I think you mean the majority of the people under 18. Most adults would consider it theft whether they'd do it themselves or not.
In my experience - rubbish.
Large numbers of adults of all ages are copying music to each other, especially using more traditional methods such as tape/CD copying. These same people would consider it abhorrent to steal something.
For most people, saying "Would you like this CD? I just nicked it from the shop the other day" would be unthinkable, but offering a copy of a CD, even to someone who disagrees with any form of copyright infringement, is considered okay.
I would agree, except now we are calling something a "dwarf" planet which by definition is not a planet. So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset. This is very bad. Dwarf has a very specific meaning as a descriptor and planet now has a specific meaning, but "dwarf planet" put together now has a totally unique meaning contrary to the definition of the two words individually. Dwarf simply means "small" as an adjective, to say that it is a small planet, but then in your definition say that it is not a planet at all, is the result of either too little sleep or too many beers.
I take your point, though people have long used "minor planet" to refer to the asteroids, even though it's clear that they are still not a subset of planets.
The article isn't too clear, but my reading is that the button won't automatically email off some report to the police, but will take the users to some webpage or whatever, where they can file a report. And if they go to that trouble to fake a report, I don't think a charge of wasting police time is unreasonable.
That'll be the one where the PIN terminals let everyone else in the queue watch you type in your number because the so called protective sides are so small or badly positioned as to be useless.
I find that my other hand serves as a functional protective side.
Sure, chip and pin may not be perfect, but it's better than relying on a signature which is on the card for all to see (and most the time the cashier won't even check it).
It's only not OK for God to have always existed if He's limited by the same laws as govern our universe.
And it's only not ok for the Universe to have always existed if the Universe itself is not limited by the same laws as govern inside it.
It's only not okay for the Universe to have been created by nothing if the Universe itself is not limited by the laws same as govern inside it.
And it's possible that something caused the big bang, and that thing always existed because it is not
It's only obtuse pride and arrogance that drive even very intelligent people to refuse to accept these three things.
Now, what was that about God?
The problem is when people try to prove God on the basis that everything (including some hypothetical natural cause of the big bang) is governed by some unproven law which they claim is true - but for some reason, their God (and only their God) is exempt.
we're just so used to everything having a beginning, but it's obvious that something must not have had a beginning.
I think it goes that the Universe must have had a beginning and must have been created by God, because apparentely everything needs a beginning and a cause... but then strangely, it's okay for God to have always existed.
Free energy is one of the biggest discoveries that people are seriously searching for.
No. No serious scientist is searching for free energy. New sources of energy perhaps, but not energy out of nowhere.
If they have discovered a brand new source of energy out of nowhere, then that would be great, but the fact that they have no idea how it works, and don't even know the difference between "free energy" and energy sources, suggests that this would be blind luck, and I'd say it's more likely that any energy is coming from known energy sources.
If they are really unable to find scientists willing to test it, then perhaps they can send it to me. I'd like to power my computer and charge my mobile phone please, to save on my electricity bill. I'll test it for free.
That and intelligent extraterrestrial life.
If I got a Slashdot article posted saying I have E.T. sitting in my room right now, what do you think the response would be?
And yes, apart from free energy there is the promise of virtually free energy. I.e. If you could create a small (as in portable) device that can separate Water molecules into the atomic components and burn the resulting Hydrogen for energy, cool. If the energy generated in that process is significantly greater (1.5X to 2X) than what is required to run the machine, viola. Virtually free energy.
What do you mean by "virtually" free energy, as opposed to free energy?
Are they performing the albums in their entirety at live performances?
Well, Genesis at first only ever performed The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway in its entirety I believe... but yes, I take your point.
On the other hand, at a concert you're still getting a work as a whole from the artist (albeit in a different form to the albums). Consider, can I by a half-price-ticket and only watch half the concert? Or maybe if I only like one of their songs and I want to see it live, can I get in for a fraction of the price? Or what about festivals where lots of bands playing, and I only want to see some bands?
No one demands only being able to pay for what they like for concerts, TV stations, DVDs, movies, books, or purchasing a meal at a restaurant where you don't like the side-salad - why should albums be any different?
Indeed with these sorts of bands, the distinction of an individual "track" is often less significant, sometimes the music continuously blends from one to the next, or can be considered a single song (e.g., the 42 minute long Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence). The tracks may just be added for convenience on a CD player, to skip to different sections.
Genesis' Supper's Ready consisted of 7 sections, but all as one track I believe - so it seems a bit silly that whether you can buy the parts individually or not depends on whether it was made a single track or not. I think the suggestion of providing the album on iTunes as a single track makes sense... if people are going to whine they want just a part of the track, I might as well ask if I can only buy the chorus of a particular song, because I don't like the verses.
What percentage of movies are meant to be viewed in order? What percentage of albums are meant to be listened to in order?
Since it's not all albums which aren't being listed on iTunes, the percentages in general are irrelevant. What matters is whether those particular artists have albums where the songs are meant to be listened to in order.
Being able to not have to buy filler, or just stuff I don't want in general, is a huge advantage of iTMS and other shops like it. Shovel more stuff on me that I don't want (and force me to pay for it) and I buy nothing
And I'd like to buy a DVD without all the extras and "Director commentary", and pay half price. Maybe get rid of the boring scenes, and save even more money. I'd like to buy a book with only the best chapters, and get it for a fraction of the price.
The problem is, even if artists are willing to have their work chopped up for whatever you want, it's an assumption to say this will significantly affect the price. That work in its entirety has still had to be made.
I do think they should offer the album as a whole for download - if iTunes doesn't support that however, then that's not their fault. Maybe they could also offer individual tracks for only 1 cent less than the price of the album...
I think that most people who are happy to freely duplicate copyrighted works have never been in the position of selling anything of their own.
I disagree. My experience amongst programmers (including professional, non-professional, open source and so on) is that plenty of them download/copy music - and possibly even software - just like everyone else. There are also musicians who welcome downloading/copying, in order to raise awareness of their work.
Also, it's important to note the distinction between selling and creating. It may be that those people who try to make money from stuff done in their spare time are less likely to download, compared to say the freeware/open source programmers. But what does that tell us? Why should the former group should be more respected? They are both "fellow creators", and the latter group often work as professional programmers. It's not about realising the effort required, it's just that the former group have more restrictive views on who should see their work.
People may hold beliefs that copyright laws are too restrictive, and in my experience, it seems to me that such people are actually more likely to be people who have produced their own work. They have no desire to have such absurdly restrictive laws, so why should the record companies?
The moon could be reclassified as a planet EVEN IF IT STILL ORBITS THE EARTH. It depends on whether the center of gravity of the pair is inside the earth or not.
Yes, and? The point still stands. Do we think it wrong that, if the centre of gravity goes from inside the planet, to between the two bodies, such that we now have two bodies orbiting each other, we would no longer consider one of them a moon, but consider the pair as a twin planetary system?
Is it right that, if we discover systems with these twin (or more) planets, we have to always label only one of them a planet, and the rest as moons?
This article is basically "This definition is wrong, because if the situation fundamentally changes, we'll have to relabel some objects". Well, duh. If Jupiter suddenly undergoes fusion, we'll have to relabel it a star, but does that mean our definitions of star and planet are broken?
Those bodies affected by an individual planet's gravitational pull shall be called moons.
How do you define "affected", given that gravity has infinite range?
The other problem is that your definition includes a reference to "planet". So for example, defining a pair of objects orbiting around each other would be hard. They can't both be planets or moons (since they affect each other), instead one must be a planet and one a moon - but which is which?
This phonemenon is also felt in list boxes, where you are expected to adjust the column widths manually to not be too short/too long, even when there is an optimal adjustment readily available. You again have to work for the computer, and ask for a ctrl+plus to set it up. Most people don't even know about ctrl+plus in column-listboxes. Some programs make it even worse, and don't let you resize their windows when the entire screen is free, and you have to scroll through their data in a little window.
Although this is a problem specific to Windows. Any decent GUI toolkit (even ones which were around 10 years ago or more) should allow application windows, and all GUI elements, to be resizeable by default. It is very frustrating that Windows is so bad at this.
"Jumpyness". Today's GUI's all "jump". What I mean by that is that they don't smoothly switch from one state to the next, but rather do that with a single screen refresh. The human mind doesn't read that very well. For example, scrolling down "jumps" down a pageful instead of scrolling down a pageful in a smooth motion.
I'm not sure what you mean. On Windows, I get smooth scrolling in my browsers (though it's very quick - as I'd want it).
Yeah, let's whip out all the lone wolves and their deacdes ago one off attacks.
Yeah, when someone makes a blanket absolute claim, heaven forbid someone point out a counter-example. And I'm not sure how they are any more "lone wolves" than muslim terrorists.
And just over one decade, I make it. I bet you people will still be citing 9/11 as an example of "Islamic terrorism" for long after 2012.
In every thread like this there is some academic robot defending that with that obsolete PC attitude
And in every thread, there is someone who claims their opponent is being "PC", because they can't explain why they are wrong...
Or do you advocate acceding to their demands which are 1) Destroy Israel and 2) Convert to Islam
Child Pornography is the sexual exploitation of a child...the rape of a child...for the sexual entertainment of an adult. There is no consent, there is no pleasure for the child.
Does this apply when a 17 year old takes a sexual photo of themselves for their partner? I think that was the point he was trying to make - legally, this is still counted as child porn (and particularly bizarre in the UK is that even though age of consent is 16, the limit for child porn is 18).
With P you can unpad P', and thus get M''. From M'' you're back at the original singly encrypted M. Complexity, but no extra security.
You've missed the point.
The point is not extra security. The idea is that when the authorities demand you decrypt a file, you can show them that the decrypted file is innocent file A, and they have no way of proving otherwise.
And my quip about can't rape the willing...was partly joke due to the fact that most men will be willing to fuck almost anyone, but, if they're truly NOT interested in a woman, he's not going to get an erection....and I don't see how it is physically possible for a female to rape a male...even if she can man-handle him, if he doesn't want to get it up..the act can't proceed...
As others have said, you can get an erection at other times.
However, a fundamental flaw is that you are mistaking sexual arousal for consent. A person can be sexually aroused even if they do not want to have sex. Consent is what a person consciously wants.
If a woman is turned on whilst being raped, that does not mean she consented. The same applies to men. It's harder for a woman to rape a man in this way, but it is not impossible.
As for men welcoming sexual advances, I'd say the difference is due to penetrating versus being-penetrated, and not a male versus female thing. Would a man be happy to be raped anally or orally by a man or woman? And orientation doesn't come into it either - bi/gay men still don't like to be raped by a man.
If you're satisfied with the people you have, then a social networking site probably looks pretty stupid.
Actually I'd disagree - these sites are very good for interacting with the people you already know (as opposed to say here on Slashdot, where I don't know anyone). I use LiveJournal a lot, but I'm not bothered at all about meeting anyone new there.
For me, one thing it has to do with is the TYPE of people it attracts
One of the whole points (and main benefits, for me) is that the type of person you see and interact with on "social networking" sites are those people in your social network. So yeah, maybe I prefer the "average Slashdotter" to the "average MySpacer or LiveJournaler", but that's irrelevant, because I don't have to deal with the average MySpacer or LiveJournaler. I do, however, have to put up with every troll and flamebaiter out on Slashdot, so in that sense it comes off worse.
And what geek on Slashdot would subject themselves to the browser-crashing HTML and attention whoring that is Myspace unless they want to see the boobs of a co-worker or high school classmate?
But note that that's a criticism of MySpace specifically, not of social networking sites.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean the majority of the people under 18. Most adults would consider it theft whether they'd do it themselves or not.
In my experience - rubbish.
Large numbers of adults of all ages are copying music to each other, especially using more traditional methods such as tape/CD copying. These same people would consider it abhorrent to steal something.
For most people, saying "Would you like this CD? I just nicked it from the shop the other day" would be unthinkable, but offering a copy of a CD, even to someone who disagrees with any form of copyright infringement, is considered okay.
I would agree, except now we are calling something a "dwarf" planet which by definition is not a planet. So, instead of the descriptor being a subset it is a superset. This is very bad. Dwarf has a very specific meaning as a descriptor and planet now has a specific meaning, but "dwarf planet" put together now has a totally unique meaning contrary to the definition of the two words individually. Dwarf simply means "small" as an adjective, to say that it is a small planet, but then in your definition say that it is not a planet at all, is the result of either too little sleep or too many beers.
I take your point, though people have long used "minor planet" to refer to the asteroids, even though it's clear that they are still not a subset of planets.
The article isn't too clear, but my reading is that the button won't automatically email off some report to the police, but will take the users to some webpage or whatever, where they can file a report. And if they go to that trouble to fake a report, I don't think a charge of wasting police time is unreasonable.
That'll be the one where the PIN terminals let everyone else in the queue watch you type in your number because the so called protective sides are so small or badly positioned as to be useless.
I find that my other hand serves as a functional protective side.
Sure, chip and pin may not be perfect, but it's better than relying on a signature which is on the card for all to see (and most the time the cashier won't even check it).
It's only not OK for God to have always existed if He's limited by the same laws as govern our universe.
And it's only not ok for the Universe to have always existed if the Universe itself is not limited by the same laws as govern inside it.
It's only not okay for the Universe to have been created by nothing if the Universe itself is not limited by the laws same as govern inside it.
And it's possible that something caused the big bang, and that thing always existed because it is not
It's only obtuse pride and arrogance that drive even very intelligent people to refuse to accept these three things.
Now, what was that about God?
The problem is when people try to prove God on the basis that everything (including some hypothetical natural cause of the big bang) is governed by some unproven law which they claim is true - but for some reason, their God (and only their God) is exempt.
Proof: The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true.
Yes, I think that word fits here.
It isn't overloading because overloading is for function calls
It's okay, he was overloading the word overloading.
we're just so used to everything having a beginning, but it's obvious that something must not have had a beginning.
... but then strangely, it's okay for God to have always existed.
I think it goes that the Universe must have had a beginning and must have been created by God, because apparentely everything needs a beginning and a cause
Free energy is one of the biggest discoveries that people are seriously searching for.
No. No serious scientist is searching for free energy. New sources of energy perhaps, but not energy out of nowhere.
If they have discovered a brand new source of energy out of nowhere, then that would be great, but the fact that they have no idea how it works, and don't even know the difference between "free energy" and energy sources, suggests that this would be blind luck, and I'd say it's more likely that any energy is coming from known energy sources.
If they are really unable to find scientists willing to test it, then perhaps they can send it to me. I'd like to power my computer and charge my mobile phone please, to save on my electricity bill. I'll test it for free.
That and intelligent extraterrestrial life.
If I got a Slashdot article posted saying I have E.T. sitting in my room right now, what do you think the response would be?
And yes, apart from free energy there is the promise of virtually free energy. I.e. If you could create a small (as in portable) device that can separate Water molecules into the atomic components and burn the resulting Hydrogen for energy, cool. If the energy generated in that process is significantly greater (1.5X to 2X) than what is required to run the machine, viola. Virtually free energy.
What do you mean by "virtually" free energy, as opposed to free energy?
Most top 40 artists ...
Are Radiohead "Most top 40 artists"? Are "Most top 40 artists" refusing to release on iTunes because of this reason, or only a few?
Are they performing the albums in their entirety at live performances?
Well, Genesis at first only ever performed The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway in its entirety I believe... but yes, I take your point.
On the other hand, at a concert you're still getting a work as a whole from the artist (albeit in a different form to the albums). Consider, can I by a half-price-ticket and only watch half the concert? Or maybe if I only like one of their songs and I want to see it live, can I get in for a fraction of the price? Or what about festivals where lots of bands playing, and I only want to see some bands?
No one demands only being able to pay for what they like for concerts, TV stations, DVDs, movies, books, or purchasing a meal at a restaurant where you don't like the side-salad - why should albums be any different?
Indeed with these sorts of bands, the distinction of an individual "track" is often less significant, sometimes the music continuously blends from one to the next, or can be considered a single song (e.g., the 42 minute long Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence). The tracks may just be added for convenience on a CD player, to skip to different sections.
... if people are going to whine they want just a part of the track, I might as well ask if I can only buy the chorus of a particular song, because I don't like the verses.
Genesis' Supper's Ready consisted of 7 sections, but all as one track I believe - so it seems a bit silly that whether you can buy the parts individually or not depends on whether it was made a single track or not. I think the suggestion of providing the album on iTunes as a single track makes sense
What percentage of movies are meant to be viewed in order? What percentage of albums are meant to be listened to in order?
Since it's not all albums which aren't being listed on iTunes, the percentages in general are irrelevant. What matters is whether those particular artists have albums where the songs are meant to be listened to in order.
Being able to not have to buy filler, or just stuff I don't want in general, is a huge advantage of iTMS and other shops like it. Shovel more stuff on me that I don't want (and force me to pay for it) and I buy nothing
And I'd like to buy a DVD without all the extras and "Director commentary", and pay half price. Maybe get rid of the boring scenes, and save even more money. I'd like to buy a book with only the best chapters, and get it for a fraction of the price.
The problem is, even if artists are willing to have their work chopped up for whatever you want, it's an assumption to say this will significantly affect the price. That work in its entirety has still had to be made.
I do think they should offer the album as a whole for download - if iTunes doesn't support that however, then that's not their fault. Maybe they could also offer individual tracks for only 1 cent less than the price of the album...
I think that most people who are happy to freely duplicate copyrighted works have never been in the position of selling anything of their own.
I disagree. My experience amongst programmers (including professional, non-professional, open source and so on) is that plenty of them download/copy music - and possibly even software - just like everyone else. There are also musicians who welcome downloading/copying, in order to raise awareness of their work.
Also, it's important to note the distinction between selling and creating. It may be that those people who try to make money from stuff done in their spare time are less likely to download, compared to say the freeware/open source programmers. But what does that tell us? Why should the former group should be more respected? They are both "fellow creators", and the latter group often work as professional programmers. It's not about realising the effort required, it's just that the former group have more restrictive views on who should see their work.
People may hold beliefs that copyright laws are too restrictive, and in my experience, it seems to me that such people are actually more likely to be people who have produced their own work. They have no desire to have such absurdly restrictive laws, so why should the record companies?
The moon could be reclassified as a planet EVEN IF IT STILL ORBITS THE EARTH. It depends on whether the center of gravity of the pair is inside the earth or not.
Yes, and? The point still stands. Do we think it wrong that, if the centre of gravity goes from inside the planet, to between the two bodies, such that we now have two bodies orbiting each other, we would no longer consider one of them a moon, but consider the pair as a twin planetary system?
Is it right that, if we discover systems with these twin (or more) planets, we have to always label only one of them a planet, and the rest as moons?
This article is basically "This definition is wrong, because if the situation fundamentally changes, we'll have to relabel some objects". Well, duh. If Jupiter suddenly undergoes fusion, we'll have to relabel it a star, but does that mean our definitions of star and planet are broken?
Those bodies affected by an individual planet's gravitational pull shall be called moons.
How do you define "affected", given that gravity has infinite range?
The other problem is that your definition includes a reference to "planet". So for example, defining a pair of objects orbiting around each other would be hard. They can't both be planets or moons (since they affect each other), instead one must be a planet and one a moon - but which is which?
This phonemenon is also felt in list boxes, where you are expected to adjust the column widths manually to not be too short/too long, even when there is an optimal adjustment readily available. You again have to work for the computer, and ask for a ctrl+plus to set it up. Most people don't even know about ctrl+plus in column-listboxes.
Some programs make it even worse, and don't let you resize their windows when the entire screen is free, and you have to scroll through their data in a little window.
Although this is a problem specific to Windows. Any decent GUI toolkit (even ones which were around 10 years ago or more) should allow application windows, and all GUI elements, to be resizeable by default. It is very frustrating that Windows is so bad at this.
"Jumpyness". Today's GUI's all "jump". What I mean by that is that they don't smoothly switch from one state to the next, but rather do that with a single screen refresh. The human mind doesn't read that very well. For example, scrolling down "jumps" down a pageful instead of scrolling down a pageful in a smooth motion.
I'm not sure what you mean. On Windows, I get smooth scrolling in my browsers (though it's very quick - as I'd want it).
Yeah, let's whip out all the lone wolves and their deacdes ago one off attacks.
Yeah, when someone makes a blanket absolute claim, heaven forbid someone point out a counter-example. And I'm not sure how they are any more "lone wolves" than muslim terrorists.
And just over one decade, I make it. I bet you people will still be citing 9/11 as an example of "Islamic terrorism" for long after 2012.
In every thread like this there is some academic robot defending that with that obsolete PC attitude
And in every thread, there is someone who claims their opponent is being "PC", because they can't explain why they are wrong...
Or do you advocate acceding to their demands which are 1) Destroy Israel and 2) Convert to Islam
Look, it's a strawman.
Child Pornography is the sexual exploitation of a child...the rape of a child...for the sexual entertainment of an adult. There is no consent, there is no pleasure for the child.
Does this apply when a 17 year old takes a sexual photo of themselves for their partner? I think that was the point he was trying to make - legally, this is still counted as child porn (and particularly bizarre in the UK is that even though age of consent is 16, the limit for child porn is 18).
Because when I want somebody's ideas on what comprises a democracy, I ask somebody with a peerage.
Ironic and amusing, but that's the way it is. The first thing people will do in a true democracy is vote away their rights...
With P you can unpad P', and thus get M''. From M'' you're back at the original singly encrypted M. Complexity, but no extra security.
You've missed the point.
The point is not extra security. The idea is that when the authorities demand you decrypt a file, you can show them that the decrypted file is innocent file A, and they have no way of proving otherwise.
And my quip about can't rape the willing...was partly joke due to the fact that most men will be willing to fuck almost anyone, but, if they're truly NOT interested in a woman, he's not going to get an erection....and I don't see how it is physically possible for a female to rape a male...even if she can man-handle him, if he doesn't want to get it up..the act can't proceed...
As others have said, you can get an erection at other times.
However, a fundamental flaw is that you are mistaking sexual arousal for consent. A person can be sexually aroused even if they do not want to have sex. Consent is what a person consciously wants.
If a woman is turned on whilst being raped, that does not mean she consented. The same applies to men. It's harder for a woman to rape a man in this way, but it is not impossible.
As for men welcoming sexual advances, I'd say the difference is due to penetrating versus being-penetrated, and not a male versus female thing. Would a man be happy to be raped anally or orally by a man or woman? And orientation doesn't come into it either - bi/gay men still don't like to be raped by a man.
If you're satisfied with the people you have, then a social networking site probably looks pretty stupid.
Actually I'd disagree - these sites are very good for interacting with the people you already know (as opposed to say here on Slashdot, where I don't know anyone). I use LiveJournal a lot, but I'm not bothered at all about meeting anyone new there.
For me, one thing it has to do with is the TYPE of people it attracts
One of the whole points (and main benefits, for me) is that the type of person you see and interact with on "social networking" sites are those people in your social network. So yeah, maybe I prefer the "average Slashdotter" to the "average MySpacer or LiveJournaler", but that's irrelevant, because I don't have to deal with the average MySpacer or LiveJournaler. I do, however, have to put up with every troll and flamebaiter out on Slashdot, so in that sense it comes off worse.
And what geek on Slashdot would subject themselves to the browser-crashing HTML and attention whoring that is Myspace unless they want to see the boobs of a co-worker or high school classmate?
But note that that's a criticism of MySpace specifically, not of social networking sites.