then the man from audience asks if he doesn't see the writing on the wall, that this is going to happen to TV soon, within 20 years. Ari's answer is that he'll be fine with that, he'll be 71.
In all fairness, he said many things just to get a laugh, and that was one of them. Another comment he made just a minute earlier, which was also made for a laugh, was actually even more interesting. The guy in the audience said "why isn't anyone in TV seeing that writing on the wall", and Ari responded "listen, nobody said any of us guys down south are geniuses."
But if people stop buying CDs or MP3s (and just hand money direct to the bands at concerts) then audio engineers, extra instrumentalists, and backing vocalists won't be hired at all for the studio productions, because those CDs/MP3s will no longer be made.
Music will always be recorded, whether it's profitable or not. It's a promotional tool.
If there were no recordings of music, you'd have a chicken/egg conundrum. Nobody comes to your shows because they've never heard you, and they've never heard you because they've never been to one of your shows. People need to hear the music somewhere to become interested in it in the first place and want to go see the band live. To hear it, it needs to be recorded.
Even if recordings reach the point of never being sold and only given away, bands will still invest in them, just as they invest in any other promotional material. Besides, it's fun. I record stuff just because I want to, and I don't even give it away, let alone sell it. I don't need the promise of riches to make me want to make an album.
And that pretty much sums up the argument that Topolsky should've brought with him, rather than fumbling over his road analogy after it had already died in its tracks.
In the video I watched, Emanual absolutely had a counter argument.
Topolsky said "they (Google) aren't policemen, they don't police things" and Emanual responded "no, they decide when they want to police something and when they don't want to". He went on to discuss how Google is actively filtering child pornography, but refuses to actively filter copyright infringement. Topolsky had no response to that other than to mutter "I don't know" and then go back to the road analogy and talk about tearing up the road. However, using his analogy, Emanual was not arguing that the road be torn up, just that since the road is already being policed for one bad thing, then it should also be policed for other bad things.
The argument that Topolsky should have brought was that, first of all, Google doesn't filter child pornography, so Emanual's premise is wrong. Secondly, child pornography is always illegal (at least in the U.S where this debate was occurring), so any instance of child pornography is, by definition, an instance of illegal child pornography, whereas an instance of downloaded content is not necessarily an instance of illegally downloaded content, so the filtering is different. Basically, the nature of the content in question is that it must be self-policed.
There is no general correlation between a weak argument and being not wrong (or a strong argument, for that matter). There is just the fact that in this particular instance, the argument presented was a weak attempt to make a particular point. And while others are criticizing Emanual for simply bullying in response, if you listen, he actually made an argument in response which Topolsky failed to counter, despite it also being a weak argument.
I watched the video. I don't agree with Emanuel's perspective, and I hate to say this, but Topolsky got his ass handed to him. He presented a weak argument, and Emanual ripped it apart. Topolsky's not wrong, he just failed to bring a decent argument, and was basically laughed out of the room.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't (this nerd finds it interesting), but it could certainly be "stuff that matters".
...in the hopes of influencing the "editors" who select these stories.
Your ~162K userid suggests you've been here for a while, so I, with my ~566K userid shouldn't have to tell you that there's this thing called the Firehose. But, well, here we are.
A trademark doesn't stop you from writing the word in a post on a forum. It stops you from using the word as part of the name of your competing product, service, or company. In other words, Facebook trademarking "book" simply means that you can't build a competing social networking site called "Friendbook" or something similar.
Legally speaking, if you're a builder and you have a FB account, you now need to get FB's permission for your work, because you agreed to not use the word "Wall" without their permission.
It's not quite that extreme. When discussing trademarks, the word "use" has a particular meaning. Just because something is trademarked doesn't mean you can't say it or write it or discuss it. It means you can't use it as a mark of trade. So, assuming this EULA has any legal weight (a big assumption), the limitation on "using" the word "wall" would only apply if you're using it as a mark of trade while on Facebook. They cannot extend the weight of their EULA to actions that occur outside of Facebook, and they cannot extend the weight of trademark law to just any usage they feel like.
Drought. Bad ones too. In my part of NJ, we got a few inches of snow this year, instead of a few feet. The reservoirs are going to be bone-dry, since there's no snow to melt.
Last year, we got way more snow than we usually do. Global warming. This year, way less. Global warming.
There are lots of people in the world who don't know what they're talking about. Anyone who uses local weather patterns as "proof" either for or against global warming falls into that category. Usually it's the deniers who do this, but anyone can make that mistake.
Of course, that says nothing about the science behind global warming, yet other misinformed people will use it to strengthen whatever their current belief is.
Sharepoint - seriously? - does anyone use that pile of crap? You're not going to get people to switch to your alternative - wait, what was your alternative anyways? - just by calling their current solution a "pile of crap."
This, right here, is exactly the main problem with Linux advocacy. Linux advocates are mostly people who hate Windows for one reason or another, and assume that everyone else hates Windows as well, but just haven't figured out that they have a choice.
But the problem is, in actuality, most Windows users are quite happy with it. Sure, people love to complain about it, and given the incredibly large number of people actually using it, there's bound to be a large number (but small percentage) of people who are vocal about what they dislike about Windows. But for the most part, people are content with it.
I love Linux. It's my all-time favourite server OS. But my all-time favourite desktop OS is Windows 7. So, when a Linux advocate comes along and tells me that my OS is buggy and unsecure, and insists that I can do 98% of the things I use a computer for with some open source alternative running on Linux, and then either use WINE or dual-boot for the remaining 2%, my response is, why bother? I can just continue doing 100% of the things I do on my existing Windows machine with zero effort on my part.
They need to demonstrate why it's better than Windows. And opinionated rants about how "buggy" or "unsecure" or just plain "crappy" Windows is isn't going to cut it. Neither will "free software" ideology, for most people. And this is where the advocacy fails. Because it's actually not better. It's just different.
You're misunderstanding me. It is a license, and it does rely on copyright. I was merely making the distinction that it is copyright law that applies restrictions, and the GPL that lifts those restrictions. The two work together. Without copyright, there could be no GPL.
The user has to comply with redistribution restrictions because the aim of the license is to benifit scoiety as a whole rather than compensating the creator.
Again, my point is that it is only copyright that limits what the licensee can do. GPL grants licensees the right to do things that copyright doesn't otherwise allow them to do. However, in order to be granted those rights, the licensee must meet the requirements of the GPL. Those aren't additional restrictions. They're the requirements to allow you to have restrictions lifted. If you're not willing to meet those requirements, then you continue to have the standard restrictions that copyright law imposes.
No, the GPL takes rights away from everyone, just like copyright does, because GPL IS copyright. It's not a legal hack.
GPL isn't copyright, but GPL relies on copyright. It doesn't take anything away. Copyright enforces a certain set of restrictions to everyone but the holder, and allows the holder to lift those restrictions for certain individuals. GPL uses that feature of copyright (the ability to lift restrictions) to define the eligibility requirements for becoming someone for whom some of the restrictions (but not all of them) are lifted.
Nothing is restricted under the GPL. Everything is restricted under copyright, and GPL merely chooses which restrictions to lift, and under what circumstances.
Go study something like Prolog*, then come back and tell me that all a new language can bring to the table is a different syntax.
* I'm not suggesting that Prolog is a new language, just that it's representative of how a language can introduce completely different programming concepts.
This is exactly right. It's amazing how many people immediately look for ways to go behind the employer's back. Why not start by just asking them? If the employer is expecting you to travel for extended periods of time, then there is an obvious need for getting a reasonable amount of personal use out of the laptop, as traveling with two laptops (one for work, one for pleasure) is just silly. Your employer is human, and likely a reasonable one at that (and if not, you should be looking to replace her or him). So, just explain your needs and come to an agreement.
Cashiers used to be expected to be capable of some basic arithmetic, but not so anymore.
It used to be that they would confirm the change amount by adding it up from the owed amount to the paid amount. Now, they just pile the change on top of the bills and silently try to slide it onto your hand, which invariably results in some of the precariously piled change falling onto the counter.
And if, after they've rung it in and had the cash register tell them how much change to give, you try to give them a little extra change so that they'll give you back a nice round bill instead, then they'll just stare at you like you're trying to pay with live snails.
Funnily enough, he was actually asking the police if he could go to his car when one of the commanders started shouting "Arrestee! Arrestee!" and had him arrested.
That's not what I see in the video (full video here). He was quite obviously following the line of riot cops, filming as he went, and when a cop stopped him he figured he needed an excuse to be going in that direction, so he came up with "I want to go to my car".
It's unclear from the video if there was any legitimate resisting going on, although the cop says to him "you were told to disperse". We don't see that part in the video, so it's unclear if it happened before he started the camera, or if she made that up.
It is the craziness of the mass media that translates a copyright filing as "Invention".
He calls it his invention, too. Check out his website at www.inventorofemail.com. He basically claims that, while there were previous implementations of electronic mail-like messaging systems, the first to have the features of modern email, including multiple folders, to/cc/bcc, subject lines, etc, was his program called "EMAIL", thereby making EMAIL the first modern e-mail system.
Also, it's not the term "EMAIL" that was copyrighted, but the program and its user manual. As others have pointed out, you can't copyright a term.
As is standard for anything involving copyrights, trademarks, or patents, the claim has been distorted. He has a copyright on "EMAIL"... meaning a program called "EMAIL", not the term. He registered both the program and its user manual with the Copyright Office.
He is playing a ridiculous semantic game. If you look at his website, he never claims to have invented "email". He claims only to have invented "EMAIL", which is technically correct, in that he did create a program called "EMAIL". He even goes so far as to admit that the word "email" was in use previously, but that he was the first to use the word "EMAIL".
Slashdot Mirror
then the man from audience asks if he doesn't see the writing on the wall, that this is going to happen to TV soon, within 20 years. Ari's answer is that he'll be fine with that, he'll be 71.
In all fairness, he said many things just to get a laugh, and that was one of them. Another comment he made just a minute earlier, which was also made for a laugh, was actually even more interesting. The guy in the audience said "why isn't anyone in TV seeing that writing on the wall", and Ari responded "listen, nobody said any of us guys down south are geniuses."
But if people stop buying CDs or MP3s (and just hand money direct to the bands at concerts) then audio engineers, extra instrumentalists, and backing vocalists won't be hired at all for the studio productions, because those CDs/MP3s will no longer be made.
Music will always be recorded, whether it's profitable or not. It's a promotional tool.
If there were no recordings of music, you'd have a chicken/egg conundrum. Nobody comes to your shows because they've never heard you, and they've never heard you because they've never been to one of your shows. People need to hear the music somewhere to become interested in it in the first place and want to go see the band live. To hear it, it needs to be recorded.
Even if recordings reach the point of never being sold and only given away, bands will still invest in them, just as they invest in any other promotional material. Besides, it's fun. I record stuff just because I want to, and I don't even give it away, let alone sell it. I don't need the promise of riches to make me want to make an album.
And that pretty much sums up the argument that Topolsky should've brought with him, rather than fumbling over his road analogy after it had already died in its tracks.
In the video I watched, Emanual absolutely had a counter argument.
Topolsky said "they (Google) aren't policemen, they don't police things" and Emanual responded "no, they decide when they want to police something and when they don't want to". He went on to discuss how Google is actively filtering child pornography, but refuses to actively filter copyright infringement. Topolsky had no response to that other than to mutter "I don't know" and then go back to the road analogy and talk about tearing up the road. However, using his analogy, Emanual was not arguing that the road be torn up, just that since the road is already being policed for one bad thing, then it should also be policed for other bad things.
The argument that Topolsky should have brought was that, first of all, Google doesn't filter child pornography, so Emanual's premise is wrong. Secondly, child pornography is always illegal (at least in the U.S where this debate was occurring), so any instance of child pornography is, by definition, an instance of illegal child pornography, whereas an instance of downloaded content is not necessarily an instance of illegally downloaded content, so the filtering is different. Basically, the nature of the content in question is that it must be self-policed.
There is no general correlation between a weak argument and being not wrong (or a strong argument, for that matter). There is just the fact that in this particular instance, the argument presented was a weak attempt to make a particular point. And while others are criticizing Emanual for simply bullying in response, if you listen, he actually made an argument in response which Topolsky failed to counter, despite it also being a weak argument.
I watched the video. I don't agree with Emanuel's perspective, and I hate to say this, but Topolsky got his ass handed to him. He presented a weak argument, and Emanual ripped it apart. Topolsky's not wrong, he just failed to bring a decent argument, and was basically laughed out of the room.
Next time, have the balls (and decency) to look the guy in the eye when you fire him, and shit like this won't happen.
That's insane. I had never heard of passenger simulators.
I agree, this is not news for nerds.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't (this nerd finds it interesting), but it could certainly be "stuff that matters".
...in the hopes of influencing the "editors" who select these stories.
Your ~162K userid suggests you've been here for a while, so I, with my ~566K userid shouldn't have to tell you that there's this thing called the Firehose. But, well, here we are.
Just because his name is Brutal Killingspree
At least it's not Peter File.
Prior art is for patents, not trademarks.
A trademark doesn't stop you from writing the word in a post on a forum. It stops you from using the word as part of the name of your competing product, service, or company. In other words, Facebook trademarking "book" simply means that you can't build a competing social networking site called "Friendbook" or something similar.
Legally speaking, if you're a builder and you have a FB account, you now need to get FB's permission for your work, because you agreed to not use the word "Wall" without their permission.
It's not quite that extreme. When discussing trademarks, the word "use" has a particular meaning. Just because something is trademarked doesn't mean you can't say it or write it or discuss it. It means you can't use it as a mark of trade. So, assuming this EULA has any legal weight (a big assumption), the limitation on "using" the word "wall" would only apply if you're using it as a mark of trade while on Facebook. They cannot extend the weight of their EULA to actions that occur outside of Facebook, and they cannot extend the weight of trademark law to just any usage they feel like.
Last year, we got way more snow than we usually do. Global warming. This year, way less. Global warming.
There are lots of people in the world who don't know what they're talking about. Anyone who uses local weather patterns as "proof" either for or against global warming falls into that category. Usually it's the deniers who do this, but anyone can make that mistake.
Of course, that says nothing about the science behind global warming, yet other misinformed people will use it to strengthen whatever their current belief is.
Sharepoint - seriously? - does anyone use that pile of crap?
You're not going to get people to switch to your alternative - wait, what was your alternative anyways? - just by calling their current solution a "pile of crap."
This, right here, is exactly the main problem with Linux advocacy. Linux advocates are mostly people who hate Windows for one reason or another, and assume that everyone else hates Windows as well, but just haven't figured out that they have a choice.
But the problem is, in actuality, most Windows users are quite happy with it. Sure, people love to complain about it, and given the incredibly large number of people actually using it, there's bound to be a large number (but small percentage) of people who are vocal about what they dislike about Windows. But for the most part, people are content with it.
I love Linux. It's my all-time favourite server OS. But my all-time favourite desktop OS is Windows 7. So, when a Linux advocate comes along and tells me that my OS is buggy and unsecure, and insists that I can do 98% of the things I use a computer for with some open source alternative running on Linux, and then either use WINE or dual-boot for the remaining 2%, my response is, why bother? I can just continue doing 100% of the things I do on my existing Windows machine with zero effort on my part.
They need to demonstrate why it's better than Windows. And opinionated rants about how "buggy" or "unsecure" or just plain "crappy" Windows is isn't going to cut it. Neither will "free software" ideology, for most people. And this is where the advocacy fails. Because it's actually not better. It's just different.
If it was not a copyright licence...
You're misunderstanding me. It is a license, and it does rely on copyright. I was merely making the distinction that it is copyright law that applies restrictions, and the GPL that lifts those restrictions. The two work together. Without copyright, there could be no GPL.
The user has to comply with redistribution restrictions because the aim of the license is to benifit scoiety as a whole rather than compensating the creator.
Again, my point is that it is only copyright that limits what the licensee can do. GPL grants licensees the right to do things that copyright doesn't otherwise allow them to do. However, in order to be granted those rights, the licensee must meet the requirements of the GPL. Those aren't additional restrictions. They're the requirements to allow you to have restrictions lifted. If you're not willing to meet those requirements, then you continue to have the standard restrictions that copyright law imposes.
No, the GPL takes rights away from everyone, just like copyright does, because GPL IS copyright. It's not a legal hack.
GPL isn't copyright, but GPL relies on copyright. It doesn't take anything away. Copyright enforces a certain set of restrictions to everyone but the holder, and allows the holder to lift those restrictions for certain individuals. GPL uses that feature of copyright (the ability to lift restrictions) to define the eligibility requirements for becoming someone for whom some of the restrictions (but not all of them) are lifted.
Nothing is restricted under the GPL. Everything is restricted under copyright, and GPL merely chooses which restrictions to lift, and under what circumstances.
Go study something like Prolog*, then come back and tell me that all a new language can bring to the table is a different syntax.
* I'm not suggesting that Prolog is a new language, just that it's representative of how a language can introduce completely different programming concepts.
This is exactly right. It's amazing how many people immediately look for ways to go behind the employer's back. Why not start by just asking them? If the employer is expecting you to travel for extended periods of time, then there is an obvious need for getting a reasonable amount of personal use out of the laptop, as traveling with two laptops (one for work, one for pleasure) is just silly. Your employer is human, and likely a reasonable one at that (and if not, you should be looking to replace her or him). So, just explain your needs and come to an agreement.
No, the problem is that they get too much sleep.
Maybe someday one of them will get up and actually show up to work. I'm doubtful, though.
Cashiers used to be expected to be capable of some basic arithmetic, but not so anymore.
It used to be that they would confirm the change amount by adding it up from the owed amount to the paid amount. Now, they just pile the change on top of the bills and silently try to slide it onto your hand, which invariably results in some of the precariously piled change falling onto the counter.
And if, after they've rung it in and had the cash register tell them how much change to give, you try to give them a little extra change so that they'll give you back a nice round bill instead, then they'll just stare at you like you're trying to pay with live snails.
Funnily enough, he was actually asking the police if he could go to his car when one of the commanders started shouting "Arrestee! Arrestee!" and had him arrested.
That's not what I see in the video (full video here). He was quite obviously following the line of riot cops, filming as he went, and when a cop stopped him he figured he needed an excuse to be going in that direction, so he came up with "I want to go to my car".
It's unclear from the video if there was any legitimate resisting going on, although the cop says to him "you were told to disperse". We don't see that part in the video, so it's unclear if it happened before he started the camera, or if she made that up.
I'm assuming GP would like to allow for the possibility that others in the family might actually want to watch TV when you're not home.
For any scenario other than the bachelor scenario, the "remote" needs to stay with the TV.
It is the craziness of the mass media that translates a copyright filing as "Invention".
He calls it his invention, too. Check out his website at www.inventorofemail.com. He basically claims that, while there were previous implementations of electronic mail-like messaging systems, the first to have the features of modern email, including multiple folders, to/cc/bcc, subject lines, etc, was his program called "EMAIL", thereby making EMAIL the first modern e-mail system.
Also, it's not the term "EMAIL" that was copyrighted, but the program and its user manual. As others have pointed out, you can't copyright a term.
As is standard for anything involving copyrights, trademarks, or patents, the claim has been distorted. He has a copyright on "EMAIL"... meaning a program called "EMAIL", not the term. He registered both the program and its user manual with the Copyright Office.
He is playing a ridiculous semantic game. If you look at his website, he never claims to have invented "email". He claims only to have invented "EMAIL", which is technically correct, in that he did create a program called "EMAIL". He even goes so far as to admit that the word "email" was in use previously, but that he was the first to use the word "EMAIL".
He's a tool, and his website makes it obvious.