As much as I dislike it, the owners of the copy write do control the distribution of their intellectual property.
(It's "copyright". And I'll refrain from a discussion of what an extreme misnomer "intellectual property" is.)
Not really. Once a work is published, you have no right to stop people talking about it - which is all a link is. It's no different that saying "hey, on page A13 of today's Baltimore Sun, second column, there's a story you might want to read." That's all a link is - which is why linking is free speech.
These sites typically generate revenue from adds or additional features on their main page
Their inability to create a well-designed site, or a useful business plan for it, does not affect my free-speech rights.
There are technical ways to prevent deep linking; or they can put ads or additional features on every page.
As the creators of the content, they should have the right to control how and when that content is made available.
Bullshit.
I am the creator of this post. But once I've published it I have no rights - legal or ethical - to control who may read it, or when they read it, or to prevent other people from talking or writing about it.
This is yet another case of lawyers on crack, nothing more. We really need to outlaw litigating under the influence...
Most jobs, your co-workers can't do without you. someone's got to do what YOU do while you are gone.
If they can't cope with your absence for a week, they have serious problems. What are they going to do if you get ill, or run over by a bus, or get a better offer?
Any organization that can't cope with you taking time off it fatally flawed, and you ought to leave before it collapses.
My colleagues are competent, and I have documented as much of my project as I can. They can do without me for a week. They could even, with some difficulty, pick up the pieces if I quit, or got run over by a streetcar.
And this is all well and good, except that many firms' HR depts haven't really adjusted and still base vacation time solely on number of years served at that one company.
This is why I like contracting - no messing around with accumulating vacation time, just "I will not be here from X to Y." I largely get to determine my own balance between money and time.
Everyone has known for years
that tobacco is harmful and addictive. The tobacco companies shouldn't be sued for your idiotic actions.
What big tobacco should be sued for - hell, what they should have their charters revoked for and their directors imprisoned for - is lying, and conspiring to hide information, about those dangers.
Eating "organic" foods doesn't help, because plants have developed chemical ways to deal with pests, and generate these toxic
chemicals in even greater amounts when grown without pesticides.
What, you think organic farmers just let insect pests run rampant over their crops? They use IPM strategies, and lower-toxicity and low-peristance insecticides. They also use no herbicides and no fungicides. The result is less toxic crap in your food, in the soil, and in the water.
If you've read any of the low carb diet books (eg, Protein Power, Dr Atkins Diet) they can tell you all kinds of tales of hyperinsulinemia and many related ills coming from a high carb diet.
Of course, what they don't tell you is how dangerous these faddish high-protein diets are.
Avoid simple carbs with high glycemic index, sure. But the protein mania is simply unhealthy. Your caloric intake should still be mostly clean-burning carbohydrates. Best way to lose weight is still to get up off your ass and exercise.
(Exception: the protein focused diet can be useful as a temporary measure in adult onset diabetes, to sort of "reset" the insulin regulation mechanism. Otherwise, forget it - it's a very unhealthful practice.)
T'was a hard thing to do, definitely. (And if this had gone up sooner, and I've have seen the posts from locals who were interested, I'd have saved them out from the pile.) I thought about putting them up on Yahoo auctions, but shipping would be very difficult and expensive - the boxen themselves are small, but the monitors are monsterous. (I'm not even sure you could ship them in a standard cardboard box. If only I'd been able to get them to work with my Linux boxen...I tried but no luck.)
But the hardware isn't supported by any of the free Unices, not even NetBSD, and the OS that's on there is a beta release of Trusted HP-UX - which means that to get anything done with them you have to mess around with the MaxSix trusted networking extensions. That's a pain that outweighs any potential usefullness.
Still, they're being recycled, not just dumped - so their component molecules will yet have a chance to participate in the Great Chain of Computation.
Re:stronger and smarter - but how to get wiser?
on
The Next Generation
·
· Score: 1
Wouldn't prolonegd life increase the proportion of elders in the population, thereby (supposedly) increasing the average wisdom?
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom." - H. L. Mencken
Experience is not enough - people have to learn from it - think about it, consider it, compare it to the experience of others, and generally engage their brains.
stronger and smarter - but how to get wiser?
on
The Next Generation
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Certainly technology is going to change our bodies, and our brains. But how will this new capacity be directed? Will we become gods made in the image of man, Olympian myths made manifest, possessed of great power but still mired in petty squabbles? Or will we truely become transcendant, more serene and compassionate deities?
There's no technological enhancement that can make us wiser. If we're going to start becoming gods, it behooves us to start acting with a bit of maturity.
It takes more than a naked ape with superpowers to be a god.
So the metaphor stands: somebody else using your work for their benefit without consideration for the investment of your time and energy is *similar* to somebody copying a CD without consideration for the machinery, both creative and economic, that went into its creation.
Uh, it's also similar to someone reading a library book and thus avoiding paying the author. Or borrowing a book from a friend. Or humming a song for my own amusement.
People share ideas. That's part of the human experience. Sharing by making digital copies is no different than telling jokes, lending books, singing songs, and all the other methods of sharing we've had for centuries.
Most artists (ie. Costello) haven't agreed to freely trade their music. They've chosen to sell their music and allow their fans to purchase it.
The point is that this "choice" to sell, rather than share, music is now as irrelevant as a comedian's "choice" to sell, rather than share, a joke. If I come up with a good joke, I can't say "You may not tell this joke to anyone else."
Sharing recorded music is now just as easy as telling jokes or singing songs.
The difference between stealing cars and burning CDs? Degrees of separation.
No, the difference is that if you steal my car you deprive me of it. If you make an unauthorized copy of a CD of my songs, I am no worse off.
Yes, artists should be compensated. But copying is not theft, and pay-per-copy is no longer workable. Time for a new paradigm.
I suggest something based on the same idea as songwriter royalties - I can sing "Rockin' inb the Free World" in the shower, or at a party, all I want; but when I sign it at the bar, Neil Young gets paid (via BMI or ASCAP). Drop the notion of "Copyright" and replace it with a right to royalties on for-profit use.
You have something. You didn't pay for it. How exactly is that not theft?
Non sequitor - you are assuming that if you didn't pay for something, you must have stolen it. I have many things I didn't pay for; I've never paid for sunshine, for oxygen, for my dogs (rescued mutts)...more relevantly, I've never paid for the Pythagorean Theorm, the Four Noble Truths, or the value of pi to ten significant digits.
Since when was theft limited only to physical property?
Who said it was? Theft of service is a real thing, when it deprives others of that service. Copying, however, deprives no one of anything.
imagine 100 years ago if you copied a script or book you'd still be called a cheat and a theif
A century ago, if you copied a poem out of a book no one would mind. Today, if you copy a song off of a copy-protected CD, the DCMA stormtroopers may come after you.
That doesn't make piracy ok.
Who said theft and murder on the high seas was ok?
Oh! You meant making copies without a permission slip. That's something that's here to stay, love it or lump it. It's time to accept that reality and move on to the question of how, given that, creators of interesting strings of bits can still get paid (and thus keep eating in order to create more interesting bit strings). Neither theft nor piracy has anything to do with it.
[standard three year old argument...]
While its not theft in the physical sense you are using someone elses tool and not paying them for their services. Its
like cheating a cabby.
No, it's not. The cabbie provided a limited service, and my use of that service prevented him from rendering it to someone else. Copying bits deprives no one of anything. Copying is not theft.
Which is not to say it's right. Just that it's not theft.
Some people want to get paid for their efforts and by all means they should.
That doesn't mean that a pay-per-copy scheme is the best, or even a practical - or even a possible! - way for that to happen.
In other words, alternative medicine yes, homeopathy, no.
That's the problem - everything from homeopathy and "crystal healing", to herbs, low-fat diets and massage therapy, is classified as "alternative" when compared to industry-standard cut 'n' drug practices[0].
Some "alternative" therapies (herbs, massage, acupuncture[1]) have plausable physiological mechanisms. Of course, not all therapies in these categories have the effects that are sometimes claimed for them; but the idea that eating a plant, getting rubbed, or being pricked with needles can have definite effects on the flesh should not be surprising to anyone.
Others (such as many ch'i/ki/energy therapies that involve interaction between the pracitioner and the patient) have a more psychosomatic[2] action - disease and healing have a larger psychological and sociological component than we often think. Unfortunately sometimes practioners of these therapies focus their explanations on mystical energies or somesuch, and skeptical investigators often focus on these deficient explanations rather than on the question of whether the patient obtains relief.
I practice reiki. I've found it effective, on myself and others, for minor physical and emotional disturbances. But I believe it works though mild bodywork, the physiological reaction to touch, and the powerful healing effect of ritual, and not by mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra - but still, the best way to obtain the necessary state of mind is to think about mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra. It's sort of like what ESR talks about in "Dancing with the Gods". As he puts it,
Magic is loose in the world. It is not the magic of fantasy -- no would-be violators of the laws of physics need apply. Real magic acts
in and through human agents. The two forms of practical magic are healing and divination. Healing works because human minds have
more control over their bodies than we normally think; divination works because humans know and perceive more than they are
consciously aware of.
...
Feel free to hypothesize that I've merely learned how to enter some non-ordinary mental states that
change my body language, disable a few mental censors, and have me putting out signals that other people interpret in terms of certain
material in their own unconscious minds.
Fine. You've explained it. Correctly, even. But you can't do it!
And as long as you stick with the sterile denotative language of psychology, and the logical mode of the waking mind, you won't be able
to --- because you can't reach and program the unconscious mind that way.
Another category of "alternative" therapies would be those that are completely self-activated placebos. Homoepathy would seem to fit here. (However, be aware that many remedies marketed as homoepathic do contain enough active material to have an effect, and should really be classified as herbal.) Some may be presented by believers, some ("psychic surgery") may be presented by con men.
Finally there are some that not only don't work, but are actively unhealthy.
It's a pretty broad range of practices to be lumped under one label.
([0]Which certainly have their place. If my body gets majorly damaged, please take me to the local trauma center and drug and cut me as appropriate. However, when all you have is a scalpel, everyone looks like a surgical candidate...)
([1] Speaking strictly of endorphin release and nerve stimulation, not meridians of ch'i, which would fall into the next category.)
([2] Which means "mind-body", not "it's all in the mind".)
Unless I misunderstand, your phone calls are analog all the way.
You misunderstand. They're digital most of the way. Only the "last mile" to your house is analog. (Unless you've got ISDN, in which case it's digital to your door.)
The PTSN is a circuit-switched network, where the nodes talk to one another over a packet-switched network. It's hideously complex and ugly, mostly because it's got to be able to connect some guy in the middle of nowhere using a tin can and string to somebody using this VoIP service.
I've learned a little bit about the SS7 protocols, and I'm amazed every time I think about what it takes to get a call through.
Mythology itself ain't nothin' but the best of the "pulp fiction" of the anceint Greeks and Romans. (And other old school cultures, but in our society it's mostly Greco-Roman).
Consciously or unconsciously, every artist borrows from and builds on what has gone before.
Slashdot Mirror
(It's "copyright". And I'll refrain from a discussion of what an extreme misnomer "intellectual property" is.)
Not really. Once a work is published, you have no right to stop people talking about it - which is all a link is. It's no different that saying "hey, on page A13 of today's Baltimore Sun, second column, there's a story you might want to read." That's all a link is - which is why linking is free speech.
Their inability to create a well-designed site, or a useful business plan for it, does not affect my free-speech rights.
There are technical ways to prevent deep linking; or they can put ads or additional features on every page.
Bullshit.
I am the creator of this post. But once I've published it I have no rights - legal or ethical - to control who may read it, or when they read it, or to prevent other people from talking or writing about it.
This is yet another case of lawyers on crack, nothing more. We really need to outlaw litigating under the influence...
If they can't cope with your absence for a week, they have serious problems. What are they going to do if you get ill, or run over by a bus, or get a better offer?
Any organization that can't cope with you taking time off it fatally flawed, and you ought to leave before it collapses.
My colleagues are competent, and I have documented as much of my project as I can. They can do without me for a week. They could even, with some difficulty, pick up the pieces if I quit, or got run over by a streetcar.
This is why I like contracting - no messing around with accumulating vacation time, just "I will not be here from X to Y." I largely get to determine my own balance between money and time.
What big tobacco should be sued for - hell, what they should have their charters revoked for and their directors imprisoned for - is lying, and conspiring to hide information, about those dangers.
What, you think organic farmers just let insect pests run rampant over their crops? They use IPM strategies, and lower-toxicity and low-peristance insecticides. They also use no herbicides and no fungicides. The result is less toxic crap in your food, in the soil, and in the water.
Of course, what they don't tell you is how dangerous these faddish high-protein diets are.
Avoid simple carbs with high glycemic index, sure. But the protein mania is simply unhealthy. Your caloric intake should still be mostly clean-burning carbohydrates. Best way to lose weight is still to get up off your ass and exercise.
(Exception: the protein focused diet can be useful as a temporary measure in adult onset diabetes, to sort of "reset" the insulin regulation mechanism. Otherwise, forget it - it's a very unhealthful practice.)
T'was a hard thing to do, definitely. (And if this had gone up sooner, and I've have seen the posts from locals who were interested, I'd have saved them out from the pile.) I thought about putting them up on Yahoo auctions, but shipping would be very difficult and expensive - the boxen themselves are small, but the monitors are monsterous. (I'm not even sure you could ship them in a standard cardboard box. If only I'd been able to get them to work with my Linux boxen...I tried but no luck.)
But the hardware isn't supported by any of the free Unices, not even NetBSD, and the OS that's on there is a beta release of Trusted HP-UX - which means that to get anything done with them you have to mess around with the MaxSix trusted networking extensions. That's a pain that outweighs any potential usefullness.
Still, they're being recycled, not just dumped - so their component molecules will yet have a chance to participate in the Great Chain of Computation.
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom." - H. L. Mencken
Experience is not enough - people have to learn from it - think about it, consider it, compare it to the experience of others, and generally engage their brains.
Certainly technology is going to change our bodies, and our brains. But how will this new capacity be directed? Will we become gods made in the image of man, Olympian myths made manifest, possessed of great power but still mired in petty squabbles? Or will we truely become transcendant, more serene and compassionate deities?
There's no technological enhancement that can make us wiser. If we're going to start becoming gods, it behooves us to start acting with a bit of maturity.
It takes more than a naked ape with superpowers to be a god.
Yes, and then they have to face the consequences of those mistakes.
BB din't just advertise a price, they accepted payment at that price. That's binding.
The joy of big-box retailers...eliminate any competition, then you get to do what you want.
Uh, it's also similar to someone reading a library book and thus avoiding paying the author. Or borrowing a book from a friend. Or humming a song for my own amusement.
People share ideas. That's part of the human experience. Sharing by making digital copies is no different than telling jokes, lending books, singing songs, and all the other methods of sharing we've had for centuries.
The point is that this "choice" to sell, rather than share, music is now as irrelevant as a comedian's "choice" to sell, rather than share, a joke. If I come up with a good joke, I can't say "You may not tell this joke to anyone else."
Sharing recorded music is now just as easy as telling jokes or singing songs.
No, the difference is that if you steal my car you deprive me of it. If you make an unauthorized copy of a CD of my songs, I am no worse off.
Yes, artists should be compensated. But copying is not theft, and pay-per-copy is no longer workable. Time for a new paradigm.
I suggest something based on the same idea as songwriter royalties - I can sing "Rockin' inb the Free World" in the shower, or at a party, all I want; but when I sign it at the bar, Neil Young gets paid (via BMI or ASCAP). Drop the notion of "Copyright" and replace it with a right to royalties on for-profit use.
Of course you have. But software isn't like lawnmowers.
I borrow your book for thirty days. I copy it. I give you back the original. Have I stolen your book? Nope.
Non sequitor - you are assuming that if you didn't pay for something, you must have stolen it. I have many things I didn't pay for; I've never paid for sunshine, for oxygen, for my dogs (rescued mutts)...more relevantly, I've never paid for the Pythagorean Theorm, the Four Noble Truths, or the value of pi to ten significant digits.
Who said it was? Theft of service is a real thing, when it deprives others of that service. Copying, however, deprives no one of anything.
A century ago, if you copied a poem out of a book no one would mind. Today, if you copy a song off of a copy-protected CD, the DCMA stormtroopers may come after you.
Who said theft and murder on the high seas was ok?
Oh! You meant making copies without a permission slip. That's something that's here to stay, love it or lump it. It's time to accept that reality and move on to the question of how, given that, creators of interesting strings of bits can still get paid (and thus keep eating in order to create more interesting bit strings). Neither theft nor piracy has anything to do with it.
No, it's not. The cabbie provided a limited service, and my use of that service prevented him from rendering it to someone else. Copying bits deprives no one of anything. Copying is not theft.
Which is not to say it's right. Just that it's not theft.
That doesn't mean that a pay-per-copy scheme is the best, or even a practical - or even a possible! - way for that to happen.
No, they're not. Copying is not theft. Using software is not theft.
They may be violating an agreement. But that's not the same as stealing.
That's the problem - everything from homeopathy and "crystal healing", to herbs, low-fat diets and massage therapy, is classified as "alternative" when compared to industry-standard cut 'n' drug practices[0].
Some "alternative" therapies (herbs, massage, acupuncture[1]) have plausable physiological mechanisms. Of course, not all therapies in these categories have the effects that are sometimes claimed for them; but the idea that eating a plant, getting rubbed, or being pricked with needles can have definite effects on the flesh should not be surprising to anyone.
Others (such as many ch'i/ki/energy therapies that involve interaction between the pracitioner and the patient) have a more psychosomatic[2] action - disease and healing have a larger psychological and sociological component than we often think. Unfortunately sometimes practioners of these therapies focus their explanations on mystical energies or somesuch, and skeptical investigators often focus on these deficient explanations rather than on the question of whether the patient obtains relief.
I practice reiki. I've found it effective, on myself and others, for minor physical and emotional disturbances. But I believe it works though mild bodywork, the physiological reaction to touch, and the powerful healing effect of ritual, and not by mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra - but still, the best way to obtain the necessary state of mind is to think about mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra. It's sort of like what ESR talks about in "Dancing with the Gods". As he puts it,
Another category of "alternative" therapies would be those that are completely self-activated placebos. Homoepathy would seem to fit here. (However, be aware that many remedies marketed as homoepathic do contain enough active material to have an effect, and should really be classified as herbal.) Some may be presented by believers, some ("psychic surgery") may be presented by con men.
Finally there are some that not only don't work, but are actively unhealthy.
It's a pretty broad range of practices to be lumped under one label.
([0]Which certainly have their place. If my body gets majorly damaged, please take me to the local trauma center and drug and cut me as appropriate. However, when all you have is a scalpel, everyone looks like a surgical candidate...)
([1] Speaking strictly of endorphin release and nerve stimulation, not meridians of ch'i, which would fall into the next category.)
([2] Which means "mind-body", not "it's all in the mind".)
You misunderstand. They're digital most of the way. Only the "last mile" to your house is analog. (Unless you've got ISDN, in which case it's digital to your door.)
The PTSN is a circuit-switched network, where the nodes talk to one another over a packet-switched network. It's hideously complex and ugly, mostly because it's got to be able to connect some guy in the middle of nowhere using a tin can and string to somebody using this VoIP service.
I've learned a little bit about the SS7 protocols, and I'm amazed every time I think about what it takes to get a call through.
25 cents a track is three bucks for a CD's worth (twelve songs) of music. I can do better than that by clever manipulation of CD clubs.
I think more like ten cents a pop would defintely do it - think ten bucks, one hundred songs.
And if we cut the middlemen out, most artists would probably end up ahead.
Look more carefully:
You either need a time machine, or it's a joke (admittedly a strange and non-funny one).
Because the first statement is true, while the second is false.
Further, no one is talking about throwing people who use Flash idiotically into jail.
See the difference?
Mythology itself ain't nothin' but the best of the "pulp fiction" of the anceint Greeks and Romans. (And other old school cultures, but in our society it's mostly Greco-Roman).
Consciously or unconsciously, every artist borrows from and builds on what has gone before.
If you Read The Fine Article, you'll see that the screenwriter in question has been dead for many years; and is already listed in the movie's credits.