If it were valid that basic plots can be copyrighted, then almost all works of fiction out there would be infringing someone's copyright somewhere. The legal view is bogus if it holds that an abstract story structure can be copyrighted. "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl' as a story structure should not be copyrightable. The structure is the abstract principal behind a story, but the realization of that abstraction is what gets copyrighted normally - the words it gets presented in.
Worse, if someone wrote an automated plot generator and created and copyrighted perhaps 100,000 basic plots, then no one could write a novel anymore. Obviously something is wrong here, and any judge claiming that abstract intellectual structures in a story can be owned is deeply out of touch with reality.
By the way, there are writing tools like the SW product Dramatica which help create plot permutations. I think they say they have 64,000 variations or something.
No, if you look carefully, you'll find that SCO invented the neutron. Honest. Check out the tiny copyright symbol on every neutron: "All your neutron are belong to us - SCO"
The stuff described on the U Minn site is NOT the real Silly Putty. The real stuff is a silicon polymer as far as I know. The Elmer's Glue/borate mix has only a limited shelflife. It has some viscoelasticity, but it does not behave fully like the real Putty.
The current state of speculative media really is oversaturation, with the inevitable dullness that comes from too many mediocre writers and publishers chasing the buck. What little that is good out there is buried in the literary and visual media equivalent of spam. Sturgeon's Law: '99% of everything is crap' really does apply. Or is there someone out there who will defend Britney Spears?
I went to Tower Books recently to look for a book by William Faulkner. The store had on the shelf exactly, and only, three books by Faulkner. But on the next aisle, ah, there were 10 shelves of Star Trek pablum. All of it mechanically-written stumbling crap written by 10th-graders for easy-listening zombies. Our society's equivalent of the dime novel, disposable. The kind of person who reads this mediocre crap is a consumer, not a thinker.
But this extends to most media now. Comics for one. Consider Batman. Batman has reached a point where the character has been so overmarketed it has become passe, unentertaining. Nothing new, same old same old.
On Spider's point about loss of interest in space travel, I agree. Kids grow up watching Trek explore the universe in a star-travelling plush hotel, encountering the alien forehead-of-the-week. There is a combined deplacement of reality and desensitization that occurs. This flashy shiny 'everything is neatly tied up in the 38 minutes left between commercials' absorbs the edge of curiosity that would normally drive people to genuinely engage in furthering real life space travel.
I compare Star Trek versus real space travel to excessive masturbation versus real sex. It's too easy for the easy gratification to replace the real thing. And it's far inferior.
Just out of curiousity, if I taught the doll to say "This is a stickup. Give me all your money in a bag" and took it into a bank, would they arrest Cindy, or me?
There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that someone is developing a pulse detonation powered Sybian. On the other hand, women everywhere are cheering technology onward.
A key factor was mentioned here: pulsejets are REALLY loud. So if we end up with a bunch of them flying around, where exactly will they be taking off and landing. Because airports in urban areas already have severe noise problems.
Not only firmware differences. Some years ago I had a WD 1.6GB drive and the board went bad. I talked to WD and they said that simply swapping the board was not guaranteed to work. The reason is, for every drive, during manufacturing they tweak parameters on the board, sometimes by writing values into an EEPROM. This is done automatically by calibration equipment. Such values control head gain, servos, etc. If you merely swap boards, you run the risk of then getting marginal or erroneous performance. Even in modern drives there is still plenty of analog at the front end, and things like gain and servo tracking in the read channel are important. So this guy was lucky indeed because it was not 100% likely to work.
I do not recommend Feynman for people starting out in physics. His work was best for teaching advanced physics students and his 'introductory' physics lecture series is actually geared towards people who already know physics. The books look elegant intellectually, and they are, but they do not aim to make it easy for beginners. I endured having to use the Feynman physics texts as a freshman and sophomore at Caltech. The lecturers teaching us operated on almost a whole parallel track to the Feynman books and had to create a set of lecture notes basically comprising a whole second textbook. Doing the problem sets at Tech was in part a lot of discovering 'tricks'. I hated it, as it was more like playing an obscene game than having an enjoyable learning experience. But then, Caltech was a lot of nerds teaching nerds. So what could you expect...
Some of us used Halliday and Resnick as a supplement, a physics text aimed at normal people, and with many problems and solutions.
Did you say, movies? By your command, Emperor, I shall disintegrate the Battlestar Galactica for bad acting and sundry other crimes. But, could you reboot me first? I seem to have a couple of memory leaks and I'm almost out of physical RAM. Well, yes, I AM running Windows 2150, Emperor... But it's not MY fault.
The adding of ringers is indeed an old practice but still a useful one. It's also used by intelligence agencies and can point a leak straight back to a single source. The Soviets used it during the Cold War and, sadly, people have died because of it.
After John Kerry's campaign manager's laptop - with his campaign information - was stolen in San Francisco this year under very suspicious circumstances, and shortly thereafter, the same thing happened to Democratic candidate for SF mayor Angela Alioto, I realized that all political candidates should add ringers to their databases for campaign contributors. In the event that an opponent engineers a theft of data and uses it to solicit funds from people on the list, this might be used to identify the player.
And these thefts DO occur more often than you might imagine. It's kind of odd how it's only Democrats whose databases have been stolen. There was also a database theft from a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Tennessee... call me paranoid, but it's all documented.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the BBC did not want to publicize the Doctor's sexual relationship with his dog, K9. But it really got lonely in space sometimes.
There's also Reverse Chinese Notation, where you have to redo your calculation again after a half hour.
You think that's bad, this morning already I've had 4 popup ads for the X10 Single-Atom Laser.
What, haven't you ever watched Richard's "Sweatin Plasma to the Oldies"? I've known all along.
I read 'giant rats' and immediately thought of Santa Cruz.
Worse, if someone wrote an automated plot generator and created and copyrighted perhaps 100,000 basic plots, then no one could write a novel anymore. Obviously something is wrong here, and any judge claiming that abstract intellectual structures in a story can be owned is deeply out of touch with reality.
By the way, there are writing tools like the SW product Dramatica which help create plot permutations. I think they say they have 64,000 variations or something.
Does McDonald's hot coffee have the capability to cause serious injury? -- YES.
Does McDonald's coffee contain toxic chemicals? -- Well, one cup can destroy the ozone layer.
I rest my case.
By simple, geometrically-precise logic I conclude we must put Ronald McDonald in Guantanamo Bay NOW.
No, if you look carefully, you'll find that SCO invented the neutron. Honest. Check out the tiny copyright symbol on every neutron: "All your neutron are belong to us - SCO"
It's classified. I can't tell you what it's used for, but it involves sex with crash test dummies and stealth aircraft.
Mein fuehrer, I can walk! And it's all because of Silly Putty! -- Dr. Strangelove.
The stuff described on the U Minn site is NOT the real Silly Putty. The real stuff is a silicon polymer as far as I know. The Elmer's Glue/borate mix has only a limited shelflife. It has some viscoelasticity, but it does not behave fully like the real Putty.
I went to Tower Books recently to look for a book by William Faulkner. The store had on the shelf exactly, and only, three books by Faulkner. But on the next aisle, ah, there were 10 shelves of Star Trek pablum. All of it mechanically-written stumbling crap written by 10th-graders for easy-listening zombies. Our society's equivalent of the dime novel, disposable. The kind of person who reads this mediocre crap is a consumer, not a thinker.
But this extends to most media now. Comics for one. Consider Batman. Batman has reached a point where the character has been so overmarketed it has become passe, unentertaining. Nothing new, same old same old.
On Spider's point about loss of interest in space travel, I agree. Kids grow up watching Trek explore the universe in a star-travelling plush hotel, encountering the alien forehead-of-the-week. There is a combined deplacement of reality and desensitization that occurs. This flashy shiny 'everything is neatly tied up in the 38 minutes left between commercials' absorbs the edge of curiosity that would normally drive people to genuinely engage in furthering real life space travel.
I compare Star Trek versus real space travel to excessive masturbation versus real sex. It's too easy for the easy gratification to replace the real thing. And it's far inferior.
This does explain my reaction to meeting Cowboy Neal, too.
Oh yeah? Well I not only fired MY boss, but I outsourced my wife to INDIA.
I have violent reactions to nuts, but only the ones heading SCO.
Just out of curiousity, if I taught the doll to say "This is a stickup. Give me all your money in a bag" and took it into a bank, would they arrest Cindy, or me?
There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that someone is developing a pulse detonation powered Sybian. On the other hand, women everywhere are cheering technology onward.
A key factor was mentioned here: pulsejets are REALLY loud. So if we end up with a bunch of them flying around, where exactly will they be taking off and landing. Because airports in urban areas already have severe noise problems.
Not only firmware differences. Some years ago I had a WD 1.6GB drive and the board went bad. I talked to WD and they said that simply swapping the board was not guaranteed to work. The reason is, for every drive, during manufacturing they tweak parameters on the board, sometimes by writing values into an EEPROM. This is done automatically by calibration equipment. Such values control head gain, servos, etc. If you merely swap boards, you run the risk of then getting marginal or erroneous performance. Even in modern drives there is still plenty of analog at the front end, and things like gain and servo tracking in the read channel are important. So this guy was lucky indeed because it was not 100% likely to work.
This is what comes of racing turtles. *I* race penguins, and they are fast, slippery little buggers quite ahead of their time.
Some of us used Halliday and Resnick as a supplement, a physics text aimed at normal people, and with many problems and solutions.
Did you say, movies? By your command, Emperor, I shall disintegrate the Battlestar Galactica for bad acting and sundry other crimes. But, could you reboot me first? I seem to have a couple of memory leaks and I'm almost out of physical RAM. Well, yes, I AM running Windows 2150, Emperor... But it's not MY fault.
It's not a crash. It's...it's... a programmed REST BREAK.
Um, I was planning to outsource moderators and live comfortably on the proceeds.
After John Kerry's campaign manager's laptop - with his campaign information - was stolen in San Francisco this year under very suspicious circumstances, and shortly thereafter, the same thing happened to Democratic candidate for SF mayor Angela Alioto, I realized that all political candidates should add ringers to their databases for campaign contributors. In the event that an opponent engineers a theft of data and uses it to solicit funds from people on the list, this might be used to identify the player.
And these thefts DO occur more often than you might imagine. It's kind of odd how it's only Democrats whose databases have been stolen. There was also a database theft from a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Tennessee... call me paranoid, but it's all documented.