Another point that has fallen out of the language (and not just English; familiar vs formal is distinguished in many other languages):
One major use of the familiar form was to express personal superiority or greater personal power. So if God addressed Moses as "Thou", God was informing Moses that Moses was God's social inferior, and/or that God had more power than Moses.
Similarly, in some cultures it's a mortal insult to refer to your superiors in the familiar voice, since one only addresses equals or underlings in familiar mode.
Historically, I expect that "thou" was used quite correctly by early biblical translators, per the social expectations of the day and the languages involved.
Ideally, yes -- just expire the damned thing in a reasonable timeframe, and 99% of the associated copyright issues simply go away (along with all the bureaucracy, and good riddance!)
The only problem I see is that for public domain to be meaningful for abandonware, the source code must be archived somewhere retrievable (such as the LoC), because chances are that by the time the program falls out of copyright, the company is out of business and the actual authors no longer have the source code. And running the binary thru a disassembler ain't exactly an ideal way to regenerate it!
And perhaps to avoid the "source code vanishes when the company died" issue, the source and binaries must be on deposit with the LoC, and the penalty for not doing so being that you wouldn't be allowed to pursue copyright infringement.
The concept came to me that if IP is "property" then to extend copyright beyond the first term (and 20 years seems reasonable to me) the owner should have to pay "property tax". Here's one notion of how to handle that:
After the first term expires, the copyright holder has the option to "buy" an extension, but the cost to do so is based on a significant percentage of the gross (*not* the net) sales during the first term. So if a work is still highly profitable, it would make sense to extend its copyright; if not, then into the public domain with it. I'm thinking that a "tax" of perhaps 20% of the gross would be daunting enough to inhibit copyright hoarding.
This system would require an audit trail, but anyone who is making enough money on a piece of "intellectual property" to want to pay that much "tax" to extend copyright probably has the resources to retain auditors as needed.
"You'd basically need to have a population with the mindset that any executive of a large business, unless he built it himself from rock bottom, cannot be trusted. Particularly those that just roam from company to company, soaking up bonuses."
That's *exactly* what I'd like to see -- in both politics and business!! And if it means a return to pre-WW2 business and political mindsets, where no one was trusted by the proles unless they worked their way up, well, maybe that's a good thing, given the current climate.
I do believe we'd all be better off, since then more of the Powers That Be would have a clue about Real Life.
As to the current generation of politicos, they'd have to age out before we'd see real change, but after that, it wouldn't MATTER if someone was rich or what they did when not in office, they'd still have limited influence if only because it's hard to do political deals if you're not the man on the spot.
Yeah, there'd be more political gridlock (akin to what happens with multiparty coalitions in some other countries) but that's certainly better than rushing toward our collective doom.
Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall some hoorah a few years ago when their salary increase came on the agenda suspiciously close to "shift change", especially since most congresscritters can expect to get re-elected.
So it still amounts to them setting their own salaries, if not for today then for their next term.
Interesting point. I think you may well be right, that it's not just the "unelectability" of being seen to have "voted against supporting our troops", but that they are also being prodded by the many contractors who benefit directly and indirectly (there should likewise be a scramble for security contracts as the RealID thing passes into being).
Perhaps America as a whole has become too entrenched in its own comforts, thus elects folk who do indeed represent that... as someone once pointed out re the Soviet/Czarist system, people get the government that most reflects their own values, even if it doesn't seem like it from a given individual's viewpoint.
Exactly. Which is why politics should be PREVENTED from becoming a *career*. See another of my posts in this thread, about making it into at most an alternate and part-time job, precisely as the founding fathers envisioned it.
Yep, that is indeed a problem. For every corrupt or spineless politician we evict, there is another waiting to be elected.
See my other post in this thread about a method of at least limiting their power, and making them experience more of the Real World, by forcibly making politics NOT a "career".
I'm reminded of what Senator McGovern said after he retired from politics and tried to get into the hotel business, and found that thanks to all the legislation that HE HIMSELF had helped pass, it was now impossible for a startup to ever succeed in the hotel business. In a subsequent interview he said flat out that if he'd known what a negative impact his own legislation was having on the citizenry's ability to make a living, he'd never have proposed most of it.
Goes to demonstrate how far from reality the political world has gone.
Exactly!! and my further point was that winning that next election has become FAR more important than doing what's right for America.
Here's a thought: what if anyone could hold office as many times as they can get elected, BUT they cannot hold any given office for consecutive terms, nor can they aspire to another public office (including appointed positions) during the interim session (defined as four years, to average out the various term lengths). That might dilute the impact of "election-killer" votes, especially in cases like this one where it really matters to our fundamental freedoms.
It would also tend to kill the "career politician" thing, since at least half the time, they'd have to actually work for a living out in the real world, just like their constituents. It would do them good to see how the other half lives.
Maybe if *enough* congresscritters had put their foot down and said in so many words "No, we're not spending money in Iraq so our troops can come home to a police state," there would have been a hasty revision to separate the troop support funds from the various nasty riders. But noooo, we can make a token protest (as our beloved Ms.President-in-training Feinstein did -- and with her I am quite sure it was just a token for those few constituents who had noticed the RealID components) but we can't really DO anything to stop it. Winning that next election is FAR more important than preserving fundamental American freedoms.
[Nightmare scenario that I find altogether too likely to happen: Feinstein and Boxer as a Pres/VP team. Or only marginally less frightening, Hillary and Diane. Run for the hills!]
And that is typically the problem by the time someone gets as far as the Senate. They're far too insulated from their constituents for our needs and desires to matter, and far too advanced in their *careers* to think of anything else, even if they weren't initially in it for the power it brings them.
Doesn't sound very different from the corportate CEO-go-round, does it?
While I have known politicians who genuinely aspired to do the best for their people, they aren't the rule, especially by the time they get to Congress.
Waitaminnut, when Congress changes its salary, doesn't that have to be passed by an act of Congress? I remember a big hoorah about the last time, and I recall when the Presidential salary was doubled (at the time it was $100k, which then seemed like a lot of money).
Given that provision, now all that's needed is to expand the "duties" [powers] of the Secretary of Homeland Security, and in due course we'd have an entire government that is not subject to judicial review.
I fail to see any significant difference between this scenario, and a fullblown dictatorship.
Last time a democrat tried to object to provisions of an Iraq spending bill, the republicans screamed "voted against the war before he voted against it" for eight months until he lost an election. Congressional democrat opposition has been, since then, dead.
Goes to show that none of 'em have the balls to stand up for what they believe in, let alone for what's best for their constituents.
Nope, I have both standard and widescreen versions on VHS -- still sealed, so I can't swear to what's on them, tho they seriously predate modern CGI, so I expect are largely untwiddled. However I do know (firsthand, I asked the official SW archivist) that the Ep.4 original soundtrack had already been lost as of 1978 and all subsequent editions are remixed.
The widescreen VHS came in a boxed set with a "making of" tape included, and was issued a couple years after the initial VHS.
Word around is that there are 3 more in the works and that they involve Mara Jade, which means they'll be cribbed from some of the aftermarket novels.
Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn" trilogy would probably work best, of the ones I've read. It has an interesting new bad guy and for the most part, tolerable plotting that follows reasonably from the existing SW universe.
Don't try to frighten us with your producer's ways, George Lucas. Your sad devotion to that ancient trilogy has not helped you conjure up our stolen childhood memories, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the hidden originals...
Slashdot Mirror
Another point that has fallen out of the language (and not just English; familiar vs formal is distinguished in many other languages):
One major use of the familiar form was to express personal superiority or greater personal power. So if God addressed Moses as "Thou", God was informing Moses that Moses was God's social inferior, and/or that God had more power than Moses.
Similarly, in some cultures it's a mortal insult to refer to your superiors in the familiar voice, since one only addresses equals or underlings in familiar mode.
Historically, I expect that "thou" was used quite correctly by early biblical translators, per the social expectations of the day and the languages involved.
Ideally, yes -- just expire the damned thing in a reasonable timeframe, and 99% of the associated copyright issues simply go away (along with all the bureaucracy, and good riddance!)
The only problem I see is that for public domain to be meaningful for abandonware, the source code must be archived somewhere retrievable (such as the LoC), because chances are that by the time the program falls out of copyright, the company is out of business and the actual authors no longer have the source code. And running the binary thru a disassembler ain't exactly an ideal way to regenerate it!
Do you or your buddy mind if we quote him elsewhere? That he's a man on the spot makes his words all that much more meaningful.
And perhaps to avoid the "source code vanishes when the company died" issue, the source and binaries must be on deposit with the LoC, and the penalty for not doing so being that you wouldn't be allowed to pursue copyright infringement.
The concept came to me that if IP is "property" then to extend copyright beyond the first term (and 20 years seems reasonable to me) the owner should have to pay "property tax". Here's one notion of how to handle that:
After the first term expires, the copyright holder has the option to "buy" an extension, but the cost to do so is based on a significant percentage of the gross (*not* the net) sales during the first term. So if a work is still highly profitable, it would make sense to extend its copyright; if not, then into the public domain with it. I'm thinking that a "tax" of perhaps 20% of the gross would be daunting enough to inhibit copyright hoarding.
This system would require an audit trail, but anyone who is making enough money on a piece of "intellectual property" to want to pay that much "tax" to extend copyright probably has the resources to retain auditors as needed.
"You'd basically need to have a population with the mindset that any executive of a large business, unless he built it himself from rock bottom, cannot be trusted. Particularly those that just roam from company to company, soaking up bonuses."
That's *exactly* what I'd like to see -- in both politics and business!! And if it means a return to pre-WW2 business and political mindsets, where no one was trusted by the proles unless they worked their way up, well, maybe that's a good thing, given the current climate.
I do believe we'd all be better off, since then more of the Powers That Be would have a clue about Real Life.
As to the current generation of politicos, they'd have to age out before we'd see real change, but after that, it wouldn't MATTER if someone was rich or what they did when not in office, they'd still have limited influence if only because it's hard to do political deals if you're not the man on the spot.
Yeah, there'd be more political gridlock (akin to what happens with multiparty coalitions in some other countries) but that's certainly better than rushing toward our collective doom.
Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall some hoorah a few years ago when their salary increase came on the agenda suspiciously close to "shift change", especially since most congresscritters can expect to get re-elected.
So it still amounts to them setting their own salaries, if not for today then for their next term.
Interesting point. I think you may well be right, that it's not just the "unelectability" of being seen to have "voted against supporting our troops", but that they are also being prodded by the many contractors who benefit directly and indirectly (there should likewise be a scramble for security contracts as the RealID thing passes into being).
Perhaps America as a whole has become too entrenched in its own comforts, thus elects folk who do indeed represent that... as someone once pointed out re the Soviet/Czarist system, people get the government that most reflects their own values, even if it doesn't seem like it from a given individual's viewpoint.
Exactly. Which is why politics should be PREVENTED from becoming a *career*. See another of my posts in this thread, about making it into at most an alternate and part-time job, precisely as the founding fathers envisioned it.
[eyeing tagline]
Eat the rich. The poor are tough and stringy.
Yep, that is indeed a problem. For every corrupt or spineless politician we evict, there is another waiting to be elected.
See my other post in this thread about a method of at least limiting their power, and making them experience more of the Real World, by forcibly making politics NOT a "career".
I'm reminded of what Senator McGovern said after he retired from politics and tried to get into the hotel business, and found that thanks to all the legislation that HE HIMSELF had helped pass, it was now impossible for a startup to ever succeed in the hotel business. In a subsequent interview he said flat out that if he'd known what a negative impact his own legislation was having on the citizenry's ability to make a living, he'd never have proposed most of it.
Goes to demonstrate how far from reality the political world has gone.
Exactly!! and my further point was that winning that next election has become FAR more important than doing what's right for America.
Here's a thought: what if anyone could hold office as many times as they can get elected, BUT they cannot hold any given office for consecutive terms, nor can they aspire to another public office (including appointed positions) during the interim session (defined as four years, to average out the various term lengths). That might dilute the impact of "election-killer" votes, especially in cases like this one where it really matters to our fundamental freedoms.
It would also tend to kill the "career politician" thing, since at least half the time, they'd have to actually work for a living out in the real world, just like their constituents. It would do them good to see how the other half lives.
Maybe if *enough* congresscritters had put their foot down and said in so many words "No, we're not spending money in Iraq so our troops can come home to a police state," there would have been a hasty revision to separate the troop support funds from the various nasty riders. But noooo, we can make a token protest (as our beloved Ms.President-in-training Feinstein did -- and with her I am quite sure it was just a token for those few constituents who had noticed the RealID components) but we can't really DO anything to stop it. Winning that next election is FAR more important than preserving fundamental American freedoms.
[Nightmare scenario that I find altogether too likely to happen: Feinstein and Boxer as a Pres/VP team. Or only marginally less frightening, Hillary and Diane. Run for the hills!]
Gee, ya think??
And that is typically the problem by the time someone gets as far as the Senate. They're far too insulated from their constituents for our needs and desires to matter, and far too advanced in their *careers* to think of anything else, even if they weren't initially in it for the power it brings them.
Doesn't sound very different from the corportate CEO-go-round, does it?
While I have known politicians who genuinely aspired to do the best for their people, they aren't the rule, especially by the time they get to Congress.
Waitaminnut, when Congress changes its salary, doesn't that have to be passed by an act of Congress? I remember a big hoorah about the last time, and I recall when the Presidential salary was doubled (at the time it was $100k, which then seemed like a lot of money).
If not Congress, *who* decides??
Given that provision, now all that's needed is to expand the "duties" [powers] of the Secretary of Homeland Security, and in due course we'd have an entire government that is not subject to judicial review.
I fail to see any significant difference between this scenario, and a fullblown dictatorship.
Somehow this sounds exactly like how Trusted Computing will insinuate itself.
What is wrong with this era we live in??? haven't we learned anything from our vast access to history??
More'n likely to the "Double all Congresscritters' salaries" bill.. :/
Goes to show that none of 'em have the balls to stand up for what they believe in, let alone for what's best for their constituents.
FANTASTIC idea. Who do we have to bribe to get it passed into law??
Nope, I have both standard and widescreen versions on VHS -- still sealed, so I can't swear to what's on them, tho they seriously predate modern CGI, so I expect are largely untwiddled. However I do know (firsthand, I asked the official SW archivist) that the Ep.4 original soundtrack had already been lost as of 1978 and all subsequent editions are remixed.
The widescreen VHS came in a boxed set with a "making of" tape included, and was issued a couple years after the initial VHS.
Hmmph. You must need to update your compilers. ;)
Word around is that there are 3 more in the works and that they involve Mara Jade, which means they'll be cribbed from some of the aftermarket novels.
Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn" trilogy would probably work best, of the ones I've read. It has an interesting new bad guy and for the most part, tolerable plotting that follows reasonably from the existing SW universe.
I think it's best to do the same as works well with some authors, notably Bujold's Vorkosigan series:
First time, read/watch in the order they were *made*.
Second time, read/watch in chronological order.
Don't try to frighten us with your producer's ways, George Lucas. Your sad devotion to that ancient trilogy has not helped you conjure
up our stolen childhood memories, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the hidden originals...
In fact, Lucas swore up and down that the first three films would NEVER EVER be released on videotape.
[eyeing my set of original VHS tapes] I guess I'm seeing things again.