Significantly cheaper, they are. Good point. I would assume AMD has razor-thin profit margins from their chips, as well, so discounts would be impossible. *shrug*
AMD should seriously consider its response to this. The Linux community is well-informed, in general, and has been much quicker in moving to AMD than Windows users (mostly because Windows users are mainly Dell/Gateway/Compaq/Etc customers..), and AMD would do well to make attempts to avoid disappointing us.
I just got a new box, Athlon 1.2GHz... Asus a7a266 mainboard... nice little box for general usage. Soon as I finish moving, I'll get cable modem back and stop using mom's AOL, and I'll go back to Linux. But now I see this, and I'm eyeing my AGP card, and wondering. AMD has earned a lot of respect from me in the last couple years, as I've found the Athlons to be simply the finest x86 CPU's I've ever got my hands on, at great prices with very reasonable motherboards/chipsets as well. Now this. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's an engineering mistake, but I'm not clear on how AMD is handling it, and I hope they don't disappoint me. Sure, you can do a workaround - but as others have asked, what's the story on the performance hit? What about AMD working with the kernel folks to find another, better solution? Or maybe AMD could consider offering serious discounts on new, un-flawed CPU's, for those who are already eyeing upgrades?
...if you leave info on your ex-roommate's computer and he loses his junk lawsuit against you and uses the info to steal all your accounts/nicks/webmailboxes/etc.
What I find interesting is that most people have poor spatial reasoning and form recognition. In fact, tests of those two are used in IQ tests and the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) - specifically for military to guage your ability to avoid friendly-fire incidents, recognize enemy movements/formations/activities.
Since it's obviously not a picture-puzzle to be assembled, I think a lot of people would have a hard time remembering.
Comcast cable in Arlington/Alexandria VA (right across the river from Washington D.C. for the geographically challenged) already has VOD. Errr, to be more correct, is getting it as we speak. Random digital cable customers are getting 'invitation cards' in the mail, offering them the chance to test the service. It looks very neat, and I just ordered digital cable specifically so I can hopefully test it (I needed to get my cable modem turned back on anyway). Reminds me of those commercials by the electronics company (I forget who) that use the old Beatles lyrics: You got to admit it's getting better, getting better all the time
See yer all focusing on material goods. I mentioned material goods because I had none of the spiritual kind. That was my whole point. I coulda got an F-16 and I woulda said 'fuck christmas' - because I didn't get my family. You misunderstood.
Mod me down 2 points for voicing my opinion? Hmmm the 'fuck christmas' part wasn't about gifts, it was about not seeing family for 14 months even though they're a 4 or 5 hour drive away, and all my friends being muslim so christmas being pointless. Thanks:D
Re:I got jack shit.
on
Merry Christmas
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Oh and btw there's only one ISA and one PCI and they're scrunched so you can only use one. So yeah, fuck christmas.
I got jack shit.
on
Merry Christmas
·
· Score: 2, Informative
A package of 12 pairs of black socks and 6 white undershirts, and my neighbor gave me a pII-400 128mb 20gb box which sounds cool except everything's integrated on the motherboard. Yay. Fuck christmas.
Man, I tell ya! This has got to be the most interesting thread I've ever seen on/.
So many of us seem to know so much.... so much analysis and thought and work put into these stories.
As for the blade you mention, that's absolutely correct. Although it could easily be identified and described by someone at a later date.
I'm beginning to question the wisdom of filming all 3 at the same time. Perhaps leaving a skeleton crew behind, and fixer-upper clauses in the actors' contracts, would have been good. That way these little issues we talk about that are easily resolved by a 2 minute segment in the subsequent movie can be taken care of. They're minor things, unnoticed by most viewers, but they do relate directly to PJ's promise to bring as faithful a delivery as he can. Overall, we've complained about missing themes, background and historical information being obfuscated/forgotten/ignored, and character details. Almost all could be fixed with a week of filming in the spring to be spliced into The Two Towers. Hmmm... shooting 3 movies at the same time, though, with such rich source material, I suspect the actual useable footage for each movie to be nearly twice the released-form length. DVD will be nice, if done right.
Note, though that I am in no way belittling the production thus far. It has far exceeded all my expectations, and in a fair analysis, it is a beautiful rendition of such a complex work of literature. It would have been far too easy for PJ to mutate this into a purely commercial, homogenized pile of horseshit.
Quite true. And perhaps the theme behind that one is of innocence, wisdom, and great beauty falling before the hands of blunt ego, force, greed, and desire. Melkor and Sauron could not do it - but the Men could. And they did it quite by accident, with no grand scheme. It shows that attacks are fought off, but slow creepings go unnoticed, or at least unchallenged, and perhaps the Elves had no real charges to level against Men. Tolkien hated to be accused of allegory, but he admitted that no author could completely disconnect his writings from the content of his daily thoughts. Just an idea, but perhaps Tolkien was alarmed or at least aware of the creeping socialism that was doing a better job of overtaking Europe and America than the Nazis or Russians who were being beaten back? Intentionally or unintentionally, the themes do reflect the goings-on in the Wide World outside Tolkien's pages.
Mathoms - they're called 'mathoms'. Those things that are passed back and forth, that is. And you're right about the big battle scenes - Tolkien wouldn't bother writing detailed accounts of individual thrusts etc... same as PJ wouldn't spend 3 minutes browsing the mathoms on Bilbo's shelves. Different mediums.
Oh, yes, I think you're right. Been a LOOOONG time since I read that one. And only once... a lot of interesting stuff, but overall I found it somewhat dry and confusing. Of course, I was 14 or 15 at the time. So yes, PJ messed up - the West wasn't losing, Sauron did have a legitimate reason for being accessible. Oh well, details details.
True. And true on the air-rush thingie too. Very neat. It was good to see recognizable elvish faces in the crowd, it lent a sense of connection and made them (if the audience later recognized them) more mysterious.
To be honest, there was so much detail that I really don't remember many of these small things until other viewers later mention them... I was so distracted with the overall scheme and so overwhelmed with the fact that the movie was out and I was watching it...
Well, there was no specific description of HOW the Ring was cut from the hand. My impression is that it was pretty much *after* the battles when Sauron was cornered in his fortress, although it does make sense that Sauron would ride forth into the battle if he got too close to losing. But here, it says that the West had all but lost, and *then* the Ring was cut from the Dark Hand, which begs the question 'Why was Sauron accessible under those circumstances?'. Details, details.
In any event, I suppose the cutting would be necessarily shown, although the fight scene involving it and the full detail of Sauron irked me. The image of a throne in a fortress with a weakened, faintly resisting Dark Hand on the armrest and Narsil making a quick surgical slice has always been in my brain somehow, although with thought it seems wrong.
It was necessary to shift some stuff around, for a number of reasons. The biggest of course was that audiences needed to have some more detail, and unlike the books, you have to wait a full year to get them. But PJ is doing remarkably well.
As for showing Sauron... a big mistake, I think. Yes, an audience needs to have a valid enemy... but if done right, an unseen one would be even more threatening and disturbing. Perhaps PJ wasn't quite brave enough to attempt it.
The details were nice, mostly out of the way of the general audience while giving us addicts small injections.
Galadriel issue you mentioned was a disappointment - not that one instance specifically, but overall... a lot of the sad/beautiful/etc themes and back-issues were left out.
Hmmm well if you paid enough attention to the books, you'd see that Saruman believes he is acting on his own, and is to a certain extent - the extent Sauron allows. Sauron would be all too happy to let Saruman breed orcs which he can then take over after ridding himself of Saruman, and he doesn't mind letting the Ringbearer have even more folks chasing him. He figures the Ring will be lost to Saruman, then recovered by himself in the near future. None of this is explicit of course.
As for Saruman not making his own ring, we haven't gotten to the part in The Two Towers where that becomes evident, either. Just relax, PJ seems to be doing quite good so far.
Oh, the topic was the IMDB ranking? Hmmm, yes, there's much hype, rabid fans, and the fact that it's a new release so more people feel moved to take the time to vote and write reviews. Overall I'd say it's in the top 15, maybe 10... #1? No, it's impossible. The story wasn't intended for movies, and although the adaptation so far has been shockingly good... well, let's put it this way: There may be better movies - but I do not believe there are better stories.
I had to go back a second time, I left something on the floor the first time: my jaw.
-1 for me-too post. I totally agree. I also think it's great to see a show like this, however 'tasteless' it may be described as being. Regardless of how many people were offended or amused by this, it did bring more attention to a troubling subject that NEEDS to be explored. Taboos are not healthy for an informed, free, intelligent, rational society, and this kind of jokesterism is one more step toward open public discussion. Regardless of the *content* of the show (I haven't seen it, don't plan to), thumbs up to the guys who put it on the air. Whether they realized it or not, they've pointed out the foolishness of the general public by way of exposure of 'unmentionable' social issues.
...one of the most blatant, anti-competitive strategies MS has ever employed. The bundling of IE is actually beneficial, from a technical and usability standpoint (or would be, if IE and its related programs, such as Outlook, weren't so shoddy) - but for them to include their own product and then block competing products via operating system code is... not very smart, in light of the antitrust suit lodged against them on grounds of anti-competition practices.
For MS to decide for you what should be installed and used is also a disrespect to the consumer/user. This is the last straw - I'm completely breaking with MS. No more of my clients will be offered Microsoft products. Neither, after the term of technical support for existing customers expires, will I offer extended service contracts encompassing Microsoft products.
I thought the question was in regards to organizations - wouldn't they have faster connections? And don't most of us have friends with connections anyway? And who needs both the install.iso and the source.iso? Not I - install from the install.iso, any source can be gotten as needed.
Even if you do only have 56k, just get the base disksets and install from another partition. Add other stuff as needed. Much more efficient --
Uhm, why? A few proprietary drivers, some packaging, and technical support that would be free if you spent a tad bit of time online anyway? Yes, Linux costs money in the sense that your time is valuable - but a free distro, one that can be downloaded and burnt to CD, is great. Actually, Slackware is my favorite and it's entirely ftp-distributed (except those places that package it) --
Re:The "Joy Of Sex" pun will be lost of most of us
on
Joy of Linux
·
· Score: 1
i sure do.. and i enjoy it. sense-of-self is critical to life - and the purpose and meaning of life is to find happiness for oneself. self-confidence, self-valuation, self-preservation - see a common theme? 'self'. yup, i'm a rational egoist, aka a whole man. having a big ego != arrogance. arrogance is undeserved egotism, and is usually coupled with a belief that you are inherently better than others - whereas rational egoism, also known as 'rational self-interest' is simply a belief that you are better than most others because of the choices you make and the way you manage your life - which, when you think about it, is entirely rational. we pass judgement on murderers, thugs, thieves, and other lower forms of life - why not on intellectual criminals, those people who willfully ignore the facts of reality (also described as 'refusing to think'):)
--
Re:The "Joy Of Sex" pun will be lost of most of us
on
Joy of Linux
·
· Score: 1
uh no i haven't decided HOW to handle it yet but MS will not be part of the answer unless there is no other way:D --
Just because the government calls something a property right does not mean that it is
i completely agree. government does not GIVE rights - rights are inherent in the human condition. government is not the source of money, culture, morals, rights, or anything else - except something called 'protection from the initiation of force'. as for the imposition of copyrights being socialist in nature, i must strongly disagree. copyrights can, if handled wrong, result in too much control over the expression of a person - but on the flipside, if handled wrong, can also result in the denial of a person's rightful claim to ownership of their work. this explains why the founding fathers were so deeply divided - and troubled - on the issue of copyright. the proper balance, as we can look to the last 230+ years of american history, lies in two key concepts: 1) the content of your published work is yours alone, unless you explicitely agree to release control of a portion or the whole of it; 2) common ideas, long-standing ideas, and simple phrases cannot be copyrighted, as they are already part of the public domain.
what this means is simple: if you write a book about abraham lincoln, the specific wording and general tone (this seems rather subjective on the surface, but i'm using the honest abe example for a reason - go see plagiarism cases that made it to the u.s. circuit courts) can be, if you choose, designated as yours. but the events, places, names, etc - cannot be copyrighted, because you did not create them, they are factual, and they are long-known ideas. this provides your work a measure of protection while still allowing others the freedom of speech to write about ol' abe if they so choose. now, if you created characters that did not actually exist, those too would become yours - but of course i would be free to create my own.
point is, there must be a balance between freedom and security to write/create without having your work robbed from you by others - and freedom and security to write new material. this balance can get sticky at times, objective measurement of creativity is not possible in fine detail - but the vast majority of copyright cases are plain-as-day for someone who values individual rights.
you mentioned the idea of independence from institutions that attempt to better manage your life by taking away your options - what the hell do you think 'eminent domain' is about? it's about an institution deciding that yeah, your business or home is nice and all, but the public could use the land so much better. when it's applied to ideas, it's theft just the same. copyright is for the PROTECTION of the individual - protecting the fruits of his labor. if everything you created/wrote/built/invented were inelligable for copyright/ownership/patent, why in the world would you ever work? there would be no use in it - as soon as you were done, the public could rush in and claim it as their own. look at soviet russia - look at how little was created by the citizens, look at how little they produced outside of government work! NOTHING - they produced NOTHING - there was no reason. working for nothing is stupid, and everyone knows it. --
Re:The "Joy Of Sex" pun will be lost of most of us
on
Joy of Linux
·
· Score: 1
sure. i'm in charge of designing building and running the entire thing. the idea is to provide dialup access to office workers who wish to work from home - let their companies buy per-seat licenses to our network which has encrypted internet-carried connections to the office network. not geekish? you bet... or something. kthx. pics from wallet? har.:D you're just jealous n stuff k bye --
Slashdot Mirror
Significantly cheaper, they are. Good point. I would assume AMD has razor-thin profit margins from their chips, as well, so discounts would be impossible. *shrug*
Also...
AMD should seriously consider its response to this. The Linux community is well-informed, in general, and has been much quicker in moving to AMD than Windows users (mostly because Windows users are mainly Dell/Gateway/Compaq/Etc customers..), and AMD would do well to make attempts to avoid disappointing us.
I just got a new box, Athlon 1.2GHz... Asus a7a266 mainboard... nice little box for general usage. Soon as I finish moving, I'll get cable modem back and stop using mom's AOL, and I'll go back to Linux. But now I see this, and I'm eyeing my AGP card, and wondering. AMD has earned a lot of respect from me in the last couple years, as I've found the Athlons to be simply the finest x86 CPU's I've ever got my hands on, at great prices with very reasonable motherboards/chipsets as well. Now this. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's an engineering mistake, but I'm not clear on how AMD is handling it, and I hope they don't disappoint me. Sure, you can do a workaround - but as others have asked, what's the story on the performance hit? What about AMD working with the kernel folks to find another, better solution? Or maybe AMD could consider offering serious discounts on new, un-flawed CPU's, for those who are already eyeing upgrades?
...if you leave info on your ex-roommate's computer and he loses his junk lawsuit against you and uses the info to steal all your accounts/nicks/webmailboxes/etc.
What I find interesting is that most people have poor spatial reasoning and form recognition. In fact, tests of those two are used in IQ tests and the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) - specifically for military to guage your ability to avoid friendly-fire incidents, recognize enemy movements/formations/activities.
Since it's obviously not a picture-puzzle to be assembled, I think a lot of people would have a hard time remembering.
Comcast cable in Arlington/Alexandria VA (right across the river from Washington D.C. for the geographically challenged) already has VOD. Errr, to be more correct, is getting it as we speak. Random digital cable customers are getting 'invitation cards' in the mail, offering them the chance to test the service. It looks very neat, and I just ordered digital cable specifically so I can hopefully test it (I needed to get my cable modem turned back on anyway). Reminds me of those commercials by the electronics company (I forget who) that use the old Beatles lyrics: You got to admit it's getting better, getting better all the time
See yer all focusing on material goods. I mentioned material goods because I had none of the spiritual kind. That was my whole point. I coulda got an F-16 and I woulda said 'fuck christmas' - because I didn't get my family. You misunderstood.
Mod me down 2 points for voicing my opinion? Hmmm the 'fuck christmas' part wasn't about gifts, it was about not seeing family for 14 months even though they're a 4 or 5 hour drive away, and all my friends being muslim so christmas being pointless. Thanks :D
Oh and btw there's only one ISA and one PCI and they're scrunched so you can only use one. So yeah, fuck christmas.
A package of 12 pairs of black socks and 6 white undershirts, and my neighbor gave me a pII-400 128mb 20gb box which sounds cool except everything's integrated on the motherboard. Yay. Fuck christmas.
Man, I tell ya! This has got to be the most interesting thread I've ever seen on /.
.... so much analysis and thought and work put into these stories.
So many of us seem to know so much
As for the blade you mention, that's absolutely correct. Although it could easily be identified and described by someone at a later date.
I'm beginning to question the wisdom of filming all 3 at the same time. Perhaps leaving a skeleton crew behind, and fixer-upper clauses in the actors' contracts, would have been good. That way these little issues we talk about that are easily resolved by a 2 minute segment in the subsequent movie can be taken care of. They're minor things, unnoticed by most viewers, but they do relate directly to PJ's promise to bring as faithful a delivery as he can. Overall, we've complained about missing themes, background and historical information being obfuscated/forgotten/ignored, and character details. Almost all could be fixed with a week of filming in the spring to be spliced into The Two Towers. Hmmm... shooting 3 movies at the same time, though, with such rich source material, I suspect the actual useable footage for each movie to be nearly twice the released-form length. DVD will be nice, if done right.
Note, though that I am in no way belittling the production thus far. It has far exceeded all my expectations, and in a fair analysis, it is a beautiful rendition of such a complex work of literature. It would have been far too easy for PJ to mutate this into a purely commercial, homogenized pile of horseshit.
Quite true. And perhaps the theme behind that one is of innocence, wisdom, and great beauty falling before the hands of blunt ego, force, greed, and desire. Melkor and Sauron could not do it - but the Men could. And they did it quite by accident, with no grand scheme. It shows that attacks are fought off, but slow creepings go unnoticed, or at least unchallenged, and perhaps the Elves had no real charges to level against Men. Tolkien hated to be accused of allegory, but he admitted that no author could completely disconnect his writings from the content of his daily thoughts. Just an idea, but perhaps Tolkien was alarmed or at least aware of the creeping socialism that was doing a better job of overtaking Europe and America than the Nazis or Russians who were being beaten back? Intentionally or unintentionally, the themes do reflect the goings-on in the Wide World outside Tolkien's pages.
Mathoms - they're called 'mathoms'. Those things that are passed back and forth, that is. And you're right about the big battle scenes - Tolkien wouldn't bother writing detailed accounts of individual thrusts etc... same as PJ wouldn't spend 3 minutes browsing the mathoms on Bilbo's shelves. Different mediums.
Oh, yes, I think you're right. Been a LOOOONG time since I read that one. And only once... a lot of interesting stuff, but overall I found it somewhat dry and confusing. Of course, I was 14 or 15 at the time. So yes, PJ messed up - the West wasn't losing, Sauron did have a legitimate reason for being accessible. Oh well, details details.
True. And true on the air-rush thingie too. Very neat. It was good to see recognizable elvish faces in the crowd, it lent a sense of connection and made them (if the audience later recognized them) more mysterious.
To be honest, there was so much detail that I really don't remember many of these small things until other viewers later mention them... I was so distracted with the overall scheme and so overwhelmed with the fact that the movie was out and I was watching it...
Well, there was no specific description of HOW the Ring was cut from the hand. My impression is that it was pretty much *after* the battles when Sauron was cornered in his fortress, although it does make sense that Sauron would ride forth into the battle if he got too close to losing. But here, it says that the West had all but lost, and *then* the Ring was cut from the Dark Hand, which begs the question 'Why was Sauron accessible under those circumstances?'. Details, details.
In any event, I suppose the cutting would be necessarily shown, although the fight scene involving it and the full detail of Sauron irked me. The image of a throne in a fortress with a weakened, faintly resisting Dark Hand on the armrest and Narsil making a quick surgical slice has always been in my brain somehow, although with thought it seems wrong.
It was necessary to shift some stuff around, for a number of reasons. The biggest of course was that audiences needed to have some more detail, and unlike the books, you have to wait a full year to get them. But PJ is doing remarkably well.
As for showing Sauron... a big mistake, I think. Yes, an audience needs to have a valid enemy... but if done right, an unseen one would be even more threatening and disturbing. Perhaps PJ wasn't quite brave enough to attempt it.
The details were nice, mostly out of the way of the general audience while giving us addicts small injections.
Galadriel issue you mentioned was a disappointment - not that one instance specifically, but overall... a lot of the sad/beautiful/etc themes and back-issues were left out.
Overall very good. *Sigh* 2 more years.
Hmmm well if you paid enough attention to the books, you'd see that Saruman believes he is acting on his own, and is to a certain extent - the extent Sauron allows. Sauron would be all too happy to let Saruman breed orcs which he can then take over after ridding himself of Saruman, and he doesn't mind letting the Ringbearer have even more folks chasing him. He figures the Ring will be lost to Saruman, then recovered by himself in the near future. None of this is explicit of course.
As for Saruman not making his own ring, we haven't gotten to the part in The Two Towers where that becomes evident, either. Just relax, PJ seems to be doing quite good so far.
Oh, the topic was the IMDB ranking? Hmmm, yes, there's much hype, rabid fans, and the fact that it's a new release so more people feel moved to take the time to vote and write reviews. Overall I'd say it's in the top 15, maybe 10... #1? No, it's impossible. The story wasn't intended for movies, and although the adaptation so far has been shockingly good... well, let's put it this way: There may be better movies - but I do not believe there are better stories.
I had to go back a second time, I left something on the floor the first time: my jaw.
-1 for me-too post. I totally agree. I also think it's great to see a show like this, however 'tasteless' it may be described as being. Regardless of how many people were offended or amused by this, it did bring more attention to a troubling subject that NEEDS to be explored. Taboos are not healthy for an informed, free, intelligent, rational society, and this kind of jokesterism is one more step toward open public discussion. Regardless of the *content* of the show (I haven't seen it, don't plan to), thumbs up to the guys who put it on the air. Whether they realized it or not, they've pointed out the foolishness of the general public by way of exposure of 'unmentionable' social issues.
...one of the most blatant, anti-competitive strategies MS has ever employed. The bundling of IE is actually beneficial, from a technical and usability standpoint (or would be, if IE and its related programs, such as Outlook, weren't so shoddy) - but for them to include their own product and then block competing products via operating system code is ... not very smart, in light of the antitrust suit lodged against them on grounds of anti-competition practices.
For MS to decide for you what should be installed and used is also a disrespect to the consumer/user. This is the last straw - I'm completely breaking with MS. No more of my clients will be offered Microsoft products. Neither, after the term of technical support for existing customers expires, will I offer extended service contracts encompassing Microsoft products.
I thought the question was in regards to organizations - wouldn't they have faster connections? And don't most of us have friends with connections anyway? And who needs both the install.iso and the source.iso? Not I - install from the install.iso, any source can be gotten as needed.
Even if you do only have 56k, just get the base disksets and install from another partition. Add other stuff as needed. Much more efficient
--
Uhm, why? A few proprietary drivers, some packaging, and technical support that would be free if you spent a tad bit of time online anyway? Yes, Linux costs money in the sense that your time is valuable - but a free distro, one that can be downloaded and burnt to CD, is great. Actually, Slackware is my favorite and it's entirely ftp-distributed (except those places that package it)
--
i sure do.. and i enjoy it. sense-of-self is critical to life - and the purpose and meaning of life is to find happiness for oneself. self-confidence, self-valuation, self-preservation - see a common theme? 'self'. yup, i'm a rational egoist, aka a whole man. having a big ego != arrogance. arrogance is undeserved egotism, and is usually coupled with a belief that you are inherently better than others - whereas rational egoism, also known as 'rational self-interest' is simply a belief that you are better than most others because of the choices you make and the way you manage your life - which, when you think about it, is entirely rational. we pass judgement on murderers, thugs, thieves, and other lower forms of life - why not on intellectual criminals, those people who willfully ignore the facts of reality (also described as 'refusing to think') :)
--
uh no i haven't decided HOW to handle it yet but MS will not be part of the answer unless there is no other way :D
--
Just because the government calls something a property right does not mean that it is
i completely agree. government does not GIVE rights - rights are inherent in the human condition. government is not the source of money, culture, morals, rights, or anything else - except something called 'protection from the initiation of force'. as for the imposition of copyrights being socialist in nature, i must strongly disagree. copyrights can, if handled wrong, result in too much control over the expression of a person - but on the flipside, if handled wrong, can also result in the denial of a person's rightful claim to ownership of their work. this explains why the founding fathers were so deeply divided - and troubled - on the issue of copyright. the proper balance, as we can look to the last 230+ years of american history, lies in two key concepts: 1) the content of your published work is yours alone, unless you explicitely agree to release control of a portion or the whole of it; 2) common ideas, long-standing ideas, and simple phrases cannot be copyrighted, as they are already part of the public domain.
what this means is simple: if you write a book about abraham lincoln, the specific wording and general tone (this seems rather subjective on the surface, but i'm using the honest abe example for a reason - go see plagiarism cases that made it to the u.s. circuit courts) can be, if you choose, designated as yours. but the events, places, names, etc - cannot be copyrighted, because you did not create them, they are factual, and they are long-known ideas. this provides your work a measure of protection while still allowing others the freedom of speech to write about ol' abe if they so choose. now, if you created characters that did not actually exist, those too would become yours - but of course i would be free to create my own.
point is, there must be a balance between freedom and security to write/create without having your work robbed from you by others - and freedom and security to write new material. this balance can get sticky at times, objective measurement of creativity is not possible in fine detail - but the vast majority of copyright cases are plain-as-day for someone who values individual rights.
you mentioned the idea of independence from institutions that attempt to better manage your life by taking away your options - what the hell do you think 'eminent domain' is about? it's about an institution deciding that yeah, your business or home is nice and all, but the public could use the land so much better. when it's applied to ideas, it's theft just the same. copyright is for the PROTECTION of the individual - protecting the fruits of his labor. if everything you created/wrote/built/invented were inelligable for copyright/ownership/patent, why in the world would you ever work? there would be no use in it - as soon as you were done, the public could rush in and claim it as their own. look at soviet russia - look at how little was created by the citizens, look at how little they produced outside of government work! NOTHING - they produced NOTHING - there was no reason. working for nothing is stupid, and everyone knows it.
--
sure. i'm in charge of designing building and running the entire thing. the idea is to provide dialup access to office workers who wish to work from home - let their companies buy per-seat licenses to our network which has encrypted internet-carried connections to the office network. not geekish? you bet... or something. kthx. pics from wallet? har. :D you're just jealous n stuff k bye
--