You live in Sweden, so you probably don't have a lot of people sticking a gun in your back and demanding you hand over your iPhone. You might not care what happens to the phone, but you'd probably prefer not to be beaten up for it. If it was common knowledge up front that *all* stolen phones are useless (not some dumb "opt in" system as you seem to describe) there would be a lot less incentive to commit armed robbery over it.
And honestly, most people stealing your phone really don't give a shit about your data, they just want to wipe it and sell it.
It's completely possible, the problem is neither the carriers nor the police have any interest in doing it.
It's not in the carrier's interest to spend a dime helping to track down your phone - after mine was stolen (and then used to call several local numbers that I could clearly see in my statement!) AT&T told me it would be a waste of my time to notify the police. Unless you live in Mayberry they are just going to take your report, ignore it, and if they are honest tell you flat out they just don't have the resources to track down cell phone thefts.
On the same carrier, maybe. But, for example, the iPhone 4s is a world phone (with CDMA and GSM), and if unlocked, etc. could be used on another company's network (in the US or another country). That's why any effective solution would need a database shared among all carriers, ideally globally so the stolen phones aren't just sent to Mexico, etc.
Agreed - there are a lot of needless and stupid laws out there, but this would not be one of them.
Another poster already made the analogy of cars and VINs - when a car is stolen it goes into the system and no DMV will renew registration and issue new plates for it. Pretty sure that was mandated by law. Imagine how much better it would work if it were instantly enforceable to the point of disabling the engine as soon as it was reported stolen (which is effectively what the carriers could do with technology they already have...)
I'd love to see an actual valid argument from a legislator NOT to do this, because I'm going to bet any objection they might have would really revolve around telecommunications lobbying...
I don't think there is any reason for the AC to start insulting people, jeez, it's just a silly discussion. But Zaentz owns "the worldwide film, stage, and merchandise rights", not the stories.
If Burger King had to pay to plaster the characters' faces all over its packaging, I don't see why it's any different for a pub putting their faces on their signs, walls, menus, etc. That's *merchandise rights*. Of course, a single pub is a lot smaller business, that's why it was $100 and not $1M.
In the end I wouldn't disagree that Zaentz is kind of a sleaze-ball. But legally, he clearly has standing...
I'm not proposing that we limit who can speculate. I'm proposing that we require speculators to take possession of the product they're trading.
In effect that's the same thing, of course. Most of the oil produced/traded/etc isn't really stored, it's all part of a continuous pipeline from drilling, transport, refining, and consumption. Not even the big oil companies/refineries could "take possession" of all the oil they trade in all at once. That was the point of the OP - with your restriction the entire market is then limited to the few players in the giant oil oligopoly who are a part of this pipeline.
Not that I necessarily disagree with you - but we sure as hell need better regulation if we replace the free market with a few large corporations, or it's going to be a lot worse than price increases from speculation...
I think the difference is between "futures" and "futures speculation".
Oil needs to be traded as a futures commodity just like the rest of them; that's not only how the producers raise capital to produce, as you say, it's how consumers (not end consumers, but the direct buyers) can ensure their supply and predict the price.
What we don't need is all of the speculators, who buy and sell the oil futures with no intent to ever take delivery, just to make a profit off of the fluctuations. As you said, the key is to ensure that the producers and the consumers can trade their future commodities without all of the traders just in there to speculate.
And no, traders most definitely couldn't just "hold on to it" - at some point they would have to take delivery, and I don't think there is enough room in their office at the investment bank to store 100,000 barrels of oil (though in reality it's not really stored in barrels any more of course, it's transported through pipelines, tankers, and stored in giant tanks...)
Honestly, what's wrong with that? Have you read the actual correspondence? No, me neither. For all we know it could have gone like this:
1. "Hey, we found some random British pub using a crap load of characters, stills, etc from our movies, we need to send them a legal letter telling them to stop or license our images". [if you don't believe this, GO TO THEIR SITE. Viggo Mortensen's face *still* features prominently] 2. "Oh, sounds like it's a college town pub that's been around for 20 years, why don't we just offer them a trivial licensing fee to keep everyone happy." 3. OMFG GIANT SCANDAL STORY GOT OUT AFTER FIRST LETTER IGNORING SECOND! EEEEVVVIIIILLLLLL!
If anyone had bothered to actually look up the details they were only asking for $100 to license the rights. As they also explained, they were legally obligated to license the copyrighted/trademarked material, since failure to pursue a known violation would allow anyone else to do the same. So they did the best thing they could, which is to preserve their IP and license the rights for a trivial fee.
$100 to use all of the likenesses and images from the movie to promote the pub? That sounds like a great deal to me. And as the OP said, it does sound like Fry doesn't know the real story, as ponying up $100 to pay for the license is just a PR stunt.
To quote the licensor:
Zaentz has said: “we’ve tried to be very gracious. We said in the letter [that was sent to Roberts], rather than engage in protracted and expensive litigation, we would prefer to resolve this matter amicably.
“We think asking for a nominal licensing fee is very reasonable. I think $100 would be about the maximum we would charge.”
He went on to say that if he is ever in the neighbourhood then he will stop by for a drink.
OH NO! HOW EVIL!
Besides, it's not American culture, it's a British novel and a British pub...
The AC commenter makes a good point - that's why a common statement you hear in the debate is "evolution is a theory and a fact" (more accurately it contains a bunch of facts).
A "law" is really more a statement of a specific predictable result given certain conditions. Evolution a a theory is so broad it's hard to find any absolute predicable outcomes based on set circumstances; but there are laws in biology used to help describe evolutionary processes, like Mendel's Laws, for example...
That's where that came from. I could quote from others but you are not worth debating any more; if you want to look them up go read a book. Or don't bother, I'm sure some random arrogant/. poster knows SO much more than the *real* scientists doing the research, lecturing, and writing the textbooks.
Honestly your definition is really no better than many of the others you have snidely tried to put down, and worse than some.
In the natural sciences, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts.
You clearly seem to disagree with that definition. Well, it wasn't the wording of some random atheist (I had to look up what the "ACA" even stood for; assuming you weren't talking about the American Cornhole Association) - it is a direct quote from an award winning biologist and educator with a lot more credibility than you will ever have. And it's trivially easy to find many others in academia who describe it the same way, as a tested and substantiated explanation, which is exactly what I said.
If a theory is thoroughly proven wrong, it's rejected, and is no longer relevant as a theory in a scientific sense, just a historical sense.
Well, besides the fact that your statement is incorrect (I'll assume you meant solar system!) - neither of those is really a theory in a scientific sense. They are facts, ie. observable phenomenon. A theory would be an explanation for the phenomenon, like "objects orbit the sun because of gravitational attraction" (which at a high level is the same theory of why the earth is round, of course).
I suppose in antiquity they may have been "theories" in the sense of "educated guesses", but not really in the sense of the scientific method. That's actually the problem - creationists want to define the term as an educated guess, whereas scientists define it as an explanation that has been supported by extensive facts and observations.
I think you should go look up the definition of "scientific law". Nowhere does it claim to be an absolute truth, in fact that's not even remotely what it means. If your professors seriously argued changing Newton's Laws to theories, they don't understand the terminology either.
In fact, a law is not even really on the same continuum as a theory - a theory is an explanation for a phenomenon, and a law is just a statement of results *in specific circumstances*. A scientific law can be disproved, sure, but it makes no sense to be "demoted"...
That misunderstanding is one of the primary weapons of the anti-science creationists who try to introduce doubt where none really exists by claiming that "evolution is just a theory". In science not *all things* are theories, but certainly all *explanations* are theories (in various levels of certainty).
The National Academy of Science has a nice statement summarizing this:
Why isn't evolution called a law? Laws are generalizations that describe phenomena, whereas theories explain phenomena. For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe what will happen under certain circumstances; thermodynamics theories explain why these events occur. Laws, like facts and theories, can change with better data. But theories do not develop into laws with the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the goal of science."
You must not have watched many Michael Bay movies.
If you had, you'd understand that they don't just affect those watching, but have ripple effects that have been slowly eroding the fabric of space/time as we know it.
Russia just said that because they knew the US would refuse it anyway. And it's not "EU trading partners", it's NATO. They are welcome to invade Sweden and Finland, but don't mess with Norway!
They have been major trading partners (including arms sales) with Iran, Syria, etc. for a long time, and have no worries about Iran firing missiles at them. It's all politics.
I think you can pretty much extend that to "a ____ lawyer has lobbied for more complicated ____ laws to increase the number of people hiring ____ lawyers" and still have a factual statement.
I agree that they shouldn't just "be forgiven" and the whole thing ignored now that they backed down (and of course they said the boycott was not a reason - yeah, right, bullshit). But it's clearly relevant to AN UPDATE ON THE BOYCOTT and it clearly has a point given the boycott definitely influenced them in withdrawing support for a horrible law. How many more changes can be brought about if researchers continue to stand up to these monopolistic publishers?
Pretending it's an irrelevant and pointless detail is exactly what Elsevier *wants* you to think.
Slashdot Mirror
You live in Sweden, so you probably don't have a lot of people sticking a gun in your back and demanding you hand over your iPhone. You might not care what happens to the phone, but you'd probably prefer not to be beaten up for it. If it was common knowledge up front that *all* stolen phones are useless (not some dumb "opt in" system as you seem to describe) there would be a lot less incentive to commit armed robbery over it.
And honestly, most people stealing your phone really don't give a shit about your data, they just want to wipe it and sell it.
It's completely possible, the problem is neither the carriers nor the police have any interest in doing it.
It's not in the carrier's interest to spend a dime helping to track down your phone - after mine was stolen (and then used to call several local numbers that I could clearly see in my statement!) AT&T told me it would be a waste of my time to notify the police. Unless you live in Mayberry they are just going to take your report, ignore it, and if they are honest tell you flat out they just don't have the resources to track down cell phone thefts.
On the same carrier, maybe. But, for example, the iPhone 4s is a world phone (with CDMA and GSM), and if unlocked, etc. could be used on another company's network (in the US or another country). That's why any effective solution would need a database shared among all carriers, ideally globally so the stolen phones aren't just sent to Mexico, etc.
Agreed - there are a lot of needless and stupid laws out there, but this would not be one of them.
Another poster already made the analogy of cars and VINs - when a car is stolen it goes into the system and no DMV will renew registration and issue new plates for it. Pretty sure that was mandated by law. Imagine how much better it would work if it were instantly enforceable to the point of disabling the engine as soon as it was reported stolen (which is effectively what the carriers could do with technology they already have...)
I'd love to see an actual valid argument from a legislator NOT to do this, because I'm going to bet any objection they might have would really revolve around telecommunications lobbying...
I don't think there is any reason for the AC to start insulting people, jeez, it's just a silly discussion. But Zaentz owns "the worldwide film, stage, and merchandise rights", not the stories.
If Burger King had to pay to plaster the characters' faces all over its packaging, I don't see why it's any different for a pub putting their faces on their signs, walls, menus, etc. That's *merchandise rights*. Of course, a single pub is a lot smaller business, that's why it was $100 and not $1M.
In the end I wouldn't disagree that Zaentz is kind of a sleaze-ball. But legally, he clearly has standing...
I'm not proposing that we limit who can speculate. I'm proposing that we require speculators to take possession of the product they're trading.
In effect that's the same thing, of course. Most of the oil produced/traded/etc isn't really stored, it's all part of a continuous pipeline from drilling, transport, refining, and consumption. Not even the big oil companies/refineries could "take possession" of all the oil they trade in all at once. That was the point of the OP - with your restriction the entire market is then limited to the few players in the giant oil oligopoly who are a part of this pipeline.
Not that I necessarily disagree with you - but we sure as hell need better regulation if we replace the free market with a few large corporations, or it's going to be a lot worse than price increases from speculation...
I think the difference is between "futures" and "futures speculation".
Oil needs to be traded as a futures commodity just like the rest of them; that's not only how the producers raise capital to produce, as you say, it's how consumers (not end consumers, but the direct buyers) can ensure their supply and predict the price.
What we don't need is all of the speculators, who buy and sell the oil futures with no intent to ever take delivery, just to make a profit off of the fluctuations. As you said, the key is to ensure that the producers and the consumers can trade their future commodities without all of the traders just in there to speculate.
And no, traders most definitely couldn't just "hold on to it" - at some point they would have to take delivery, and I don't think there is enough room in their office at the investment bank to store 100,000 barrels of oil (though in reality it's not really stored in barrels any more of course, it's transported through pipelines, tankers, and stored in giant tanks...)
Honestly, what's wrong with that? Have you read the actual correspondence? No, me neither. For all we know it could have gone like this:
1. "Hey, we found some random British pub using a crap load of characters, stills, etc from our movies, we need to send them a legal letter telling them to stop or license our images". [if you don't believe this, GO TO THEIR SITE. Viggo Mortensen's face *still* features prominently]
2. "Oh, sounds like it's a college town pub that's been around for 20 years, why don't we just offer them a trivial licensing fee to keep everyone happy."
3. OMFG GIANT SCANDAL STORY GOT OUT AFTER FIRST LETTER IGNORING SECOND! EEEEVVVIIIILLLLLL!
If anyone had bothered to actually look up the details they were only asking for $100 to license the rights. As they also explained, they were legally obligated to license the copyrighted/trademarked material, since failure to pursue a known violation would allow anyone else to do the same. So they did the best thing they could, which is to preserve their IP and license the rights for a trivial fee.
$100 to use all of the likenesses and images from the movie to promote the pub? That sounds like a great deal to me. And as the OP said, it does sound like Fry doesn't know the real story, as ponying up $100 to pay for the license is just a PR stunt.
To quote the licensor:
Zaentz has said: “we’ve tried to be very gracious. We said in the letter [that was sent to Roberts], rather than engage in protracted and expensive litigation, we would prefer to resolve this matter amicably.
“We think asking for a nominal licensing fee is very reasonable. I think $100 would be about the maximum we would charge.”
He went on to say that if he is ever in the neighbourhood then he will stop by for a drink.
OH NO! HOW EVIL!
Besides, it's not American culture, it's a British novel and a British pub...
The vast majority of Slashdot readers probably thought is was both funny and a much better answer to your (cave?) troll than was deserved.
If you can't see the point or the humor the problem may not be whether the post belongs on Slashdot, but whether you do...
Interesting and insightful, really? Mods obviously don't RTFA any more than any one else here.
Though I would have modded it funny, maybe. Especially if you picture someone rubbing the trees with a gigantic balloon...
The AC commenter makes a good point - that's why a common statement you hear in the debate is "evolution is a theory and a fact" (more accurately it contains a bunch of facts).
A "law" is really more a statement of a specific predictable result given certain conditions. Evolution a a theory is so broad it's hard to find any absolute predicable outcomes based on set circumstances; but there are laws in biology used to help describe evolutionary processes, like Mendel's Laws, for example...
Go read a book.
That's where that came from. I could quote from others but you are not worth debating any more; if you want to look them up go read a book. Or don't bother, I'm sure some random arrogant /. poster knows SO much more than the *real* scientists doing the research, lecturing, and writing the textbooks.
Honestly your definition is really no better than many of the others you have snidely tried to put down, and worse than some.
In the natural sciences, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts.
You clearly seem to disagree with that definition. Well, it wasn't the wording of some random atheist (I had to look up what the "ACA" even stood for; assuming you weren't talking about the American Cornhole Association) - it is a direct quote from an award winning biologist and educator with a lot more credibility than you will ever have. And it's trivially easy to find many others in academia who describe it the same way, as a tested and substantiated explanation, which is exactly what I said.
If a theory is thoroughly proven wrong, it's rejected, and is no longer relevant as a theory in a scientific sense, just a historical sense.
I thought it was with zombie-eating gorillas that will just freeze to death when winter rolls around.
Well, besides the fact that your statement is incorrect (I'll assume you meant solar system!) - neither of those is really a theory in a scientific sense. They are facts, ie. observable phenomenon. A theory would be an explanation for the phenomenon, like "objects orbit the sun because of gravitational attraction" (which at a high level is the same theory of why the earth is round, of course).
I suppose in antiquity they may have been "theories" in the sense of "educated guesses", but not really in the sense of the scientific method. That's actually the problem - creationists want to define the term as an educated guess, whereas scientists define it as an explanation that has been supported by extensive facts and observations.
I think you should go look up the definition of "scientific law". Nowhere does it claim to be an absolute truth, in fact that's not even remotely what it means. If your professors seriously argued changing Newton's Laws to theories, they don't understand the terminology either.
In fact, a law is not even really on the same continuum as a theory - a theory is an explanation for a phenomenon, and a law is just a statement of results *in specific circumstances*. A scientific law can be disproved, sure, but it makes no sense to be "demoted"...
That misunderstanding is one of the primary weapons of the anti-science creationists who try to introduce doubt where none really exists by claiming that "evolution is just a theory". In science not *all things* are theories, but certainly all *explanations* are theories (in various levels of certainty).
The National Academy of Science has a nice statement summarizing this:
Why isn't evolution called a law?
Laws are generalizations that describe phenomena, whereas theories explain phenomena. For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe what will happen under certain circumstances; thermodynamics theories explain why these events occur. Laws, like facts and theories, can change with better data. But theories do not develop into laws with the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the goal of science."
You must not have watched many Michael Bay movies.
If you had, you'd understand that they don't just affect those watching, but have ripple effects that have been slowly eroding the fabric of space/time as we know it.
I dare you to Google "potato law".
Russia just said that because they knew the US would refuse it anyway. And it's not "EU trading partners", it's NATO. They are welcome to invade Sweden and Finland, but don't mess with Norway!
They have been major trading partners (including arms sales) with Iran, Syria, etc. for a long time, and have no worries about Iran firing missiles at them. It's all politics.
I think you can pretty much extend that to "a ____ lawyer has lobbied for more complicated ____ laws to increase the number of people hiring ____ lawyers" and still have a factual statement.
Well, at least the world won't have to worry about your genes propagating....
Exactly! Same reason you should wait to buy your next car... flying cars are just around the corner, until then, you can take the bus.
Well, at least the world won't have to worry about your genes propagating...
I agree that they shouldn't just "be forgiven" and the whole thing ignored now that they backed down (and of course they said the boycott was not a reason - yeah, right, bullshit). But it's clearly relevant to AN UPDATE ON THE BOYCOTT and it clearly has a point given the boycott definitely influenced them in withdrawing support for a horrible law. How many more changes can be brought about if researchers continue to stand up to these monopolistic publishers?
Pretending it's an irrelevant and pointless detail is exactly what Elsevier *wants* you to think.