I haven't given up TV, but I cut the cable when I moved into my first apartment. In 1990. Broadcast TV always gave me enough to watch (maybe 5 hours/week), and these days between broadcast TV, iTunes, Netflix, and now streaming by the networks themselves, there's very little I'm missing.
There's plenty of historical evidence that copyright laws of the kind created by the Statute of Anne and the copyright clause of the US Constitution aided both the economy and (more importantly, I think) the exchange of ideas within their jurisdictions. The UK experienced a veritable boom in publishing after Anne (the dawn of the modern novel and journalism as we know it). Both statutes were author-friendly (rather than publisher-friendly), and didn't significantly restrict the development of the public domain as copyrights expired fairly promptly. It's only with the imposition of absurdly long copyright terms (even just Berne-plus, let alone DMCA and ACTA level) that we've seen the diminishing economic returns, and ballooning restrictions on public freedom. Worse, copyright law as we know it today is much like Prohibition: it's turned too many people into casual criminals, to the point that they question the very real, demonstrable value of copyright altogether.
Neither the iPad nor Courier have (or would have in the case of MS's canceled project) any real advantages when it comes to getting work done
The fact that you only evaluate a computer in terms of "getting working done" demonstrates that your thinking is a little out of date. Granted, Microsoft seemed to think of the Courier primarily as a productivity tool, which may be related to the fact that they've killed it (outmoded thinking), but despite some token productivity apps for the iPad, that's not what it's for. It's for reading/playing/watching/surfing/chatting... in other words, everything but "getting work done".
Creating a site that invites people to do Something Really Stupid as a way to educate people not to do Something Really Stupid is practically begging to get flagged as malicious. It is, in fact, Something Really Stupid.
There's more to government regulation of the market than the word "monopoly". There's also a broader concept known as "restraint of trade", which is what Apple is wandering into when it arbitrarily limits what other businesses can develop for its system.
p.s. No EDGE iPhone? You seem to know less about the iPhone than you do about commerce law. Shutting up would be smart.
A bigger problem for Amtrak (in most parts of the country) is the fact that it doesn't own the rails it uses. So it's at the mercy of the freight carriers who do own the rails. That's not a problem with national (or formerly national) passenger rail systems that control their own timetables.
the first time in living memory that an ash cloud had brought one of the world's most congested airspaces to a standstill.
And the time before that was....? The timeframe "in living memory" happens to include the dawn of aviation as we know it. (Hint: Maybe you aren't old enough to remember it, but as long as there are still people alive who do, it's "in living memory".) So I think it's safe to say this is the first time ever that it's brought European aviation to a standstill.
It's "evolution" only if it's a trait that increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction. Not being socially afraid of anybody might increase one's chances of reproducing, but a lack of defensiveness can also open one up to various dangers, the kinds that can remove one from the gene pool before reaching reproductive age. I don't see this trait becoming common.
Wikipedia can't be the solution to every information-gathering problem. And despite some slogans to the contrary, it clearly doesn't want to be. It has policies of Notabiliy, No Original Research, and Neutral Point of View that effectively make it unsuitable for certain information. If you want in-depth, exhaustive information about other topics, you consult a more specialized resource, such as drum and bugle corps, Star Wars, Star Trek, garden flowers, movies, Pokémon, Peter Pan, travel, alternate realities, etc. Wikipedia even has a mechanism for interwiki linking to many of these resources, recognizing them as independent specialty resources.
I want to thank, and praise, Mr Sanger for bringing to light this shameful practice by his chief competitor. Poor innocent Toons like those who pose for "lolicon" images have been exploited for decades (and in fact, for centuries, dating back to the Cartones who posed for Italian Renaissance sketches). From the moment of their very conception, these underage Toons are forced to engage in degrading activities for the private amusement of readers in the solitude of their own homes, leading to the dire social scourge of inappropriate thoughts. A single Toon might find herself being viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers of all walks of life, traumatized over and over. But thanks to the efforts of legislators in the U.S., the U.K., and other countries, and the heroic actions of Mr Sanger and others like him, these Toons may finally be freed of this abuse. No person is free while other people – even imaginary ones – are still being oppressed!
At least the popular name is staying the same. I'd hate it if they ruined my favorite entomological pun: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."
You see the same thing all over the place in other media as well. You can't swing a cat at a comics convention without hitting someone who's aching to "emulate" Jack Kirby by.... writing more stories using the characters Kirby created. (Or insert Will Eisner or Steve Ditko or Alan Moore or Jim Lee, etc. Or insert a beloved novelist or filmmaker or musician.) But that's not what made any of these creators great. What made them great was the fact that they created their own new characters (or songs or whatever). If you want to pay homage to the creators of PAC-MAN, don't waste your time on PAC-MAN-3D. Create something new, like they did.
No, they're not talking about how many orbiters they have left. They're talking about how many missions. After this one will be the "final mission" for each orbiter: Atlantis retires in May. Endeavour retires in July, and Discovery retires in September.
Meanwhile, in another segment of UK law, free speech is being undermined by the criminalization of "child pornography" that does not include actual photos of actual children. Apparently depicting something harmful is as harmful as doing something harmful.
A real man would insist on condoms actually made from the tissues of the endangered animals (a la "lambskin" condoms)!
Re:It might have been valuable back in 1998 or so
on
Sex.com is Going Down
·
· Score: 1
Just FYI, I see or hear* the opposite far more often: people typing simple URLs into the search field, whether it's the one in the corner next to the URL field, or even the one found on their home page (Google, MSN, Yahoo). I don't have the data at hand, but a nontrivial amount of searches on those sites are for fully qualified domain names.
*Typical example: Me on the phone: "Please type example dot com in the address field, hit Enter, and look for the ____ icon in the upper right corner." User: "I don't see that icon." (A few probing questions later) Me: "Is there a Google logo in the upper left corner?" User: "Yes."
Re:It might have been valuable back in 1998 or so
on
Sex.com is Going Down
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The intersection of those two sets is huge. I staff a corporate help desk and I talk to dozens of people a week who don't know the difference between the URL field and the search field.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't given up TV, but I cut the cable when I moved into my first apartment. In 1990. Broadcast TV always gave me enough to watch (maybe 5 hours/week), and these days between broadcast TV, iTunes, Netflix, and now streaming by the networks themselves, there's very little I'm missing.
There's plenty of historical evidence that copyright laws of the kind created by the Statute of Anne and the copyright clause of the US Constitution aided both the economy and (more importantly, I think) the exchange of ideas within their jurisdictions. The UK experienced a veritable boom in publishing after Anne (the dawn of the modern novel and journalism as we know it). Both statutes were author-friendly (rather than publisher-friendly), and didn't significantly restrict the development of the public domain as copyrights expired fairly promptly. It's only with the imposition of absurdly long copyright terms (even just Berne-plus, let alone DMCA and ACTA level) that we've seen the diminishing economic returns, and ballooning restrictions on public freedom. Worse, copyright law as we know it today is much like Prohibition: it's turned too many people into casual criminals, to the point that they question the very real, demonstrable value of copyright altogether.
They're probably Americans. Have you seen what most people here eat? Of course they have bowel problems.
The fact that you only evaluate a computer in terms of "getting working done" demonstrates that your thinking is a little out of date. Granted, Microsoft seemed to think of the Courier primarily as a productivity tool, which may be related to the fact that they've killed it (outmoded thinking), but despite some token productivity apps for the iPad, that's not what it's for. It's for reading/playing/watching/surfing/chatting... in other words, everything but "getting work done".
Creating a site that invites people to do Something Really Stupid as a way to educate people not to do Something Really Stupid is practically begging to get flagged as malicious. It is, in fact, Something Really Stupid.
There's more to government regulation of the market than the word "monopoly". There's also a broader concept known as "restraint of trade", which is what Apple is wandering into when it arbitrarily limits what other businesses can develop for its system.
p.s. No EDGE iPhone? You seem to know less about the iPhone than you do about commerce law. Shutting up would be smart.
It isn't the rights, it's the money. Amtrak can't afford to lay down its own rails.
A bigger problem for Amtrak (in most parts of the country) is the fact that it doesn't own the rails it uses. So it's at the mercy of the freight carriers who do own the rails. That's not a problem with national (or formerly national) passenger rail systems that control their own timetables.
From TFA:
And the time before that was....? The timeframe "in living memory" happens to include the dawn of aviation as we know it. (Hint: Maybe you aren't old enough to remember it, but as long as there are still people alive who do, it's "in living memory".) So I think it's safe to say this is the first time ever that it's brought European aviation to a standstill.
It's "evolution" only if it's a trait that increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction. Not being socially afraid of anybody might increase one's chances of reproducing, but a lack of defensiveness can also open one up to various dangers, the kinds that can remove one from the gene pool before reaching reproductive age. I don't see this trait becoming common.
"Kin"?
Well, at least it'll sell well in Appalachia, enabling teens to keep track of which cousins are dating which.
Wikipedia can't be the solution to every information-gathering problem. And despite some slogans to the contrary, it clearly doesn't want to be. It has policies of Notabiliy, No Original Research, and Neutral Point of View that effectively make it unsuitable for certain information. If you want in-depth, exhaustive information about other topics, you consult a more specialized resource, such as drum and bugle corps, Star Wars, Star Trek, garden flowers, movies, Pokémon, Peter Pan, travel, alternate realities, etc. Wikipedia even has a mechanism for interwiki linking to many of these resources, recognizing them as independent specialty resources.
I want to thank, and praise, Mr Sanger for bringing to light this shameful practice by his chief competitor. Poor innocent Toons like those who pose for "lolicon" images have been exploited for decades (and in fact, for centuries, dating back to the Cartones who posed for Italian Renaissance sketches). From the moment of their very conception, these underage Toons are forced to engage in degrading activities for the private amusement of readers in the solitude of their own homes, leading to the dire social scourge of inappropriate thoughts. A single Toon might find herself being viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers of all walks of life, traumatized over and over. But thanks to the efforts of legislators in the U.S., the U.K., and other countries, and the heroic actions of Mr Sanger and others like him, these Toons may finally be freed of this abuse. No person is free while other people – even imaginary ones – are still being oppressed!
{sigh}
And "Informative"? Really?
At least the popular name is staying the same. I'd hate it if they ruined my favorite entomological pun: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."
Translation: "I was on the losing side of this debate, so I'm bitching about the process."
You see the same thing all over the place in other media as well. You can't swing a cat at a comics convention without hitting someone who's aching to "emulate" Jack Kirby by.... writing more stories using the characters Kirby created. (Or insert Will Eisner or Steve Ditko or Alan Moore or Jim Lee, etc. Or insert a beloved novelist or filmmaker or musician.) But that's not what made any of these creators great. What made them great was the fact that they created their own new characters (or songs or whatever). If you want to pay homage to the creators of PAC-MAN, don't waste your time on PAC-MAN-3D. Create something new, like they did.
"Unfortunately, I am pretty sure the game is not in the public domain yet. "
Since there are no video games I'm aware of that pre-date 1923 (US copyright law), I'd say that's probably right.
And if you can't stay on topic, neither can we.
No, they're not talking about how many orbiters they have left. They're talking about how many missions. After this one will be the "final mission" for each orbiter: Atlantis retires in May. Endeavour retires in July, and Discovery retires in September.
Meanwhile, in another segment of UK law, free speech is being undermined by the criminalization of "child pornography" that does not include actual photos of actual children. Apparently depicting something harmful is as harmful as doing something harmful.
A real man would insist on condoms actually made from the tissues of the endangered animals (a la "lambskin" condoms)!
Just FYI, I see or hear* the opposite far more often: people typing simple URLs into the search field, whether it's the one in the corner next to the URL field, or even the one found on their home page (Google, MSN, Yahoo). I don't have the data at hand, but a nontrivial amount of searches on those sites are for fully qualified domain names.
*Typical example:
Me on the phone: "Please type example dot com in the address field, hit Enter, and look for the ____ icon in the upper right corner."
User: "I don't see that icon."
(A few probing questions later)
Me: "Is there a Google logo in the upper left corner?"
User: "Yes."
Take a Marketing class, and find out.
The intersection of those two sets is huge. I staff a corporate help desk and I talk to dozens of people a week who don't know the difference between the URL field and the search field.