The more interesting question is why you should become so upset when by common usage or statutory definition copyright infringement does become theft.
The problem is that allowing copyright to be equated with property reinforces the argument for perpetual copyright. Copyrights are (supposed to be) limited monopolies granted for limited times. In essence we, the public, are temporarily leasing to the creator the sole rights to a work which, in its natural state, would immediately become part of the public domain upon its release. Allowing them to refer to copyright as a property right makes their attempts to extend copyrights perpetually seem less inappropriate. After all, when you own property it's yours till you sell it, right? Copyright isn't a property right. Read the US Constitution and Title 17 of the US Code. It makes it very clear that copyright is merely a government devised system to temporarily treat works as if they were property in order to encourage the enrichment of the public domain.
OSX is not a service, it's a product. You cannot by charged with theft of services for copying an OSX CD. It's a copyright issue, and copyright violation is not theft. Feel free to argue that it's as morally abhorrent as theft, but in a legal sense it's not the same thing at all. See Title 17 of the US Code.
No, that would be more of the same "Peak Oil" crap, which relies upon the assumption that oil exists only down to a certain depth beneath the earth's surface in order to calculate "undiscovered reserves". The Russians are finding oil more than 40,000 feet deep. This, plus the fact that the theory that oil is a finite, depletable resource was formed in the mid-1700's and hasn't really changed since. Lot's of information to discredit Hubbert out there. Just depends on which side you choose to believe: the doomsday scenario, or one that doesn't conveniently ignore contradictory evidence.
That warm period in the middle ages...
It's actually better known as:
THE LITTLE ICE AGE!
I was under the impression that the Little Ice age followed the Medieval Warm Period. Why do you suggest that the "ice age" half of it is the only salient aspect of the two events? The fact that it got cold after it got hot doesn't change the fact that it got hot. Is this page for the Geology 150 course at the University of Southern California incorrect in metioning the two on equal footing? Are all these links when one googles "The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period" wrong because they find the former as relevant as the latter?
I'm sure good papers have been written contradicting the dominant paradigm as it relates to climate change. Perhaps someone has written papers using some outside factor such as Sunspont cycles or Earth Axial tilt (a la Milankovitch Cycles) but it has not been published or if it has it is ignored. You seem to have some rather naive view of science that as soon as someone writes a paper directly contradicting the domianant paradigm, scientists who support the dominant paradigm immediately change position. But, anyone who has read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions or who has paid attention to scientific history knows it simply doesn't work that way.
It would be the equivalent to papers coming out which directly contradict the Big Bang Theory (which have and are of good scholarship and sound science) but are they acknowledged? of course not, the dominant astronomical community will not tolerate anything that contradicts their dominant paradigm and will mock, suppress, or simply ignore those that go against the dominant theory, in this case The Big Bang Theory.
This argument dovetails rather nicely with something I found on Wikipedia just yesterday in reference to Special Relavitiy which stated in the introduction that since this theory is so well accepted any theories which contradict it must be due to unreproducable experimental error. This has only to do with the culture of acceptance (popularity contest) not the scientific method by which it is thought science progresses as we have been taught it does. The arrogance and ignorance in the aforementioned statement is profound, infact with thoughts like that I'm surprised scientific progress occurs at all.
It seems to me that frequently it takes the weight of a quite a bit of "unreproducable experimental error" to finally collapse the bulwark of belief.
Just a small quibble: you can say there's no such thing as intellectual property all you want, but countless cases quite explicitly refer to trademarks, copyrights and patents as such. Not to mention the fact that they're taught as such in law school.
He means "no such thing as IP" as in "fails the definition of property". It's obvious to all of us that the term has a legal meaning. The point is, the term is intentionally mileading. It was concoted in the 19th century as a catch-phrase for those arguing for further extension of copyright terms.
I think its time to stop protesting the phrase "intellectual property" and just start dealing with the actual law...
So long as some people still think it's possible to own a song, a story, or a cartoon mouse, it will remain necessary to remind them that the term "intellectual property" is misleading. Copyright is simply a system that allows us to treat something which is clearly not property as if it was property. The works will always be essentially free because there's no way to cage an idea. For example: Michael Jackson didn't buy all those Beatles songs; the songs were already available to essentially everyone. What he bought was the right to copy, which is a government-granted monopoly.
Another side note: The life expectency was lower back then. 28 was effectively one's life.
Bullshit. Thomas Jefferson lived to be 83. Average life expectancy was pulled drastically downward by infant and child mortality, but if you made it to age 21, you could expect to easily live into your 60's. Here's a quickie on the reasons why the "avg life expectancy was 25 in the stone age" theory is a load of crap based on statistical oversimplification.
About ten terabytes. Or maybe 20 terabytes. Or maybe as much as 3 petabytes.
Heh. Whichever it turns out to be, the LoC, being yet another part of the federal government, will probably make it available for viewing/downloading as a single PDF file.
My grandpa was a farmer who died over 50 years ago. Since I don't get to collect royalties on the corn he grew in the 1930s, I've had to work to produce my own income.
If you get an inheritance? You effectively do.
No, he doesn't. He's getting money earned by his grandfather before he died. Authors can save their earnings and pass that money on to their descendents just like the rest of us.
Furthermore, this gives government agents the right to go into any house to inspect for "TVs"???
Actually, they don't have to. They can easily collect the appropriate information when you buy a TV (or a PC). Much like when you buy a DirecTV unit which requires a year's subscription. They know who you are and where you live already, and that you have a TV. All they need to do is send the bill.
Why are we even wasting time on the Ultime Online series? It's just another Everquest clone that three people outside of Korea will ever play.
Christ almighty, are you really that fucking stupid? Here is Ultima VII, and here is Ultima Online. RTFA, check out the links, and then come back and say something. I won't even bother to go into the timeline regarding the release dates of Ultima Online and EverQuest. Fucking 'tard...
What happens to someone when they lose all their money? Or someone steals their money? Or their spouse gambles it all away? Or they are sued for their entire life savings? If you want to replace Social Security with something else, you will have to solve these problems at the same time.
What do people do now? Social Security is already not an adequate solution for any of those problems. Without going into a complicated political rant, my belief is that (after a difficult adjustment period) people will actually start helping one another again. The problem we have now is that the federal government has gotten into the charity business, essentially driving all but the most dedicated of us out. Our reaction to the poor is now "why doesn't the government do something about it; I give them plenty of money". Get the gov't out of it, and people will start helping one another.
The reason I will probably be voting for Bush is, I think another 4 years of his and his cabinet's tactics may discredit the Republican party for a decade or two.
Heh. Like the way Nixon resigning in disgrace put Carter in the white house? All it did was get us the most exasperatingly limp Democrat chief of state in the 20th century, which more or less resulted in 12 years of Reagan/Bush. I'm afraid there just ain't no way to win, no matter how you vote.
The problem is more difficult and less conspiracy-oriented than you think.
As a libertarian myself, the biggest problem I see is that so many people don't like the idea of personal responsibility. Like the Homer Simpson campaign slogan, "Can't somebody else do it?" Sure, they could (for example) invest retirement money themselves instead of pitching it down the rathole that is Social Security and do much better in the end, but they don't want to have to do anything.
Heh. Yep. That's why his auction is getting bid on, and Mr. "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is still waiting for that one guy with $70K to burn.
Huge auctions like these are futile, rarely would anyone ever put up that much money all at once for a gigantic collection.
They're only futile if you have an absurd starting bid like $70,000. If you start the bid at something reasonable, you'll sell it no problem. People who set high start prices don't understand ebay. It doesn't matter if that "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is worth the $70K; no one is going to START their bid at that. People shop ebay mostly just for the chance getting a deal. Say, for example, that you're selling an item you know is worth about $50. Do you start it at $50? No, because no one will bid on it! You need to suck them into it by starting it at $1. Yes, ONE DOLLAR. If it really is worth $50, someone will bid on it in hopes of getting it for LESS than $50. Then, all it takes is ONE MORE PERSON to bid against them. What's even better is that people get caught up in the excitement and will usually bid MORE than it's worth just so they'll WIN. That same item that wouldn't have sold at a start of $50 will often go for $60 or more.
Now, with a huge collection that you think is worth $70K, starting it at $1 isn't going to work because the pool of potential buyers that can pony up that kind of dough is too small. Oversized collections like that ought to be broken into at least a dozen smaller auctions; get 'em under $10K value. The real sweet spot is probably $3K or so, but the stuff has to be actually appear to be WORTH that. I doubt the "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is going to bring in $70K; maybe if he sold in blocks of less than 20 games at a time, but all at once? I doubt it.
So then, do you think that smoking crack may be 'ok' if you are not driving.
Sure. I think our drug laws are absurd. If an adult wishes to smoke crack, that should be allowed. It directly hurts no one but himself, and it's not the role of government to be our mother. This is, however, a separate issue.
Also are there any 'unreasonable circumstances' that smoking crack and driving may be combined?
If a nutcase is sitting in the passenger seat with a bomb and says "smoke this crack and keep driving or I'll blow us both up", that would certainly qualify for "unreasonable circumstances" status. I only mentioned the caveat because some people like to throw out ridiculous situations (like the one above) in an effort to show that it's not ALWAYS safer to not smoke crack while driving.
So, you think that you can get both a speeding ticket for say doing 5 mph over the limit and a 'impeding the flow of traffic' for not being 20 mph over the limit at the same time!
No, I never said that. You will get one or the other, but not both. Unless they have it in for you or need to meet a quota, cops will only write a ticket if you do something potentially dangerous. To wit: Driving significantly faster than everyone else will likely get you a speeding ticket. Pulling into the left lane going 65mph when the flow of traffic is 80mph thereby causing everyone to slam on their brakes and/or swerve around you, that would get you an "impeding" ticket, regardless of the posted speed limit. Like I said (and you apparently agree), it all depends on whether or not your actions were "reasonable and prudent" (as the law puts it).
i don't get it...
must be one of those strips like peanuts...
not really supposed to be funny...
I think the flaw in this comic strip is that it takes 9 pictures and 20 speech balloons to "condense" a 2-sentence story:
"The first test at home, 8.5miles, didn't work. After borrowing some equipment and trying again out in the hot Nevada desert, they managed to connect over a distance of 55.1 miles"
Typical "Wired" crap, if you ask me. Make 5 pages of content fill 40 pages using tricks found in their Adobe InDesign menus. Lame.
As far as passing in that situation being illegal in the US, I was talking about when the center line is a double solid yellow line. Of course, if the center line is a single dotted yellow line, you may pass, or a double line where your side of the line is dotted. If they are both solid, no pass. (but people still insist on doing it even around blind corners.
The original situation only implied breaking the speed limit, since that's what the discussion was about. All other aspects were assumed to be within the law. It's no more rational to assume that he was suggesting passing a slow car at 80mph over the double-yellow line around a blind corner than it would be to assume he was suggesting doing it while drunk, with a painted-over windshield, and/or while driving in reverse.
Driving in traffic, like much of life, requires rational adaptation rather than slavish adherence to the letter of the law. Sometimes it's more important to be safe than to obey the law.
So, under your 'condisional morality' if I am traveling though a Crack user infected street, I should consider smoking crack in order to be safer. Well *maybe* that's a little extreme...
It is. Classic straw man argument. Smoking crack while driving isn't safer under any reasonable circumstances.
Also you cannot get a speeding ticket for doing the speed limit, you must exceed the 'speed limit' in order to be issued a summons.
That's true, for a speeding ticket. Impeding the flow of traffic, however, has nothing to do with posted limits, but rather your speed relative to everyone else. The fact that you were going the speed limit might win you a few points with the judge, but the fact that you were doing it in the left lane of a crowded 4-lane highway when the right lane is full of trucks also going the speed limit, that might lose you some. It's a crappy thing for a cop to cite you over, but he's well within the law if he does.
Can this functionality be switched off by the customer/dealer?
Hah! You are the one the system is intended to lock out, so no, I doubt we will be able to turn it off. "Trusted Computing" is all about the software manufacturer knowing it can trust your machine to not let you run their software until they know you've paid for it (i.e. you register online and they issue you a key that makes the software work on your machine, and your machine alone).
PDF doesn't suck. It's excellent for what it does, and it beats the pants off Word.doc format as a distribution format.
PDF sucks for stuff nobody is going to print out, like a WEB PAGE!. Or are you one of those guys who makes his secretary print out his emails for him to read.
pdf is icky because it is a cross-platform well defined spec that produces beautifully printed output.
And that is a bad thing if you're trying to read it on a computer screen rather than printing it out..pdf is a great format for things that will end up printed, like forms, or brochures;.pdf sucks for reading on computers because it does not adapt to local screen geometry.
I wonder how well this system works in a snowstorm. Or even after a snowstorm when there's clumps of snow on the sign. I expect it can't read things better than a human in those conditions.
Heh. And how well will it deal with a sign that used to say "SPEED LIMIT 35 MPH", but some wise-guy has "adjusted" it with a marks-a-lot to say "85 MPH"?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that allowing copyright to be equated with property reinforces the argument for perpetual copyright. Copyrights are (supposed to be) limited monopolies granted for limited times. In essence we, the public, are temporarily leasing to the creator the sole rights to a work which, in its natural state, would immediately become part of the public domain upon its release. Allowing them to refer to copyright as a property right makes their attempts to extend copyrights perpetually seem less inappropriate. After all, when you own property it's yours till you sell it, right? Copyright isn't a property right. Read the US Constitution and Title 17 of the US Code. It makes it very clear that copyright is merely a government devised system to temporarily treat works as if they were property in order to encourage the enrichment of the public domain.
OSX is not a service, it's a product. You cannot by charged with theft of services for copying an OSX CD. It's a copyright issue, and copyright violation is not theft. Feel free to argue that it's as morally abhorrent as theft, but in a legal sense it's not the same thing at all. See Title 17 of the US Code.
I guess this is the opposite :-)
No, that would be more of the same "Peak Oil" crap, which relies upon the assumption that oil exists only down to a certain depth beneath the earth's surface in order to calculate "undiscovered reserves". The Russians are finding oil more than 40,000 feet deep. This, plus the fact that the theory that oil is a finite, depletable resource was formed in the mid-1700's and hasn't really changed since. Lot's of information to discredit Hubbert out there. Just depends on which side you choose to believe: the doomsday scenario, or one that doesn't conveniently ignore contradictory evidence.
I was under the impression that the Little Ice age followed the Medieval Warm Period. Why do you suggest that the "ice age" half of it is the only salient aspect of the two events? The fact that it got cold after it got hot doesn't change the fact that it got hot. Is this page for the Geology 150 course at the University of Southern California incorrect in metioning the two on equal footing? Are all these links when one googles "The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period" wrong because they find the former as relevant as the latter?
It would be the equivalent to papers coming out which directly contradict the Big Bang Theory (which have and are of good scholarship and sound science) but are they acknowledged? of course not, the dominant astronomical community will not tolerate anything that contradicts their dominant paradigm and will mock, suppress, or simply ignore those that go against the dominant theory, in this case The Big Bang Theory.
This argument dovetails rather nicely with something I found on Wikipedia just yesterday in reference to Special Relavitiy which stated in the introduction that since this theory is so well accepted any theories which contradict it must be due to unreproducable experimental error. This has only to do with the culture of acceptance (popularity contest) not the scientific method by which it is thought science progresses as we have been taught it does. The arrogance and ignorance in the aforementioned statement is profound, infact with thoughts like that I'm surprised scientific progress occurs at all.
It seems to me that frequently it takes the weight of a quite a bit of "unreproducable experimental error" to finally collapse the bulwark of belief.
He means "no such thing as IP" as in "fails the definition of property". It's obvious to all of us that the term has a legal meaning. The point is, the term is intentionally mileading. It was concoted in the 19th century as a catch-phrase for those arguing for further extension of copyright terms.
I think its time to stop protesting the phrase "intellectual property" and just start dealing with the actual law...
So long as some people still think it's possible to own a song, a story, or a cartoon mouse, it will remain necessary to remind them that the term "intellectual property" is misleading. Copyright is simply a system that allows us to treat something which is clearly not property as if it was property. The works will always be essentially free because there's no way to cage an idea. For example: Michael Jackson didn't buy all those Beatles songs; the songs were already available to essentially everyone. What he bought was the right to copy, which is a government-granted monopoly.
Bullshit. Thomas Jefferson lived to be 83. Average life expectancy was pulled drastically downward by infant and child mortality, but if you made it to age 21, you could expect to easily live into your 60's. Here's a quickie on the reasons why the "avg life expectancy was 25 in the stone age" theory is a load of crap based on statistical oversimplification.
Heh. Whichever it turns out to be, the LoC, being yet another part of the federal government, will probably make it available for viewing/downloading as a single PDF file.
PDF sucks.
If you get an inheritance? You effectively do.
No, he doesn't. He's getting money earned by his grandfather before he died. Authors can save their earnings and pass that money on to their descendents just like the rest of us.
Actually, they don't have to. They can easily collect the appropriate information when you buy a TV (or a PC). Much like when you buy a DirecTV unit which requires a year's subscription. They know who you are and where you live already, and that you have a TV. All they need to do is send the bill.
Christ almighty, are you really that fucking stupid? Here is Ultima VII, and here is Ultima Online. RTFA, check out the links, and then come back and say something. I won't even bother to go into the timeline regarding the release dates of Ultima Online and EverQuest. Fucking 'tard...
What do people do now? Social Security is already not an adequate solution for any of those problems. Without going into a complicated political rant, my belief is that (after a difficult adjustment period) people will actually start helping one another again. The problem we have now is that the federal government has gotten into the charity business, essentially driving all but the most dedicated of us out. Our reaction to the poor is now "why doesn't the government do something about it; I give them plenty of money". Get the gov't out of it, and people will start helping one another.
Heh. Like the way Nixon resigning in disgrace put Carter in the white house? All it did was get us the most exasperatingly limp Democrat chief of state in the 20th century, which more or less resulted in 12 years of Reagan/Bush. I'm afraid there just ain't no way to win, no matter how you vote.
As a libertarian myself, the biggest problem I see is that so many people don't like the idea of personal responsibility. Like the Homer Simpson campaign slogan, "Can't somebody else do it?" Sure, they could (for example) invest retirement money themselves instead of pitching it down the rathole that is Social Security and do much better in the end, but they don't want to have to do anything.
Heh. Yep. That's why his auction is getting bid on, and Mr. "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is still waiting for that one guy with $70K to burn.
How does such a business make money? College students can generally only afford free stuff.
They're only futile if you have an absurd starting bid like $70,000. If you start the bid at something reasonable, you'll sell it no problem. People who set high start prices don't understand ebay. It doesn't matter if that "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is worth the $70K; no one is going to START their bid at that. People shop ebay mostly just for the chance getting a deal. Say, for example, that you're selling an item you know is worth about $50. Do you start it at $50? No, because no one will bid on it! You need to suck them into it by starting it at $1. Yes, ONE DOLLAR. If it really is worth $50, someone will bid on it in hopes of getting it for LESS than $50. Then, all it takes is ONE MORE PERSON to bid against them. What's even better is that people get caught up in the excitement and will usually bid MORE than it's worth just so they'll WIN. That same item that wouldn't have sold at a start of $50 will often go for $60 or more.
Now, with a huge collection that you think is worth $70K, starting it at $1 isn't going to work because the pool of potential buyers that can pony up that kind of dough is too small. Oversized collections like that ought to be broken into at least a dozen smaller auctions; get 'em under $10K value. The real sweet spot is probably $3K or so, but the stuff has to be actually appear to be WORTH that. I doubt the "ULTIMATE JAPANCENTRIC VIDEO GAME COLLECTION" is going to bring in $70K; maybe if he sold in blocks of less than 20 games at a time, but all at once? I doubt it.
Sure. I think our drug laws are absurd. If an adult wishes to smoke crack, that should be allowed. It directly hurts no one but himself, and it's not the role of government to be our mother. This is, however, a separate issue.
Also are there any 'unreasonable circumstances' that smoking crack and driving may be combined?
If a nutcase is sitting in the passenger seat with a bomb and says "smoke this crack and keep driving or I'll blow us both up", that would certainly qualify for "unreasonable circumstances" status. I only mentioned the caveat because some people like to throw out ridiculous situations (like the one above) in an effort to show that it's not ALWAYS safer to not smoke crack while driving.
So, you think that you can get both a speeding ticket for say doing 5 mph over the limit and a 'impeding the flow of traffic' for not being 20 mph over the limit at the same time!
No, I never said that. You will get one or the other, but not both. Unless they have it in for you or need to meet a quota, cops will only write a ticket if you do something potentially dangerous. To wit: Driving significantly faster than everyone else will likely get you a speeding ticket. Pulling into the left lane going 65mph when the flow of traffic is 80mph thereby causing everyone to slam on their brakes and/or swerve around you, that would get you an "impeding" ticket, regardless of the posted speed limit. Like I said (and you apparently agree), it all depends on whether or not your actions were "reasonable and prudent" (as the law puts it).
I think the flaw in this comic strip is that it takes 9 pictures and 20 speech balloons to "condense" a 2-sentence story:
"The first test at home, 8.5miles, didn't work. After borrowing some equipment and trying again out in the hot Nevada desert, they managed to connect over a distance of 55.1 miles"
Typical "Wired" crap, if you ask me. Make 5 pages of content fill 40 pages using tricks found in their Adobe InDesign menus. Lame.
The original situation only implied breaking the speed limit, since that's what the discussion was about. All other aspects were assumed to be within the law. It's no more rational to assume that he was suggesting passing a slow car at 80mph over the double-yellow line around a blind corner than it would be to assume he was suggesting doing it while drunk, with a painted-over windshield, and/or while driving in reverse.
So, under your 'condisional morality' if I am traveling though a Crack user infected street, I should consider smoking crack in order to be safer. Well *maybe* that's a little extreme...
It is. Classic straw man argument. Smoking crack while driving isn't safer under any reasonable circumstances.
Also you cannot get a speeding ticket for doing the speed limit, you must exceed the 'speed limit' in order to be issued a summons.
That's true, for a speeding ticket. Impeding the flow of traffic, however, has nothing to do with posted limits, but rather your speed relative to everyone else. The fact that you were going the speed limit might win you a few points with the judge, but the fact that you were doing it in the left lane of a crowded 4-lane highway when the right lane is full of trucks also going the speed limit, that might lose you some. It's a crappy thing for a cop to cite you over, but he's well within the law if he does.
Hah! You are the one the system is intended to lock out, so no, I doubt we will be able to turn it off. "Trusted Computing" is all about the software manufacturer knowing it can trust your machine to not let you run their software until they know you've paid for it (i.e. you register online and they issue you a key that makes the software work on your machine, and your machine alone).
PDF sucks for stuff nobody is going to print out, like a WEB PAGE!. Or are you one of those guys who makes his secretary print out his emails for him to read.
And that is a bad thing if you're trying to read it on a computer screen rather than printing it out. .pdf is a great format for things that will end up printed, like forms, or brochures; .pdf sucks for reading on computers because it does not adapt to local screen geometry.
Heh. And how well will it deal with a sign that used to say "SPEED LIMIT 35 MPH", but some wise-guy has "adjusted" it with a marks-a-lot to say "85 MPH"?