Actually, thats not true. A lot of copyrights are maintained, even though they aren't commercialized at all, either because the copyright holder just wants to be a jerk about it or because it would cost them more to monetize the copyright than it's worth to them. Because copyright is practically eternal and requires no effort to maintain, all these works are lost to the public commons, some of them forever. This, of course, is the exact opposite of what copyright is supposed to do. The taxation system provides incentive to release works when they're no longer profitable. By your argument we could replace *all* taxes with income tax, which is stupid - not everything that the public provides results in income which can be taxed - and a more logical thread of the same idea is to abolish income tax and tax all ownership. Which is actually a very logical and straightforward idea - you owe the commons a tax on anything you can restrict the access of others to - but the idea actually causes libertarians to shrivel and die, like salt on a slug.
That is *exactly the point*. Remember that copyright is not a natural right - it's a restricted monopoly created soley for the intent of providing incentive to release your works (which is why it's stupid that we extend copyright to unpublished works, but whatever). It was decided that the best way of providing incentive was to grant a mechanism to monetize your work. If the work isn't valuable enough that you can monetize it, then why shouldn't it be in the public domain? People will pay the tax on it as long as the revenues from it equal or exceed the tax.
90% of everything is crap, of course. Here's a brief list (in no particular order) of some of the games I remember from recent years as being very good.
Katamari Damancy, of course, for breaking new ground and being quirky and fun without sticking to the tried & true gameplay mechanics
Beyond Good and Evil. Traditional 3d engine, but not FPS gameplay. Great story. Very cute and occasionally funny.
No One Lives Forever series. Gameplay was only so-so, really - same old crap - but the voice acting and comedy made playing this enormously fun. Actually accomplishing objectives was secondary to eavesdropping on angsting teenage ninjas.
Thief series, especially the first 2. Excellent implementation of the FPSneaker, which was a new concept then, as well as a fantastic storyline and rich environment. This is one of the very few (only?) mission based games where I actually cared about what happened, even though I knew I wasn't going to change anything. Thief 3 gets a bonus prize for best survival horror game that isn't a survival horror game. I still shiver when I remember playing the Shalebridge Cradle.
Morrowind. People rag on it for the cookie cutter NPCs, but the scope and breadth that they managed was incredible, the visuals were great, and like all the elder scrolls game, the backstory was immersive. The problem with immersive games like this is where the technology fails to deliver - Morrowind tried very very hard, which only made it more jarring where it failed.
On the other hand, if you're doing the kind of high end DHTML fiddling that would expose these kind of memory leaks on a customer-facing e-business site, you need to get the hell smacked out of you.
It's worth pointing out that while FF certainly has it's share of leaks, in the *specific case* of JS garbage collection, it's much better than IE. Which is what TFA said.
*Mozilla*, the core of Firefox, has had working JavaScript for years, and had it years before Opera did. Firefox had it from day one because of this. So I'm not comparing the brand new Firefox against the old Opera, I'm comparing the old Mozilla against the old Opera. Firefox getting new features is neat, for the same reason Opera getting working JavaScript is neat. There's no need to try to cut Firefox down by saying Opera had it first - sure Opera had mouse gestures first, but when it had those, it didn't have working JavaScript or CSS support.
While on the other hand, Firefox/Mozilla has had JavaScript that worked for years, and a standard compliant DOM model, and better CSS support, and a useable plugin model, etc, etc. Opera is a nice browser, but it's not like it's objectively superior to Firefox. Basic functionality, as opposed to cute UI tricks, has been present in Mozilla for a really long time, whereas Opera didn't even get a usefull JS engine until version 7.
It depends greatly on what you consider "a substitute". Some people want that to mean that you can replace Office with OO and the only thing that changes is the application icon. OO isn't at that point and doesn't want to be, so if this is you, OO will fail. Some people ware more accepting of differences, but want 100% comapatiblity with existing documents, macros, etc. This is the greyest area, because OOs compatability is good but certainly not 100%. If you're in this category, your milage will vary considerably. The last case is where the user just wants to do the same things with OO that they can do with Office and in this case OO succeeeds superbly.
.NET actually has some advantages architecturally, although it's slower in other areas. Remeber that.NET also gets to take advantage of much of the research into JIT and VMs over the last few years. There is still a signifigant amount of VM overhead in both cases - claims that VM code is "as fast" as compiled code is generally only true in synthetic benchmarks, and not in whole system analysis. Naturally, some of the speed disadvantage comes from the feature set of the VM. The biggest performance issue with modern VM based languages is memory consumption, not CPU time, though.
IE isn't an application, though. So this isn't Netscape fucking with another application, it's Netscape editing a system setting to correctly configure itself (except it's got it wrong, of course). There's nothing wrong with editing IEs registry settings and lots (and I mean *lots*) of applications do it. It's system software, after all.
"innovative" has become a red flag for me, where I pretty much dismiss arguments built on it. It's really easy to re-define it to mean whatever you want. Is it innovate to refine a UI concept thats existed for a long time until it's polished? Is innovation extending a published standard? How about working within the standard to achieve the same result? How about implementing features long known and discussed in academia in commercial products? Is being first to market innovative, or is being the market leader?
Incidently, even faked child porn is illegal in a lot of places. There's been some constitutional challenges to these but I'm not sure how they've turned out. I know Ohio had a law that banned even synthesized "child porn" with no actors/models/whatever involved.
I agree, at least on the face of it. He is, naturally, arguing in his appeal that that is exactly what happened. Hopefully, of course, the next level of appeal will reject the lower courts opinion on PGP but decide that it didn't have an effect on the verdict and maintain the guilty verdict. But the possibility of this sort of thing, and "getting off on technicalities" are why DAs should just simmer down. Any time anyone is able to overturn a verdict on procedural grounds, or on technicalities like this, the prosecuting attorneys and other responsible parties (like offices not following rules of evidence, etc) should be censured, instead of the common response, which seems to be blaming the courts and lobbying for the overturn of these technicalities that preserve our freedoms.
TFA excplicitly states that the case made no mention of encrypted files being found, only of the software being present. The existence of kiddie porn is evidence, the existence of software is not. In fact, according to the summary, no kiddie porn was found at all - he was convicted on the testimony of a model.
Even if there were files found, a simple re-reading of your argument clearly points out the fallacy. The existence of the *encrypted kiddie porn* is the evidence, not the existence of software which may or many not have been used to encrypt that file.
It sounds like they had all the evidence they needed. I don't think anyone believes that had the state not brought up the existence of PGP, the guy would have been acquitted.
The whole point of the appeal is that the evidence was irrelevent and that it may have influenced the jury. If it's not relevent, then the prosecution has no business bringing it in the first place, for exactly this reason - this guy will appeal again, and I hope that a higher court rules differently. And wouldn't it be fucking terrible if this guy is guilty, and he gets off because some dumbfuck of a DA decided that having encryption software was worth introducing as evidence?
Apparently, the existence of PGP (not of encrypted documents, note, simple the existence of PGP) was used as evidence in his trial. His appeal claimed that evidence was irrelevent and should not have been admitted. The appellate court ruled that it's appropriate to present the existence of an encryption program as evidence of criminal intent, *even in the absence of any supporting evidence* is reasonable. The guy is trying to get off on a technicality, but the judge is going the wrong way in closing off that loophole. His Internet use is more reasonable, although "lolitas" is a common porn term for young(ie, "just turned 18") girls and a web search for that is unlikely to turn up anything more illegal than a regular porn search (say, "boobies") would.
This is not true. In fact, it is the opposite of true. Mere aggregation of data (like phone books, famously) are *not* copywritable. There is some wiggle room, especially if you have good lawyers - again famously, the annotations and numbers added by Lexis to court rulings are considered copyrightable, thus giving them a defacto control over large chunks of legal documents.
Because databases are not protected, many large personal-information companies have been pressuring Congress to pass special protection laws for them, but so far none have passed.
Aargh. No. You're only losing the right to give me a caramel-covered apple. Which you aren't really losing, because you never had such a right. Your right to give me a plain old non-carmelized apple is intact. You can't lose a right unless you already had it. Since you never had a right to give me a caramel covered apple, you can't be losing anything. The problem here is your usage of the term "lose". You haven't lost anything.
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Actually, thats not true. A lot of copyrights are maintained, even though they aren't commercialized at all, either because the copyright holder just wants to be a jerk about it or because it would cost them more to monetize the copyright than it's worth to them. Because copyright is practically eternal and requires no effort to maintain, all these works are lost to the public commons, some of them forever. This, of course, is the exact opposite of what copyright is supposed to do. The taxation system provides incentive to release works when they're no longer profitable. By your argument we could replace *all* taxes with income tax, which is stupid - not everything that the public provides results in income which can be taxed - and a more logical thread of the same idea is to abolish income tax and tax all ownership. Which is actually a very logical and straightforward idea - you owe the commons a tax on anything you can restrict the access of others to - but the idea actually causes libertarians to shrivel and die, like salt on a slug.
That is *exactly the point*. Remember that copyright is not a natural right - it's a restricted monopoly created soley for the intent of providing incentive to release your works (which is why it's stupid that we extend copyright to unpublished works, but whatever). It was decided that the best way of providing incentive was to grant a mechanism to monetize your work. If the work isn't valuable enough that you can monetize it, then why shouldn't it be in the public domain? People will pay the tax on it as long as the revenues from it equal or exceed the tax.
The reason the preview costs $999 is that it includes the hardware.
Because of emails well-known resistance to impersonation and spoofing, right?
It's worth pointing out that while FF certainly has it's share of leaks, in the *specific case* of JS garbage collection, it's much better than IE. Which is what TFA said.
Yes, but thats linear/serial access, not random access. Which is what the parent said - the advantage of a zip file is random access.
*Mozilla*, the core of Firefox, has had working JavaScript for years, and had it years before Opera did. Firefox had it from day one because of this. So I'm not comparing the brand new Firefox against the old Opera, I'm comparing the old Mozilla against the old Opera. Firefox getting new features is neat, for the same reason Opera getting working JavaScript is neat. There's no need to try to cut Firefox down by saying Opera had it first - sure Opera had mouse gestures first, but when it had those, it didn't have working JavaScript or CSS support.
While on the other hand, Firefox/Mozilla has had JavaScript that worked for years, and a standard compliant DOM model, and better CSS support, and a useable plugin model, etc, etc. Opera is a nice browser, but it's not like it's objectively superior to Firefox. Basic functionality, as opposed to cute UI tricks, has been present in Mozilla for a really long time, whereas Opera didn't even get a usefull JS engine until version 7.
Hello, world is more complicated than it seems.
Communism & Capitalism would make a great title for an avante-garde pseudo artistic gay porn movie.
It depends greatly on what you consider "a substitute". Some people want that to mean that you can replace Office with OO and the only thing that changes is the application icon. OO isn't at that point and doesn't want to be, so if this is you, OO will fail. Some people ware more accepting of differences, but want 100% comapatiblity with existing documents, macros, etc. This is the greyest area, because OOs compatability is good but certainly not 100%. If you're in this category, your milage will vary considerably. The last case is where the user just wants to do the same things with OO that they can do with Office and in this case OO succeeeds superbly.
.NET actually has some advantages architecturally, although it's slower in other areas. Remeber that .NET also gets to take advantage of much of the research into JIT and VMs over the last few years. There is still a signifigant amount of VM overhead in both cases - claims that VM code is "as fast" as compiled code is generally only true in synthetic benchmarks, and not in whole system analysis. Naturally, some of the speed disadvantage comes from the feature set of the VM. The biggest performance issue with modern VM based languages is memory consumption, not CPU time, though.
IE isn't an application, though. So this isn't Netscape fucking with another application, it's Netscape editing a system setting to correctly configure itself (except it's got it wrong, of course). There's nothing wrong with editing IEs registry settings and lots (and I mean *lots*) of applications do it. It's system software, after all.
"innovative" has become a red flag for me, where I pretty much dismiss arguments built on it. It's really easy to re-define it to mean whatever you want. Is it innovate to refine a UI concept thats existed for a long time until it's polished? Is innovation extending a published standard? How about working within the standard to achieve the same result? How about implementing features long known and discussed in academia in commercial products? Is being first to market innovative, or is being the market leader?
Incidently, even faked child porn is illegal in a lot of places. There's been some constitutional challenges to these but I'm not sure how they've turned out. I know Ohio had a law that banned even synthesized "child porn" with no actors/models/whatever involved.
I agree, at least on the face of it. He is, naturally, arguing in his appeal that that is exactly what happened. Hopefully, of course, the next level of appeal will reject the lower courts opinion on PGP but decide that it didn't have an effect on the verdict and maintain the guilty verdict. But the possibility of this sort of thing, and "getting off on technicalities" are why DAs should just simmer down. Any time anyone is able to overturn a verdict on procedural grounds, or on technicalities like this, the prosecuting attorneys and other responsible parties (like offices not following rules of evidence, etc) should be censured, instead of the common response, which seems to be blaming the courts and lobbying for the overturn of these technicalities that preserve our freedoms.
Even if there were files found, a simple re-reading of your argument clearly points out the fallacy. The existence of the *encrypted kiddie porn* is the evidence, not the existence of software which may or many not have been used to encrypt that file.
The whole point of the appeal is that the evidence was irrelevent and that it may have influenced the jury. If it's not relevent, then the prosecution has no business bringing it in the first place, for exactly this reason - this guy will appeal again, and I hope that a higher court rules differently. And wouldn't it be fucking terrible if this guy is guilty, and he gets off because some dumbfuck of a DA decided that having encryption software was worth introducing as evidence?
Apparently, the existence of PGP (not of encrypted documents, note, simple the existence of PGP) was used as evidence in his trial. His appeal claimed that evidence was irrelevent and should not have been admitted. The appellate court ruled that it's appropriate to present the existence of an encryption program as evidence of criminal intent, *even in the absence of any supporting evidence* is reasonable. The guy is trying to get off on a technicality, but the judge is going the wrong way in closing off that loophole. His Internet use is more reasonable, although "lolitas" is a common porn term for young(ie, "just turned 18") girls and a web search for that is unlikely to turn up anything more illegal than a regular porn search (say, "boobies") would.
One of these can carry 290 metric tons (tonnes?). Thats pretty close.
As per the subject line, I was referring specifically to the US.
No you didn't, because you *never had the right* to give me an apple covered in caramel.
Because databases are not protected, many large personal-information companies have been pressuring Congress to pass special protection laws for them, but so far none have passed.
Aargh. No. You're only losing the right to give me a caramel-covered apple. Which you aren't really losing, because you never had such a right. Your right to give me a plain old non-carmelized apple is intact. You can't lose a right unless you already had it. Since you never had a right to give me a caramel covered apple, you can't be losing anything. The problem here is your usage of the term "lose". You haven't lost anything.