If I was in the same room, I would punch both participants of this "conversation" in the face and ask the rest to help throwing them out, because they are obviously Microsoft astroturfers -- one for making an idiotic claim, another for "agreeing" with it.
- I think I'll go with "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" that most influential sentence written back in 1776 by TJ.
"Pursuit of happiness" is the most dangerous, destructive idea in the history of mankind.
Happiness is a rare feeling that is produced as a response to extraordinary positive experiences. It is not an everyday, normal occurrence. It is definitely not supposed to be "pursued". A person who believes that he can somehow capture "happiness" and be permanently happy as a result of it, will lead miserable life, and will cause trouble, destruction and death to others whom he will see as an obstacle on his path to the permanently ecstatic existence that he believes to be a norm. Or, alternatively, he will achieve his dumbass goal by constantly increasing dosage of drugs -- what would be less damaging to himself and others than actual "pursuit".
Where exactly that work mentions "self-made man" or anything close to the American idea of that?
"Self-made man" is an originally unprivileged person who achieved wealth, power and privilege, supposedly entirely as a result of his own efforts as opposed to being born into privilege, accident, or assistance of society or other members' of society. Such idea was considered utterly idiotic over the whole history of mankind, except for brief and limited time and place when was possible to acquire new land by simply laying claim on newly discovered or undeveloped territory. Before that, in agrarian society, social position of any person was entirely based on amount of land the person owns or controls -- and therefore impossible to change unless for a nobleman that already has control over vast amount of land, with land ownership and political power being supposedly divinely protected privileges. After that, it became based on climbing numerous ladders over hierarchies in industrial society -- and therefore requiring either membership in various elites, or going through education system where a person is constantly assisted by others, or usually both.
"Self-made man" was based on a fantastic image of American frontier -- its poster boy would be a person who taken over some uninhabited land (no problem with local nobility already claiming it, or land being so worthless, no one would bother claiming it) and developed it into a successful business (in such a fantastic world, neither education nor pre-established relationships with people in power are necessary for such accomplishment). It was projected onto early industrialists in US (better known as robber barons), and probably at some extent in Europe (where early capitalists, despite their enterprises all being based on inherited wealth, were seen as having too "low" origin for their power and wealth compared to "real" aristocracy).
While some outside US would believe in such nonsense, it is absolutely definitely an American invention to promote and glorify such a thing. Worse yet, outside US people who are described as "self-made" by American standards, would be categorized as "Nouveau riche", a term that has, and always had strong negative connotations.
1. Charity == throwing stolen money into the crowd. If "charitable" people really cared about others, they wouldn't get those money from the rest of society in the first place, they would just voluntarily reduce their own income. If that wasn't done, there is no altruism involved.
2. One can do more by forcing rich people's money to be used for something good rather than by scraping money for something in my, poor person's budget, therefore it's more ethical to force rich people to be taxed. Rich people treat everyone else as prey or enemies, so there is no point treating them in any other way, either -- furthermore it's unethical for anyone else to care about their interests. Do I care about needs of cows when I eat steak? Does the cow care about my needs? Same applies to few percents of Americans who own overwhelming majority of everything.
Communism declares the problem to be "private ownership of the means of production" -- a specific form of property that controls others' labor and allows its owner to seize fruits of others' labor. If you really care about owning a nice car, you can have it. However what you can not do under a Communist system is to get a nice car by amassing "money" through stealing others' labor just because you somehow managed to worm your way into "ownership" of a factory where those people work. Controlling others' labor and appropriating the product through ownership is seen as the fundamental problem of Capitalism, that has to be fixed by disallowing such practice.
Obviously, lack of ability to become super-rich will also mean that you would not be able to get a luxury car unless the rest of the society can do so (though if you really care, you can build Ferraris with your friends in spare time while the rest of society finds your activity silly or artistic). But if you have Ferrari already, no one cares if you do -- and you will be stuck with this last Ferrari until it will turn into rust, because no one is interested in maintaining if for you, or buying it from you, and especially leasing it from you, either.
American tradition of "individualism" means that everyone has to have exactly the same goals (money, toys, power, popularity,...), and therefore everyone has to fight against the rest of the society to be the best at achieving those goals. The "individual" part comes not from individuality but from being alone in fighting all other identical individuals.
I don't know how to begin explaining how stupid it is, so I just hope, people who support this idea will kill each other, and take their masters with them. So far they are doing a good job.
And this is why hairyfeet is here -- to shill for Microsoft. The rest is karma whoring -- it's not like he adds anything new, he just posts popular opinions expecting to be modded up. He and his employers don't realize that it's long past the point when existence of loud assholes promoting their corporate masters' talking point meant anything -- they are discredited, and I am one of the people who will keep them discredited.
Go, write more offtopic rebuttals in a completely unrelated thread, attract attention of everyone you hoped to influence, then create another account for new batch of bullshit.
ALL he can say is that I must secretly be getting giant checks from MSFT.
How so? You can state in easily accessible and attributable manner (such as in the notes in the published form of the work itself) that you, the author, disclaim any rights toward distribution of your work, and grant it to the mankind as a whole. As long as this is clearly expressed, no one, not even yourself, can argue otherwise. There is no law that declares it illegal to give things away, except for certain rights -- property and copyright are not among those.
The purpose of the termination right is to allow authors to change their minds no matter what they did earlier.
No, the purpose is to take copyright away from the owner regardless of the copyright owner's (or author's, or anyone else's) wishes, because copyright duration is intended to be limited. There is no "changing your mind" in law -- once you have given something to another or others, there is no taking back.
And if you die you may have evil heirs who want to cash in on your cool project. So now not only can't you disclaim it during your life, you also need to setup a trust to hold the copyright after you die. That costs money.
This is pure bullshit. If you don't like your heirs, you can always exclude them from your will, or even order your property destroyed, however it has absolutely nothing to do with something that is no longer yours, such as public domain (or equivalent) work.
This isn't some anti-open source troll.
Oh yes it is. You are intentionally muddying the water around clear (and usually irrelevant) subject to produce FUD around licenses. It's also remarkable that you are trying to find examples in US copyright law even though US already has plenty of works released into public domain by their authors, and therefore your examples are irrelevant.
Given that US law is the most property-obsessed in the world, it is not even useful as a point for comparison, so unless you will produce an example of a country where blanket disclaimer of copyright is illegal, and approval of each act of distribution is forced upon authors, you should stop pretending to have any kind of valid point whatsoever.
It's just pure facts. All of this applies to any other kind of license as well.
"License" is nothing but a statement made by a person expressing his conditions in a transaction. It has no special legal meaning on its own. There is nothing in a law, anywhere in the world, that declares text named "license" to be somehow more important or authoritative than any other statement attached to a contract. It is completely unrelated to another (though related) meaning of the word "license" -- a permit issued by a government or government-approved institution to perform some restricted activity that is otherwise forbidden by law except for holders of government-approved licenses.
If author in any form declares that he no longer wishes to have conditions of distribution being controlled by him, and the work is a gift to the mankind as a whole, it is not any different from declaring a work to be in public domain, or "licensing" it under those conditions yo everyone.
The only reason standard license texts exist, is that they contain known, clearly defined terms that can be easily applied to real-life situations, and works licensed under the same or compatible conditions are easier to deal with.
And here is what happens when Microsoft marketing people are out of their talking points -- their monkeys are allowed to build the "arguments" themselves. This is how hairyfeet sounds when he doesn't have any copy to paste.
This is absolutely irrelevant. Even though copyright is automatically applicable to all creative works, it is not one of unalienable rights -- anyone who has it or could have it, can disclaim it. There are plenty of reasons why this may be a bad idea, however all of them are related to ability of others to produce derived works while refusing to co-operate with the original author or society as a whole.
1. The guy I am replying to, is repeating some of the most idiotic myths. Once something is distributed under whatever conditions, no one, anywhere, can take it back.
2. Anywhere in the world anyone can distribute his work (given that the work is legal to distribute there in the first place) without demanding any control over it. What one may not be able to do, is to insist on not being the author, or giving someone else the right to claim authorship -- this has absolutely nothing to do with copyright or public domain.
Slashdot Mirror
I use OpenOffice almost daily, but for very simple stuff.
No, you don't. You post Microsoft marketing crap in every thread where you can stuff your comment.
In 18th century it meant "...and lamentations of their women".
Problem is, if you tell kids they're idiots they act like idiots,
Idiots should be informed that they are idiots. This keeps them from trying to take place of smart people.
if you tell them they're gifted their performance improves.
This is false. Their fear of not being as gifted as they are told, increases, so any failure discourages them.
There are countries other than US. Most of them have examples of what is useful for teaching at school.
If I was in the same room, I would punch both participants of this "conversation" in the face and ask the rest to help throwing them out, because they are obviously Microsoft astroturfers -- one for making an idiotic claim, another for "agreeing" with it.
US workers
Who?
- I think I'll go with "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" that most influential sentence written back in 1776 by TJ.
"Pursuit of happiness" is the most dangerous, destructive idea in the history of mankind.
Happiness is a rare feeling that is produced as a response to extraordinary positive experiences. It is not an everyday, normal occurrence. It is definitely not supposed to be "pursued". A person who believes that he can somehow capture "happiness" and be permanently happy as a result of it, will lead miserable life, and will cause trouble, destruction and death to others whom he will see as an obstacle on his path to the permanently ecstatic existence that he believes to be a norm. Or, alternatively, he will achieve his dumbass goal by constantly increasing dosage of drugs -- what would be less damaging to himself and others than actual "pursuit".
He IS the solution. His kids will be too dumb to live.
Solution: raise minimum to something that is actually useful.
And your alternative is what, hijack ships? This is what people do in Somalia in the absence of taxes.
Where exactly that work mentions "self-made man" or anything close to the American idea of that?
"Self-made man" is an originally unprivileged person who achieved wealth, power and privilege, supposedly entirely as a result of his own efforts as opposed to being born into privilege, accident, or assistance of society or other members' of society. Such idea was considered utterly idiotic over the whole history of mankind, except for brief and limited time and place when was possible to acquire new land by simply laying claim on newly discovered or undeveloped territory. Before that, in agrarian society, social position of any person was entirely based on amount of land the person owns or controls -- and therefore impossible to change unless for a nobleman that already has control over vast amount of land, with land ownership and political power being supposedly divinely protected privileges. After that, it became based on climbing numerous ladders over hierarchies in industrial society -- and therefore requiring either membership in various elites, or going through education system where a person is constantly assisted by others, or usually both.
"Self-made man" was based on a fantastic image of American frontier -- its poster boy would be a person who taken over some uninhabited land (no problem with local nobility already claiming it, or land being so worthless, no one would bother claiming it) and developed it into a successful business (in such a fantastic world, neither education nor pre-established relationships with people in power are necessary for such accomplishment). It was projected onto early industrialists in US (better known as robber barons), and probably at some extent in Europe (where early capitalists, despite their enterprises all being based on inherited wealth, were seen as having too "low" origin for their power and wealth compared to "real" aristocracy).
While some outside US would believe in such nonsense, it is absolutely definitely an American invention to promote and glorify such a thing. Worse yet, outside US people who are described as "self-made" by American standards, would be categorized as "Nouveau riche", a term that has, and always had strong negative connotations.
1. Charity == throwing stolen money into the crowd. If "charitable" people really cared about others, they wouldn't get those money from the rest of society in the first place, they would just voluntarily reduce their own income. If that wasn't done, there is no altruism involved.
2. One can do more by forcing rich people's money to be used for something good rather than by scraping money for something in my, poor person's budget, therefore it's more ethical to force rich people to be taxed. Rich people treat everyone else as prey or enemies, so there is no point treating them in any other way, either -- furthermore it's unethical for anyone else to care about their interests. Do I care about needs of cows when I eat steak? Does the cow care about my needs? Same applies to few percents of Americans who own overwhelming majority of everything.
You are a moron.
Communism declares the problem to be "private ownership of the means of production" -- a specific form of property that controls others' labor and allows its owner to seize fruits of others' labor. If you really care about owning a nice car, you can have it. However what you can not do under a Communist system is to get a nice car by amassing "money" through stealing others' labor just because you somehow managed to worm your way into "ownership" of a factory where those people work. Controlling others' labor and appropriating the product through ownership is seen as the fundamental problem of Capitalism, that has to be fixed by disallowing such practice.
Obviously, lack of ability to become super-rich will also mean that you would not be able to get a luxury car unless the rest of the society can do so (though if you really care, you can build Ferraris with your friends in spare time while the rest of society finds your activity silly or artistic). But if you have Ferrari already, no one cares if you do -- and you will be stuck with this last Ferrari until it will turn into rust, because no one is interested in maintaining if for you, or buying it from you, and especially leasing it from you, either.
It's very similar to the "self-made man" archetype that has been touted as the ideal person to be for several thousand years.
Hundreds. That's a uniquely American ideal, created to glorify robber barons.
American tradition of "individualism" means that everyone has to have exactly the same goals (money, toys, power, popularity,...), and therefore everyone has to fight against the rest of the society to be the best at achieving those goals. The "individual" part comes not from individuality but from being alone in fighting all other identical individuals.
I don't know how to begin explaining how stupid it is, so I just hope, people who support this idea will kill each other, and take their masters with them. So far they are doing a good job.
hairyfeet and his copypasta again. Whoring for karma expecting that it will help him shout louder in his GLORIOUS BATTLES FOR MICROSOFT.
And this is why hairyfeet is here -- to shill for Microsoft. The rest is karma whoring -- it's not like he adds anything new, he just posts popular opinions expecting to be modded up. He and his employers don't realize that it's long past the point when existence of loud assholes promoting their corporate masters' talking point meant anything -- they are discredited, and I am one of the people who will keep them discredited.
Go, write more offtopic rebuttals in a completely unrelated thread, attract attention of everyone you hoped to influence, then create another account for new batch of bullshit.
ALL he can say is that I must secretly be getting giant checks from MSFT.
Why secretly? This is his job.
HAY GUYZ, hairyfeet is hard at work, whoring karma by posting popular opinions.
The problem is, you *can't* disclaim it.
How so? You can state in easily accessible and attributable manner (such as in the notes in the published form of the work itself) that you, the author, disclaim any rights toward distribution of your work, and grant it to the mankind as a whole. As long as this is clearly expressed, no one, not even yourself, can argue otherwise. There is no law that declares it illegal to give things away, except for certain rights -- property and copyright are not among those.
The purpose of the termination right is to allow authors to change their minds no matter what they did earlier.
No, the purpose is to take copyright away from the owner regardless of the copyright owner's (or author's, or anyone else's) wishes, because copyright duration is intended to be limited. There is no "changing your mind" in law -- once you have given something to another or others, there is no taking back.
And if you die you may have evil heirs who want to cash in on your cool project. So now not only can't you disclaim it during your life, you also need to setup a trust to hold the copyright after you die. That costs money.
This is pure bullshit. If you don't like your heirs, you can always exclude them from your will, or even order your property destroyed, however it has absolutely nothing to do with something that is no longer yours, such as public domain (or equivalent) work.
This isn't some anti-open source troll.
Oh yes it is. You are intentionally muddying the water around clear (and usually irrelevant) subject to produce FUD around licenses. It's also remarkable that you are trying to find examples in US copyright law even though US already has plenty of works released into public domain by their authors, and therefore your examples are irrelevant.
Given that US law is the most property-obsessed in the world, it is not even useful as a point for comparison, so unless you will produce an example of a country where blanket disclaimer of copyright is illegal, and approval of each act of distribution is forced upon authors, you should stop pretending to have any kind of valid point whatsoever.
It's just pure facts. All of this applies to any other kind of license as well.
"License" is nothing but a statement made by a person expressing his conditions in a transaction. It has no special legal meaning on its own. There is nothing in a law, anywhere in the world, that declares text named "license" to be somehow more important or authoritative than any other statement attached to a contract. It is completely unrelated to another (though related) meaning of the word "license" -- a permit issued by a government or government-approved institution to perform some restricted activity that is otherwise forbidden by law except for holders of government-approved licenses.
If author in any form declares that he no longer wishes to have conditions of distribution being controlled by him, and the work is a gift to the mankind as a whole, it is not any different from declaring a work to be in public domain, or "licensing" it under those conditions yo everyone.
The only reason standard license texts exist, is that they contain known, clearly defined terms that can be easily applied to real-life situations, and works licensed under the same or compatible conditions are easier to deal with.
The guy is a web designer. The proper version is "DON'T BE a web designer".
make interaction with our vehicles natural and intuitive
Shoo! Shoo!
And here is what happens when Microsoft marketing people are out of their talking points -- their monkeys are allowed to build the "arguments" themselves. This is how hairyfeet sounds when he doesn't have any copy to paste.
This is absolutely irrelevant. Even though copyright is automatically applicable to all creative works, it is not one of unalienable rights -- anyone who has it or could have it, can disclaim it. There are plenty of reasons why this may be a bad idea, however all of them are related to ability of others to produce derived works while refusing to co-operate with the original author or society as a whole.
I see, Microsoft marketing is really scraping the bottom of the barrel now.
1. The guy I am replying to, is repeating some of the most idiotic myths. Once something is distributed under whatever conditions, no one, anywhere, can take it back.
2. Anywhere in the world anyone can distribute his work (given that the work is legal to distribute there in the first place) without demanding any control over it. What one may not be able to do, is to insist on not being the author, or giving someone else the right to claim authorship -- this has absolutely nothing to do with copyright or public domain.
3. You are stupid, too.