It does also sometimes serve its original intent, to protect the little guy from having his ideas stolen with zero recourse.
I agree, that is the original intent of patents.
But has anyone heard of a little guy using a patent to stave off a large corporation from stealing his ideas in the last decade or so? It only works if the little guy has lawyers good enough to go to bat against the megacorporations likely to steal his patent. Which, of course, means he's not a little guy.
The patent game is a game played by companies with teams of lawyers on the payroll. IMHO, the little guy was bounced out of this arena sometime around 1950 or so. I know I haven't seen it be otherwise in my lifetime.
And such accusations without proof are libelous (being in written form), no doubt based on jealousy, not to mention is basically irrational.
Wrong on all three counts.
Let's see, the OP is saying he is convinced the painting is real, he is doing his best to shut up anyone questioning his claim, and he is claiming anyone who does question his claim is irrational.
You know, if someone was trying to sell a fake they'd do these exact three things. Make a claim, try to silence opposition to the claim, and discredit his detractors.
I'm not saying it is a fake, I'm just saying this guy is obviously paving the way for selling the painting, but doing it exactly like a con artist would. Don't believe me? Check out antiques auctions on eBay. The guys who are full of bologna do the exact same song and dance. Especially people selling old armour. Bury it in their backyard for a few months, dig it up, then make those kind of statements.
"This is a real Roman Cavalry helmet."
"Stop nitpicking about the details or I'll report you to eBay abuse. You're screwing up my auction."
"If you not a real historian then shut up, you don't know what you're talking about."
The math part was the part I liked the best. Deriving equations, all that. I loved seeing where it all came from. It was like watching thought become action, something akin to magic.
The whole time I felt like I was climbing a mountain. I loved it all. The challenge of it, the feeling of treading new waters, late nights, too much coffee...all of it. I know that makes me deeply odd, but it's true.
No it's not. The real artists aren't hanging around bars. These guys we're probably just like you: Pretending. The real artists are AT HOME doing something useful. But you did make a good point. There are a lot of people who like pretending. I see them all the time and GOOD GOD I would have hated your guts - no offense - if I had seen you at that bar.
None taken. But I must clarify one point. I was not pretending to be anything. I was mistaken for something, but that was hardly my fault. I've always been me. Even though I did have a vaguely-trendy-at-one-time army jacket with junk on it. A closer inspection of the jacket would have revealed that most of the stuff was Battletech patches anyways. I did it as a nod to my being an engineer and basically decked myself out as a house Steiner mech technician. It did somewhat look like what other people were doing, but it wasn't.
Well, what can I say - it amused me at the time. Ah, youth.
I hadn't thought of it that way but you're right - thanks for the laugh! =)
This sort of thing happens to me from time to time actually. Maybe I missed my calling.
I was once in New Orleans with a different girlfriend who later on became my wife. I had bought a new button and stuck it on my jacket, "Jesus is Coming - look busy". We had been drinking daiquiris all day and were making our way down Bourbon street in the late evening crowd.
The Jesus Guy spotted me and read my pin. If you've been down there, you know him. He has lots of scraggly hair, wears a long white robe-ish thing, and drags around a gigantic 8 ft. cross. On a wheel, strangely enough. Kinda misses the point IMHO but whatever.
Anyways, he missed the sarcasm on the pin and decided it was a statement of support. Called me brother and began preaching up a storm. I did the only logical thing and joined him. We did about a minute of impromptu preaching at the crowd. "Times short and these people don't know it!" I did my best doomsday prophet impersonation. And made a new friend - he was pleased to spend a moment with someone of like mind.
At the end I shook his hand, patted his cross and walked off. Soon as we were out of earshot my wife said, "You know, it's a wonder people don't punch you in the face more often." =)
No, what you learned was that a lot of people who wander around who look at modern art are pretentious and know nothing about art and just want to impress their girlfriends who took them to the met by following and agreeing with the artsy looking people.
I'm sure there's a kind of hipster peer-pressure thing going on. That's kind of my point.
As for the event in question, here's how it went down.
My girlfriend was by my side when I started my routine. We were alone at the time. Other people wandered in...maybe 5 or 6. They wanted to see what I was talking about. I did my bit on 3 or 4 paintings, thinking my girlfriend was beside me. What she did was take two steps back and watch.
I turned around. There was a lady who was maybe in her 50's with white hair leading the pack. I made eye contact with her and was surprised. I thought I was alone with my SO. The lady smiled and nodded in an encouraging manner that suggested, "Please, do go on!" I apologized, explaining I thought I was alone and didn't wish to disturb their viewing. Wandered back to my SO who was doing her very very best to not laugh. We exited the room. Later on she told me about my miniature fan club and how impressed they were with my insight.
Yeah, it's a small sample and I'm sure it doesn't speak for the whole crowd. But it did teach me a small something about modern art.
I paint and let me tell you that to get inspiration for a painting is hard. And please don't get me started on "how I could do that in five minutes." If you think like that then you actually don't understand art.
If you're talking about the "looks like 5 minute art" being the modern variety, then I must call shenanigans on you. Modern art is bollocks.
Disclaimer: I'm not an artist. What I know about art you could fit in a thimble. But, I'm an engineer and scientist, and I have tested this. Albeit accidentally.
Over a dozen years ago I went to the Met in NYC with a girlfriend. At the time I had long hair, was only slightly balding, and wore military clothing with lots of pins all over it. I looked eccentric. I looked...like what you'd think of when you think "artist".
So we're at the Met. And to make my SO laugh, I start doing my best "LA Story" impression on the modern art display. I was a little louder than I should have been (I blame the extra-fun Manhattan bars for this). Other people could hear me - I didn't know this. I began spouting nonsense.
"It says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy."
"It's amazing how much of a conversation you can have with just green, isn't it?"
"You can see the effort but not the grace. Yellow can be so unforgiving."
And so on.
What I didn't realize was that other art people were looking over my shoulder and nodding at every single thing I was saying. I had the weird hair and the odd jacket. And nothing I was saying was making sense. Since it was all zooming over their heads, they erred on the side of caution and assumed I was a genius. And I had improved their day with my "insight", which was nothing more than half-drunken babbling. When I turned around and saw a half a dozen people following me around, I knew I had learned something important:
It does NOT suck to be an engineering student. If - and here's the big part - if you like engineering. If you're in this because you parents told you to do it, or because you think there's big money in it - there's the door and don't let it hit you in the ass.
Complaining about how engineering is hard work is like someone studying to be a proctologist and coming home from the first day at work and complaining about all the assholes. How could you possibly be surprised by this? Anything that requires you to learn differential equations is going to be a little taxing.
As for myself, I loved being an engineering student. Having a building full of PhDs that would explain anything, absolutely anything to me ROCKED. I miss college.
In fact, you only needed about 8 credit hours of extra engineering classes to graduate out of the electives. I graduated with over 35. Took extra classes in antenna design, digital number theory, non-linear controls...you name it. I loved it all and dearly miss college.
On the flip side, you know what actually does suck? A mortgage. That's what.
So, being SubGenius myself and rather abhorrent of any and all religions, does anyone else think that I can get NetSol to close down any and all religious websites that they currently host?
Speaking as a Discordian myself, I approve of people of all religions getting their panties in a twist and trying to blow each other to smithereens. It's exciting fun and makes for fantastic television. It would go against my beliefs to take any of these religious websites down. I therefore find it necessary to declare a counter-Fatwah on you! Double double neener neener to you, good sir. And all that.
Onward Christian Soldiers,
Onward Buddhist Priests.
Onward, Fruits of Islam,
Fight till you're deceased.
Fight your little battles,
Join in thickest fray;
For the Greater Glory,
of Dis-cord-i-a.
Yah, yah, yah,
Yah, yah, yah, yah.
Blfffffffffft!
Chaos is everywhere - the Goddess reigns supreme. =)
'I downloaded it via Windows Update, and got a bluescreen on the third part of the update,' wrote 'Iggy33' in a comment posted Wednesday on Microsoft's Vista team blog. Iggy33 was just one of dozens of posters complaining about Vista Service Pack 1's effect on their PCs.
Not that I'm backing Microsoft, but if they only have dozens of complaints on something with an installed base that large - then I'd consider the release a rather large success.
More people had problems downloading the NIN album.
This guy is still getting voter support while he's in jail for mob related crimes.
Remember that Star Trek:TOS episode where everyone was a cheesy mobster? That was filmed in Ohio. They did it to save on costuming and sets. I'm sure of it.
If you're hungry and I steal an apple from you, I've deprived you of something. Something you need. This is stealing. Taking something that is yours, so that you no longer have it. After I do so, you continue to be hungry. You have no apple.
And that is why copyright infringement is a different law, with a different definition, and different penalties. If you want to drive the discussion into morality, it is clearly not as bad as stealing because after I perform an illegal copy - you still have the original. If we extend the metaphor and we're still talking apples, you can still eat yours and not be hungry anymore. It is less of an injury to you.
Morally, it's a smaller offense. Much smaller, especially since I may have deprived you of nothing. If I had to pay for an apple, maybe I just wouldn't have bothered and done without. Every file copied the RIAA views as a lost sale. And I can tell you, there is a lot of music out there where free is the maximum value of it's worth. Most of the stuff on the radio I hear these days I wouldn't pay two cents for.
First of all, if you pay, doesn't that imply you'll be illegally downloading music?
Not at all. If you go by what the OP said, as soon as you pay you're legally allowed to download. By paying you're saying "I intend to download some music, and I want to do it legally."
Secondly, doesn't this reek of paying protection money for doing virtually nothing wrong in the first place?
Virtually nothing wrong and nothing wrong are two different things. Although I hate to say it because the RIAA are among the worst examples of scum-sucking corporate greed - if you receive a good it is just and fair to pay for that good.
This isn't like paying off the school bully because after you pay - you get something for it.
As a side notion, it would be nice if you could also just opt to send that money to the artist directly and get some sort of receipt that would be sufficient to keep the law off your downloads. I'd jump at that in a heartbeat.
The thing is, if it was played at any other time, it would be indistinguishable from any other accordion. So you're really just contributing to the proliferation of accordions. At this point, I think we can fall back the the gun.
They have their accordions; we have ours. It's standard cold war policy. MAD - "Mutually Assured Dissonance."
An excellent idea. But let's add opt-in to it. Not everyone pays the protection money automatically - only those who want it. If you don't pay then you aren't covered. Like...insurance, maybe. If you don't download music you don't need it. Just like if you don't drive a car, you don't need car insurance. If you do, then you buy in.
Slashdot Mirror
Pinguis fors fortis.
I agree, that is the original intent of patents.
But has anyone heard of a little guy using a patent to stave off a large corporation from stealing his ideas in the last decade or so? It only works if the little guy has lawyers good enough to go to bat against the megacorporations likely to steal his patent. Which, of course, means he's not a little guy.
The patent game is a game played by companies with teams of lawyers on the payroll. IMHO, the little guy was bounced out of this arena sometime around 1950 or so. I know I haven't seen it be otherwise in my lifetime.
Wal Mart is an awful lot like the RIAA - they're horrific price gougers.
Read this.
When Wal Mart tells you to lower their prices, that means lower them or get outta my store.
What would that be in Teraballmers?
Wrong on all three counts.
Let's see, the OP is saying he is convinced the painting is real, he is doing his best to shut up anyone questioning his claim, and he is claiming anyone who does question his claim is irrational.
You know, if someone was trying to sell a fake they'd do these exact three things. Make a claim, try to silence opposition to the claim, and discredit his detractors.
I'm not saying it is a fake, I'm just saying this guy is obviously paving the way for selling the painting, but doing it exactly like a con artist would. Don't believe me? Check out antiques auctions on eBay. The guys who are full of bologna do the exact same song and dance. Especially people selling old armour. Bury it in their backyard for a few months, dig it up, then make those kind of statements.
"This is a real Roman Cavalry helmet."
"Stop nitpicking about the details or I'll report you to eBay abuse. You're screwing up my auction."
"If you not a real historian then shut up, you don't know what you're talking about."
I'm assuming POS in this particular sentence does not mean Point Of Sale.
The math part was the part I liked the best. Deriving equations, all that. I loved seeing where it all came from. It was like watching thought become action, something akin to magic.
The whole time I felt like I was climbing a mountain. I loved it all. The challenge of it, the feeling of treading new waters, late nights, too much coffee...all of it. I know that makes me deeply odd, but it's true.
None taken. But I must clarify one point. I was not pretending to be anything. I was mistaken for something, but that was hardly my fault. I've always been me. Even though I did have a vaguely-trendy-at-one-time army jacket with junk on it. A closer inspection of the jacket would have revealed that most of the stuff was Battletech patches anyways. I did it as a nod to my being an engineer and basically decked myself out as a house Steiner mech technician. It did somewhat look like what other people were doing, but it wasn't.
Well, what can I say - it amused me at the time. Ah, youth.
I hadn't thought of it that way but you're right - thanks for the laugh! =)
This sort of thing happens to me from time to time actually. Maybe I missed my calling.
I was once in New Orleans with a different girlfriend who later on became my wife. I had bought a new button and stuck it on my jacket, "Jesus is Coming - look busy". We had been drinking daiquiris all day and were making our way down Bourbon street in the late evening crowd.
The Jesus Guy spotted me and read my pin. If you've been down there, you know him. He has lots of scraggly hair, wears a long white robe-ish thing, and drags around a gigantic 8 ft. cross. On a wheel, strangely enough. Kinda misses the point IMHO but whatever.
Anyways, he missed the sarcasm on the pin and decided it was a statement of support. Called me brother and began preaching up a storm. I did the only logical thing and joined him. We did about a minute of impromptu preaching at the crowd. "Times short and these people don't know it!" I did my best doomsday prophet impersonation. And made a new friend - he was pleased to spend a moment with someone of like mind.
At the end I shook his hand, patted his cross and walked off. Soon as we were out of earshot my wife said, "You know, it's a wonder people don't punch you in the face more often." =)
That's not my claim. My claim is that there is nothing to understand.
I'm sure there's a kind of hipster peer-pressure thing going on. That's kind of my point.
As for the event in question, here's how it went down.
My girlfriend was by my side when I started my routine. We were alone at the time. Other people wandered in...maybe 5 or 6. They wanted to see what I was talking about. I did my bit on 3 or 4 paintings, thinking my girlfriend was beside me. What she did was take two steps back and watch.
I turned around. There was a lady who was maybe in her 50's with white hair leading the pack. I made eye contact with her and was surprised. I thought I was alone with my SO. The lady smiled and nodded in an encouraging manner that suggested, "Please, do go on!" I apologized, explaining I thought I was alone and didn't wish to disturb their viewing. Wandered back to my SO who was doing her very very best to not laugh. We exited the room. Later on she told me about my miniature fan club and how impressed they were with my insight.
Yeah, it's a small sample and I'm sure it doesn't speak for the whole crowd. But it did teach me a small something about modern art.
I paint and let me tell you that to get inspiration for a painting is hard. And please don't get me started on "how I could do that in five minutes." If you think like that then you actually don't understand art.
If you're talking about the "looks like 5 minute art" being the modern variety, then I must call shenanigans on you. Modern art is bollocks.
Disclaimer: I'm not an artist. What I know about art you could fit in a thimble. But, I'm an engineer and scientist, and I have tested this. Albeit accidentally.
Over a dozen years ago I went to the Met in NYC with a girlfriend. At the time I had long hair, was only slightly balding, and wore military clothing with lots of pins all over it. I looked eccentric. I looked...like what you'd think of when you think "artist".
So we're at the Met. And to make my SO laugh, I start doing my best "LA Story" impression on the modern art display. I was a little louder than I should have been (I blame the extra-fun Manhattan bars for this). Other people could hear me - I didn't know this. I began spouting nonsense.
"It says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy."
"It's amazing how much of a conversation you can have with just green, isn't it?"
"You can see the effort but not the grace. Yellow can be so unforgiving."
And so on.
What I didn't realize was that other art people were looking over my shoulder and nodding at every single thing I was saying. I had the weird hair and the odd jacket. And nothing I was saying was making sense. Since it was all zooming over their heads, they erred on the side of caution and assumed I was a genius. And I had improved their day with my "insight", which was nothing more than half-drunken babbling. When I turned around and saw a half a dozen people following me around, I knew I had learned something important:
Art, modern art anyways - is a load of rubbish.
It's the emperor's new clothes.
It does NOT suck to be an engineering student. If - and here's the big part - if you like engineering. If you're in this because you parents told you to do it, or because you think there's big money in it - there's the door and don't let it hit you in the ass.
Complaining about how engineering is hard work is like someone studying to be a proctologist and coming home from the first day at work and complaining about all the assholes. How could you possibly be surprised by this? Anything that requires you to learn differential equations is going to be a little taxing.
As for myself, I loved being an engineering student. Having a building full of PhDs that would explain anything, absolutely anything to me ROCKED. I miss college.
In fact, you only needed about 8 credit hours of extra engineering classes to graduate out of the electives. I graduated with over 35. Took extra classes in antenna design, digital number theory, non-linear controls...you name it. I loved it all and dearly miss college.
On the flip side, you know what actually does suck? A mortgage. That's what.
You misunderstand me, sir. I'm not being ironic and I oppose nobody. I merely adore watching The Lady at her work.
All things are true. For further illumination consult your pineal gland.
Speaking as a Discordian myself, I approve of people of all religions getting their panties in a twist and trying to blow each other to smithereens. It's exciting fun and makes for fantastic television. It would go against my beliefs to take any of these religious websites down. I therefore find it necessary to declare a counter-Fatwah on you! Double double neener neener to you, good sir. And all that.
Onward Christian Soldiers,
Onward Buddhist Priests.
Onward, Fruits of Islam,
Fight till you're deceased.
Fight your little battles,
Join in thickest fray;
For the Greater Glory,
of Dis-cord-i-a.
Yah, yah, yah,
Yah, yah, yah, yah.
Blfffffffffft!
Chaos is everywhere - the Goddess reigns supreme. =)
Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group. Sounds like a straight to DVD Jean-Claude van Damme movie.
Not that I'm backing Microsoft, but if they only have dozens of complaints on something with an installed base that large - then I'd consider the release a rather large success.
More people had problems downloading the NIN album.
Read this.
Then this.
And finally, this.
This guy is still getting voter support while he's in jail for mob related crimes.
Remember that Star Trek:TOS episode where everyone was a cheesy mobster? That was filmed in Ohio. They did it to save on costuming and sets. I'm sure of it.
To hell with 'seem' - post benchmarks.
Why are we so concerned about the telcos and their responsibility? How about the people who had them do the eavesdropping in the first place?
I think we're going after the red cape and not the matador here. We're being distracted away from the actual guilty parties.
Why do your technically and morally not match?
If you're hungry and I steal an apple from you, I've deprived you of something. Something you need. This is stealing. Taking something that is yours, so that you no longer have it. After I do so, you continue to be hungry. You have no apple.
And that is why copyright infringement is a different law, with a different definition, and different penalties. If you want to drive the discussion into morality, it is clearly not as bad as stealing because after I perform an illegal copy - you still have the original. If we extend the metaphor and we're still talking apples, you can still eat yours and not be hungry anymore. It is less of an injury to you.
Morally, it's a smaller offense. Much smaller, especially since I may have deprived you of nothing. If I had to pay for an apple, maybe I just wouldn't have bothered and done without. Every file copied the RIAA views as a lost sale. And I can tell you, there is a lot of music out there where free is the maximum value of it's worth. Most of the stuff on the radio I hear these days I wouldn't pay two cents for.
Not at all. If you go by what the OP said, as soon as you pay you're legally allowed to download. By paying you're saying "I intend to download some music, and I want to do it legally."
Secondly, doesn't this reek of paying protection money for doing virtually nothing wrong in the first place?Virtually nothing wrong and nothing wrong are two different things. Although I hate to say it because the RIAA are among the worst examples of scum-sucking corporate greed - if you receive a good it is just and fair to pay for that good.
This isn't like paying off the school bully because after you pay - you get something for it.
As a side notion, it would be nice if you could also just opt to send that money to the artist directly and get some sort of receipt that would be sufficient to keep the law off your downloads. I'd jump at that in a heartbeat.
They have their accordions; we have ours. It's standard cold war policy. MAD - "Mutually Assured Dissonance."
What I'm proposing here is a peacetime accordion.
An excellent idea. But let's add opt-in to it. Not everyone pays the protection money automatically - only those who want it. If you don't pay then you aren't covered. Like...insurance, maybe. If you don't download music you don't need it. Just like if you don't drive a car, you don't need car insurance. If you do, then you buy in.
How about an identical accordion 180 degrees out of phase with the offending accordion?