Well, UV light can cause cancer, but I suppose he meant something else. I hope you advised him to go hide in a basement for the rest of his natural life...
Of course, the air in basements in many areas has a high concentration of (radioactive) radon, from the decay of uranium in granite.
If you're curious just how rampant this thing is, take a look at this picture. Yes, all of those are pirated CD's. And they are being sold in Metro stations for $3 or so.
You can get them in China cheaper, in Hong Kong a little more expensive. Most software is currently about $3.50/CDR, but a year ago it was about $1, that's what the latest crackdown did, really put a dent in the bootleg trade.
I know the parent is supposed to be a funny story but as an analogy it misses some very important points.
I think you've just discovered the futility of car-based analogies. But somehow people, particularly Americans, seem addicted to them. Comparing intellectual property (eg an MP3 file) to an automobile is just stupid in so many ways, but you see it all the time.
Nevertheless.... you've missed the rather important point that the tank is free, the station wagon is not, making it worth considering at least.
I wouldn't say that in the beginning Apple was hermeticaly sealed.... Not at all. Many a hardware hacker got his start on old Apples,
I think Neal was referring more to software of the Mac era. Certainly most Macs have been very user-friendly on the hardware side (except of course for the first Macs). The OS has always hidden away its complexity.
If you really want to carry this analogy to its logical (?) conclusion, read Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line. Some parts (bold) seem very relevant to this story.
Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.
There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.
The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.
Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.
Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.
On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.
One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro- sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.
With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old- fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.
Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.
The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a
I really don't think your citation ("exclusive rights to...display the copyrighted work publicly") extends to "control how a work is presented and who gets to see it" which was what I was disagreeing with; exactly as owning the copyright of a book does not let you dictate who may read it and how they do so. Once the copyright holder has allowed distribution they lose the right to prohibit such things. (Though a separate contact enterrd into may do so.)
Copyright is the right to control how a work is presented and who gets to see it.
No it's not. Copyright controls how a work is published: copied and sold. The legal hammer Lucas is wielding is trademark dilution. Also, probably any distributor has to sign some contract on how it is to be exhibited; that could say anything.
Parody is alright, but these people are just showing the movie with no sound. That isn't parody, that's Showing The Movie With No Sound.
Right. This is a derivative work. Spaceballs is a parody. Given that though, as long as Lucasfilm is being paid the normal screening fees, I don't see what their problem is.
When the whole country has fewer people than one US state, that becomes possible.
Counting votes by hand works fine, I did it in Australin elections 20 years ago. The same half-dozen who staff the voting area during the day count the ballots after it closes, took two or three hours I think. That two or three hours is all that you save; big deal. Any seats that are very close are recounted, but again, so what?
What if Austrailia decides they want to run their elections on our software? We've proud of other countries copying our constitution and systems of government, why not our systems of elections too
Australians designed a system two years ago that addressed and eased most of those concerns: They chose to make the software running their system completely open to public scrutiny.
so use a web based service to send and recieve faxes. You can view them, print them, recieve them as emails, either as graphics or OCR'ed for you already. Plus, your phone line is tied up, answering voice calls with the matining call of the modem.
Yes, but you have to pay several dollars a month for such a service, or possibly some limited services are free but require you to accept spam in return. I use one of these and it's a bit of a drag but occasionally necessary. Also many services are limited as to where the dial-up numbers they provide are; you don't want to force people to make international calls to fax you if they're in the same city. If I used faxes more than once a month I'd install fax software and use my modem.
>And how was Star Wars original in any way?
George Lucas took an archetypical storyline and added "in space".
He didn't even do that, though he'd like you to think it was "inspired" by Campbell's hero theories. It was based on 1900s-40s sword-and-spaceship pulp sf, (like Burrough's Barsoom stories, EE Smiths' Lensmaan et al)and also owes much to the cinema serials like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and of course Dune. Not that there's anythong wrong with that, but the intellectual pretentiousness of claiming some deep significance for it is a bit off-putting.
but you still need to worry about somebody flying a plane into it, either intentionally or accidentally. This is something that aircraft carriers are good for. Last time I checked, not that many private companies owned their own aircraft carrier...
Since the tether point is not going to move, you can save a few billion by having a similarly immobile "aircraft carrier", if not an island then something like an oil rig.
You schedule the reboot during shift change. No planes are landing, no safety issues.
Except in an emergency, which by its nature will happen unpredictably, maybe even on a shift change (or the TERRORISTS might plan something nasty then once they know).
These people score a 9.8 out of 10 in the Buzzword Bingo game. That second paragraph, in particular, would keep me as far away from them as possible.
It was obviously designed to do that; it's a joke. And if you look up the location of their company, it's basically Gilligan's Island: an uninhabited (except for 20 Fish and Wildlife Service staff) atoll 1000 miles south of Hawaii.
What I do wonder - is it spammers with the hope of gaining e-mail addresses from unsuspecting people who don't actually want spam - especially perhaps corporate email addresses - and added onto a large list?
Spammers wouldn't be so cute. They'd locate it in Bangalore, not Gilligan's Island.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the air in basements in many areas has a high concentration of (radioactive) radon, from the decay of uranium in granite.
No problem, no network support, therefore not online apps. Otherwise, why not close the spreadsheet and image apps?
Bad URL try this.
You can get them in China cheaper, in Hong Kong a little more expensive. Most software is currently about $3.50/CDR, but a year ago it was about $1, that's what the latest crackdown did, really put a dent in the bootleg trade.
The word is paid, not payed.
And
"applications" not "aplications"
"available" not "avaiable"
"approximate" not "aproximate"
Four typos in one paragraph. And these editors get payed (sic) for this? How hard is it to run a spellcheck?
I think you've just discovered the futility of car-based analogies. But somehow people, particularly Americans, seem addicted to them. Comparing intellectual property (eg an MP3 file) to an automobile is just stupid in so many ways, but you see it all the time.
Nevertheless.... you've missed the rather important point that the tank is free, the station wagon is not, making it worth considering at least.
Well, there was the Batmobile.
I think Neal was referring more to software of the Mac era. Certainly most Macs have been very user-friendly on the hardware side (except of course for the first Macs). The OS has always hidden away its complexity.
Not a nitpick, just another example of insufferable American ignorance and arrogance.
I really don't think your citation ("exclusive rights to...display the copyrighted work publicly") extends to "control how a work is presented and who gets to see it" which was what I was disagreeing with; exactly as owning the copyright of a book does not let you dictate who may read it and how they do so. Once the copyright holder has allowed distribution they lose the right to prohibit such things. (Though a separate contact enterrd into may do so.)
No it's not. Copyright controls how a work is published: copied and sold. The legal hammer Lucas is wielding is trademark dilution. Also, probably any distributor has to sign some contract on how it is to be exhibited; that could say anything.
Right. This is a derivative work. Spaceballs is a parody. Given that though, as long as Lucasfilm is being paid the normal screening fees, I don't see what their problem is.
Counting votes by hand works fine, I did it in Australin elections 20 years ago. The same half-dozen who staff the voting area during the day count the ballots after it closes, took two or three hours I think. That two or three hours is all that you save; big deal. Any seats that are very close are recounted, but again, so what?
No thanks, but you could run your elections on Australian software
Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting
Yes; I'm not disputing that it was brilliantly executed. Just the idea some have that Lucas created the genre (as in the article summary).
Yes, but you have to pay several dollars a month for such a service, or possibly some limited services are free but require you to accept spam in return. I use one of these and it's a bit of a drag but occasionally necessary. Also many services are limited as to where the dial-up numbers they provide are; you don't want to force people to make international calls to fax you if they're in the same city. If I used faxes more than once a month I'd install fax software and use my modem.
George Lucas took an archetypical storyline and added "in space".
He didn't even do that, though he'd like you to think it was "inspired" by Campbell's hero theories. It was based on 1900s-40s sword-and-spaceship pulp sf, (like Burrough's Barsoom stories, EE Smiths' Lensmaan et al)and also owes much to the cinema serials like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and of course Dune. Not that there's anythong wrong with that, but the intellectual pretentiousness of claiming some deep significance for it is a bit off-putting.
And how was Star Wars original in any way?
Since the tether point is not going to move, you can save a few billion by having a similarly immobile "aircraft carrier", if not an island then something like an oil rig.
Except in an emergency, which by its nature will happen unpredictably, maybe even on a shift change (or the TERRORISTS might plan something nasty then once they know).
At 31 it seems to be working fine.
That isn't what the post I was replying to said. (Whether it's true or not.) And "actual damages" in these cases is entirely conjectural.
It was obviously designed to do that; it's a joke. And if you look up the location of their company, it's basically Gilligan's Island: an uninhabited (except for 20 Fish and Wildlife Service staff) atoll 1000 miles south of Hawaii.
Spammers wouldn't be so cute. They'd locate it in Bangalore, not Gilligan's Island.
No, this is for governements only.