In my experience DSL is much more reliable than wireless or cable, but YMMV.
I've used all three, and of them, only DSL has gone down for hours and even days at a time. When I had cable modem service a couple years ago it was rock solid. It'd slow down once in a while, but I never had it go down completely. My wireless connection is a bit flaky - sometimes the connection gets dropped - but I've never had it go down completely to where it wouldn't reconnect, at least not while I was in my apartment (which happens to be a stone's throw away from a cell phone tower). DSL was great when it worked, but every few months it'd just stop working completely for hours at a time, this was true through three different apartments that I've lived in.
I think it really depends on where you live, though.
The frisson of defining information as negative emerges ultimately from a semi-deliberate muddling of the distinction between the definition of information in the quantum computing context and information as we use the word in daily life. This is not hard useful scientific discovery so much as the scientific equivalent of making an outrageous pun.
Kind of like what happened with relativity/relativism ("everything is relative, Einstein even proved it").
I worked in construction for a year, and I eventually quit because I was only getting something like 20 hours a week in because it was raining so often.
And yeah, I guess it's nice in the longer term to have multiple skills, but unless you've got the money or the connections to work for yourself you're most likely going to have to start all over pay-wise every time you switch, if you can convince someone to overlook your lack of (or gap in) paid experience in the first place. Even if you do manage to get a job working for yourself a lot of fields have licensing issues so you'd need to keep all your licenses up to date.
I worked for a while out of college in unix software development. Now I work in accounting (for way less money, I might add). I suppose if the market for unix software development in my area got really hot I could get a low-end job, but I doubt I'll ever be working in software for someone else.
Ignoring 2D for the moment, if a human decided when, what and how to photograph part of the Earth it might very well be an artistic expression.
As far as "what" part of the Earth is being photographed (and at what zoom level), this I think is usually going to be considered an artistic expression. As for "when", this might be artistic, depending on the specifics, but if it's just "whenever the satellite happens to be there" it isn't. The "how" part is the best argument the satellite/aerial photographer is going to have. If it's just a best-effort reproduction of visible light though, I don't think this would pass. If there were some filters applied or some recoloring or something, then maybe they've got an argument.
Back to the "where" part, though, when it comes to Google Maps and Google Earth, the user is the one who picks the "where" part, so the user is the one with the strongest copyright claim.
If the photographing is wholly mechanical and routine, on the other hand, then perhaps not.
I suppose it might have sounded like I was arguing that no satellite photo can ever be copyrightable (looking back, I suppose I basically said that). I don't think that's true. Rather, what I was arguing was against the view that all photos are necessarily copyrightable. That's clearly not true.
As for the satellite images being used by Google, I'd say the majority of them are on shaky ground as far as copyright protection. And though they didn't do so in the original version of Google Earth, Google is even claiming a copyright itself on the images, which I don't understand at all.
That's IDSL though, right? Anyway, what I read about Verizon (which services this place) was that their equipment was originally limited to 12,000 ft but that they were upgrading it to 15,000 ft.
Your NSP or LEC is dicking you around. Try to see if you can pay for an actual DSL tech to test your line with a proper testset (Sunrise- not Harris).
The thing is, I really don't care. I already have EVDO which is somewhat more expensive and has shitty ping times, but I can take it on the road with me, and I just bought a slim wireless-g card so that I can route the EVDO to the rest of the house so my girlfriend can use it. I'm not really interested in paying something like $65 a month for a phone line and DSL (and taxes). The only real advantage I'd have is that I can keep my desktop computer always connected, but since I have a VPS server online at a colo this isn't that big a deal. If I wind up really needing a real broadband connection I'll just go with cable modem.
Hmm, I can't find it. I read somewhere else (just some blog, though) that the phone company only has to provide 911 service if you have a dial tone, which I suppose would make sense since I had a line at my old apartment then I had it disconnected. Not sure what the real truth is, I couldn't find anything on the FCC site.
From the satellite images that Google uses, the Earth might as well be 2 dimensional. In any case, the point is that not all photographs are copyrightable. Only photographs which embody creativity are copyrightable. So how does a satellite photo of the surface of the Earth qualify?
But even with these photos, the angle doesn't seem to have been chosen for any particular artistic purpose.
And this has exactly what to do with copyright?
Promotion of the arts is the whole purpose of copyright law!
By your logic, it would impossible for any astronomical image to be copyrighted.
Not really, an astronomical image contains much more selection than this. Google Maps cover the whole Earth. There isn't any selection at all.
I tend to think that these guys would disagree with that.
Who cares whether or not Sky and Telescope would disagree? All that matters is whether or not these guys would agree. You know, the people that said "The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.'" And "the 1976 revisions to the Copyright Act leave no doubt that originality, not 'sweat of the brow,' is the [p*360] touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works." And "the Constitution mandates some minimal degree of creativity"
The photographer composed the shot, configured his camera, and took the photograph. His skill and the expenses he undertook are rewarded by a limited-term copyright.
Copyright is not given to reward skill and expense, it is given to reward creativity. There's nothing creative in a satellite photo of the surface of the Earth.
I suggest you read Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service. Here's a quote from Wikipedia regarding it:
The court clarified that the intent of copyright law was not, as claimed by Rural and some lower courts, to reward the efforts of persons collecting information, but rather "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8), that is, to encourage creative expression. Its opinion stated that collection copyrights apply to only the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself.
Now, explain to me what creativity goes into taking a bunch of satellite photos of the surface of the earth.
Those images don't look like satellite images, and they certainly don't look anything like the images Google has. But even with these photos, the angle doesn't seem to have been chosen for any particular artistic purpose.
Yeah, a commercial website which has every incentive to scare people into thinking they can't copy something when really they can. Much the same reason Microsoft puts obviously unenforcible clauses in its EULA, or the reason that Major League Baseball says that "any descriptions of this broadcast are prohibited" even though the courts ruled that this isn't true. Companies make claims of laws that don't exist all the time. Sometimes they do so because they think the law actually applies. Sometimes they do so because they disagree with a particular court ruling. And sometimes they do so simply to scare people.
Since English is not my native language, I apologize if I confused my verbs. By requested, I meant asked. I though they were synonyms.
No, I think I was just confused as to which images you were talking about, the white house ones or the Australian ones. In any case, the newspaper article is outright incorrect when it says that "Google Earth 'censors' the White House with blocks of colour over the roof".
If Google doesn't modify the images they receive, and they use them legally, why don't they announce just that, instead of replying "Look, the images aren't really that detailed".
It's not really clear what Google was responding to when they said "The same information is available to anyone who flies over or drives by a piece of property." But just because Google is getting the images from someone else and not modifying them doesn't mean they can't choose to do so. I doubt the point of having a "double standard" was brought up to them. I think the paper asked them "why aren't you censoring this", not "why are you censoring the White House pictures but not this?"
Is it so hard to go find a tall building in downtown D.C. and bring a camera with a zoom? Then instead of getting an image from years ago you'd get something from days ago.
Sure. "The U.S. Geological Survey, which paid for the photographs, has been distributing them publicly since last December without formally acknowledging they were altered. The Washington photographs were part of a national project to create high-resolution images of 133 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis, Las Vegas and Dallas."
Everywhere I've read (even in the article) says it's Google censoring the images. The request from the reactor's authorities directly to Google seems to reinforce this notion.
Australia is asking Google to censor the images.
Otherwise, they could just complain to the real source, and Google would certainly point out they don't have actual control over the photos and they just make it available to the public.
I'm sure they already have complained to the real source. What did you think, that Google launched satellites just so it could create Google Maps?
Not sure. You'd probably do more damage to the world destroying Google's headquarters than destroying some Australian nuclear site, and if you managed to actually break in to Google's servers you'd probably have access to millions of bank accounts (via the "email me a new password" feature so many banks have).
Google IS censoring pictures of important buildings in America, and Google's arguments in this case relate to these buildings just as well.
The thing is, it probably isn't Google that is censoring the pictures, but someone who is providing the images to Google. And in many cases, the images are being provided by the US government itself.
But google also uses higher resolution satellite images from commercial providers like Space Imaging's IKONOS platform. These are copyright (although Google seems to use lower-resolution versions of these, due surely to cost).
How can you copyright a satellite photo of the earth? Since you're so far away, there's no selection of angle (other than "down"), so it seems to me these are similar to a photograph of any other 2-dimensional object, in other words, not copyrightable.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really think the extra bandwidth costs would be more than the cost of his salary while coming up with a better solution?
In my experience DSL is much more reliable than wireless or cable, but YMMV.
I've used all three, and of them, only DSL has gone down for hours and even days at a time. When I had cable modem service a couple years ago it was rock solid. It'd slow down once in a while, but I never had it go down completely. My wireless connection is a bit flaky - sometimes the connection gets dropped - but I've never had it go down completely to where it wouldn't reconnect, at least not while I was in my apartment (which happens to be a stone's throw away from a cell phone tower). DSL was great when it worked, but every few months it'd just stop working completely for hours at a time, this was true through three different apartments that I've lived in.
I think it really depends on where you live, though.
The frisson of defining information as negative emerges ultimately from a semi-deliberate muddling of the distinction between the definition of information in the quantum computing context and information as we use the word in daily life. This is not hard useful scientific discovery so much as the scientific equivalent of making an outrageous pun.
Kind of like what happened with relativity/relativism ("everything is relative, Einstein even proved it").
I worked in construction for a year, and I eventually quit because I was only getting something like 20 hours a week in because it was raining so often.
And yeah, I guess it's nice in the longer term to have multiple skills, but unless you've got the money or the connections to work for yourself you're most likely going to have to start all over pay-wise every time you switch, if you can convince someone to overlook your lack of (or gap in) paid experience in the first place. Even if you do manage to get a job working for yourself a lot of fields have licensing issues so you'd need to keep all your licenses up to date.
I worked for a while out of college in unix software development. Now I work in accounting (for way less money, I might add). I suppose if the market for unix software development in my area got really hot I could get a low-end job, but I doubt I'll ever be working in software for someone else.
It's quite common for those with the weakest legal copyright protections to use the most draconian technical techniques to assert copyright.
Ignoring 2D for the moment, if a human decided when, what and how to photograph part of the Earth it might very well be an artistic expression.
As far as "what" part of the Earth is being photographed (and at what zoom level), this I think is usually going to be considered an artistic expression. As for "when", this might be artistic, depending on the specifics, but if it's just "whenever the satellite happens to be there" it isn't. The "how" part is the best argument the satellite/aerial photographer is going to have. If it's just a best-effort reproduction of visible light though, I don't think this would pass. If there were some filters applied or some recoloring or something, then maybe they've got an argument.
Back to the "where" part, though, when it comes to Google Maps and Google Earth, the user is the one who picks the "where" part, so the user is the one with the strongest copyright claim.
If the photographing is wholly mechanical and routine, on the other hand, then perhaps not.
I suppose it might have sounded like I was arguing that no satellite photo can ever be copyrightable (looking back, I suppose I basically said that). I don't think that's true. Rather, what I was arguing was against the view that all photos are necessarily copyrightable. That's clearly not true.
As for the satellite images being used by Google, I'd say the majority of them are on shaky ground as far as copyright protection. And though they didn't do so in the original version of Google Earth, Google is even claiming a copyright itself on the images, which I don't understand at all.
Huh? Are you implying that I was the anonymous coward?
The limit is 18,000ft, not 13,000.
That's IDSL though, right? Anyway, what I read about Verizon (which services this place) was that their equipment was originally limited to 12,000 ft but that they were upgrading it to 15,000 ft.
Your NSP or LEC is dicking you around. Try to see if you can pay for an actual DSL tech to test your line with a proper testset (Sunrise- not Harris).
The thing is, I really don't care. I already have EVDO which is somewhat more expensive and has shitty ping times, but I can take it on the road with me, and I just bought a slim wireless-g card so that I can route the EVDO to the rest of the house so my girlfriend can use it. I'm not really interested in paying something like $65 a month for a phone line and DSL (and taxes). The only real advantage I'd have is that I can keep my desktop computer always connected, but since I have a VPS server online at a colo this isn't that big a deal. If I wind up really needing a real broadband connection I'll just go with cable modem.
Hmm, I can't find it. I read somewhere else (just some blog, though) that the phone company only has to provide 911 service if you have a dial tone, which I suppose would make sense since I had a line at my old apartment then I had it disconnected. Not sure what the real truth is, I couldn't find anything on the FCC site.
Before the US declares war on the Internet?
Think I'm kidding? I thought my dad was kidding when he said "Iraq is next" after we went into Pakistan.
From the satellite images that Google uses, the Earth might as well be 2 dimensional. In any case, the point is that not all photographs are copyrightable. Only photographs which embody creativity are copyrightable. So how does a satellite photo of the surface of the Earth qualify?
Creative and difficult are not the same thing. Copyright is not given to reward skill and expense, it is given to reward creativity.
But even with these photos, the angle doesn't seem to have been chosen for any particular artistic purpose.
And this has exactly what to do with copyright?
Promotion of the arts is the whole purpose of copyright law!
By your logic, it would impossible for any astronomical image to be copyrighted.
Not really, an astronomical image contains much more selection than this. Google Maps cover the whole Earth. There isn't any selection at all.
I tend to think that these guys would disagree with that.
Who cares whether or not Sky and Telescope would disagree? All that matters is whether or not these guys would agree. You know, the people that said "The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.'" And "the 1976 revisions to the Copyright Act leave no doubt that originality, not 'sweat of the brow,' is the [p*360] touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works." And "the Constitution mandates some minimal degree of creativity"
The photographer composed the shot, configured his camera, and took the photograph. His skill and the expenses he undertook are rewarded by a limited-term copyright.
Copyright is not given to reward skill and expense, it is given to reward creativity. There's nothing creative in a satellite photo of the surface of the Earth.
I suggest you read Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service. Here's a quote from Wikipedia regarding it:
Now, explain to me what creativity goes into taking a bunch of satellite photos of the surface of the earth.
Those images don't look like satellite images, and they certainly don't look anything like the images Google has. But even with these photos, the angle doesn't seem to have been chosen for any particular artistic purpose.
Yeah, a commercial website which has every incentive to scare people into thinking they can't copy something when really they can. Much the same reason Microsoft puts obviously unenforcible clauses in its EULA, or the reason that Major League Baseball says that "any descriptions of this broadcast are prohibited" even though the courts ruled that this isn't true. Companies make claims of laws that don't exist all the time. Sometimes they do so because they think the law actually applies. Sometimes they do so because they disagree with a particular court ruling. And sometimes they do so simply to scare people.
Since English is not my native language, I apologize if I confused my verbs. By requested, I meant asked. I though they were synonyms.
No, I think I was just confused as to which images you were talking about, the white house ones or the Australian ones. In any case, the newspaper article is outright incorrect when it says that "Google Earth 'censors' the White House with blocks of colour over the roof".
If Google doesn't modify the images they receive, and they use them legally, why don't they announce just that, instead of replying "Look, the images aren't really that detailed".
It's not really clear what Google was responding to when they said "The same information is available to anyone who flies over or drives by a piece of property." But just because Google is getting the images from someone else and not modifying them doesn't mean they can't choose to do so. I doubt the point of having a "double standard" was brought up to them. I think the paper asked them "why aren't you censoring this", not "why are you censoring the White House pictures but not this?"
Maybe if you were using a digital camera and brought a printer up to the top of the building with you :P
A photograph of a 2-dimensional object is not a creative work according to Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
Is it so hard to go find a tall building in downtown D.C. and bring a camera with a zoom? Then instead of getting an image from years ago you'd get something from days ago.
Care to back that up with some info?
Sure. "The U.S. Geological Survey, which paid for the photographs, has been distributing them publicly since last December without formally acknowledging they were altered. The Washington photographs were part of a national project to create high-resolution images of 133 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis, Las Vegas and Dallas."
Everywhere I've read (even in the article) says it's Google censoring the images. The request from the reactor's authorities directly to Google seems to reinforce this notion.
Australia is asking Google to censor the images.
Otherwise, they could just complain to the real source, and Google would certainly point out they don't have actual control over the photos and they just make it available to the public.
I'm sure they already have complained to the real source. What did you think, that Google launched satellites just so it could create Google Maps?
Not sure. You'd probably do more damage to the world destroying Google's headquarters than destroying some Australian nuclear site, and if you managed to actually break in to Google's servers you'd probably have access to millions of bank accounts (via the "email me a new password" feature so many banks have).
Google IS censoring pictures of important buildings in America, and Google's arguments in this case relate to these buildings just as well.
The thing is, it probably isn't Google that is censoring the pictures, but someone who is providing the images to Google. And in many cases, the images are being provided by the US government itself.
But google also uses higher resolution satellite images from commercial providers like Space Imaging's IKONOS platform. These are copyright (although Google seems to use lower-resolution versions of these, due surely to cost).
How can you copyright a satellite photo of the earth? Since you're so far away, there's no selection of angle (other than "down"), so it seems to me these are similar to a photograph of any other 2-dimensional object, in other words, not copyrightable.
Please. Just because you put "(C) 2005 You" on something doesn't make it true. People put copyright notices on public domain content all the time.