny, as TFA is.
The problem with adding how to fix the system is that you could be dead wrong. Or shortsided. Or partisan, or dumb. Just clearly pointing out what the problem is is extremely important.
This guy isn't saying he has the answer. I respect that. He's helping shape the debate. I respect that too.
that is what has been plaguing the entire gaming industry since the late 90s: graphics over gameplay.
People have been saying that since the beginning of time.* And yet, there is still a gaming industry; people who were raised on the "old classics" (whether "classic" is defined as pacman, tetris, mario, wolfenstein 3d, warcraft, quake, fallout, halflife, counterstrike, god of war, etc.) still play games (if they have time) and still love gaming. I play a ton of TF2 now, and, yes, there has been constant innovation in terms of gameplay over the past 20 years of FPS multiplayer. Name the genre,** and there are examples of modern games in that genre that are both graphically superior and have at least some innovative gameplay features that make them at least arguably "better" games than the classics.
And that's only looking at mainstream games. As you've pointed out, there are plenty of casual games - and more importantly, indie games - that focus on gameplay over graphics. And it's always been that way. Casual and indie gaming is not a new phenomenon, except on consoles. There have always been casual and indie games on the PC.
* beginning of time = when I was born, in the 80's.
** exception: space flight sims. I really miss Tie Fighter...
The stunt is in shutting down suddenly, without warning, and, apparently, in the middle of a sale. If this was planned, it's a stunt. They could have announced ahead of time, even just a day or a week ahead of time, that they'd be shutting down for a period before reopening. Hell, they could have announced ahead of time that they were shutting down permanently, and probably gotten some kind of fire-sale/goodbye-sale revenue.
Doing this suddenly produces shock and probably some panic from long-time customers, and that's why, if it was planned, it's a stunt.
Hurd did not cause HP to cease to exist as a corporate entity. Hurd did not cause all of HP's going concern value to evaporate.
In other words, Hurd is an excellent example of how not having corporate capital punishment* encourages the recycling of aggressive/ruthless executives from one company to another. If executives' criminal behavior did cause massive loss to shareholders, I think the 'old boy' network would disappear in a hurry. People value their money a lot more than they value the friend of friend of a friend.
* I'm not saying that HP should have been executed because of Hurd's behavior.
the psychopaths responsible for the decisions, will find a way out, leaving their customary trail of destruction and misery after them: they will manipulate their way out of the to-be-killed corporation that they corrupted and abused, and into a leading position in another company.
Imagine you're on the board of directors of company x. Suppose the CEO of company y, known to be ruthless and to dramatically increase profits, -
but also known to have caused the "execution" of company y, i.e., caused the immediate liquidation of company y, meaning that all of company y's "going concern" value is lost and only the value of its liquid assets are recovered by shareholders,
- wants to be the CEO of your company, company x. Would you want him to be your CEO?
The imposition of an actual "death penalty" for criminal corporations would have an enormous impact on the way business is run in this country... because people would lose money as a result of criminal behavior by a company they have invested in.
I would guess we all probably fall into two camps- either dramatically underestimating or dramatically overestimating the level of information stored in the profile. Without better specifics in the hands of the populace about the level of personal details, it doesn't seem to me that a fair level of regulation can possibly be drafted by public officials.
Yes.
An easy regulation that doesn't require google or other online businesses to change their business model (much) would be to simply require them to release all collected data on a user to that user on request (while also making sure that the information is provided securely and confidentially). Attach some kind of civil (rather than criminal, which would probably go to far) penalty, and allow users to sue, either as a class action, or individually. This scheme wouldn't prevent Google from collecting data, but would allow users to understand what data they're giving over, and what kind of uses it can be put to. Google already has the privacy dashboard, but I'm thinking much more granular stuff, including, as others have pointed out, what data about you is collected from your email contacts, etc.
Then, users have the real potential to understand whether or not they want to use the service. It also encourages businesses not to abuse their gathered data. Thus, the market could possibly self-regulate to meet the that magical equilibrium where all parties are as close as possible to maximizing utility. Either no further regulation would be necessary, or the regulation would at least be better informed and more likely to be efficient
Really? They couldn't be bothered to count more than 369 signatures?
There are 736 Members of the European Parliament. 369 is a majority.
That's a gross amount of shoes.
I wasn't suggesting you could only have one or the other. I was asking which you prefer.
My point was that open access is a better solution than net neutrality. Net neutrality has downsides. If there was actually a market for ISPs, if there was meaningful choice - you could chose between:
-a completely neutral ISP
-an ISP that maintains strong security over its network (e.g., inspects packets for known malicious content)
-an ISP that prioritizes multimedia streaming
-an ISP that prioritizes gaming
-an ISP that prioritizes VoIP
-an ISP for casual users (like AOL)
-an ISP that prioritizes users' privacy (e.g., keeps no logs)
etc.
If there really was a dynamic ISP market, I would probably argue against net neutrality.
Which would you rather have - choice, or net neutrality?
I favor "open access" over net neutrality. Open access means telecom providers have to allow other ISPs to use their infrastructure. In fact, I would really prefer de-integrating (disintegrating?) telecom service from telecom infrastructure. I would have no problem with comcast, shitty company that it is, owning half of the cable infrastructure in the US, if all of the content services were run by competing companies.
So, if I could choose between having choice, versus enforced net neutrality, I would choose choice.
But, of course, you're right - there is no choice, and so this article is bullshit.
Disclaimer: I'm not defending the GP.
It doesn't matter that it is technically rather simple to perform, many great works of art are not necessarily difficult in technique, but their value comes from the unique and meaningful perspective of the artist. In this particular case, I have to say that these are some of the most inspired, evocative, and meaningful photo manipulations I have ever seen or am ever likely to see.
Perhaps this is most meaningful photo-manipulation you'll ever see... but I really doubt that's true. The photoshopping here is amateurish, and a detriment, I think, to what could be a very powerful set of artwork. Had the artist managed to blend together the photographs to create a single imagine, rather than two rather obviously layered images, the "ghosts of the past" effect would be much more striking. The artist could have conveyed much more subtle and penetrating messages.
Take this image for example. The impact here is seeing these WWII soldiers walking down an otherwise modern street. A technically proficient photo editor would not have, for example, cut off the legs of the foremost soldier, nor allowed the soldiers in the distance to the right fade out. On top of that, I think it would have been much more striking if the present showed through the past as well - the soldiers on the sidewalk passing by modern road signs, for instance. A similar kind of modification would have transformed this image from intriguing to shocking. The image that comes closest to successfully blending the past and present is this image, except for the tree on the right that fazes out, and the poor blending with the sky.
On the other hand, this image came very close to being absolutely striking, but the decision to partially fade out the car the soldiers are walking by is a tragic mistake. If the car were fully present, the soldiers would look like they were walking around the cars in the parking lot - conveying a powerful message that we tend to move history around our conveniences, rather than respect the weight of the ages. Similarly, this image would have been visually and emotionally arresting, if the artist had been willing to let the flag poles stay in the foreground rather than blend away and back again; and had taken more care with the soldier's legs, and the hard edges in between the second and third pole.
As they are now, these photographs do draw attention to the history of places, and are a worth a look. They are not, however, art-gallery material. And the key difference is not the artistic ambition, but the lack of technical ambition.
Naturally, this is all my artistic opinion, and I understand that we might have different tastes. I just want to emphasize that technical proficiency , or lack thereof, can make or break art... and I think it broke it in this case. If this artist is comfortable handing his work off to a master printmaker, I think this body of work could turn into something really powerful.
Here is an example of some less serious but way better done manipulations of historic photos. Seriously, check this stuff out.
Throwing away mod points! Sorry to everyone I've modded up in this article...
It' s almost 3 times more expensive than what the French can get, without even trying to be cost-effective.
The reason that nuclear power is expensive has very little to do with efficiency of electricity production - it's well known that, once up and running, nuke plants produce energy cheaply (see comment further down the page by HiddenCamper).
The reason nuclear power is expensive is the cost of capital. Nuclear plants cost billions and billions of dollars to build, and take upwards of 10 years (or more!) to go from initial funding to actual production. In large part, the delay has to do with the regulatory process.* Huge initial investment + long time before any return is possible = enormous cost of capital.
The financial markets have never liked nuclear power.** It's expensive, and fossil fuels are cheap. From the beginning, the federal government has had to offer up enormous incentives and guarantees to get the financial markets to go along with financing nuclear power. And the government should continue to encourage nuclear investment, because an electric infrastructure based around nuclear power would be great for this country. It'd just also be expensive.
* I'm a far left liberal, essentially a socialist. But I recognize that regulations aren't always good.
** for a college research project, I once indexed and coded all the mentions of "nuclear energy" in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal between 1945 and 1975. On the categories of security, safety, financial, and environmental, more than half of all the articles coded "negative" were in the category financial. The negative financial press started in 1955 and contented steadily throughout the 60s and early 70s. Between 1970 and 1975, 89% of the articles about nuclear energy were negative, mostly concerning the financing of nuclear power (but also a fair about of negative articles on environmental and safety issues). The last nuclear power plant built in the US (not including the recent attempts to build new ones) was built in 1977.
...it is entirely within the realm of possibility the the governing administration creates a culture and a wider political will that either enables or prevents these types of actions. For example, under GWB some functionary several layers away from the white house could probably get away with enacting faith based traffic laws, under Obama maybe not so likely.
Honestly, I don't think this issue falls neatly along the democrat/republican partisan divide. As much as I want "my side" (liberal democrats) to actually be on my side (against expansive copyright law), I really don't think they are. Republicans, as a class at least, aren't either.
Conceptually, I frame this issue as government regulations preventing commercial entities from trampling individual liberty through sheer market power. Surely "liberals," or at least "progressives," would be on my side! But I cannot deny that Democrats, including Obama, are in the pocket of Hollywood/big media on these issues. There have been too many Obama political appointees that come straight from the RIAA and MPAA.
So, no, I really don't think this is a result of Obama's influence on public policy. If anything, this is a result of constant, tireless effort on the part of the EFF and other electronic liberty advocacy organizations. We, the slashdot-type people, have to wake up and realize that republican/democratic party differences do not divide us when it comes to technology/internet policy. Not just copyright, but information privacy, net neutrality, etc.
it looks like the Obama Administration finally got something right in regards to copyright and fair use/first sale.
I'm an Obama supporter, but Obama had nothing to do with this. The Copyright Office is a part of the Library of Congress, which is a creature of Congress. The new exemptions were recommended by the Registrar of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, who has been in office since 1994. Her boss, the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, has been in office since 1987.
The DMCA only really applies when you distribute copies after circumventing copy protection. If you keep them to yourself, you are operating within the bounds of fair use and the legal protections for reverse engineering and interoperability.
The DMCA as codified at 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A) pretty clearly states:
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Fair use, arguably, does not apply to section 1201. Fair use, as codified at 17 U.S.C. 107, reads:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Note that section 1201 is a prohibition against circumvention of a technological measure, while fair use is a defense against infringement. If you don't think there's a difference, you're not a lawyer ;)
The new rule holds that amateur creators do not violate the DMCA when they use short excerpts from DVDs in order to create new, noncommercial works for purposes of criticism or comment if they believe that circumvention is necessary to fulfill that purpose.
However, the video makers may be still be infringing copyrights if their use of the video from the DVD is not fair use.
The important part here, I think, is that noncommercial video producers will be able to defend against both a DMCA anti-circumvention suit and a normal infringement suit with a fair use defense. Used to be that the DMCA anti-circumvention rule arguably wasn't subject to the fair use doctrine as codified at 17 U.S.C. 107; since the new exemption is very close to the rules for fair use, a successful fair use defense would very likely also defeat a DMCA claim.
An example of a noncommercial, commentary or criticism use of a copyrighted video that is not fair use might be the inclusion of a few minutes of video for a movie that hasn't yet been released. Under Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, the Supreme Court found that a review containing a few important excerpts of a book that had not yet been released was a copyright infringement and did not have a fair use defense. This could easily be extended to movie reviews (at least, for direct to DVD movies).
The copyright office's exemptions absolutely have the effect of changing what is legal, because the DMCA says so.
True. The DMCA, as codified, states at 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(D):
The Librarian shall publish any class of copyrighted works for which the Librarian has determined, pursuant to the rulemaking conducted under subparagraph (C), that noninfringing uses by persons who are users of a copyrighted work are, or are likely to be, adversely affected, and the prohibition contained in sub-paragraph (A) shall not apply to such users with respect to such class of works for the ensuing 3-year period.
So, the Librarian of Congress can exempt any class of works from this section of the DMCA, based on a regulatory rule-making process, which is defined in 1201(a)(1)(C). Which I won't quote, but you can read for yourself here.
Now it will be possible to take that right away.
This is not a right. This is an exception to a law. You don't now have a "right to jailbreak your iphone." Instead, Apple no longer has the right to sue you for jailbreaking your phone - or, more accurately, I think, you now have a defense against such a suit (you'd still have to hire a lawyer to deal with the suit).
The way the government historically gains power is to grant you rights you already have, then modify them later.
The DMCA took away your personal liberty (I wouldn't call it a "right") to access copyrighted information that was "secured" by DRM. The government didn't give you the right and then modify it; it just straight took away personal liberty.
Depending on the specific wording of your local ordinances, you can charge the neighbor with trespass for playing his music loudly all night long.
You're thinking of nuisance. The Wikipedia article on trespass is pretty good.
I think the more important issue with their research was that they didn't actually download the files and examine the contents. Apparently, they just looked at file names, and determined whether or not the content was infringing.
Overall, we classified ten of the 1021 files, or approximately 1%, as likely non-infringing, This result should be interpreted with caution, as we may have missed some non-infringing files, and our sample is of files available, not files actually downloaded.
If, as they say, the files may never be downloaded, then how does that contribute to the bittorrent protocol's level of piracy? If the torrent contains junk or mislabeled files, it likewise shouldn't be counted as "infringing." Some files may be labeled with commercial music or movie titles, but only contain a snippet of copied content, perhaps enough to count as fair use... hell, a whole movie or song might qualify as fair use, depending on how it's used. For example, ironically, academic researchers downloading otherwise infringing torrents for the purpose of studying piracy rates may actually be fair use.
They recognize the limits of their study. But I think they understate (or evade) the importance of actually downloading and examining the content of the torrent. Ultimately, the only way to know if certain materials are infringing is for the owner of the copyright to attest that the copier doesn't have permission, and for a court to rule that the copier wasn't engaged in fair use.