The current copyright term gives 99.8% of the return of a perpetual right, that is not in line with the mindset or the writings of the framers of the Constitution.
(Re)Read Breyer's opinion.
I also believe Ginsburg wholly misconstrued the 1st Amendment arguement. Read the Amicus brief filed by Burt Neuborne and the Con. Law professor. It reads like a text book on First Amendment jurisprudence. Almost every major decision in the history of Supreme Court First Amendment cases is shown to support a reversal of the Appeals Court's decision that "Copyrights are categorically immune from challenges under the First Amendment."
I stand in a sort of perverse awe, trying to grasp the 'reasoning' of Justice Ginsburg's opinion...utterly perplexed as to how six other justices signed their names to it when they had the exact text of how the ruling should have come down by Justice Breyer's hand.
I want there to be some good that comes out of Eldred, but right now I'm very disillusioned. So, I'm following Lessig's advice and turning to blogging. Let your opinions be known.
I'm actually more interested in the possibility of redesigning the functionality of the forward button.
In the current implementations, the forward button loses it's registry once you go back/up and then click a link. It's kind of like creating a new time line in your browser...you lose all the pages you had been to in the previous line...before you went back. Why should it be that way?
Does anyone remember the code to activate Dog Mode?
I only vaguely remember running around in ROTT with a dog sniffer in front of me instead of a gun. I believe it would facilitate getting under/to areas you couldn't access otherwise, as well.
The creator of ScavHunt, who still works at the U of C hospitals, does make several appearances in the film.
Also, at this year's event there were a total of almost 10 past head judges and head judges emeritus. Footage of them reminiscing is about as close to a 'History of ScavHunt' text as we're going to get.
I would never slander F.I.S.T. I know you guys did an amazing job, and made for terrific film subjects at the same time. I was just saying that the team that won must have spent atleast 2 grand.
Actually, you both have it wrong. That item was a roadtrip item. It was Greek Town (yes, a predominantly Greek neighborhood) in Detroit, MI that the item was referencing. That is why the particular sayings on the jersey were about the Red Wings player.
On Campus; It's that season at Chicago, and Ph.D.'s have taken a back seat to a degree of silliness. By Andrew Bluth
''People think of the University of Chicago and they think the students are weird,'' says Tom Howe, a junior from Atlanta. Having taken off his chicken suit, he is wearing a cardboard crown from a Burger King Kid's Meal. ''We want to show that intellectual doesn't necessarily mean stuffy.''
It is this philosophy -- that Chicago students can have fun if they really put their minds to it -- that gave birth to the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, a yearly celebration of looniness at a campus far better known for its Nobel laureates.
Putting aside term papers for a long weekend, hundreds of undergraduates in teams representing dormitories and student organizations range around the campus -- and, this year, the North American continent -- in search of items that will never be found in a course catalogue. The grand prize is $500, but the goal, says Mr. Howe, is loftier: ''to make the participants maximize their intellectual creativity.''
These were among the 339 items on the list for this year's scavenger hunt, released at the stroke of midnight on May 6:
No. 123: A computer suffering a year 2000 problem.
No. 262: Five Mensa membership cards.
No. 167: A 15-foot-tall monument to Grimace, the McDonald's Happy Meal character.
No. 40: A tenured professor willing to recite profane lyrics from a gangsta rap song.
Each team works from an identical list; items are assigned points, based on difficulty, and the team with the most points by Sunday afternoon is the winner. The wording of certain clues often suggests a trip to a far-flung destination -- having a team member photographed with an Ontario police officer, for instance.
Teams are often elaborately organized, with ''page masters'' assigned to each page of the list and at least one person operating a computer long after midnight in search of Web sites that will lead the team to cubic zirconia (20 points) or Chicago Bulls season tickets (15 points) or an autographed photograph of the Food Network star Jacqui Malouf (30 points).
''One of the items on the list was the 'street value of Mount Everest,' '' said Sam Hunt, a freshman competing for his dorm, Shoreland Hall. ''So we posted it on Ebay, and made it look pretty, with a nice picture of the mountain and everything. The bidding got up to $180 before we got kicked off the site.''
The Shoreland team is run out of sixth-floor dormitory room of its captain, Ryan Miller. By the end of the weekend, Thai food containers litter the floor and at least three trash cans are overflowing with empty soda cans. The members have slept little if at all, and the room is a nest of cables that wire no fewer than six personal computers.
When the phone rings, it is answered with a curt ''Command central'' and calls are kept short so that the line can be free for a check-in from the road-trip group, probably somewhere in Canada.
''From what we can gather, the road-trip team is doing really well,'' Mr. Miller says. ''Except last time they checked in, they sounded drunk.''
Other items on this year's list included building a nuclear reactor from scratch (one team was actually successful -- this is the University of Chicago, after all), an edible iMac computer and a ticket to a local theater for a certain movie opening May 19. (To these students, the date needs no further explanation.)
No one is really sure how or when the scavenger hunt began, but they do know it is a welcome break from economics exams and Shakespeare papers -- a way to demonstrate, in Mr. Howe's words, that ''we actually can have fun on this campus.''
And how do you say fun on a college campus better than a keg toss? As part of the Scavolympics, a string of a dozen events before the final judging that teams compete for points in, all 13 teams came together to recreate a battle of the Civil War, to demonstrate a fight between Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, and, yes, to toss a keg.
Competing for his dorm, Hitchcock-Snell, 23-year-old Niyi Omojola, after minutes earlier winning the competition that called for contestants to eat an entire bottle of squeeze cheese, won the keg toss. While others had grabbed the kegs with two hands, taken a few steps and heaved, he held it with one hand, arm extended, and spun around like a discus thrower, propelling the keg beyond the other teams' markers.
''I was trying to get some torque,'' said Mr. Omojola, a junior. ''If you can direct that torque in a straight line, you can throw it pretty far. People were trying to muscle it, and that's not going to work.''
And if you can't say fun at the U. of C., with a little torque and a keg toss, certainly you can with a nuclear reactor.
Two physics majors, Justin Kasper and Fred Niell, gathered up some spare junk from their physics labs and dorm rooms and built a plutonium-producing reactor.
''It's kind of scary how easy it was to do,'' said Mr. Niell, assuring onlookers that there was only a trace of plutonium -- nothing harmful. ''It only took us about a day to build it. We've been thinking about it for a few days and we gathered the parts, and last night we assembled it. In Justin's room -- he lost the coin toss.''
To the best of my recollection, the reactor used fisile material to create radioactive isotopes which could be used for medical purposes. Thus, in a loose sense of the term, it was a breeder reactor.
Yes, the nuclear breeder reactor was working before the judges made the team disassemble it. It was built on the steps of one of the University's main classroom buildings by the members of 'Matthews House' team in the Spring '99.
The people involved were physics majors, working in jobs with access to nuclear material.
It's a negligable amount. About $500 for first place, which is at most 1/5th of the teams funds spent on the competition.
I was involved in the making of the Periphrastic film 'The Hunt' as a camera man and assistant. I must say it was the most fun I've had outside competition in the Hunt itself.
It seems your suggestion would be an even greater burden on individuals...requiring a specific group to register in a specific manner, and it would be less effective as well.
In this new system the government does not force anyone to register a certain way. All they are doing is telling parents that.kids.us domains have been proven to be 'kid friendly'. So, if you want to be an overprotective parent, don't allow them outside that scope.
If, however, they instead made all pr0n sites use.xxx, then there is still a myriad of things that are not 'kid friendly' out there for kids to wander into. And, telling parents to keep their kids away from.xxx sites accomplishes much less.
"The study offers fresh evidence that the Internet may be proving easier to control than older forms of communication like telephones, facsimile machines or even letters."
The product at Fry's comes with support and documentation that is otherwise not included. It may be a highprice to pay for information which is otherwise available all over the net, but for some it is simply a matter of convenience.
It sounds to me like you just want everyone else to accept your priorities. Funny though, they haven't landed you in a very tenable position, so I'd think they'd be some of the last for society to adopt as a whole.
Some people need a helping hand, but the epidemic is not at such a level as to begin to decry any spending which does not have immediate and obvious charitable effects (the net effect of your initial post). Even accepting your ethos, you're forgetting that there are hundreds of people who will be losing their jobs if Farscape is canceled. Not just overpaid actors, but average Joe set builders &c.
Your worldview is too narrow. I don't think your initial post was well thought out. If you still hold by the tenets put forth there, then I don't think I have the power or desire to continue to show the error of your ways.
Chuckle. Just to clarify, I'm not an Objectivist, I just think that AS is an excellent critique of the sort of thinking that the original poster appears to be espousing.
When people are rewarded based solely on need the motivation to produce/thrive becomes non-existant. The only competition is to prove who is worst off, fighting to be on the bottom rung, not to be left out of the handouts. Society stagnates as people have no reason to progress.
Everyone has priorities. Your logic is headed down a very slippery, liberal slope.
Before you suggest that we have a responsibility to donate to the lowest/needest rung, think for a second on what a race to the bottom looks like. If you're having trouble, read Atlas Shrugged.
They leave hope that 'Firefly' may be moved to the Monday 9/8c timeslot at a later date. Hiatus doesn't always mean a show is canceled. 'Andy Richter Controls the Universe' is coming back soon after an extended break, for which I am thankful.
American Library Association v. United States (01-CV-1322) is the latest case to challenge mandatory internet filters at public libraries. The Library Association brief in a lower court case can be found here. The Pennsylvania court recognized the proper weight of the First Amendment issues in the case, finding that the CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) infringed on protected speech. The government appealed and the Supreme Court granted certiorari. Arguments are expected to take place this winter or early spring.
I've been suggesting anyone who wants a real understanding of the issues of this case to turn to eldred.cc and lessig.org because until I read this article I'd yet to see a member of the mainstream press comprehend the actual argument for reversal.
Disney's trademark of the character Mickey Mouse will never expire, but the copyrights to creative works in which he is depicted most certainly should. The framers of the Constitution understood creative works to be both an input and output of the creative process, and that copyrights should only be granted for the purpose of contributing to the progress of the arts and sciences. Why should no one be allowed to do to Disney what they continue to do to authors such as Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Planet?!)? This case is not about the length of time, as many misrepresent it. The petitioners agree that Congress has the right to set any length of time for copyright (save infinity), but the question is whether they can retroactively apply extensions (Walt isn't going to create more cartoons cause his copyrights suddenly got a few more years tacked on, so how does such legislation fit the purpose of promotion, which the clause explicitly outlines?), and whether that sort of legislation should be subject to appropriate intermediate first amendment analysis (which the lower courts refused to even consider).
Slashdot Mirror
The current copyright term gives 99.8% of the return of a perpetual right, that is not in line with the mindset or the writings of the framers of the Constitution.
(Re)Read Breyer's opinion.
I also believe Ginsburg wholly misconstrued the 1st Amendment arguement. Read the Amicus brief filed by Burt Neuborne and the Con. Law professor. It reads like a text book on First Amendment jurisprudence. Almost every major decision in the history of Supreme Court First Amendment cases is shown to support a reversal of the Appeals Court's decision that "Copyrights are categorically immune from challenges under the First Amendment."
-R
I stand in a sort of perverse awe, trying to grasp the 'reasoning' of Justice Ginsburg's opinion...utterly perplexed as to how six other justices signed their names to it when they had the exact text of how the ruling should have come down by Justice Breyer's hand.
I want there to be some good that comes out of Eldred, but right now I'm very disillusioned. So, I'm following Lessig's advice and turning to blogging. Let your opinions be known.
-R
I'm actually more interested in the possibility of redesigning the functionality of the forward button.
In the current implementations, the forward button loses it's registry once you go back/up and then click a link. It's kind of like creating a new time line in your browser...you lose all the pages you had been to in the previous line...before you went back. Why should it be that way?
-R
Does anyone remember the code to activate Dog Mode?
I only vaguely remember running around in ROTT with a dog sniffer in front of me instead of a gun. I believe it would facilitate getting under/to areas you couldn't access otherwise, as well.
The creator of ScavHunt, who still works at the U of C hospitals, does make several appearances in the film.
Also, at this year's event there were a total of almost 10 past head judges and head judges emeritus. Footage of them reminiscing is about as close to a 'History of ScavHunt' text as we're going to get.
-R
I would never slander F.I.S.T. I know you guys did an amazing job, and made for terrific film subjects at the same time. I was just saying that the team that won must have spent atleast 2 grand.
Sorry for the confusion,
-R
Actually, you both have it wrong. That item was a roadtrip item. It was Greek Town (yes, a predominantly Greek neighborhood) in Detroit, MI that the item was referencing. That is why the particular sayings on the jersey were about the Red Wings player.
-R
That item is in the video. Your wish will only run you $19.99.
On Campus; It's that season at Chicago, and Ph.D.'s have taken a back seat to a degree of silliness.
By Andrew Bluth
''People think of the University of Chicago and they think the students are weird,'' says Tom Howe, a junior from Atlanta. Having taken off his chicken suit, he is wearing a cardboard crown from a Burger King Kid's Meal. ''We want to show that intellectual doesn't necessarily mean stuffy.''
It is this philosophy -- that Chicago students can have fun if they really put their minds to it -- that gave birth to the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, a yearly celebration of looniness at a campus far better known for its Nobel laureates.
Putting aside term papers for a long weekend, hundreds of undergraduates in teams representing dormitories and student organizations range around the campus -- and, this year, the North American continent -- in search of items that will never be found in a course catalogue. The grand prize is $500, but the goal, says Mr. Howe, is loftier: ''to make the participants maximize their intellectual creativity.''
These were among the 339 items on the list for this year's scavenger hunt, released at the stroke of midnight on May 6:
No. 123: A computer suffering a year 2000 problem.
No. 262: Five Mensa membership cards.
No. 167: A 15-foot-tall monument to Grimace, the McDonald's Happy Meal character.
No. 40: A tenured professor willing to recite profane lyrics from a gangsta rap song.
Each team works from an identical list; items are assigned points, based on difficulty, and the team with the most points by Sunday afternoon is the winner. The wording of certain clues often suggests a trip to a far-flung destination -- having a team member photographed with an Ontario police officer, for instance.
Teams are often elaborately organized, with ''page masters'' assigned to each page of the list and at least one person operating a computer long after midnight in search of Web sites that will lead the team to cubic zirconia (20 points) or Chicago Bulls season tickets (15 points) or an autographed photograph of the Food Network star Jacqui Malouf (30 points).
''One of the items on the list was the 'street value of Mount Everest,' '' said Sam Hunt, a freshman competing for his dorm, Shoreland Hall. ''So we posted it on Ebay, and made it look pretty, with a nice picture of the mountain and everything. The bidding got up to $180 before we got kicked off the site.''
The Shoreland team is run out of sixth-floor dormitory room of its captain, Ryan Miller. By the end of the weekend, Thai food containers litter the floor and at least three trash cans are overflowing with empty soda cans. The members have slept little if at all, and the room is a nest of cables that wire no fewer than six personal computers.
When the phone rings, it is answered with a curt ''Command central'' and calls are kept short so that the line can be free for a check-in from the road-trip group, probably somewhere in Canada.
''From what we can gather, the road-trip team is doing really well,'' Mr. Miller says. ''Except last time they checked in, they sounded drunk.''
Other items on this year's list included building a nuclear reactor from scratch (one team was actually successful -- this is the University of Chicago, after all), an edible iMac computer and a ticket to a local theater for a certain movie opening May 19. (To these students, the date needs no further explanation.)
No one is really sure how or when the scavenger hunt began, but they do know it is a welcome break from economics exams and Shakespeare papers -- a way to demonstrate, in Mr. Howe's words, that ''we actually can have fun on this campus.''
And how do you say fun on a college campus better than a keg toss? As part of the Scavolympics, a string of a dozen events before the final judging that teams compete for points in, all 13 teams came together to recreate a battle of the Civil War, to demonstrate a fight between Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, and, yes, to toss a keg.
Competing for his dorm, Hitchcock-Snell, 23-year-old Niyi Omojola, after minutes earlier winning the competition that called for contestants to eat an entire bottle of squeeze cheese, won the keg toss. While others had grabbed the kegs with two hands, taken a few steps and heaved, he held it with one hand, arm extended, and spun around like a discus thrower, propelling the keg beyond the other teams' markers.
''I was trying to get some torque,'' said Mr. Omojola, a junior. ''If you can direct that torque in a straight line, you can throw it pretty far. People were trying to muscle it, and that's not going to work.''
And if you can't say fun at the U. of C., with a little torque and a keg toss, certainly you can with a nuclear reactor.
Two physics majors, Justin Kasper and Fred Niell, gathered up some spare junk from their physics labs and dorm rooms and built a plutonium-producing reactor.
''It's kind of scary how easy it was to do,'' said Mr. Niell, assuring onlookers that there was only a trace of plutonium -- nothing harmful. ''It only took us about a day to build it. We've been thinking about it for a few days and we gathered the parts, and last night we assembled it. In Justin's room -- he lost the coin toss.''
It's the 'Road Trip Theme'...there's one every year, afaik. There's also a theme song.
Recent Theme Songs:
1998 Weather Girls, "It's Raining Men"
1999 Vengaboys, "We Like to Party"
2000 Positive K, "I Gotta Man"
2001 The Charlie Daniels Band, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"
2002 Andrew W.K., "Party Hard"
Yes, Moacir is still judging. He is in the film.
-R
To the best of my recollection, the reactor used fisile material to create radioactive isotopes which could be used for medical purposes. Thus, in a loose sense of the term, it was a breeder reactor.
Yes, the nuclear breeder reactor was working before the judges made the team disassemble it. It was built on the steps of one of the University's main classroom buildings by the members of 'Matthews House' team in the Spring '99.
The people involved were physics majors, working in jobs with access to nuclear material.
It's a negligable amount. About $500 for first place, which is at most 1/5th of the teams funds spent on the competition.
I was involved in the making of the Periphrastic film 'The Hunt' as a camera man and assistant. I must say it was the most fun I've had outside competition in the Hunt itself.
-R
It seems your suggestion would be an even greater burden on individuals...requiring a specific group to register in a specific manner, and it would be less effective as well.
.kids.us domains have been proven to be 'kid friendly'. So, if you want to be an overprotective parent, don't allow them outside that scope.
.xxx, then there is still a myriad of things that are not 'kid friendly' out there for kids to wander into. And, telling parents to keep their kids away from .xxx sites accomplishes much less.
In this new system the government does not force anyone to register a certain way. All they are doing is telling parents that
If, however, they instead made all pr0n sites use
-R
"The study offers fresh evidence that the Internet may be proving easier to control than older forms of communication like telephones, facsimile machines or even letters."
It's all coming true.
-R
Not exactly.
The product at Fry's comes with support and documentation that is otherwise not included. It may be a highprice to pay for information which is otherwise available all over the net, but for some it is simply a matter of convenience.
-R
It sounds to me like you just want everyone else to accept your priorities. Funny though, they haven't landed you in a very tenable position, so I'd think they'd be some of the last for society to adopt as a whole.
Some people need a helping hand, but the epidemic is not at such a level as to begin to decry any spending which does not have immediate and obvious charitable effects (the net effect of your initial post). Even accepting your ethos, you're forgetting that there are hundreds of people who will be losing their jobs if Farscape is canceled. Not just overpaid actors, but average Joe set builders &c.
Your worldview is too narrow. I don't think your initial post was well thought out. If you still hold by the tenets put forth there, then I don't think I have the power or desire to continue to show the error of your ways.
-R
Chuckle. Just to clarify, I'm not an Objectivist, I just think that AS is an excellent critique of the sort of thinking that the original poster appears to be espousing.
-R
When people are rewarded based solely on need the motivation to produce/thrive becomes non-existant. The only competition is to prove who is worst off, fighting to be on the bottom rung, not to be left out of the handouts. Society stagnates as people have no reason to progress.
-R
Everyone has priorities. Your logic is headed down a very slippery, liberal slope.
Before you suggest that we have a responsibility to donate to the lowest/needest rung, think for a second on what a race to the bottom looks like. If you're having trouble, read Atlas Shrugged.
-R
The re-tooled fox schedule can be seen here.
They leave hope that 'Firefly' may be moved to the Monday 9/8c timeslot at a later date. Hiatus doesn't always mean a show is canceled. 'Andy Richter Controls the Universe' is coming back soon after an extended break, for which I am thankful.
-R
Regarding old people w/ cell phones...
Your answers are here and here.
American Library Association v. United States (01-CV-1322) is the latest case to challenge mandatory internet filters at public libraries. The Library Association brief in a lower court case can be found here. The Pennsylvania court recognized the proper weight of the First Amendment issues in the case, finding that the CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) infringed on protected speech. The government appealed and the Supreme Court granted certiorari. Arguments are expected to take place this winter or early spring.
-R
I've been suggesting anyone who wants a real understanding of the issues of this case to turn to eldred.cc and lessig.org because until I read this article I'd yet to see a member of the mainstream press comprehend the actual argument for reversal.
Disney's trademark of the character Mickey Mouse will never expire, but the copyrights to creative works in which he is depicted most certainly should. The framers of the Constitution understood creative works to be both an input and output of the creative process, and that copyrights should only be granted for the purpose of contributing to the progress of the arts and sciences. Why should no one be allowed to do to Disney what they continue to do to authors such as Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Planet?!)? This case is not about the length of time, as many misrepresent it. The petitioners agree that Congress has the right to set any length of time for copyright (save infinity), but the question is whether they can retroactively apply extensions (Walt isn't going to create more cartoons cause his copyrights suddenly got a few more years tacked on, so how does such legislation fit the purpose of promotion, which the clause explicitly outlines?), and whether that sort of legislation should be subject to appropriate intermediate first amendment analysis (which the lower courts refused to even consider).
-R