The reason I make this distinction is that before I'll buy that an elevator is a necessity for this future you imagine, you'll need to prove to me that you could not accomplish the same thing with a free-flying machine.
Here's the thing: with free flying machines, you don't recover the energy from payloads brought out of orbit, to use on your next payload to send into orbit. All of that beautiful gravitational potential energy (earth-frame) is wasted away into heat.
Energetically, the elevator really starts paying for itself once you bring an asteroid or three into orbit and start using the potential energy stored in them (and their raw and barely refined materials - including fresh water) to raise things like people, finished goods, and supplies into orbit. As long as someone wants those raw materials on the earth enough for it to be worth getting them into GSO, that energy is free for the taking.
As The Man (Heinlein) said, "Low Earth Orbit is halfway to anywhere" (meaning that it's very high in our gravity well, such that you've got about half of the energy you need for escape velocity). Geosynchronous is much further out than LEO is - it's most of the way to anywhere, and that works both ways.
It's just that IT departments tend to have the highest percentage of employees who remember being beaten up and having their lunch money taken from them!
I agree - I'm going to try to condense your argument down, in my own words. Bayes is hardly necessary unless you want to get all formal (and Bayesian views suffer from the fallacy of equivalence for initial conditions, anyway - though natch, that's kind of inevitable).
Here's the thing: the flip side of the fallacy of ad hominem is the fallacy of equivalence, the notion that one should initially consider every single argument equally.
Yes, arguments should be considered on their merits and not upon their origins. However, in the absence of the complete picture (and truly, it's rarely possible to have that complete picture) it is often useful to consider the source and their ability to think clearly and without prejudice. This is especially true in complex matters such as global climate change, and highly speculative and ideological matters such as the impact of DRM.
So whether it's purely logical or not, it's certainly reasonable to give more consideration to a statement about evolution that came from, say, Stephen Jay Gould over one that comes from Pat Robertson.
So, in short, argumentum ad hominem should be viewed with suspicion but is not without its uses.
Oh yes - and Doctorow is kind of a self-important twit. If I want his opinions, I'll read his freakin' blog, I don't need it on/. too.
You've gotta love slashdot. One of the few posts in this thread that actually demonstrates an understanding of special relativity, and some knuckle-dragger moderates it as a "Troll."
Apparently, it was a few people who understand special relativity and inertial reference frames better than you do.
"Past light cone" means a lot more than just saying that the light hasn't reached us yet. The need to talk about there being no preferred reference frame is evidenced by all the self-deluded knuckle-draggers here who are saying, "yeah, well, it happened 1950 years ago the light just hasn't reached us yet."
That's not what special relativity says - past and future are not meaningful concepts outside of your past and future light cones, there is only "elsewhere." If your model of the universe includes being able to say something at those distances has happened when it's outside of your past and future light cones, you're working with a newtonian, non-relativistic worldview.
Nonsense, it's an artificial comparison to compare the expense on a per game basis. Instead, look at the cost per hour of gameplay and do the math.
Let's say that I play games 25 hours a month, a fairly casual gamer. Each traditional PC or console game (Civs aside) take about that long per game, plus or minus 10 hours. So let's say I'll buy 8 games a year - at $40-$60 per new game, that's $400/year. That's compared to $50 startup plus $15/month the first year of WoW, or $230/year. So even if you buy a couple of other games (the only other game I've bought in the last year was Civ IV, which has a shorter-but-similar "long playtime" effect), you're still ahead of the game.
If you game more than that per month, MMOs are even more economical. Clearly, less money is being spent in total on games in that scenario, which I contend is a lighter-than-usual gamer.
The issue isn't the money that's being taken in by WoW, it's the player time. People aren't not buying other games because they can't afford them, they're not buying them because they don't have the time to play them.
The main thing coming to mind watching that video as the booster fell after the lens cleaned off was:
I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now isn't it? And whats this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! Thats it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello Ground!
Failing to deliver the entirety of a work does not count as a "derivative work". Nothing was added or changed.
Nope.
A condensation, especially one made along definite editorial lines that differ from the original creator's, is certainly a derivative work, by 17 U.S.C. 101:
A "derivative work," that is, a work that is based on (or derived from) one or more already existing works, is copyrightable if it includes what the copyright law calls an "original work of authorship." Derivative works, also known as "new versions," include such works as translations, musical arrangements, dramatizations, fictionalizations, art reproductions, and condensations. Any work in which the editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship is a "derivative work" or "new version."
Back to OP:
When a newspaper cuts down an Associated Press article, does that qualify as a "derivative work"?
It certainly does. Newspapers pay for the license to create derivative works as well as redistribute. As part of that license, they are required to not edit it in such a way that will distort the "essential meaning" of the piece.
If you, say, switch from PC to Mac, or Mac to Linux, you're looking at pretty much the same hassles you get with a new machine. You have to reinstall all the apps you want to use on it, restore your backed-up data files of significance, etc.
Actually, not. Not when you get with a new Mac, at least.
As part of the Mac initial bootup, you link the new Mac to the old Mac with a firewire cable. It automatically transfers all the user accounts and anything new in/Applications,/Library and wherever else. It takes a few hours to synch, but it's pretty damned complete (as long as your Apps are all well behaved and installed where there're supposed to be, in/Applications).
I've done this 3 times at this point. The only time I had to do anything else, it was because I had placed games in a directory I had created,/Games, instead of/Applications. I now put them in/Applications/Games and there's no problem.
For me it really was a painless upgrade process. (Here's where/.ers jump in and talk about their varying mileage with non-conforming installations - in/opt,/usr/local, etc).
The Resident Evil games just don't work for me - to me, they're too "arcadish" in that I find the story flimsy, an excuse for the gameplay. The gameplay should serve the story, not vice versa.
On the other end of things, there's Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The Gamecube was an odd choice of platforms for this grown-up title, but this game alone is nearly enough to justify picking up an old used 'cube. The gameplay was solid and fun, but it was always in service to the story: even your most basic actions were affected by a choice that you make in the first few minutes (which God you're aligned with affects how you interact with different monsters).
On top of that, they had a brilliant sanity system - as you lost sanity, they'd introduce subtle audio effects (using the surround sound to do so), and introduce visual distortions and hallucinations (like blood dripping and statues' heads turning to follow you). As you truly lost it, they'd gradually escalate to doing things like playing tricks where you'd hallucinate walking on the ceiling of a room you've just entered - or even alarm you by simulating a system crash, or pretending that you've just reached the end of the game, without resolution (showing you an add for the fictional sequel). There's another one where they simulate someone playing with the volume control on your TV's remote - first you think, "Hey! Where's the remote?" before thinking a split second later, "Hey, that's not what the volume control feedback looks like on my TV!" There are dozens more, they're truly inspired and some of them will get you.
If you have not played this game and you want a truly scary experience, give it a look. It's the best game I've played since Deus Ex (for a different genre game with a brilliant, driving story line). It's one of maybe 5 reasonably modern games that I'd say are truly don't-miss masterworks.
Any discussion of video technology adoption that ignores the impact of pornography is incomplete.
So the question should be, will pornography on the new formats be better in any substantial way? More interactive, more content, more arousing? Will they be making films of a longer duration, will they be providing more extras?
Wait and see what the adult industry does with this format - if they yawn and put out 60-120 minute, linear 480p movies with no more extras than a DVD, then the format is not going to have a rapid adoption rate. If they get more creative with the new format, well, then there's a shot.
I still can't figure out how the claim that the GNU Public License encourages free speech is not utterly disingenuous. The GPL is the opposite of free speech; it's a highly detailed copyright agreement with the purpose of restricting the expression of derivative works. If I can't keep an expression to myself, I am restricted. All license agreements begin from the starting point of complete restriction, that is, total prohibition against use, and then work forward from that point. The summit of free speech is public domain expression--if you want to speak it again, go ahead, and for whatever purpose you care to seek. As much as I am an advocate of free speech and all other civil rights, my purpose with public software is not free speech--it's free beer.
Global cooling as a panic was a mass media phonenomon, not a scientific one - there was never any broad acceptance of it as a theory in the scientific press. You know, as in publications that actually require inconvenient speedbumps like peer review by scientists prior to publication, instead of just needing to get something new out to press to sell to uncle Miltie.
Realclimate.org (which is run by, yes, real life practicing climatologists) has a great article debunking the whole "global cooling" bogon, here.
Go read those papers, the "Halloween documents." They aren't just random FUD, those are internal Microsoft documents stating exactly how Microsoft intends to destroy OSS.
"Embrace, extend and extinguish" isnt' a summary that was randomly invented by OSS paranoiacs, according to sworn testimony the phrase came out of Microsoft VP Paul Maritz' mouth in Intel's meetings with Microsoft.
So we're supposed to not be suspicious when they announce that, gee golly, they're serious about embracing?
Spamhaus is well known to block legitimate sites - my hosting ISP (very small, very special purpose - very spam intolerant) has a block of addresses that's between a couple of well known spammer-friendly ISPs' blocks.
Nonsense. You use asymmetric crypto - in essence, recording data with a mission-specific public key and using the corresponding private key to access the data in a secure facility.
You could paint the public key on the side of the airplane for all to see and not lose any substantial amount of security, as long as only a couple of people have access to the private key.
You'd still want to burn the drives, but if the Chinese have broken any of the stronger asymmetric crypto algorithms they can cause a lot more trouble than accessing the data on a spyplane's harddrive!
I'll remind you that the bulk of his work is comprised of parodies, usually nearly note-for-note copies of other musicians' songs.
I don't know what the specific legalities are in publishing covers of other people's songs are (I know ASCAP is usually involved, but not how an individual would deal with ASCAP with downloaded music), but I guarantee you that it's more than just putting the songs up on iTunes through CDBaby and keeping 100% of the profit.
Remember the 90/10 rule - your application will probably spend 90% of its time in 10% of the code.
Once interpretters are fast enough for UIs to be first class, it makes sense to take a hybrid approach. Implement functionality in the interpretted lanugage and then override that critical 10% of the code (or whereever your critical execution path is) with native versions.
Slashdot Mirror
Energetically, the elevator really starts paying for itself once you bring an asteroid or three into orbit and start using the potential energy stored in them (and their raw and barely refined materials - including fresh water) to raise things like people, finished goods, and supplies into orbit. As long as someone wants those raw materials on the earth enough for it to be worth getting them into GSO, that energy is free for the taking.
As The Man (Heinlein) said, "Low Earth Orbit is halfway to anywhere" (meaning that it's very high in our gravity well, such that you've got about half of the energy you need for escape velocity). Geosynchronous is much further out than LEO is - it's most of the way to anywhere, and that works both ways.
It's just that IT departments tend to have the highest percentage of employees who remember being beaten up and having their lunch money taken from them!
I agree - I'm going to try to condense your argument down, in my own words. Bayes is hardly necessary unless you want to get all formal (and Bayesian views suffer from the fallacy of equivalence for initial conditions, anyway - though natch, that's kind of inevitable).
/. too.
Here's the thing: the flip side of the fallacy of ad hominem is the fallacy of equivalence, the notion that one should initially consider every single argument equally.
Yes, arguments should be considered on their merits and not upon their origins. However, in the absence of the complete picture (and truly, it's rarely possible to have that complete picture) it is often useful to consider the source and their ability to think clearly and without prejudice. This is especially true in complex matters such as global climate change, and highly speculative and ideological matters such as the impact of DRM.
So whether it's purely logical or not, it's certainly reasonable to give more consideration to a statement about evolution that came from, say, Stephen Jay Gould over one that comes from Pat Robertson.
So, in short, argumentum ad hominem should be viewed with suspicion but is not without its uses.
Oh yes - and Doctorow is kind of a self-important twit. If I want his opinions, I'll read his freakin' blog, I don't need it on
You've gotta love slashdot. One of the few posts in this thread that actually demonstrates an understanding of special relativity, and some knuckle-dragger moderates it as a "Troll."
Apparently, it was a few people who understand special relativity and inertial reference frames better than you do.
"Past light cone" means a lot more than just saying that the light hasn't reached us yet. The need to talk about there being no preferred reference frame is evidenced by all the self-deluded knuckle-draggers here who are saying, "yeah, well, it happened 1950 years ago the light just hasn't reached us yet."
That's not what special relativity says - past and future are not meaningful concepts outside of your past and future light cones, there is only "elsewhere." If your model of the universe includes being able to say something at those distances has happened when it's outside of your past and future light cones, you're working with a newtonian, non-relativistic worldview.
Nonsense, it's an artificial comparison to compare the expense on a per game basis. Instead, look at the cost per hour of gameplay and do the math.
Let's say that I play games 25 hours a month, a fairly casual gamer. Each traditional PC or console game (Civs aside) take about that long per game, plus or minus 10 hours. So let's say I'll buy 8 games a year - at $40-$60 per new game, that's $400/year. That's compared to $50 startup plus $15/month the first year of WoW, or $230/year. So even if you buy a couple of other games (the only other game I've bought in the last year was Civ IV, which has a shorter-but-similar "long playtime" effect), you're still ahead of the game.
If you game more than that per month, MMOs are even more economical. Clearly, less money is being spent in total on games in that scenario, which I contend is a lighter-than-usual gamer.
The issue isn't the money that's being taken in by WoW, it's the player time. People aren't not buying other games because they can't afford them, they're not buying them because they don't have the time to play them.
A condensation, especially one made along definite editorial lines that differ from the original creator's, is certainly a derivative work, by 17 U.S.C. 101:
Back to OP: It certainly does. Newspapers pay for the license to create derivative works as well as redistribute. As part of that license, they are required to not edit it in such a way that will distort the "essential meaning" of the piece.
As part of the Mac initial bootup, you link the new Mac to the old Mac with a firewire cable. It automatically transfers all the user accounts and anything new in
I've done this 3 times at this point. The only time I had to do anything else, it was because I had placed games in a directory I had created,
For me it really was a painless upgrade process. (Here's where
Free People should be able to use preview and GET THE URL RIGHT.
Number one reason it shouldn't be: NH is too damned cold. Free people should be smart enough to live someplace warmer.
The Resident Evil games just don't work for me - to me, they're too "arcadish" in that I find the story flimsy, an excuse for the gameplay. The gameplay should serve the story, not vice versa.
On the other end of things, there's Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem . The Gamecube was an odd choice of platforms for this grown-up title, but this game alone is nearly enough to justify picking up an old used 'cube. The gameplay was solid and fun, but it was always in service to the story: even your most basic actions were affected by a choice that you make in the first few minutes (which God you're aligned with affects how you interact with different monsters).
On top of that, they had a brilliant sanity system - as you lost sanity, they'd introduce subtle audio effects (using the surround sound to do so), and introduce visual distortions and hallucinations (like blood dripping and statues' heads turning to follow you). As you truly lost it, they'd gradually escalate to doing things like playing tricks where you'd hallucinate walking on the ceiling of a room you've just entered - or even alarm you by simulating a system crash, or pretending that you've just reached the end of the game, without resolution (showing you an add for the fictional sequel). There's another one where they simulate someone playing with the volume control on your TV's remote - first you think, "Hey! Where's the remote?" before thinking a split second later, "Hey, that's not what the volume control feedback looks like on my TV!" There are dozens more, they're truly inspired and some of them will get you.
If you have not played this game and you want a truly scary experience, give it a look. It's the best game I've played since Deus Ex (for a different genre game with a brilliant, driving story line). It's one of maybe 5 reasonably modern games that I'd say are truly don't-miss masterworks.
Any discussion of video technology adoption that ignores the impact of pornography is incomplete.
So the question should be, will pornography on the new formats be better in any substantial way? More interactive, more content, more arousing? Will they be making films of a longer duration, will they be providing more extras?
Wait and see what the adult industry does with this format - if they yawn and put out 60-120 minute, linear 480p movies with no more extras than a DVD, then the format is not going to have a rapid adoption rate. If they get more creative with the new format, well, then there's a shot.
Bah. The facts have a well-known anti-Bush agenda.
Global cooling as a panic was a mass media phonenomon, not a scientific one - there was never any broad acceptance of it as a theory in the scientific press. You know, as in publications that actually require inconvenient speedbumps like peer review by scientists prior to publication, instead of just needing to get something new out to press to sell to uncle Miltie.
Realclimate.org (which is run by, yes, real life practicing climatologists) has a great article debunking the whole "global cooling" bogon, here.
Snort. Gee, I don't know why anybody would ever be suspicious of Microsoft.
.
Go read those papers, the "Halloween documents." They aren't just random FUD, those are internal Microsoft documents stating exactly how Microsoft intends to destroy OSS.
"Embrace, extend and extinguish" isnt' a summary that was randomly invented by OSS paranoiacs, according to sworn testimony the phrase came out of Microsoft VP Paul Maritz' mouth in Intel's meetings with Microsoft
So we're supposed to not be suspicious when they announce that, gee golly, they're serious about embracing?
You're either a fool or a shill.
You would be wrong.
Spamhaus is well known to block legitimate sites - my hosting ISP (very small, very special purpose - very spam intolerant) has a block of addresses that's between a couple of well known spammer-friendly ISPs' blocks.
Blacklists are much more of a bane than a boon.
Nonsense. You use asymmetric crypto - in essence, recording data with a mission-specific public key and using the corresponding private key to access the data in a secure facility. You could paint the public key on the side of the airplane for all to see and not lose any substantial amount of security, as long as only a couple of people have access to the private key.
You'd still want to burn the drives, but if the Chinese have broken any of the stronger asymmetric crypto algorithms they can cause a lot more trouble than accessing the data on a spyplane's harddrive!
For most artists, I'd agree. But "Weird" Al?
I'll remind you that the bulk of his work is comprised of parodies, usually nearly note-for-note copies of other musicians' songs.
I don't know what the specific legalities are in publishing covers of other people's songs are (I know ASCAP is usually involved, but not how an individual would deal with ASCAP with downloaded music), but I guarantee you that it's more than just putting the songs up on iTunes through CDBaby and keeping 100% of the profit.
Remember the 90/10 rule - your application will probably spend 90% of its time in 10% of the code.
Once interpretters are fast enough for UIs to be first class, it makes sense to take a hybrid approach. Implement functionality in the interpretted lanugage and then override that critical 10% of the code (or whereever your critical execution path is) with native versions.
Did you hear about Nancy Reagan's program for the homeless?
It was called, "Just get a house!"