My examples were chosen to accentuate the point that even though it is totally obvious that something is wrong or unfounded, the scientists that wrote it have the gall to push it on the public, and the public lap it up, and become misinformed. The Walking With * series has been accepted as some sort of masterpiece, and already there are copycat productions being made with slightly better graphics and equally bad science.
One might as well just say, "hey, they're lies! Don't criticise them for being untrue!"
Jurassic park is different, it has no pretentions of being accurate. That really is sci-fi, and not a "science show". I was surprised to hear that these shows are being shown in schools and set as homework. The issue is more important than might be realised at first.
I am intrigued. The last time I mentioned this to someone, they never actually spoke to me again. I made a similar comment the other day, and earned my first foe. I make this comment once more, and within a minute I've earned a flamebait moderation.
Why don't people want to accept it? The two examples I gave wear real ones (Walking With Dinosaurs - BBC and Walking With Beasts - also BBC) We don't know what colour dinosaurs were! We don't know how good the eyes of Australopithecus were! Yet I see this kind of thing all the time, sprinkled with the occasional "DEADLY gamma rays!"
Come on, wake up people. You're being fed nonsense by those who won't admit they're guessing.
What really annoys me about most pre-history books and television shows is not the way that they assume, but the way they put forward their assumptions as facts. The way that in a show about dinosaurs, the narrator will casually throw in a bit about "the brightly coloured skin" or saying that Australopithecus slept in trees and had good colour vision.
Is anyone claiming that they produced the music they copied? Apart from, perhaps, the musicians who sample the work of other musicians without crediting them?
1. I'd have a hard time saying that the industry's intent is to destroy fair use. Where's the profit in that?
Fair use is largely concerned with being able to copy a work. The problem that I and many like me see is that it can't even be properly argued that there IS any profit in it. The point is not profit but control, with the idea that in some time in the future this can be leveraged to make profit. It's the same reason Disney are so scared to let "Steamboat Willie" fall out of copyright. You think they're going to many a fortune on that any time soon?
2. I have little doubt that the problems that are occurring are because they're trying to -comply- with spec, not obliterate it -- namely, the problems some have noted with copy-protected compact discs are because the industry is trying to protect its content while remaining compatible with an obsolete standard.
I have to wonder if you're not just having a laugh with this one. Altering a specification, for whatever reason, is quite the opposite to complying with it. The proper method of adding functionality to a specification is to create a new one. Compare how PNG could not support animation, so a new specification was made, MNG, that could. Also compare how no-one uses MNG, because they are quite happy with PNGs and animated gifs. This is how you determine whether a standard is obsolete or not, and the same logic applies to the CD. If everyone is happy with it, it isn't obsolete... or will you be listening to sounds with a frequency out of the (44100/2) = 22050Hz that CD supports?
3. I have little doubt that when the next generation of media arrives, with effective digital rights management built in, that it will have the capability to deliver content and permit fair use...
The two are the antithesis of each other. When the day comes that I can't copy a CD to play on another stereo, or just to make a backup, I've lost all pretence of having fair use capabilities in the CD.
4....while preventing the sort of rampant piracy that is driving small record chains out of business.
Examples, please. I have yet to see any examples that have evidence of piracy harming small record chains, while I have seen some that suggest it helps by providing wider exposure. "Piracy" has been bandied around so long as the cause of all commercial suffering that people are beginning to believe it, even using it for an excuse for failure.
5. I think that the free market will probably be the best way to determine how importantly fair use should factor in to these new designs.
Spot on correct! So when are we going to repeal the DMCA and throw out the SSSCA/CBDTPA? Let's let the free market (including all the fair-use supporting consumers) decide whether crippled content delivery will fly or not.
I think running servers at home is still largely not for the general public but that this will change as servers become more simple to operate and configure (plug and play).
I think he misunderstood the issue, though who am I to talk. The problem that the questioner was alluding to is of the service agreements NOT ALLOWING people to run servers at home, as opposed to not being able to.
It's a really bad idea to assume that just because someone is an "expert", recognised or not, that they are right, especially when the topic is one different to what they are used to.
The mechanics of electronic voting are different to conventional voting. Just because someone is an art expert doesn't mean that they could write a paint program.
Not to be objectionable or anything, but there is no way that Philosophy can be considered useless. It's mostly logic applied to real or theoretical situations, useful for anyone. Not to mention it can help to broaden your mind (also useful).
You're right about one thing though, people really don't care about the words on the degree. Many market traders have degrees in Astrophysics. It doesn't matter whether you think about binary star systems or binary code, it's the thinking that matters.
When you start profitting off of your ability to make exact replicas of other peoples work, with little work of your own, you're really profitting off of their work, not yours - and that's not fair.
If only we were. The whole issue is that the new systems are going to severely restrict what the users can do, for fear of them breaking the DMCA.
Still, this kind of nonsense has been around for years. Why should an independent musician wanting to record his own music have to pay some other record company a levy on the blank media he uses?
All this nonsense is interlinked. On one side, you have the perceived problem of copyright infringement of things such as music and film, and on the other side you essentially have certain technology companies trying to appear to be combating this problem. What they are really doing is extending their control over the computers of other people.
Do you *really* want a computer that can only run pre-approved software?
I agree with you, but how about a couple more options?
Say, for example, you're installing a GNU/Linux system, and you don't know anything about hard drive partitioning. There should be both manual choice and a set of presets.
I've often seen suggestions for partitioning that include formulas such as double the RAM for the swap partition, but not if you have more than 256 megs. I've also read that this is only true for SunOS 4. What's the truth? Well surely the coders are going to have a better idea than a LinuxNewbie just wanting to get some sort of dual-boot system up that won't trash all of his files.
Would it be so hard to have presets, based on a combination of what packages were to be installed, the intended use of the box and the autodetected hardware present on said box?
This is where the choice thing is going wrong. Sure, give the users the option for enough rope to hang themselves, but if it can be determined that they only need a little bit of string, suggest that first.
You said, "allow the creators a way to make a profit on their hard work"
The letter of the law says nothing about financial profit. Profit can only be seen as a possible by-product of the temporary monopoly that can be granted in this case.
Once people start thinking in terms of patents and copyright being there to generate profit for inventors and authors, laws such as the DMCA start to be passed.
I think on the whole, we probably agree with there being a problem of patents being used to stifle scientific advancement. The thing is, though, copyrights and patents are being routinely used to simply keep the cash flowing in.
Patents are meant to allow the creators a way to make a profit on their hard work and to facilitate the advancement of science by encouraging patent reuse instead of constant reimplementation.
No. In America at least, patents are:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
Excellent! At last someone recognises that Terminator is superior to Terminator 2. I have to wonder, though, how could anyone rate Jurassic Park higher than Star Wars?
What a shame the write-ups are so cursory. A few sentences more and maybe a few images wouldn't have hurt.
This really happened to me. I just felt like being flippant, so I said, "It'll land on the edge" or something similar. The other guy said "No, really, heads or tails" but I repeated the call. I'm not sure who was more amazed when it landed on the side.
We need to return to the days when we can trust and honor each other and distribute our projects freely. Peace.
If only we could! You said the reason why not yourself, though.
Look at Disney. Say I wrote a story about The Little Mermaid. Say it was popular, and I started selling it. Do you really think Disney wouldn't sue me? Even though the original story, "The Little Mermaid" is in the Public Domain.
Perhaps they wouldn't sue me. I haven't got enough money to throw at lawyers to find out though.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at cellophane and aspirin and the other famous lapsed trademarks. A protected trademark, unlike copyright, is immortal.
Not so. Bayer lost the trademark to aspirin in reparations after World War I. Beware of considering any human invention immortal.
My examples were chosen to accentuate the point that even though it is totally obvious that something is wrong or unfounded, the scientists that wrote it have the gall to push it on the public, and the public lap it up, and become misinformed. The Walking With * series has been accepted as some sort of masterpiece, and already there are copycat productions being made with slightly better graphics and equally bad science.
One might as well just say, "hey, they're lies! Don't criticise them for being untrue!"
Jurassic park is different, it has no pretentions of being accurate. That really is sci-fi, and not a "science show". I was surprised to hear that these shows are being shown in schools and set as homework. The issue is more important than might be realised at first.
I am intrigued. The last time I mentioned this to someone, they never actually spoke to me again. I made a similar comment the other day, and earned my first foe. I make this comment once more, and within a minute I've earned a flamebait moderation.
Why don't people want to accept it? The two examples I gave wear real ones (Walking With Dinosaurs - BBC and Walking With Beasts - also BBC) We don't know what colour dinosaurs were! We don't know how good the eyes of Australopithecus were! Yet I see this kind of thing all the time, sprinkled with the occasional "DEADLY gamma rays!"
Come on, wake up people. You're being fed nonsense by those who won't admit they're guessing.
What really annoys me about most pre-history books and television shows is not the way that they assume, but the way they put forward their assumptions as facts. The way that in a show about dinosaurs, the narrator will casually throw in a bit about "the brightly coloured skin" or saying that Australopithecus slept in trees and had good colour vision.
I'm quite happy with P2P, though I might upgrade when P3.11P comes out.
You know, this is a real shame. It's always sad to see a book die, especially one that would have been interesting.
I have no doubt that the moon has been landed on, but it would have been such a fascinating read.
It sounds empty, but knowledge really is the antidote to ignorance. A book like that could only have added more interesting knowledge to the world.
Is anyone claiming that they produced the music they copied? Apart from, perhaps, the musicians who sample the work of other musicians without crediting them?
1. I'd have a hard time saying that the industry's intent is to destroy fair use. Where's the profit in that?
...while preventing the sort of rampant piracy that is driving small record chains out of business.
Fair use is largely concerned with being able to copy a work. The problem that I and many like me see is that it can't even be properly argued that there IS any profit in it. The point is not profit but control, with the idea that in some time in the future this can be leveraged to make profit. It's the same reason Disney are so scared to let "Steamboat Willie" fall out of copyright. You think they're going to many a fortune on that any time soon?
2. I have little doubt that the problems that are occurring are because they're trying to -comply- with spec, not obliterate it -- namely, the problems some have noted with copy-protected compact discs are because the industry is trying to protect its content while remaining compatible with an obsolete standard.
I have to wonder if you're not just having a laugh with this one. Altering a specification, for whatever reason, is quite the opposite to complying with it. The proper method of adding functionality to a specification is to create a new one. Compare how PNG could not support animation, so a new specification was made, MNG, that could. Also compare how no-one uses MNG, because they are quite happy with PNGs and animated gifs. This is how you determine whether a standard is obsolete or not, and the same logic applies to the CD. If everyone is happy with it, it isn't obsolete... or will you be listening to sounds with a frequency out of the (44100/2) = 22050Hz that CD supports?
3. I have little doubt that when the next generation of media arrives, with effective digital rights management built in, that it will have the capability to deliver content and permit fair use...
The two are the antithesis of each other. When the day comes that I can't copy a CD to play on another stereo, or just to make a backup, I've lost all pretence of having fair use capabilities in the CD.
4.
Examples, please. I have yet to see any examples that have evidence of piracy harming small record chains, while I have seen some that suggest it helps by providing wider exposure. "Piracy" has been bandied around so long as the cause of all commercial suffering that people are beginning to believe it, even using it for an excuse for failure.
5. I think that the free market will probably be the best way to determine how importantly fair use should factor in to these new designs.
Spot on correct! So when are we going to repeal the DMCA and throw out the SSSCA/CBDTPA? Let's let the free market (including all the fair-use supporting consumers) decide whether crippled content delivery will fly or not.
I think running servers at home is still largely not for the general public but that this will change as servers become more simple to operate and configure (plug and play).
I think he misunderstood the issue, though who am I to talk. The problem that the questioner was alluding to is of the service agreements NOT ALLOWING people to run servers at home, as opposed to not being able to.
Randomness doesn't exist
Tell that to a decaying atom.
It's a really bad idea to assume that just because someone is an "expert", recognised or not, that they are right, especially when the topic is one different to what they are used to.
The mechanics of electronic voting are different to conventional voting. Just because someone is an art expert doesn't mean that they could write a paint program.
Not to be objectionable or anything, but there is no way that Philosophy can be considered useless. It's mostly logic applied to real or theoretical situations, useful for anyone. Not to mention it can help to broaden your mind (also useful).
You're right about one thing though, people really don't care about the words on the degree. Many market traders have degrees in Astrophysics. It doesn't matter whether you think about binary star systems or binary code, it's the thinking that matters.
New CGI Yoda
They animated Yoda with Perl??? You really CAN do anything with it.
(Yeah, yeah, I know)
When you start profitting off of your ability to make exact replicas of other peoples work, with little work of your own, you're really profitting off of their work, not yours - and that's not fair.
You mean like the RIAA do?
If only we were. The whole issue is that the new systems are going to severely restrict what the users can do, for fear of them breaking the DMCA.
Still, this kind of nonsense has been around for years. Why should an independent musician wanting to record his own music have to pay some other record company a levy on the blank media he uses?
All this nonsense is interlinked. On one side, you have the perceived problem of copyright infringement of things such as music and film, and on the other side you essentially have certain technology companies trying to appear to be combating this problem. What they are really doing is extending their control over the computers of other people.
Do you *really* want a computer that can only run pre-approved software?
How they are unfounded? When someone can't copy their own work for fear of hurting someone else's profits, they have lost their rights on that matter.
Since when are options a bad thing?
I agree with you, but how about a couple more options?
Say, for example, you're installing a GNU/Linux system, and you don't know anything about hard drive partitioning. There should be both manual choice and a set of presets.
I've often seen suggestions for partitioning that include formulas such as double the RAM for the swap partition, but not if you have more than 256 megs. I've also read that this is only true for SunOS 4. What's the truth? Well surely the coders are going to have a better idea than a LinuxNewbie just wanting to get some sort of dual-boot system up that won't trash all of his files.
Would it be so hard to have presets, based on a combination of what packages were to be installed, the intended use of the box and the autodetected hardware present on said box?
This is where the choice thing is going wrong. Sure, give the users the option for enough rope to hang themselves, but if it can be determined that they only need a little bit of string, suggest that first.
You say that Newton died a virgin - how could anyone possibly know this? Perhaps he was a gentleman, who did not brag about such things.
You said, "allow the creators a way to make a profit on their hard work"
The letter of the law says nothing about financial profit. Profit can only be seen as a possible by-product of the temporary monopoly that can be granted in this case.
Once people start thinking in terms of patents and copyright being there to generate profit for inventors and authors, laws such as the DMCA start to be passed.
I think on the whole, we probably agree with there being a problem of patents being used to stifle scientific advancement. The thing is, though, copyrights and patents are being routinely used to simply keep the cash flowing in.
Look at what's happening now with crippled CD's? Or the Bnetd fiasco?.
Patents are meant to allow the creators a way to make a profit on their hard work and to facilitate the advancement of science by encouraging patent reuse instead of constant reimplementation.
No. In America at least, patents are:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
(The Constitution of the United States of America, Article 1, section 8)
Excellent! At last someone recognises that Terminator is superior to Terminator 2. I have to wonder, though, how could anyone rate Jurassic Park higher than Star Wars?
What a shame the write-ups are so cursory. A few sentences more and maybe a few images wouldn't have hurt.
This really happened to me. I just felt like being flippant, so I said, "It'll land on the edge" or something similar. The other guy said "No, really, heads or tails" but I repeated the call. I'm not sure who was more amazed when it landed on the side.
"I do the impossible for the unbelieving and ungrateful, why bother."
Just be thankful God doesn't feel the same way.
What a very obvious troll.
There are so many ways of refuting your argument I don't know where to start.
How about the masterpieces that have arisen through derivative works? Most of Shakespeare's work, for example.
Then there's the argument that the Internet is a public place, and if people didn't want their material viewed they should not have put it online.
Then there's the technical argument of how they could have prevented deep-linking through the refferer values.
What else... how about people's legal rights? The first sale doctrine, for example.
Shall we even talk about how there is nothing immoral whatsoever in a straightforward link?
I think that's enough for now.
We need to return to the days when we can trust and honor each other and distribute our projects freely. Peace.
If only we could! You said the reason why not yourself, though.
Look at Disney. Say I wrote a story about The Little Mermaid. Say it was popular, and I started selling it. Do you really think Disney wouldn't sue me? Even though the original story, "The Little Mermaid" is in the Public Domain.
Perhaps they wouldn't sue me. I haven't got enough money to throw at lawyers to find out though.