Just curious why it is critically important for the characters to be in public domain? People will still make money off them if they are in public domain but the parent company will likely loose business and have to lay off people.
Gasp - they might actually have to come up with some new products once every century! (And there is no reason to think that excessive copyright laws increase employment - on the contrary, with things in the public domain, there are more companies who can employ people to do things with that information, just like Disney did - in fact, why don't you criticise Disney for "stealing" ideas that were in the public domain? What about all those thieves who make films of Shakespeare, or play classical music?)
Why does the public have rights over and above the creator?
You do realise that a key part of "X years after the creator's death" means that the creator is dead?
As for keeping your work privately, go ahead, I'm sure there's no great loss. But what about if a descendant makes it public, or in hundreds of years time, your precious work is discovered by archeologists? Oh noes, you've lost control of your work!
I'm not sure what your point is - if you don't want people seeing it, don't publish it. If you do, then there isn't a problem. Why do you need to "control" your work after your death, like some kind of zombie? You're dead. You won't be able to control it.
My family home can still be in the family in 500 years but my work will belong to anyone that wants to reproduce it for a quick buck.
No, it won't. People can't steal any work that you make. However, there's nothing stopping them using the information that you've chosen to release to the public. Copyright law gives you control over that information for the duration of your lifetime, and has no analogy to a physical product.
I've largely decided to draw a line between commercial and personal work and what I deem personal will never be released to the public.
Except posts to Slashdot - aren't you now worried that 70 years after your death, someone can use your Slashdot posts without asking your corpse? You'd better stop posting here, just in case!
Yes, this would be Slashdot, where IP issues are discussed a significant amount of the time. And consider how Disney make arguments for extending copyright terms because of Mickey Mouse, that would apply just as much to Popeye.
The only ones claiming nonsensical civil liberties are those who think that things in public have some "right" to privacy. If the train's in public view, then tough.
(And that's before we get to the point that Amtrack had no problem with this.)
How many what now? It's a phone. People don't buy phones to "run an OS", they buy them as a tool which they expect to Just Work, and not worry about what "OS" it runs. All sorts of things run operating systems these days, such as cars and set-top boxes. You don't hear the manufacturers telling you what "OS" you can run on them, because people don't buy these products to run an OS.
Plenty of phone adverts show off the operation of phones in their adverts. They don't dwell on things like "Wow you can access the Internets" on it like Apple do, because for the rest of the phone industry, that's old news.
I wish mods on the Apple stories would learn what trolling means - hint, it's not having an opinion that doesn't praise Apple all the time.
I'm still waiting for that evidence - that people would rather mod down rather than supply it makes me think it doesn't exist.
GMail is a good example - I can't help thinking that if Google decided to delete all the GMail accounts without warning, there'd be an uproar on Slashdot. I wonder how many of the "It's free, and they should've backed up" commenters here have full backups of their GMail accounts?
I see moderation on Apple stories is back on form - if anyone else slagged off a product using terms such as "patheticly ugly, clunky" rather than using evidence, and then threw ad-hominems of "troll", they'd be modded down in an instant.
The seamless integration between the Phone OS, the standard apps, the 3rd party apps, my mac, iphoto, itunes, ical, mobile me.
I get so tired of the grumpy "featurism" of Slashdot posters. The Iphone might do everything and more than what my current phone does... on paper. In truth, that doesn't mean that these things work as well, I can't copy and paste when I'm editing, every time I installed a Java program it didn't work, and even though it had a 2 megapixel camera, it doesn't even have a flash, nor could I work out how to record a video with it.
This is the crux of the problem - that we don't hear about the alternatives, because Slashdot gives so much attention to this one single particular model of phone.
It is a nice device. It reportedly works very well.
I should hope it does work, else I'd be taking it back. My several year old £90 phone is nice, and works very well, but I don't see weekly Slashdot stories about it (a Motorola V980).
What the nerd community most often fail to realize is that all features aren't equal. A well implemented and well integrated feature in a convenient interface is worth way more than the same feature implemented crappy, or accessed through a annoying interface.
What the nerd community most often fail to realize is that phones have been doing these things well for years, long before Apple entered the market. What the nerd community most often fail to realize is that most people just want to get on and use a phone, and not have to wait until one with an Apple sticker comes along.
It also has one of the best UIs on any mobile device.
Evidence?
How many other phone makers actually show off their OS in their commercials?
How many what now? It's a phone. People don't buy phones to "run an OS", they buy them as a tool which they expect to Just Work, and not worry about what "OS" it runs. All sorts of things run operating systems these days, such as cars and set-top boxes. You don't hear the manufacturers telling you what "OS" you can run on them, because people don't buy these products to run an OS.
Plenty of phone adverts show off the operation of phones in their adverts. They don't dwell on things like "Wow you can access the Internets" on it like Apple do, because for the rest of the phone industry, that's old news.
You can't do that or anything similar via SMS. SMS services require a radio station or place to have an agreement with the service
Yes you can, and no you don't. It works as the AC reply points out.
If Pandora has to first record it then send it, that sounds like a more inefficient (and probably more costly, depending on your plan) way of doing it.
It reminds me of how in the UK, a court ruled that downloading an image counts as "making" an image. This was with respect to child porn, but the precedent it sets is worrying. Simple possession is illegal anyway, but it seems 5 years wasn't enough - classifying as making allowed them a maximum of 10 years. (The logic seems especially confusing, since AFAICT people seem to receive far less than 5 years for downloading, anyway.)
All actions can have moral implications including sex. Sex can be done immorally, people just differ on where the moral line is drawn. Molestation, rape, consensual sex where one party knowingly infects the other with STD's.
Indeed, though the problem those who believe that even when it's between consenting adults with no harm to others, it's still a moral issue.
I've never heard of any church preaches sex is inherently sinful
You mean that they don't say that all sex is sinful - that would be silly, as the human race would die out. But beyond the need for procreation, everything else is fair game:
* Those who say that all sex not for procreation is wrong. * Views on contraception. * Gay sex, marriage, as you say. * Alternative sexuality such as fetishism, BDSM, so-called "violent" sex. * Images of sex. * Prostitution.
Sex for pleasure gets far greater attention for being considered inherently immoral, and even something that should be criminalised. And sadly not just by religions, but also Governments, from places like India, to even the US and UK.
No one should be denied service because of their ethnicity or religion. But, as politically incorrect as it sounds, an airport security guard who doesn't divert a little more attention to Islamic-looking passengers is being negligent.
This is a straw man. No one here is questioning whatever profiling the security guards might do at the airport. Nor does anyone have a problem with "a little more attention". The issue is ignoring all the security of the airport, and just going by random mob-rule comments from the passengers - does that sound like good Bayesian probability to you? And then, they were kicked off even after they had received "a little more attention", and been cleared.
And don't forget to factor in all of the white males in your terrorist statistics.
I agree. But discrimination or not, I also think that if you've paid for a service, and they've accepted your custom - but then they mess you over for no good reason, causing distress, wasted time, and financial harm, it should be reasonable to take civil action to get compensation.
I mean yes, there's the wider question of whether an airline should be allowed to refuse service to people upfront, but at least then they could have chosen to go elsewhere - the disruption caused to them in this case was far greater.
Even if one believes in a laissez-faire economy, that doesn't mean one shouldn't be able to seek compensation through the courts if you've been wronged by somebody.
Sure, I might be worried. I might choose to walk away, or not get on the same car/plane.
But I wouldn't expect other people to be kicked out to satisfy my personal issues.
If someone wants transport all to themselves, then they should damn well pay for it. I do hope those other passengers were prepared to pick up the bill for those 9 empty seats...
The crucial difference is between changing your own behaviour, and forcing someone else to change theirs. Stereotyping others in order to change your behaviour is fine. If those passengers had chosen to get off the planes themselves because they feared the Muslims were terrorists, then I doubt anyone would be criticising them. But no, because they expect other people to have their lives disrupted based on their prejudices, that's a very different thing, and it's fair game to criticise them.
This also isn't anything to do with any supposed race vs. culture distinction - it's still reasonable to stereotype in the way you describe based on race (or sex, come to that), but again crosses the line when you force others to do so.
Although it seems unlikely they were actually kicked off for their religious beliefs (unless, I don't know, they were discussing the One True God, and they were overheard). It was more likely their appearance, whether that was an asian appearance (which would be racist), or dress typically associated with muslims, I don't know.
TFA says:
Irfan told the newspaper he thought he and the others were profiled because of their appearance. The men had beards and the women wore headscarves, traditional Muslim attire.
So, they were anti-beard and anti-headscarves then.
I don't think it really matters whichever of these is true though, it's still a ridiculous story. And it's not like they were given a choice to "stop being religious" or had the ability to shave their beards off, they were judged based on something they had already done, and so it's true that they had no choice in being able to change that.
Yup, I'm with you. In the end, breastfeeding in public isn't something I would really want to see, but whatever. But posting pictures of yourself breastfeeding just seems like being deliberately provocative.
I would say the complete reverse. If I'm out in public, it's hard to avoid seeing what other people are doing. But if someone posts something on their Facebook photo album - where's the problem? No one is forcing you to view the photos of complete strangers, so if you're worried by what you might see, don't look at them.
We're not talking about photos that randomly appear when you open Facebook.
I can guarantee you that the majority of those 400 Facebook "friends" you have really don't want to see that, any more than they want to hear about your newborn's growing poo-poo production or the consistency of his vomit.
If you don't like what your "friend" sends you, then that's an issue between you and the friend. I don't see why you need a company to nanny-supervise your friendships just because you aren't able, as that just adversely affects those of us who don't need and don't want such supervision.
There are lots of photos that some people don't want to see - maybe they don't want to see people being drunk, or pictures of Muhammed. Is that a reason for Facebook to ban them?
As a private enterprise, they have the right to restrict what they want.
And people have the right to complain.
And they figure that more people that visit their site than not would not like looking at it. And if they are after traffic numbers for ad providers, they will do whatever gets them the most views. Capitalism at work.
And how do you think people will hear about what Facebook are doing, in order to decide whether to use it? Perhaps by telling people about it, and maybe some news stories about it too?
Last time I looked, Slashdot often has stories about private organisations, and not the Government. Why is this any different? Is there some reason why stories about Facebook - you know, one of the major websites on the Internet - are not newsworthy all of a sudden?
The fact that every computer maker is making underpowered netbooks nowadays doesn't mean Apple will do the same, unless they can find a way to get it right.
But hang on, you just said that not having enough "oomph" isn't a problem.
If we're going to judge Windows on a completely different operating system (Windows 98 - as noted here, "NT didn't crash, however, despite its much earlier beta state."; since you don't know, NT 5 became Windows 2000, from which Vista is descended from), then it's fair game to judge OS X by the shambles that was classic MacOS. So, wake me up when MacOS has finally managed simple features such as multitasking...
Well, if "only" 1% of the population were deciding to kill people, that would still be an unstable society.
I'm not sure WW2 Britain is a useful example; despite a reduced availability of food, there was still a strong Government, and law and order maintained.
Dude. He's buying lolicon doujins, not Nabokov. This isn't art and literature -- it's porn.
So the age old debate of how to tell art from porn has been solved? Of course not (and the terms are not mutually exclusive).
Well, two problem here. In fact, most anime characters are teens under 18. Age of consent in Japan is 14, which lets them get away with having high schoolers in sexual situations. Anime protagonists that are of age in America are frankly the minority, weird censorship laws on pubic hair aside.
What, did you check their birth certificates? How exactly do you claim to know the ages of fictional images?
Oh, just read up on Miller and shut up with the hysterics.
"Shut up, shut up" - that's all you censorship people know, isn't it? Why don't you shut up - I don't see any artistic or literary merit in what you post, so let's say no more posts from you, or else you get to spend time in prison.
Of course, it's probably true that images in museums wouldn't be affected, but then it's even more ridiculous if the same images become illegal when found on somebody's hard drive. A selectively enforced law is a bad law. And don't think that laws are never used in stupid ways - from images in art galleries, to 30 year old album covers on online encyclopedias.
The only hysterics here are from people who think cartoons are anything to with child porn.
Slashdot Mirror
Just curious why it is critically important for the characters to be in public domain? People will still make money off them if they are in public domain but the parent company will likely loose business and have to lay off people.
Gasp - they might actually have to come up with some new products once every century! (And there is no reason to think that excessive copyright laws increase employment - on the contrary, with things in the public domain, there are more companies who can employ people to do things with that information, just like Disney did - in fact, why don't you criticise Disney for "stealing" ideas that were in the public domain? What about all those thieves who make films of Shakespeare, or play classical music?)
Why does the public have rights over and above the creator?
You do realise that a key part of "X years after the creator's death" means that the creator is dead?
As for keeping your work privately, go ahead, I'm sure there's no great loss. But what about if a descendant makes it public, or in hundreds of years time, your precious work is discovered by archeologists? Oh noes, you've lost control of your work!
I'm not sure what your point is - if you don't want people seeing it, don't publish it. If you do, then there isn't a problem. Why do you need to "control" your work after your death, like some kind of zombie? You're dead. You won't be able to control it.
My family home can still be in the family in 500 years but my work will belong to anyone that wants to reproduce it for a quick buck.
No, it won't. People can't steal any work that you make. However, there's nothing stopping them using the information that you've chosen to release to the public. Copyright law gives you control over that information for the duration of your lifetime, and has no analogy to a physical product.
I've largely decided to draw a line between commercial and personal work and what I deem personal will never be released to the public.
Except posts to Slashdot - aren't you now worried that 70 years after your death, someone can use your Slashdot posts without asking your corpse? You'd better stop posting here, just in case!
Yes, this would be Slashdot, where IP issues are discussed a significant amount of the time. And consider how Disney make arguments for extending copyright terms because of Mickey Mouse, that would apply just as much to Popeye.
The only ones claiming nonsensical civil liberties are those who think that things in public have some "right" to privacy. If the train's in public view, then tough.
(And that's before we get to the point that Amtrack had no problem with this.)
How many what now? It's a phone. People don't buy phones to "run an OS", they buy them as a tool which they expect to Just Work, and not worry about what "OS" it runs. All sorts of things run operating systems these days, such as cars and set-top boxes. You don't hear the manufacturers telling you what "OS" you can run on them, because people don't buy these products to run an OS.
Plenty of phone adverts show off the operation of phones in their adverts. They don't dwell on things like "Wow you can access the Internets" on it like Apple do, because for the rest of the phone industry, that's old news.
I wish mods on the Apple stories would learn what trolling means - hint, it's not having an opinion that doesn't praise Apple all the time.
I'm still waiting for that evidence - that people would rather mod down rather than supply it makes me think it doesn't exist.
Indeed, and presumably AOL and other free web hosts are making money from adverts too.
GMail is a good example - I can't help thinking that if Google decided to delete all the GMail accounts without warning, there'd be an uproar on Slashdot. I wonder how many of the "It's free, and they should've backed up" commenters here have full backups of their GMail accounts?
I see moderation on Apple stories is back on form - if anyone else slagged off a product using terms such as "patheticly ugly, clunky" rather than using evidence, and then threw ad-hominems of "troll", they'd be modded down in an instant.
The seamless integration between the Phone OS, the standard apps, the 3rd party apps, my mac, iphoto, itunes, ical, mobile me.
I get so tired of the grumpy "featurism" of Slashdot posters. The Iphone might do everything and more than what my current phone does... on paper. In truth, that doesn't mean that these things work as well, I can't copy and paste when I'm editing, every time I installed a Java program it didn't work, and even though it had a 2 megapixel camera, it doesn't even have a flash, nor could I work out how to record a video with it.
so I'd be happy to hear about the alternatives.
This is the crux of the problem - that we don't hear about the alternatives, because Slashdot gives so much attention to this one single particular model of phone.
It is a nice device. It reportedly works very well.
I should hope it does work, else I'd be taking it back. My several year old £90 phone is nice, and works very well, but I don't see weekly Slashdot stories about it (a Motorola V980).
What the nerd community most often fail to realize is that all features aren't equal. A well implemented and well integrated feature in a convenient interface is worth way more than the same feature implemented crappy, or accessed through a annoying interface.
What the nerd community most often fail to realize is that phones have been doing these things well for years, long before Apple entered the market. What the nerd community most often fail to realize is that most people just want to get on and use a phone, and not have to wait until one with an Apple sticker comes along.
It also has one of the best UIs on any mobile device.
Evidence?
How many other phone makers actually show off their OS in their commercials?
How many what now? It's a phone. People don't buy phones to "run an OS", they buy them as a tool which they expect to Just Work, and not worry about what "OS" it runs. All sorts of things run operating systems these days, such as cars and set-top boxes. You don't hear the manufacturers telling you what "OS" you can run on them, because people don't buy these products to run an OS.
Plenty of phone adverts show off the operation of phones in their adverts. They don't dwell on things like "Wow you can access the Internets" on it like Apple do, because for the rest of the phone industry, that's old news.
You can't do that or anything similar via SMS. SMS services require a radio station or place to have an agreement with the service
Yes you can, and no you don't. It works as the AC reply points out.
If Pandora has to first record it then send it, that sounds like a more inefficient (and probably more costly, depending on your plan) way of doing it.
It reminds me of how in the UK, a court ruled that downloading an image counts as "making" an image. This was with respect to child porn, but the precedent it sets is worrying. Simple possession is illegal anyway, but it seems 5 years wasn't enough - classifying as making allowed them a maximum of 10 years. (The logic seems especially confusing, since AFAICT people seem to receive far less than 5 years for downloading, anyway.)
but there are also some really innovative things (like "please name the song that's playing in this restaurant right now" and others).
FYI, that's been around for years, available on any phone capable of SMS.
All actions can have moral implications including sex. Sex can be done immorally, people just differ on where the moral line is drawn. Molestation, rape, consensual sex where one party knowingly infects the other with STD's.
Indeed, though the problem those who believe that even when it's between consenting adults with no harm to others, it's still a moral issue.
I've never heard of any church preaches sex is inherently sinful
You mean that they don't say that all sex is sinful - that would be silly, as the human race would die out. But beyond the need for procreation, everything else is fair game:
* Those who say that all sex not for procreation is wrong.
* Views on contraception.
* Gay sex, marriage, as you say.
* Alternative sexuality such as fetishism, BDSM, so-called "violent" sex.
* Images of sex.
* Prostitution.
Sex for pleasure gets far greater attention for being considered inherently immoral, and even something that should be criminalised. And sadly not just by religions, but also Governments, from places like India, to even the US and UK.
No one should be denied service because of their ethnicity or religion. But, as politically incorrect as it sounds, an airport security guard who doesn't divert a little more attention to Islamic-looking passengers is being negligent.
This is a straw man. No one here is questioning whatever profiling the security guards might do at the airport. Nor does anyone have a problem with "a little more attention". The issue is ignoring all the security of the airport, and just going by random mob-rule comments from the passengers - does that sound like good Bayesian probability to you? And then, they were kicked off even after they had received "a little more attention", and been cleared.
And don't forget to factor in all of the white males in your terrorist statistics.
I agree. But discrimination or not, I also think that if you've paid for a service, and they've accepted your custom - but then they mess you over for no good reason, causing distress, wasted time, and financial harm, it should be reasonable to take civil action to get compensation.
I mean yes, there's the wider question of whether an airline should be allowed to refuse service to people upfront, but at least then they could have chosen to go elsewhere - the disruption caused to them in this case was far greater.
Even if one believes in a laissez-faire economy, that doesn't mean one shouldn't be able to seek compensation through the courts if you've been wronged by somebody.
Sure, I might be worried. I might choose to walk away, or not get on the same car/plane.
But I wouldn't expect other people to be kicked out to satisfy my personal issues.
If someone wants transport all to themselves, then they should damn well pay for it. I do hope those other passengers were prepared to pick up the bill for those 9 empty seats...
The crucial difference is between changing your own behaviour, and forcing someone else to change theirs. Stereotyping others in order to change your behaviour is fine. If those passengers had chosen to get off the planes themselves because they feared the Muslims were terrorists, then I doubt anyone would be criticising them. But no, because they expect other people to have their lives disrupted based on their prejudices, that's a very different thing, and it's fair game to criticise them.
This also isn't anything to do with any supposed race vs. culture distinction - it's still reasonable to stereotype in the way you describe based on race (or sex, come to that), but again crosses the line when you force others to do so.
Although it seems unlikely they were actually kicked off for their religious beliefs (unless, I don't know, they were discussing the One True God, and they were overheard). It was more likely their appearance, whether that was an asian appearance (which would be racist), or dress typically associated with muslims, I don't know.
TFA says:
Irfan told the newspaper he thought he and the others were profiled because of their appearance. The men had beards and the women wore headscarves, traditional Muslim attire.
So, they were anti-beard and anti-headscarves then.
I don't think it really matters whichever of these is true though, it's still a ridiculous story. And it's not like they were given a choice to "stop being religious" or had the ability to shave their beards off, they were judged based on something they had already done, and so it's true that they had no choice in being able to change that.
Oh dear, it looks like I've upset one of the three remaining classic MacOS fans.
Posting the link again, for those who still seem to think that Windows 98 has anything to do with Windows Vista: http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/17767/windows-98-crashes-during-gates-demo.html .
Yup, I'm with you. In the end, breastfeeding in public isn't something I would really want to see, but whatever. But posting pictures of yourself breastfeeding just seems like being deliberately provocative.
I would say the complete reverse. If I'm out in public, it's hard to avoid seeing what other people are doing. But if someone posts something on their Facebook photo album - where's the problem? No one is forcing you to view the photos of complete strangers, so if you're worried by what you might see, don't look at them.
We're not talking about photos that randomly appear when you open Facebook.
I can guarantee you that the majority of those 400 Facebook "friends" you have really don't want to see that, any more than they want to hear about your newborn's growing poo-poo production or the consistency of his vomit.
If you don't like what your "friend" sends you, then that's an issue between you and the friend. I don't see why you need a company to nanny-supervise your friendships just because you aren't able, as that just adversely affects those of us who don't need and don't want such supervision.
There are lots of photos that some people don't want to see - maybe they don't want to see people being drunk, or pictures of Muhammed. Is that a reason for Facebook to ban them?
As a private enterprise, they have the right to restrict what they want.
And people have the right to complain.
And they figure that more people that visit their site than not would not like looking at it. And if they are after traffic numbers for ad providers, they will do whatever gets them the most views. Capitalism at work.
And how do you think people will hear about what Facebook are doing, in order to decide whether to use it? Perhaps by telling people about it, and maybe some news stories about it too?
Last time I looked, Slashdot often has stories about private organisations, and not the Government. Why is this any different? Is there some reason why stories about Facebook - you know, one of the major websites on the Internet - are not newsworthy all of a sudden?
Why not just get a laptop?
The fact that every computer maker is making underpowered netbooks nowadays doesn't mean Apple will do the same, unless they can find a way to get it right.
But hang on, you just said that not having enough "oomph" isn't a problem.
If we're going to judge Windows on a completely different operating system (Windows 98 - as noted here, "NT didn't crash, however, despite its much earlier beta state."; since you don't know, NT 5 became Windows 2000, from which Vista is descended from), then it's fair game to judge OS X by the shambles that was classic MacOS. So, wake me up when MacOS has finally managed simple features such as multitasking...
Well, if "only" 1% of the population were deciding to kill people, that would still be an unstable society.
I'm not sure WW2 Britain is a useful example; despite a reduced availability of food, there was still a strong Government, and law and order maintained.
Dude. He's buying lolicon doujins, not Nabokov. This isn't art and literature -- it's porn.
So the age old debate of how to tell art from porn has been solved? Of course not (and the terms are not mutually exclusive).
Well, two problem here. In fact, most anime characters are teens under 18. Age of consent in Japan is 14, which lets them get away with having high schoolers in sexual situations. Anime protagonists that are of age in America are frankly the minority, weird censorship laws on pubic hair aside.
What, did you check their birth certificates? How exactly do you claim to know the ages of fictional images?
Oh, just read up on Miller and shut up with the hysterics.
"Shut up, shut up" - that's all you censorship people know, isn't it? Why don't you shut up - I don't see any artistic or literary merit in what you post, so let's say no more posts from you, or else you get to spend time in prison.
Of course, it's probably true that images in museums wouldn't be affected, but then it's even more ridiculous if the same images become illegal when found on somebody's hard drive. A selectively enforced law is a bad law. And don't think that laws are never used in stupid ways - from images in art galleries, to 30 year old album covers on online encyclopedias.
The only hysterics here are from people who think cartoons are anything to with child porn.