I'll go a step further and say that 50 years is too long. Card says in the article that prior to 1978 artists would loose the copyright while still depending on it for income, and suggested this was unfair. It was the only major point of disagreement I had with that article.
How is it unfair to loose a source of income that was created 50 years ago? What other profession has this option? Artists make great contributions to society, but surely no more than inventors. Hell, a dedicated group of programmers could write something groundbreaking and massively popular, and it would be obsolete without further work in a couple years.
Bear with me for a second. Why is "hacking" an piece of hardware I own bad? I know they sell it as a loss leader, but how much moral justification can they really get from that?
I've always heard he stopped writing it because it was no longer fun for him, and he didn't want the latter days of C&H to be comparable to the latter days of, say, Garfield (which lost its status as my favorite cartoon long ago) or Peanuts.
Good for him, if it's true. I think he stopped exactly when he should have. Good for him, also, for not trying to pull a Disney with merchandise.
Just 360 ? less than 2 per cent ? of BSD Unix servers were successfully breached in August.
Is that supposed to be 2 per cent of cracked servers are BSD? Or two percent of BSD servers were cracked?
If they know the how many servers are running BSD/*nix/MS/OS2 why don't they report on the percentage of linux servers that were cracked? That would seem to be more useful in evaluating the security of different server OS's.
One day, in an imaginary world, less than 50% of people will attempt to discuss something by immediately comparing it to something totally unrelated. In this imaginary utopian world, 50-reply threads will not be created as people hammer out exactly how something is like and unlike something else, instead devoting their time to understanding and discussing concepts using arguments that stand on their own.
Analogies can be useful in explaining abstract concepts, but I'm rather tired of seeing them used to compare $crime_1 to $crime_2. We don't need to liken stealing to murder to outlaw it; we don't need to liken speeding to something in the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi's Code of Laws to argue it should be illegal. Comments about what should and should not be illegal are much weaker for using analogies.
She burned herself because she placed the coffee between her legs, took the top off and proceeded to stir in sugar. Other details were left out because the media were suddenly stricken with the sort of hysterical laughter that comes from reading Darwin Awards.
On the official forums, they not only have control, but the ability to respond to negative threads with hundreds of replies. I never played EQ, so I have no prior experience with SOE, but so far I'm not impressed with their customer service.
Funny, I do have an ID card in my pocket-four, in fact, not including credit cards and a health insurance card. They don't influence my internet activity, as far as I can tell. I'm not sure where I stated they would.
I don't consider ID cards a threat; I do consider TIA a threat, as well as an example of how unimportant privacy in the eyes of our government, or at least certain members of it. Slashdot login aside, am I still being paranoid?
If you want to talk about specific policies or events, ask and I'll tell you how I feel. Don't just assume that one slashdot posting arguing privacy is important means I believe X about Y.
I consider myself a privacy advocate because I consider a high degree of privacy necessary for a free society. The reasons are too complex for me to convey clearly, especially in a slashdot post, but consider that people behave differently when they know they are observed. Would I be posting to/. if I had a camera behind me?
All "basic human rights" fall under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So while privacy may not be itself such a right, I don't feel I can act freely when my actions are monitored.
I bet 57M Americans speed. Imagine, if you will, an attempt to crack down on speeding by imposing fines in excess of the average middle class yearly salary.
The law is not some holy document handed down to us by a perfect being. We create the laws (indirectly, of course). A free country cannot enforce a law broken habitually by 57M people while still remaining free.
I'd have trouble picking ten, but I haven't read anything by Asimov that I found anywhere near as horribly depressing as Orwell. The Foundation Triology certainly wasn't. Dune, allusions to the Butlerian War aside, is a superb version of the "one man takes on an evil empire" archetype, not a bleak attempt to forecast our future.
As for the examples I picked being old: they are considered revolutionary because of what they predicted/imagined decades ago. Mainstream SF has become more influenced by those works not because of talentless hacks trying to capitalize on them (although there surely are those), but because more and more people are starting to believe those classic works might be right.
Sci-Fi and fantasy have always had one thing in common: they rely heavily on escapism. As long as both consisted of pleasant fantasies, like cruising freely among the stars or roaming a countryside with your merry companions, all was well. But now we no longer envision cruising through space freely in our (or our children's) future, instead imagining bleak 1984/Farenheit451/Brave New World style futures.
Sci-Fi is no longer escapist, it's cautionary. And I get enough of that from reading/.:)
Just because you decide to call "the right of title" ownership does not mean you automatically grant traditional property rights to the song.
Traditional property rights cover physical, tangible things that are lost forever is taken. Copyright laws cover intellectual property. I am not saying people that 'share' such intellectual property are not breaking the law; they are, of course. However, copyright and property law are different, and apply to different things. I think we can understand copyright law and violation without resorting to bad legal analogies.
It isn't the rightness or wrongness of the actions of those being sued that most/.ers take issue with. The fines these people will face are grossly disproportionate to their crime; so great, in fact, that I would be very surprised if even one of these cases went to trial, which is traditionally where we decide which laws, if any, someone violated.
No, they have the right to distribute the songs, thus their copyright. It is that right to being the sole distributor that is being infringed. Copyright infringement is infringement a well defined set of rights, and those rights do not include traditional property rights. Ergo, not stealing.
I just checked the link in the post. The site is not even close to being slashdotted. Posting the text here is great when it's the only way to read the story, but if you can click the link and give the site a couple pennies, do so.
Third, the major demographic to be interested in reality TV is that of the female sex.
This is true. However, your original post in this thread (" Women don't care about much other than reality-TV") implies most women are interested in, even only interested in Reality TV.
X is liked mostly by elements in Y does not imply most of Y likes X. Which is why Urox called your comment uninformed, though I'd choose illogical and over generalized myself.
Wouldn't seeing the movie send the message to Fox (who, as others have mentioned, was responsible for cancelling the show and has no part in making the movie) that they lost a big time fan base, and therefore revenue stream, when they cancelled the show? I think it would send the message loudly and clearly that people want this sort of stuff.
If they are not going to make a multi-year commitment, why should I?
How is watching a TV show a multi-year commitment? I know how easy it is to get sucked in, but you have to recognize that if very few people end up enjoying the show as you do, or a writer/director/producer quits because they don't want to work on it anymore, the show might die.
Last time I bought a CD at a B&M (oh so long ago, and it was actually at Target) it was $16.99. The general trend I noticed was that new CDs would sell for $12-14, while CDs that came out a few months ago would (all) be $16.99.
The "story" about CD prices is that 1)the RIAA has been convicted of price fixing and 2)Pop music generally has one or two songs with 35 minutes of filler crap. Mix those two things with the percentage of that $16.99 that goes to (RIAA, not artist) profit and people get pissed.
That being said, I whole heartedly agree with the subject and first line of your post:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'll go a step further and say that 50 years is too long. Card says in the article that prior to 1978 artists would loose the copyright while still depending on it for income, and suggested this was unfair. It was the only major point of disagreement I had with that article.
How is it unfair to loose a source of income that was created 50 years ago? What other profession has this option? Artists make great contributions to society, but surely no more than inventors. Hell, a dedicated group of programmers could write something groundbreaking and massively popular, and it would be obsolete without further work in a couple years.
I see no reason why 15-20 years is not ample.
But our good friend Sen. Hatch didn't. His evil-ness has been confirmed once again. As has Santorum's.
A name that actually surprised me was McCain voting no....
Bear with me for a second. Why is "hacking" an piece of hardware I own bad? I know they sell it as a loss leader, but how much moral justification can they really get from that?
I've always heard he stopped writing it because it was no longer fun for him, and he didn't want the latter days of C&H to be comparable to the latter days of, say, Garfield (which lost its status as my favorite cartoon long ago) or Peanuts.
Good for him, if it's true. I think he stopped exactly when he should have. Good for him, also, for not trying to pull a Disney with merchandise.
Then how did Sen. Al Gore invent the internet?
... of Darwinism at work.
If they know the how many servers are running BSD/*nix/MS/OS2 why don't they report on the percentage of linux servers that were cracked? That would seem to be more useful in evaluating the security of different server OS's.
One day, in an imaginary world, less than 50% of people will attempt to discuss something by immediately comparing it to something totally unrelated. In this imaginary utopian world, 50-reply threads will not be created as people hammer out exactly how something is like and unlike something else, instead devoting their time to understanding and discussing concepts using arguments that stand on their own.
Analogies can be useful in explaining abstract concepts, but I'm rather tired of seeing them used to compare $crime_1 to $crime_2. We don't need to liken stealing to murder to outlaw it; we don't need to liken speeding to something in the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi's Code of Laws to argue it should be illegal. Comments about what should and should not be illegal are much weaker for using analogies.
The coffee in the McDonald's case was kept between 185-195 degrees Farenheit; that is well below the boiling point of water.
She burned herself because she placed the coffee between her legs, took the top off and proceeded to stir in sugar. Other details were left out because the media were suddenly stricken with the sort of hysterical laughter that comes from reading Darwin Awards.
On the official forums, they not only have control, but the ability to respond to negative threads with hundreds of replies. I never played EQ, so I have no prior experience with SOE, but so far I'm not impressed with their customer service.
Funny, I do have an ID card in my pocket-four, in fact, not including credit cards and a health insurance card. They don't influence my internet activity, as far as I can tell. I'm not sure where I stated they would.
I don't consider ID cards a threat; I do consider TIA a threat, as well as an example of how unimportant privacy in the eyes of our government, or at least certain members of it. Slashdot login aside, am I still being paranoid?
If you want to talk about specific policies or events, ask and I'll tell you how I feel. Don't just assume that one slashdot posting arguing privacy is important means I believe X about Y.
I consider myself a privacy advocate because I consider a high degree of privacy necessary for a free society. The reasons are too complex for me to convey clearly, especially in a slashdot post, but consider that people behave differently when they know they are observed. Would I be posting to /. if I had a camera behind me?
All "basic human rights" fall under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So while privacy may not be itself such a right, I don't feel I can act freely when my actions are monitored.
I bet 57M Americans speed. Imagine, if you will, an attempt to crack down on speeding by imposing fines in excess of the average middle class yearly salary.
The law is not some holy document handed down to us by a perfect being. We create the laws (indirectly, of course). A free country cannot enforce a law broken habitually by 57M people while still remaining free.
I'd have trouble picking ten, but I haven't read anything by Asimov that I found anywhere near as horribly depressing as Orwell. The Foundation Triology certainly wasn't. Dune, allusions to the Butlerian War aside, is a superb version of the "one man takes on an evil empire" archetype, not a bleak attempt to forecast our future.
As for the examples I picked being old: they are considered revolutionary because of what they predicted/imagined decades ago. Mainstream SF has become more influenced by those works not because of talentless hacks trying to capitalize on them (although there surely are those), but because more and more people are starting to believe those classic works might be right.
Sci-Fi and fantasy have always had one thing in common: they rely heavily on escapism. As long as both consisted of pleasant fantasies, like cruising freely among the stars or roaming a countryside with your merry companions, all was well. But now we no longer envision cruising through space freely in our (or our children's) future, instead imagining bleak 1984/Farenheit451/Brave New World style futures.
/. :)
Sci-Fi is no longer escapist, it's cautionary. And I get enough of that from reading
Just because you decide to call "the right of title" ownership does not mean you automatically grant traditional property rights to the song.
Traditional property rights cover physical, tangible things that are lost forever is taken. Copyright laws cover intellectual property. I am not saying people that 'share' such intellectual property are not breaking the law; they are, of course. However, copyright and property law are different, and apply to different things. I think we can understand copyright law and violation without resorting to bad legal analogies.
It isn't the rightness or wrongness of the actions of those being sued that most /.ers take issue with. The fines these people will face are grossly disproportionate to their crime; so great, in fact, that I would be very surprised if even one of these cases went to trial, which is traditionally where we decide which laws, if any, someone violated.
I just checked the link in the post. The site is not even close to being slashdotted. Posting the text here is great when it's the only way to read the story, but if you can click the link and give the site a couple pennies, do so.
I'll meta moderate just a diligently, and I'll slap a funny rating on it. Big surprise, not everyone agrees on what is funny.
X is liked mostly by elements in Y does not imply most of Y likes X. Which is why Urox called your comment uninformed, though I'd choose illogical and over generalized myself.
It would figure we like the MPAA on Thursdays. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
Last time I bought a CD at a B&M (oh so long ago, and it was actually at Target) it was $16.99. The general trend I noticed was that new CDs would sell for $12-14, while CDs that came out a few months ago would (all) be $16.99.
:)
The "story" about CD prices is that 1)the RIAA has been convicted of price fixing and 2)Pop music generally has one or two songs with 35 minutes of filler crap. Mix those two things with the percentage of that $16.99 that goes to (RIAA, not artist) profit and people get pissed.
That being said, I whole heartedly agree with the subject and first line of your post