why the hell would I pay $300 for a device just so I have the right to pay $10 for each book I want to read?
I don't know, maybe for the same reason you'd pay $50 for a DVD player just so you have the right to pay $20 for each movie you want to watch, or $250 for an iPod just so you have the right to pay $10 for each album you want to listen to, or $500 for a TV just so you have the right to pay $100/month for cable, or (etc).
I agree that the current implementations of eBook readers suck, particularly thanks to things like lock-in and DRM (absolute deal-breakers for me). But the "why pay for a device only to end up paying for the content" argument, which always comes up with this topic, is bunk.
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. It clearly states that "The What's Your Type? program is a recruitment program with information provided for the participants' enjoyment" (emphasis added). It's just a silly recruitment program, and it blatantly says so. They're not claiming that there is any science behind it. This is not the science-oriented people in CBS backing this, it's the PR-oriented people.
There is no conspiracy here to to drive a wedge of Japanese pseudoscience into an otherwise scientific organization. This is a bit of silliness to get people interested in donating blood.
Seriously people. Relax. Loosen your tinfoil hats. "They" are not conspiring to take your precious science away.
But I think the point is that, since you need Windows to run G-WAN, then you've already paid for IIS, so why the need for a different closed-source (but free as in beer) web server?
One of the questions raised on the Amazon page is: shouldn't this material be public domain?
This is not the original manual. This is a book published by the people who found the manual. It includes the contents of the original manual, plus some additional commentary. It is, therefore, a new original work containing some possibly public domain material.
Re:Experimental set-up raises a few questions
on
Ants That Can Count
·
· Score: 1
But the ants were moved so that they would never actually reach there home.
Where did you get that idea from? Certainly not the article. Quoting TFA:
The regular ants walked right to the nest and went inside.
The ants on stilts walked right past the nest, stopped and looked around for their home.
The ants on stumps fell short of the nest, stopped and seemed to be searching for their home.
As a drummer, I can create and reproduce the same roll on the fly. But if you asked me how many times I hit the drum pad, only then I would have to count. I did not need to count in order to reproduce the roll nor did I know how many times I actually hit the drum pads.
If that roll were more than a few seconds long, you would likely have to count. You wouldn't necessarily count the actual individual drum hits, but you would likely count the beats, or the bars, or the seconds, or something.
This leads me to believe ants cannot count, why would they need to.
Well, maybe to be able to travel great distances and then return to where they came from? Much like the theory suggests they are doing.
Counting is good for humans in order to trade, so they have developed that capability.
You misunderstand evolution. Humans have the capability to count, so they have developed trade utilizing that capability. Similarly, ants (theoretically) have the capability to count their steps, so they have developed the ability to travel far from their homes and then return without having a trail to follow back.
Honest question: suppose you're convicted of a crime you didn't commit, with no chance of being exonerated. You get to choose between spending the rest of your life in prison or being executed. Which would you choose? I think that I personally would probably prefer dying over having to spend the rest of my life locked up with actual criminals for a crime I didn't commit.
I hope you realize that when a person is sentenced to die, they don't just take you from the courtroom straight to the execution chamber. You will spend many years locked up with actual criminals, and not just any old criminals, but the worst of the worst, meaning others who have been sentenced to die.
No, I'm pretty sure that with expert sex change... you have to view source, THEN scroll down
That's true if you click a link from, for example here, but not true if you click a link from a Google search result (first result is the same link as before). In the latter case, just scroll down and read your answer.
If the email says "Hey Bob, your algorithm didn't produce the level of warming we were expecting, we need you to rework it so it is in line with our expectations" that would say a lot about how the 'science' is being done.
What if the person sending the email to Bob is someone testing Bob's algorithm in a controlled test scenario where the outcome is already known, and therefore the algorithm not meeting expectations actually means that the algorithm is wrong and needs to be reworked? Then the quote wouldn't be quite the smoking gun, would it?
Here's an honest question, why is a laser better than a high caliber bullet?
Keep in mind that lasers in reality aren't like lasers in movies. In the real world, you don't see it coming, and even after it hits, you don't know where it came from.
Photoshop is a lot more intuitive than Gimp is if you're used to Photoshop. Gimp is a lot more intuitive than Photoshop if you're used to Gimp.
Actually, I recently moved from Photoshop to GIMP, and aside from having to get used to the horrifying multiple window UI, I've found that some things that I had already gotten used to in Photoshop are more intuitive in GIMP.
Mind you, over time I'll probably find that there are other things that are the opposite, but so far that has been my take on it.
It's not being removed from the CD, it's just not being installed by default. Which makes sense. Most people don't need it.
I'm a developer, and I do UI stuff, so I use GIMP. But most folks just want to be able to crop their photos and clean up the red eye. There are plenty of much simpler tools that can do that.
By the way, I wasn't aware of the new UI in GIMP 2.8. I can't wait to see it. I love GIMP, but can't stand the stupid UI that it currently used (I hated that UI design when the old pre-.NET Visual BASIC used it, and I hate it now in GIMP).
I agree with your point in general, but the remakes came out in 1997, two years before Episode 1.
The first set of remakes came out in 1997. Lucas has changed them many times since then. The versions you get on DVD today are not the same ones that came out in '97. It is the later revisions that the GP was talking about ("I'm surprised Lucas didn't redo it in CGI in some of the newer remakes of Star Wars" — emphasis added)
You sir, are a snob. A programming snob at that, congrats.
He may be a snob, but the next time I'm hired to maintain or extend someone else's code, I hope it was written by someone like him.
I say this as someone who is currently maintaining (and mostly rewriting, whenever I get the chance) somebody else's hastily hacked together code that, more or less, works — at least until I have to add functionality, at which point I see the house of cards it really is.
People who sell a copyright, shouldn't have a say in how the law changes?
That wasn't the question. The question was whether they should have a say in what happens with the sold item after it has been sold. Of course they should have a say in changes to the law.
You're right, he sold copyright for however long the term happens to be or changes to.
No, he didn't sell it "for however long the term happens to be or changes to", he simply sold it. Period. There is no time length in a sold item. If I sell you a house, I'm not selling a house for X years, I'm selling a house. Period. No matter how long I anticipate the house will remain standing. If you want a time limit on it, then license it, not sell it.
If you're saying he shouldn't be allowed to complain about what Congress does, then seriously: fuck you, commie
This was actually one of the funniest comments I've read on Slashdot in a while.
But a copyright tranfer for 35 years is less valuable than a 75 years one. By simple fairness, if you change the terms of the deal you should allow to renegotiate. And sure as hell if the terms will ever be reduced it will not apply to closed deals.
The deal hasn't changed. The deal was a certain amount of money for a current copyright. Period. If, down the road, copyright length gets extended, well that's just a bonus for anyone who holds a copyright. But once you've sold an item for an agreed upon price, the deal is done. If the item sold becomes more valuable after the sale, well, that's the risk anyone takes when selling an item.
He sold it for 35 years, so they get to KEEP it for 35 years.
No he didn't. He sold it. Period. You can't sell something for a period of time. If you sell it, it's sold.
He sold it with the belief that it would be in the public domain after 35 years, and then the rules changed. Oh well. That's life. He still sold it, and has no reason to complain about what happens to it after he sold it. Again, if he wanted to retain control, then he shouldn't have sold it.
If it was 1970, and I gave you my work for 35 years before it naturally fell into public domain, then in the 1990s, the law changes it to 75, shouldn't *I* have some say about it?
No. You sold the copyright. Period.
If you want control over your copyright in the future, then don't sell it.
I predict a sudden explosion of disco on the oldies radio stations. They won't be able to play that music for free (since it belongs to the artists), but I bet it will be a lot cheaper than what the megacorps are asking.
It won't be cheaper because the stations will have to deal with thousands of individual artists instead of a handful of record companies. The administrative overhead will make it no longer worth the effort.
I'm sure they'll license the songs they absolutely can't do without (e.g. Hotel California will still be on the radio), but they won't bother with the rest.
On the other hand, maybe Obama will come to the record companies rescue, and alter the law in some fast-track legislation.
I'm no American, but isn't it Congress that makes laws, not the President?
How with this affect any games, movies, etc. that currently have authorization to use the music? Could this be used to require guitar hero, etc. to stop distribution of current versions because the original creator of the music doesn't want it in the game?
It won't. A licensed use of a song can't be retroactively unlicensed just because the copyright changed hands. Once it's licensed, it's licensed.
However, if the game companies want to use some of the same songs in future versions of the game, they may find themselves negotiating with different people this time, who may have different terms, or may even decide against licensing altogether.
Maybe you should read page two of the article, where it goes on to detail some of the other ways that Mr. Eiss can read the law for free. Specifically, it mentions the public library, the supreme court library, and the local community college library.
But with law the presentation is the same as the information. You can paraphrase law to make it more understandable, but what's actually written down on the original documents is what's important and it's what wins if there's any conflicts with other interpretations.
No. The "presentation" in this case is the specific electronic encoding of the wording of the law, not the wording of the law itself. The law is freely available in multiple other formats, and could even be exported to a different electronic format (MS Word, for example) and given away for free.
That doesn't make charging to know the law legitimate.
The point is that they're not charging to know the law. According to TFA, you can read the law "at the Schenectady Public Library, Schenectady County Supreme Court Library, the Schenectady County Community College Library and several other locations". And as of next year you'll be able to read and search the law online for free. In the meantime, if you want a copy to take home, you have to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
why the hell would I pay $300 for a device just so I have the right to pay $10 for each book I want to read?
I don't know, maybe for the same reason you'd pay $50 for a DVD player just so you have the right to pay $20 for each movie you want to watch, or $250 for an iPod just so you have the right to pay $10 for each album you want to listen to, or $500 for a TV just so you have the right to pay $100/month for cable, or (etc).
I agree that the current implementations of eBook readers suck, particularly thanks to things like lock-in and DRM (absolute deal-breakers for me). But the "why pay for a device only to end up paying for the content" argument, which always comes up with this topic, is bunk.
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. It clearly states that "The What's Your Type? program is a recruitment program with information provided for the participants' enjoyment" (emphasis added). It's just a silly recruitment program, and it blatantly says so. They're not claiming that there is any science behind it. This is not the science-oriented people in CBS backing this, it's the PR-oriented people.
There is no conspiracy here to to drive a wedge of Japanese pseudoscience into an otherwise scientific organization. This is a bit of silliness to get people interested in donating blood.
Seriously people. Relax. Loosen your tinfoil hats. "They" are not conspiring to take your precious science away.
But I think the point is that, since you need Windows to run G-WAN, then you've already paid for IIS, so why the need for a different closed-source (but free as in beer) web server?
One of the questions raised on the Amazon page is: shouldn't this material be public domain?
This is not the original manual. This is a book published by the people who found the manual. It includes the contents of the original manual, plus some additional commentary. It is, therefore, a new original work containing some possibly public domain material.
But the ants were moved so that they would never actually reach there home.
Where did you get that idea from? Certainly not the article. Quoting TFA:
The regular ants walked right to the nest and went inside.
The ants on stilts walked right past the nest, stopped and looked around for their home.
The ants on stumps fell short of the nest, stopped and seemed to be searching for their home.
As a drummer, I can create and reproduce the same roll on the fly. But if you asked me how many times I hit the drum pad, only then I would have to count. I did not need to count in order to reproduce the roll nor did I know how many times I actually hit the drum pads.
If that roll were more than a few seconds long, you would likely have to count. You wouldn't necessarily count the actual individual drum hits, but you would likely count the beats, or the bars, or the seconds, or something.
This leads me to believe ants cannot count, why would they need to.
Well, maybe to be able to travel great distances and then return to where they came from? Much like the theory suggests they are doing.
Counting is good for humans in order to trade, so they have developed that capability.
You misunderstand evolution. Humans have the capability to count, so they have developed trade utilizing that capability. Similarly, ants (theoretically) have the capability to count their steps, so they have developed the ability to travel far from their homes and then return without having a trail to follow back.
Honest question: suppose you're convicted of a crime you didn't commit, with no chance of being exonerated. You get to choose between spending the rest of your life in prison or being executed. Which would you choose? I think that I personally would probably prefer dying over having to spend the rest of my life locked up with actual criminals for a crime I didn't commit.
I hope you realize that when a person is sentenced to die, they don't just take you from the courtroom straight to the execution chamber. You will spend many years locked up with actual criminals, and not just any old criminals, but the worst of the worst, meaning others who have been sentenced to die.
No, I'm pretty sure that with expert sex change ... you have to view source, THEN scroll down
That's true if you click a link from, for example here, but not true if you click a link from a Google search result (first result is the same link as before). In the latter case, just scroll down and read your answer.
If the email says "Hey Bob, your algorithm didn't produce the level of warming we were expecting, we need you to rework it so it is in line with our expectations" that would say a lot about how the 'science' is being done.
What if the person sending the email to Bob is someone testing Bob's algorithm in a controlled test scenario where the outcome is already known, and therefore the algorithm not meeting expectations actually means that the algorithm is wrong and needs to be reworked? Then the quote wouldn't be quite the smoking gun, would it?
That's why context is essential.
Here's an honest question, why is a laser better than a high caliber bullet?
Keep in mind that lasers in reality aren't like lasers in movies. In the real world, you don't see it coming, and even after it hits, you don't know where it came from.
Photoshop is a lot more intuitive than Gimp is if you're used to Photoshop. Gimp is a lot more intuitive than Photoshop if you're used to Gimp.
Actually, I recently moved from Photoshop to GIMP, and aside from having to get used to the horrifying multiple window UI, I've found that some things that I had already gotten used to in Photoshop are more intuitive in GIMP.
Mind you, over time I'll probably find that there are other things that are the opposite, but so far that has been my take on it.
It's not being removed from the CD, it's just not being installed by default. Which makes sense. Most people don't need it.
I'm a developer, and I do UI stuff, so I use GIMP. But most folks just want to be able to crop their photos and clean up the red eye. There are plenty of much simpler tools that can do that.
By the way, I wasn't aware of the new UI in GIMP 2.8. I can't wait to see it. I love GIMP, but can't stand the stupid UI that it currently used (I hated that UI design when the old pre-.NET Visual BASIC used it, and I hate it now in GIMP).
I agree with your point in general, but the remakes came out in 1997, two years before Episode 1.
The first set of remakes came out in 1997. Lucas has changed them many times since then. The versions you get on DVD today are not the same ones that came out in '97. It is the later revisions that the GP was talking about ("I'm surprised Lucas didn't redo it in CGI in some of the newer remakes of Star Wars" — emphasis added)
If you ever watched the making of one of the Aliens movies you found out the slime from he aliens mouths is corn syrup.
What do you think all the blood in pretty much every violent movie you've ever seen actually is (with food colouring, of course)?
Think about that the next time you watch a horror movie.
You sir, are a snob. A programming snob at that, congrats.
He may be a snob, but the next time I'm hired to maintain or extend someone else's code, I hope it was written by someone like him.
I say this as someone who is currently maintaining (and mostly rewriting, whenever I get the chance) somebody else's hastily hacked together code that, more or less, works — at least until I have to add functionality, at which point I see the house of cards it really is.
People who sell a copyright, shouldn't have a say in how the law changes?
That wasn't the question. The question was whether they should have a say in what happens with the sold item after it has been sold. Of course they should have a say in changes to the law.
You're right, he sold copyright for however long the term happens to be or changes to.
No, he didn't sell it "for however long the term happens to be or changes to", he simply sold it. Period. There is no time length in a sold item. If I sell you a house, I'm not selling a house for X years, I'm selling a house. Period. No matter how long I anticipate the house will remain standing. If you want a time limit on it, then license it, not sell it.
If you're saying he shouldn't be allowed to complain about what Congress does, then seriously: fuck you, commie
This was actually one of the funniest comments I've read on Slashdot in a while.
But a copyright tranfer for 35 years is less valuable than a 75 years one. By simple fairness, if you change the terms of the deal you should allow to renegotiate. And sure as hell if the terms will ever be reduced it will not apply to closed deals.
The deal hasn't changed. The deal was a certain amount of money for a current copyright. Period. If, down the road, copyright length gets extended, well that's just a bonus for anyone who holds a copyright. But once you've sold an item for an agreed upon price, the deal is done. If the item sold becomes more valuable after the sale, well, that's the risk anyone takes when selling an item.
He sold it for 35 years, so they get to KEEP it for 35 years.
No he didn't. He sold it. Period. You can't sell something for a period of time. If you sell it, it's sold.
He sold it with the belief that it would be in the public domain after 35 years, and then the rules changed. Oh well. That's life. He still sold it, and has no reason to complain about what happens to it after he sold it. Again, if he wanted to retain control, then he shouldn't have sold it.
If it was 1970, and I gave you my work for 35 years before it naturally fell into public domain, then in the 1990s, the law changes it to 75, shouldn't *I* have some say about it?
No. You sold the copyright. Period.
If you want control over your copyright in the future, then don't sell it.
I predict a sudden explosion of disco on the oldies radio stations. They won't be able to play that music for free (since it belongs to the artists), but I bet it will be a lot cheaper than what the megacorps are asking.
It won't be cheaper because the stations will have to deal with thousands of individual artists instead of a handful of record companies. The administrative overhead will make it no longer worth the effort.
I'm sure they'll license the songs they absolutely can't do without (e.g. Hotel California will still be on the radio), but they won't bother with the rest.
On the other hand, maybe Obama will come to the record companies rescue, and alter the law in some fast-track legislation.
I'm no American, but isn't it Congress that makes laws, not the President?
How with this affect any games, movies, etc. that currently have authorization to use the music? Could this be used to require guitar hero, etc. to stop distribution of current versions because the original creator of the music doesn't want it in the game?
It won't. A licensed use of a song can't be retroactively unlicensed just because the copyright changed hands. Once it's licensed, it's licensed.
However, if the game companies want to use some of the same songs in future versions of the game, they may find themselves negotiating with different people this time, who may have different terms, or may even decide against licensing altogether.
Maybe you should read page two of the article, where it goes on to detail some of the other ways that Mr. Eiss can read the law for free. Specifically, it mentions the public library, the supreme court library, and the local community college library.
It's also noted in the article that the city could export it into a different electronic format and offer it for free.
But with law the presentation is the same as the information. You can paraphrase law to make it more understandable, but what's actually written down on the original documents is what's important and it's what wins if there's any conflicts with other interpretations.
No. The "presentation" in this case is the specific electronic encoding of the wording of the law, not the wording of the law itself. The law is freely available in multiple other formats, and could even be exported to a different electronic format (MS Word, for example) and given away for free.
That doesn't make charging to know the law legitimate.
The point is that they're not charging to know the law. According to TFA, you can read the law "at the Schenectady Public Library, Schenectady County Supreme Court Library, the Schenectady County Community College Library and several other locations". And as of next year you'll be able to read and search the law online for free. In the meantime, if you want a copy to take home, you have to pay for it.