The big deal, for me, is that big ads detract too much from the page content.
And, that is the $64,000 question. Will/.'s new ads end up being too distracting. If they're like this page, with the ad well sectioned off, I don't think they'll be a major problem. If they're like the ads you describe, well then/. will have violated the first rule of selling ads, Don't let your advertisers piss off your viewers enough to make them non-viewer. Of course, we haven't heard any details about the new ads, other than that they're coming, so who knows how annoying they'll be.
I see where you're coming from, but "art" can be used just like "content" as a functional word. "We need to spruce up the office. Let's get some art in here." Granted, the common definition of "content" defines it as a merely functional word. But you'll see that the secondary meanings are generalizations.
My only argument is that "content" is a neutral word that has been debased by marketdroids in the early days of the web who used it despairingly because they were too moronic to see what it represented. "Art" can mean statues, paintings, photos, theatre, performance art, music, etc... "Content" is a similar, useful abstraction when you're talking about the myrid of media that can grace a web site. "Content", as a word, is not inherently evil.
I'm not. I'm looking for information. Content is too trendy and vacuous.
So many get uppity when someone uses the word "content", but there is a reason people use it. Content is information. Content is ideas. Content is entertainment. Content is style. Content is can be just about anything, as long as it is something.
To say that the reason anyone goes to the web for information is wrong. Kids play on the web. IM/ICQers come for the community. Gamers come for the multiplayer games. Crackers come for the 31e73 challenge. Trolls come to/. for entertainment. How much of that can be narrowly constructed as "information?"
"Content" has been made a dirty word by marketing droids who were trying to save their ad-based revenue streams, but it is still a good word that lets you talk about paintings, music, movies, photos, style, communities, rants, raves, and yes, information in one simple word. In many respects, "content" is like "art", a generalization word that allows broad discussion without being cumbersome. Can you imagine the Metropolitan Museum of Art being renamed the Metropolitan Museum of Paintings, Photos, Statutes, Tapestries, Antiquities, Music, and Books?
That said, while people come and stay for the content, bad design can drive people away. I was looking for a site that had the rules for all kinds of games (sports, card, board, etc...) I found everyrule.com, which looked to be a good start. I even bookmarked it. But as I browsed the catagories, I found that with multiple pop-up, most links opening in new windows, and an inconsistent design (because it's really just a portal site), I deleted the bookmark and haven't been back since (except for now to check the URL.) Content, with a good interface makes for a good web design.
In response to Timmeh's questions about new Timberwolf cartoons, according to an episode guide someone posted in their message boards, there are 13 episodes so far. The website is currently running repeats.
If you do a little digging and guessing with the filenames, you can actually download the full Flash animations. I'd be more specific, but I don't want to get anyone in trouble. I've got all but two downloaded right now.
Termite I ask
Lights, Camera, Traction
Family Tree
A Tail to Tell
Timberwolf in Sheep's Clothing
To Beaver or Not To Beaver?
Oh! Christmas Tree
Self Helplessness
Call to Harms
Tree for Two
You Go, Squirrel Friend!
Bite Me?
Hiccup Runneth Over
I even like the little games they have at the beginning of the animation to make the download wait more bearable, even if I no longer have to wait!
"there is certainly not a requirement that the U.S. Supreme Court step in every time someone claims to have his/her fourth ammendment rights being violated."
I never said that there was. What I said was that the court has to at least consider the claims made in a case before granting or denying cert. You've said repeatedly that there's no federal issue, all I'm saying is that Proetto has claimed a federal issue, weak as it is. Should Proetto lose in the PASC, he could appeal to the USSC, and if his filings are in order, they have to at least look at his case before they deny cert. I'll further say that given a different case, the federal issue Proetto raises (are internet communications protected by 4th amend) would be a good one.
Ok, now I see where you're coming from anthony_dipierro.
Yes, there was no search and seizure. But Proetto is claiming that there was. In reality there is no federal issue, but in Proetto's case there is. Unfortunately, the court can't just presuppose that Proetto's claim is invalid, like you do. It has to at least consider the case before denying cert.
OK, we agree that there was no search and seizure, probably agree that there was no wiretap, and possibly agree that Proetto's case is full of crap. But you're presupposing that Proetto's argument is invalid. I'm just pointing out that he does raise a federal issue.
From the article, now that I've RTFA (BTW - what's up with your rules for using "RTFA"?):
At issue is whether Proetto's e-mail and instant messages to the girl should have been suppressed at trial. Proetto claims police violated the state's wiretapping law by looking at the messages without first obtaining a warrant. Proetto also claims his Fourth Amendment privacy rights were violated.
In other words, Proetto is making two seperate 4th amendment claims:
Wiretap without a warrent (potentially valid)
Infrigement of privacy (bogus)
But you say:
There doesn't seem to be a federal issue in the case...[and]...There is nothing in the article which points to a fourth ammendment issue.
Huh? What do you think "looking at the messages without first obtaining a warrant" is? Proetto is claiming that the state's capture of email and IM logs constitutes a wiretap. Wiretapping is restricted by the 4th Amendment (see Olmstead v. United States. Here's the Superior Court opinion for you. You might note that at the bottom of page three, Proetto tried to suppress evidence based on the 4th amendment (among other reasons.) Is Proetto right? Hell no. Is he making the claims anyway? You bet.
I don't see why this would go to the Supreme Court. There doesn't seem to be a federal issue in the case.
Well, the federal issue would be PA allowing a search and seizure (wiretap) without adequate 4th Amendment protections. You see, a state can restrict itself more than the Constitution specifies, but it can't override protections provided by the Constitution.
Note: I haven't RTFA, so I make no claims as to the strength of this freak's 4th amendment claims, I'm just pointing out the federal issue.
Boy, a grammar debate on/., never seen one of those before...
You've got a point, "which is why they have" might more clearly show the current status of the law than "there needs to be."
Except that I quoted Sloppy's original question, which asked "why" the current law existed as it did, not what the current law was. My phrasing implies a need for a different standard for corporations, your's just indicates that there's a difference (which Sloppy already knew.) Since the current status of the law wasn't at question, I phrased it as I did to stress the need for the law to exist as it does.
And there is [a seperate clock running for corporate copyright]. A work-for-hire (which is what a work created for a company is) has a duration of copyright that is 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
No offense by the subject line, it's just that Sloppy asked why there was a seperate clock running corporate copyright vs. personal copyright, and I explained why. Both Sloppy and I know about the corporate copyright duration.
But thanks for adding nothing to the conversation.;)
What if Congress grants copyright for one million years? Still limited, or is there a point where they cannot proceed to create a longer term because it's absurd?
I would maintain that a copyright of one million years, or even one billion years would be acceptable under the "limited time" phrase. It is certainly a long period of time, but it is certainly limited.
Actually, I would love to see Disney go after a copyright term that long. Maybe if the public saw a corporation trying to hijack their mythology for such an absurd amount of time, they would realize how damaging copyright extensions are to culture.
What is the justification for distinguishing between corporate copyrights and people's copyrights?
Well, the reason is that copyright is currently based off the author's lifetime. Since a corporation is essentially immortal, there needs to be a seperate clock running for corporate copyright.
I agree with you that copyright should last for a set amount of time, see here for a detailed analysis of that argument. It boils down to, why should Titus Andronicus get more protection in terms of years than The Tempest? A more modern example would be: why should my teen-angst poetry get longer copyright protection than the magnum opus I complete on my death bed in seventy years (hopefully)?
I go back and forth between what I think copyright should be, I imagine it must be much harder for those who actually make the decisions (well, it would be if they gave it any thought.) I find myself currently swayed by the argument that copyright should expire within the author's lifetime in order to give the author incentive to create more works. But I've also believed that an author should be able to prosper off of his work for the course of his life. Thoughout it all, however, I've firmly believed that copyright should never be a gravy train for the author's heirs (for example, I'd have Tolkien's work enter the public domain sometime between 1998-2013.) Children should stop living off of their parents, preferably sometime before the parents die, but you know how famous people are...
Why not have a two phase copyright system as follows:
phase 1: full monopoly on terms of distribution and reaping of profits....
phase 2: full credit for the creation must still be given...
How is that substantially different from now? So your terms of years are slightly different (can you say rearranging deck chairs?), but phase 2 is no change from now. It's not like people are running out and printing "Steven King's Origin of Species" or "John Grisham's Macbeth". Not giving full credit on PD works is plagiarism, not a copyright issue.
With some DVD's breaking $7 at Best Buy, they're going to have to go pretty far below that to entice customers. ("Why should I watch once for $4, when I can buy it for $7?") That means tiny margins and shaky business models, not as bad as the.coms that had negative margins, but still not very enticing for the investors either.
Yeah, yeah, that $7 is for the Cindy Crawford vehicle Fair Game, but maybe good DVD's will drop in price like that, and at least you didn't pay to see it in the theatre.
COMPUTE! used to publish tons of books that were ring bound and still managed to have colorful, meaningful spines. The cover went through the rings and around to both the front and back of the book, the pages were loose in the rings and the books lied perfectly flat for those coding sessions at my C-128. The rings had a significant gap between the top and bottom that allowed the title to show.
I don't know if their 5-6 rings at the top and bottom qualify as true "ring-bound" but their binding method was great. Long-lasting too, I still pull out COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventures every so often, have coded the BASIC program "Tower of Doom" from it several times, and it's still one of the best looking computer books on my shelf. My guess is that that binding is far too expensive for most publishers to consider.
I'm still using a Palm II, or Personal, or whatever they called it. I think it's still running OS 1. It's Good Enough, so why upgrade?
You know, if it wasn't for high-end databases, I could probably get away with still using GEOS 2.0 on my Commodore 128. Of course, then I wouldn't get to brag about my uber-Athlon, but maybe I could brag about being ultra-retro.
I think that it hasn't taken off for the same reason the Circuit City Divx DVD player failed - the phone line requirement.
Who has a phone jack in their living room, besides the one already taken up by a phone?
Preceived disadvantage of interupting the phone because of the DVR.
Psychological seperation between entertainment center and phone service.
Additionally, I think that subscription requirement adds to the preceived sticker shock ("Not only to I have to shell out $500 for this, I gotta also fork over how much per month?" The reason it's been as successful as it has been is the incredible convience it offers. Of course, I don't have one simply because my entertainment center is all full of other components.
Is it really a democracy when the governor of florida engineers the election of his brother by ordering state trooper roadblocks to turn away voters from the polls...
I have yet to see a single reputable source for this story. But to counter that, is it really a democracy when national news outlets claim that someone won the election in a state while the most conservative part of the state still had the polls open?
...and then justices appointed by his father run the clock out on the issue rather than having the balls to make a discision.
Have you ever actually read the decision? If you had, you'd see that the SC didn't "run out the clock," they actually protected the right for all votes to be treated equally. Gore only wanted the votes recounted in heavily Democratic area by whatever standard helped him the most, Bush wanted to just stop all the recounts because the clock had run out. The Justices, however, stopped a count that they found unconstitional because of the varying standards applied by ad-hoc counting teams who were being rushed to meet an improbably deadline. The Justices ordered that all ballots be treated as equally as possible. Had there been time (and if Gore had followed a different strategy, there would have been) there could have been a full recount that would have met the SC's requirements.
It's also worth noting that the CNN/MSNBC/Time/AOL/WSJ/XXX uber-report on the election results found that Bush won in most every case but for the most convoluted counting methods (something like count dimples but not hanging chads in four or five counties only.) I truly believe that in a hundred years Bush v. Gore will be hailed as a landmark case for the preservation of voting rights. The catcalls to contrary are sour grapes from people who don't see the big picture.
Certainly democracies have problems. It's not the perfect government model. So, when you find the perfect one, let me know. So far, democracy seems pretty good (yes, yes, I know we have republic not a democracy, but since that's what everyone calls it, I'll do the same.)
-sk
Re:Good training - wrong question
on
Think And Click
·
· Score: 1
I would ask why they even wasted their time training a monkey to *think* about moving a mouse. Just give him the mouse, and disconnect the damn thing.
That is the most completely perfect solution that I never would have even though of in a lifetime.
Slashdot Mirror
Until the NBA's lawyers get the Basketball Copyright Act passed, and dribbling becomes an "illegal copy the NBA's creative work."
"I'm sorry son, but you'll have to put that basketball away. What are you trying to do, be like Mike? Don't strike that pose!"
-sk
And, that is the $64,000 question. Will /.'s new ads end up being too distracting. If they're like this page, with the ad well sectioned off, I don't think they'll be a major problem. If they're like the ads you describe, well then /. will have violated the first rule of selling ads, Don't let your advertisers piss off your viewers enough to make them non-viewer. Of course, we haven't heard any details about the new ads, other than that they're coming, so who knows how annoying they'll be.
-sk
You do realize, of course, that /. is willing to give you that same information for free too. So you have to download an ad with that info, big whoop.
-sk
My only argument is that "content" is a neutral word that has been debased by marketdroids in the early days of the web who used it despairingly because they were too moronic to see what it represented. "Art" can mean statues, paintings, photos, theatre, performance art, music, etc... "Content" is a similar, useful abstraction when you're talking about the myrid of media that can grace a web site. "Content", as a word, is not inherently evil.
-sk
No, but it pays enough that $350 is the break point for them to consider dumping Windows (at least according to ESR.
-sk
So many get uppity when someone uses the word "content", but there is a reason people use it. Content is information. Content is ideas. Content is entertainment. Content is style. Content is can be just about anything, as long as it is something.
To say that the reason anyone goes to the web for information is wrong. Kids play on the web. IM/ICQers come for the community. Gamers come for the multiplayer games. Crackers come for the 31e73 challenge. Trolls come to /. for entertainment. How much of that can be narrowly constructed as "information?"
"Content" has been made a dirty word by marketing droids who were trying to save their ad-based revenue streams, but it is still a good word that lets you talk about paintings, music, movies, photos, style, communities, rants, raves, and yes, information in one simple word. In many respects, "content" is like "art", a generalization word that allows broad discussion without being cumbersome. Can you imagine the Metropolitan Museum of Art being renamed the Metropolitan Museum of Paintings, Photos, Statutes, Tapestries, Antiquities, Music, and Books?
That said, while people come and stay for the content, bad design can drive people away. I was looking for a site that had the rules for all kinds of games (sports, card, board, etc...) I found everyrule.com, which looked to be a good start. I even bookmarked it. But as I browsed the catagories, I found that with multiple pop-up, most links opening in new windows, and an inconsistent design (because it's really just a portal site), I deleted the bookmark and haven't been back since (except for now to check the URL.) Content, with a good interface makes for a good web design.
-sk
-sk
If you do a little digging and guessing with the filenames, you can actually download the full Flash animations. I'd be more specific, but I don't want to get anyone in trouble. I've got all but two downloaded right now.
- Termite I ask
- Lights, Camera, Traction
- Family Tree
- A Tail to Tell
- Timberwolf in Sheep's Clothing
- To Beaver or Not To Beaver?
- Oh! Christmas Tree
- Self Helplessness
- Call to Harms
- Tree for Two
- You Go, Squirrel Friend!
- Bite Me?
- Hiccup Runneth Over
I even like the little games they have at the beginning of the animation to make the download wait more bearable, even if I no longer have to wait!-sk
-sk
Yes, there was no search and seizure. But Proetto is claiming that there was. In reality there is no federal issue, but in Proetto's case there is. Unfortunately, the court can't just presuppose that Proetto's claim is invalid, like you do. It has to at least consider the case before denying cert.
-sk
From the article, now that I've RTFA (BTW - what's up with your rules for using "RTFA"?):
In other words, Proetto is making two seperate 4th amendment claims:- Wiretap without a warrent (potentially valid)
- Infrigement of privacy (bogus)
But you say: Huh? What do you think "looking at the messages without first obtaining a warrant" is? Proetto is claiming that the state's capture of email and IM logs constitutes a wiretap. Wiretapping is restricted by the 4th Amendment (see Olmstead v. United States. Here's the Superior Court opinion for you. You might note that at the bottom of page three, Proetto tried to suppress evidence based on the 4th amendment (among other reasons.) Is Proetto right? Hell no. Is he making the claims anyway? You bet.-sk
Note: I haven't RTFA, so I make no claims as to the strength of this freak's 4th amendment claims, I'm just pointing out the federal issue.
-sk
You've got a point, "which is why they have" might more clearly show the current status of the law than "there needs to be."
Except that I quoted Sloppy's original question, which asked "why" the current law existed as it did, not what the current law was. My phrasing implies a need for a different standard for corporations, your's just indicates that there's a difference (which Sloppy already knew.) Since the current status of the law wasn't at question, I phrased it as I did to stress the need for the law to exist as it does.
-sk
But thanks for adding nothing to the conversation. ;)
-sk
Actually, I would love to see Disney go after a copyright term that long. Maybe if the public saw a corporation trying to hijack their mythology for such an absurd amount of time, they would realize how damaging copyright extensions are to culture.
-sk
I agree with you that copyright should last for a set amount of time, see here for a detailed analysis of that argument. It boils down to, why should Titus Andronicus get more protection in terms of years than The Tempest? A more modern example would be: why should my teen-angst poetry get longer copyright protection than the magnum opus I complete on my death bed in seventy years (hopefully)?
I go back and forth between what I think copyright should be, I imagine it must be much harder for those who actually make the decisions (well, it would be if they gave it any thought.) I find myself currently swayed by the argument that copyright should expire within the author's lifetime in order to give the author incentive to create more works. But I've also believed that an author should be able to prosper off of his work for the course of his life. Thoughout it all, however, I've firmly believed that copyright should never be a gravy train for the author's heirs (for example, I'd have Tolkien's work enter the public domain sometime between 1998-2013.) Children should stop living off of their parents, preferably sometime before the parents die, but you know how famous people are...
-sk
Yeah, yeah, that $7 is for the Cindy Crawford vehicle Fair Game, but maybe good DVD's will drop in price like that, and at least you didn't pay to see it in the theatre.
-sk
I don't know if their 5-6 rings at the top and bottom qualify as true "ring-bound" but their binding method was great. Long-lasting too, I still pull out COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventures every so often, have coded the BASIC program "Tower of Doom" from it several times, and it's still one of the best looking computer books on my shelf. My guess is that that binding is far too expensive for most publishers to consider.
-sk
You know, if it wasn't for high-end databases, I could probably get away with still using GEOS 2.0 on my Commodore 128. Of course, then I wouldn't get to brag about my uber-Athlon, but maybe I could brag about being ultra-retro.
-sk
- Who has a phone jack in their living room, besides the one already taken up by a phone?
- Preceived disadvantage of interupting the phone because of the DVR.
- Psychological seperation between entertainment center and phone service.
Additionally, I think that subscription requirement adds to the preceived sticker shock ("Not only to I have to shell out $500 for this, I gotta also fork over how much per month?" The reason it's been as successful as it has been is the incredible convience it offers. Of course, I don't have one simply because my entertainment center is all full of other components.-sk
It's also worth noting that the CNN/MSNBC/Time/AOL/WSJ/XXX uber-report on the election results found that Bush won in most every case but for the most convoluted counting methods (something like count dimples but not hanging chads in four or five counties only.) I truly believe that in a hundred years Bush v. Gore will be hailed as a landmark case for the preservation of voting rights. The catcalls to contrary are sour grapes from people who don't see the big picture.
Certainly democracies have problems. It's not the perfect government model. So, when you find the perfect one, let me know. So far, democracy seems pretty good (yes, yes, I know we have republic not a democracy, but since that's what everyone calls it, I'll do the same.)
-sk
-sk