Evolution is gospel in the world of science. Not believing in the faith of evolution is blasphemy and heretics will be punished.
I'm not a scientist, but even I know evolution is simply accepted - by some - as the best current explanation for our existence, and will be revised or replaced the moment a better explanation comes along. This is a good thing.
i generally think sharing music without paying is bad karma. personally, as an architect (the one that builds physical things), i like to be compensated for my work. even if it can be distributed as 1s and 0s.
I support copyright as well. I just think the pendulum has swung too far in one direction, and the corporate media cartels are doing everything in their power to maintain their role as gate keepers of our culture. Artists and other copyright holders should have some control over how their work is disseminated, and share in the wealth it creates.
But a healthy culture depends on the free flow of ideas, and the ability to create, experience, reinterpret, mimic and reinvent without fear of being sued in to poverty by a bunch of greedy carpetbaggers.
Look, I'm no fan of RIAA, but calling this "propaganda" and saying the the RIAA is behind it is over the top, invented out of whole cloth, and a conspiracy loon's fantasy.
You're either a troll, or incredibly naive. This reminds me of the the Captain Copyright propaganda campaign Access Copyright ran in Canada a couple of years back. In addition to giving one-sided and often inaccurate information to school children, and omitting important aspects of copyright such as fair use (known as "fair dealing" in Canada), they also appeared to violate copyright law themselves by failing to abide by the terms of the Wikipedia's Free Document License.
I would like to see an effort made to educate the next generation on issues such as the erosion of our privacy, the lack of balance in current and - in Canada, at any rate - proposed copyright legislation, and the importance of looking at the source of information and considering what that source's motives may be for providing it. Maybe some savvy teacher will use this as an example of never relying on a single source for information on a given subject.
Yeah I really must apologize to Alan Moore for not getting better informed before I commented on this. From what you and others have written, it sounds like he has and wants nothing to do with any of this. I should have taken the time to learn that before opening my mouth.
Having said that, I still feel that someone really fscked up, especially given that DC Comics is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. They really just should know more about their property.
The comment I quoted above stating that they "don't believe" fox has a claim is just stupid. Why make the friggin movie if you haven't hammered out some kind of agreement, or taken them to court, to establish who controls the rights to the work. These guys never let us forget that it's show business, yet they make seemingly stupid "business" decisions. They tell us they're making art, yet they'll let this work of art get mired in a legal battle. They point their fingers at us and call us "thief," yet they'll play loose with other people's "intellectual property" if it suits them.
I know, I should shut up before I end up having to apologize to Warner Bros. (shudders}
Powderly is not Tibetan, not a resident of China, a foreigner who traveled to China for the express purpose of making this protest
So what? Are you suggesting that only those directly affected by human rights abuses can protest them, and everyone else should just mind their own business? In the Rosa Parks example given above, groups like the Congress of Racial Equality, which included white college students from northern states, took part in protests during the Montgomery bus boycott. Should they have just minded their own business?
... and achieved nothing in this protest
That's debatable. The actions of any one person may be equivalent to "the movement of butterfly wings," as you stated below, but to quote Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Thanks, Drew. I admit I don't really know enough about this subject to comment on it, but this being Slashdot and all, I just decided to go ahead and post my immediate reaction to the story. I appreciate the factual information you and others have provided. I think this illustrates the complexity of copyright law, and the need for all of us (or some of us, at any rate) to be better informed.
Yeah, sorry, my bad. I didn't look back at his original post, and thought you were quoting him directly. These "fixed that for you" posts get a little confusing. Thanks for the correction, and for diplomatic way you pointed out my error.:)
I'm not sure if you are trying to imply that the sentence
That's such a tiny percentage of the people from whom I took money
ends in a preposition, but AFAIK it does not.
"Money" is a noun, and the propositional phrase "from whom I took" describes the relationship "money" has to the object of the sentence - "the people." So "from whom I took money" would be an adjective, describing "the people." If he had written "That's such a tiny percentage of the people I took money from," that, I believe, would be ending a sentence in a preposition.
If I am wrong, please re-write the sentence in a manner that would be grammatically correct and share it with us.
You can never know for sure who the copyright holder of a work is.
Yeah, I guess five years of SCO vs the universe demonstrates that.
What if an author was tricked into signing away the copyright (or at least exclusive movie rights) but didn't realise they had done so then later signed another movie deal with a different studio.
Is that what happened here? Did Alan Moore sign away the movie rights to Fox, then turn around and sell them to Warner? Did Warner not do their "due diligence" and have thier lawyers review all relevant documents before entering in to a business relationship with the author? Did they *just* find out that Fox believes they own the rights to the property now, when the movie is already shot?
I agree with you that these issues can sometimes be cloudy - the SCO example again really illustrates this. But I think it is laughable that it got this far without anyone noticing that there may be a question as to whether or not they had the right to make the movie in the first place. Either Fox is lying, Alan Moore withheld information from Warner, or the Warner lawyers didn't do a very thorough job.
I don't understand how Warner Bros can presumably spend millions of dollars producing a movie without first securing the rights to the work the movie is based on. Do they not have a legal department?
"We respectfully disagree with Fox's position and do not believe they have any rights," a Warners spokesman said.
"Do not believe?" These guys kill me. Do you have a legal document with the copyright holder's signature on it saying you are entitled to make a movie based on their character? If you don't, it's probably not a good idea to green-light the project. I guess they're just used to doing as they please and letting their lawyers fight with anyone who gets in their way.
Okay, so where can I get a copy of the presentation?
I think they should go ahead and give their presentation and include the events of the past week in it. In 2006, Steve Rambam was arrested by the FBI minutes before he was to give his "Privacy is Dead" presentation at the HOPE conference. Of course, the charges were dropped - after the conference was over.
He went ahead and gave his presentation a couple of months later.
I am also reminded of the Russian hacker Dmitri Sklyarov, who was prevented (by way of arrest) from giving a presentation at the 2001 DefCon titled "eBook's Security -- Theory and Practice." According to the Wiki page I linked to, "On December 18, 2002 following a two-week trial in San Jose, California, a jury found that Elcomsoft (the company Sklyarov worked for) had not wilfully violated the U.S. law."
So the tactic seems to be abuse the law in order to suppress speech you don't like, since there are apparently no consequences for doing so.
Another possible example of this tactic occurred last week when the IOC attempted to use the DMCA to force YouTube to take down a video about a Tibetan protest at the Chinese consulate in New York. This one may have been a mistake, as the title of the video was apparently "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony." But that would make it Trademark - not copyright - infringement, so the DMCA take-down notice was entirely inappropriate and sure gave the impression that their motive was to prevent embarrassment to China, not protect their brand.
How about a mechanic who holds a press conference and explains how to break into your car?
I think a better analogy would be writing a book that exposes the reluctance of the auto industry to invest in the safety of their product and their complicity in the deaths of tens of thousands of motorists.
Actually, the wiki article on the DMCA says "Passed on October 12, 1998 by a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998" so I must have been mistaken. I thought I had heard something around the time of the MPAA vs 2600 case, but apparently not.
Does anyone know who in the US elected government caused the US DMCA to happen?
I'm pretty sure there would be a list somewhere.
Actually, I believe the DMCA was voted on with something akin to a show of hands. In other words, no record of who voted for or against it. I don't have a citation right now, but if I find one I'll post it in a reply to this comment. It also seems to me it was brought in as an amendment to another bill, maybe a farm bill or something. I'm less sure about that.
That's Funny/Insightful, but it also raises the point that forwarding confidential company emails to a "timestamper" or a Gmail account may be sufficient grounds to fire you. I don't know what the labour laws are in various places, but if you signed any kind of an employment agreement or an NDA or something, read it carefully before forwarding unencrypted, internal company docs anywhere. Even if you didn't, make sure that if something that could be construed as a "trade secret" or "proprietary information" surfaces out in the wild, it can not be traced back to you.
Also, the more I think about it, the more I'm certain the parent was Insightful. Google does parse your email, and I wouldn't want to have to explain to my boss how Google managed to beat us on a patent for something we've spent a lot of resources on developing.
I could go along with "Humanism is a belief system for atheists," except I don't think you need to be an atheist to be a humanist. I guess it's that word spirituality I'm having a problem with. I don't think belief in an afterlife - or a "spirit," at any rate - is necessary to care for others, or honour your dead. And I'm not saying they didn't have some sort of spiritual belief, just that I don't think it's wise to rush a belief system on them as a given. Maybe the author meant to say something closer to "humanism" than "spirituality" but just didn't know what else to call it. Or he has good reason to think the way he does and I should shut up and RTFA.
The most amazing find so far is a grave with a female and two children hugging each other. They were carefully arranged in this position. This strongly indicated they had spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead,' says Garcea.
To me it indicates they had strong secular beliefs and cared for their wives and children. But I guess if you are predisposed to believe something, you start to see it in everything. I think it's called projection. I think the person who made that comment was projecting his world view on this poor, 8000-year-old family who were probably simply arranged that way by a grieving husband and father.
I would have assumed that since French is the official language of the modern olympic games, they would have used that for the alphabetical ordering of the countries...
French is one of the official languages. According to the Olympic Charter, "The official languages of the IOC are French and English." But the convention apparently is to introduce countries in alphabetical order in the language of the host country.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, I thought it was the hackers who needed to be protected from the political parties.
I'm not a scientist, but even I know evolution is simply accepted - by some - as the best current explanation for our existence, and will be revised or replaced the moment a better explanation comes along. This is a good thing.
I support copyright as well. I just think the pendulum has swung too far in one direction, and the corporate media cartels are doing everything in their power to maintain their role as gate keepers of our culture. Artists and other copyright holders should have some control over how their work is disseminated, and share in the wealth it creates.
But a healthy culture depends on the free flow of ideas, and the ability to create, experience, reinterpret, mimic and reinvent without fear of being sued in to poverty by a bunch of greedy carpetbaggers.
You're either a troll, or incredibly naive. This reminds me of the the Captain Copyright propaganda campaign Access Copyright ran in Canada a couple of years back. In addition to giving one-sided and often inaccurate information to school children, and omitting important aspects of copyright such as fair use (known as "fair dealing" in Canada), they also appeared to violate copyright law themselves by failing to abide by the terms of the Wikipedia's Free Document License.
I would like to see an effort made to educate the next generation on issues such as the erosion of our privacy, the lack of balance in current and - in Canada, at any rate - proposed copyright legislation, and the importance of looking at the source of information and considering what that source's motives may be for providing it. Maybe some savvy teacher will use this as an example of never relying on a single source for information on a given subject.
Yeah, and he sure taught you a lesson by modding your explanation of the first post Offtopic.
How dare you point out his ignorance!
Yeah I really must apologize to Alan Moore for not getting better informed before I commented on this. From what you and others have written, it sounds like he has and wants nothing to do with any of this. I should have taken the time to learn that before opening my mouth.
Having said that, I still feel that someone really fscked up, especially given that DC Comics is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. They really just should know more about their property.
The comment I quoted above stating that they "don't believe" fox has a claim is just stupid. Why make the friggin movie if you haven't hammered out some kind of agreement, or taken them to court, to establish who controls the rights to the work. These guys never let us forget that it's show business, yet they make seemingly stupid "business" decisions. They tell us they're making art, yet they'll let this work of art get mired in a legal battle. They point their fingers at us and call us "thief," yet they'll play loose with other people's "intellectual property" if it suits them.
I know, I should shut up before I end up having to apologize to Warner Bros. (shudders}
So what? Are you suggesting that only those directly affected by human rights abuses can protest them, and everyone else should just mind their own business? In the Rosa Parks example given above, groups like the Congress of Racial Equality, which included white college students from northern states, took part in protests during the Montgomery bus boycott. Should they have just minded their own business?
That's debatable. The actions of any one person may be equivalent to "the movement of butterfly wings," as you stated below, but to quote Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Thanks, Drew. I admit I don't really know enough about this subject to comment on it, but this being Slashdot and all, I just decided to go ahead and post my immediate reaction to the story. I appreciate the factual information you and others have provided. I think this illustrates the complexity of copyright law, and the need for all of us (or some of us, at any rate) to be better informed.
Yeah, sorry, my bad. I didn't look back at his original post, and thought you were quoting him directly. These "fixed that for you" posts get a little confusing. Thanks for the correction, and for diplomatic way you pointed out my error. :)
I'm not sure if you are trying to imply that the sentence
ends in a preposition, but AFAIK it does not.
"Money" is a noun, and the propositional phrase "from whom I took" describes the relationship "money" has to the object of the sentence - "the people." So "from whom I took money" would be an adjective, describing "the people." If he had written "That's such a tiny percentage of the people I took money from," that, I believe, would be ending a sentence in a preposition.
If I am wrong, please re-write the sentence in a manner that would be grammatically correct and share it with us.
Yeah, I guess five years of SCO vs the universe demonstrates that.
Is that what happened here? Did Alan Moore sign away the movie rights to Fox, then turn around and sell them to Warner? Did Warner not do their "due diligence" and have thier lawyers review all relevant documents before entering in to a business relationship with the author? Did they *just* find out that Fox believes they own the rights to the property now, when the movie is already shot?
I agree with you that these issues can sometimes be cloudy - the SCO example again really illustrates this. But I think it is laughable that it got this far without anyone noticing that there may be a question as to whether or not they had the right to make the movie in the first place. Either Fox is lying, Alan Moore withheld information from Warner, or the Warner lawyers didn't do a very thorough job.
I don't understand how Warner Bros can presumably spend millions of dollars producing a movie without first securing the rights to the work the movie is based on. Do they not have a legal department?
"Do not believe?" These guys kill me. Do you have a legal document with the copyright holder's signature on it saying you are entitled to make a movie based on their character? If you don't, it's probably not a good idea to green-light the project. I guess they're just used to doing as they please and letting their lawyers fight with anyone who gets in their way.
Unbelievable.
Which doesn't make a whole lotta sense, since they begin training at a very young age regardless of the age they are when competing in the Olympics.
I think they should go ahead and give their presentation and include the events of the past week in it. In 2006, Steve Rambam was arrested by the FBI minutes before he was to give his "Privacy is Dead" presentation at the HOPE conference. Of course, the charges were dropped - after the conference was over.
He went ahead and gave his presentation a couple of months later.
I am also reminded of the Russian hacker Dmitri Sklyarov, who was prevented (by way of arrest) from giving a presentation at the 2001 DefCon titled "eBook's Security -- Theory and Practice." According to the Wiki page I linked to, "On December 18, 2002 following a two-week trial in San Jose, California, a jury found that Elcomsoft (the company Sklyarov worked for) had not wilfully violated the U.S. law."
So the tactic seems to be abuse the law in order to suppress speech you don't like, since there are apparently no consequences for doing so.
Another possible example of this tactic occurred last week when the IOC attempted to use the DMCA to force YouTube to take down a video about a Tibetan protest at the Chinese consulate in New York. This one may have been a mistake, as the title of the video was apparently "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony." But that would make it Trademark - not copyright - infringement, so the DMCA take-down notice was entirely inappropriate and sure gave the impression that their motive was to prevent embarrassment to China, not protect their brand.
I think a better analogy would be writing a book that exposes the reluctance of the auto industry to invest in the safety of their product and their complicity in the deaths of tens of thousands of motorists.
She'd better watch out, or the milk company will be after her for stealing their crates.
It isn't the "spite-driven, FSF worshiping Zealots" who sound bitter, my anonymous friend.
Actually, the wiki article on the DMCA says "Passed on October 12, 1998 by a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998" so I must have been mistaken. I thought I had heard something around the time of the MPAA vs 2600 case, but apparently not.
Actually, I believe the DMCA was voted on with something akin to a show of hands. In other words, no record of who voted for or against it. I don't have a citation right now, but if I find one I'll post it in a reply to this comment. It also seems to me it was brought in as an amendment to another bill, maybe a farm bill or something. I'm less sure about that.
It was very sneaky, if memory serves.
That's Funny/Insightful, but it also raises the point that forwarding confidential company emails to a "timestamper" or a Gmail account may be sufficient grounds to fire you. I don't know what the labour laws are in various places, but if you signed any kind of an employment agreement or an NDA or something, read it carefully before forwarding unencrypted, internal company docs anywhere. Even if you didn't, make sure that if something that could be construed as a "trade secret" or "proprietary information" surfaces out in the wild, it can not be traced back to you.
Also, the more I think about it, the more I'm certain the parent was Insightful. Google does parse your email, and I wouldn't want to have to explain to my boss how Google managed to beat us on a patent for something we've spent a lot of resources on developing.
I could go along with "Humanism is a belief system for atheists," except I don't think you need to be an atheist to be a humanist. I guess it's that word spirituality I'm having a problem with. I don't think belief in an afterlife - or a "spirit," at any rate - is necessary to care for others, or honour your dead. And I'm not saying they didn't have some sort of spiritual belief, just that I don't think it's wise to rush a belief system on them as a given. Maybe the author meant to say something closer to "humanism" than "spirituality" but just didn't know what else to call it. Or he has good reason to think the way he does and I should shut up and RTFA.
BS. I used the term "voila" the other night when I served dinner. Doesn't make me a Frenchman.
Not for everyone. For some people, caring for others is the height of humanism.
Yeah, I found this quote to be a bit of a leap:
To me it indicates they had strong secular beliefs and cared for their wives and children. But I guess if you are predisposed to believe something, you start to see it in everything. I think it's called projection. I think the person who made that comment was projecting his world view on this poor, 8000-year-old family who were probably simply arranged that way by a grieving husband and father.
French is one of the official languages. According to the Olympic Charter, "The official languages of the IOC are French and English." But the convention apparently is to introduce countries in alphabetical order in the language of the host country.