Incidentally, I emailed the US copyright office about this a month or so back.
>>> 01/17/05 12:17 AM >>>
A friend and I had a debate recently about copyright infringement vs. stealing. One of us believes that, from a legal standpoint, copyright
infringement is not the same thing as stealing, while the other disagrees. Any insight you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
Question submitted at 00:17 on 1/17/05.
And their reply...
Pretty much means the same thing. The use of material by others without permission can be called infringement. One sounds more polite than the other.
Copyright Office
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave SE
Washington DC 20559
(202) 707-3000
www.copyright.gov
I don't know if it's their official stance or just this one guy's opinion but it seems worth considering anyways.
I'm pretty sure the networks have the 'teen drama but with a twist' area more than covered without Star Trek's help. And speaking as a fan, I would rather Trek never existed at all ever in any form than see it reduced to such inanity.
Yeah, Donkey Kong Country doesn't have anything extra in terms of processing. And as for Mario Kart, it didn't have extra processors either. It just used the snes's built in mode 7. If Mario Kart had issues being emulated, it's probably because they never got around to emulating mode 7 in whatever particular emulator has the problems.
Except for how it isn't. It's no more of an emulator than whatever handles the API calls in Windows itself is an emulator. It's like saying GAIM is an AOL instant messenger emulator. I mean I guess you could say it is, but it's more accurate to say it's just some software that adheres to the same set of protocols.
The pdtv lol torrents on suprnova usually came from one of a handful of irc channels. They're pretty swamped at the moment so I'm not going to mention them by name, but I'm sure several other people already have.
Now that you mention it, it kind of irks me when movie reviewers go on about movies like I've seen them or something. Why don't they wise up and start reviewing only the stuff I have seen? But really, I'm sure hip hop culture will survive Zonk's crushing blow and you can get back to discussing important culture topics like rims and the latest word with missing syllables that you can use to call someone's mom. And the reason why he didn't tell you much about the show and instead went on about advertising and such was because that's pretty much all there was to it. Pretty embarrassing.
Please cite examples of possibly missed subtle smart jokes because I have to agree with that other guy. The jokes weren't funny and neither was the dubbing no matter how many levels of irony you apply to it. Of course I only watched it a few times, but it did seem like it would be a better show had I muted it.
On the subject of the Jaguar, it's 64 bit. It had a 16 bit cpu, but it contained other processors (an object and a blitter) that were each 64 bit RISC chips. It's not that a "16 bit chip contained a lot of 64 bit instructions," whatever you meant by that.
A niche doesn't necessarily refer to something small. You just made that up or assumed it from the context you usually hear it in. It pretty much refers to a particular segment of something, not a particular segment just so long as it's a small one.
I guess you're forgetting that the cgi in Titanic is powered by Linux!
Re:and a slightly more cynical view...
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 1
Um, touché?
Damn my human eyes. They can not possibly roll high enough.
Re:and a slightly more cynical view...
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 1
Hmm, a Macintosh compared to a BMW you say? I have never before been witness to such an astute and novel analogy! In all seriousness, it is unbelievable how many Mac users compare their computers to luxury cars. And I use Macs on a semi daily basis. Does Apple send out these car analogies in its newsletter as some sort of purchase affirmation? Nice way to end your post there, too. Like, "Well if you're happy using your Ford Escort, who am I to argue?"
I long for the day when Mac users will acts like their computers are just computers. Like the reason it has such a small marketshare really isn't because no one wants one, it's because it is some super great exclusive club that only those with a sense of style and taste (NOT TO MENTION BIG POCKETBOOKS LOL!!!) make it into. Whatever. I have more style than the collective body of Mac owners I've ever met. "in the club" Jesus fucking Christ. (Not you, Steve. Sit down!)
Re:PC users should read this...
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 1
There are not enough mod points in the world for you.
Waaaaait a minute. What about those car analogies you Mac people love to go on about? Like how you have your cool Ferraris and everyone else has their Ford Taurus or whatever. As often as not, people think their stuff is cool precisely because they think it makes them somehow edgy and unique. Don't even try to play dumb with me, mister. "Us Mac users do not think our computers are cool!" Yeah.
You don't *need* to yet that's exactly what you're doing. OSX is decent, but it's certainly not the holy grail of operating systems the Mac fanboys would have you believe it is. I'd say the only thing that stood out to me was consistency across thrid party apps, but that isn't the fault of the operating system. And personally speaking, I've used enough different systems that as long as the interface isn't deliberately bad, I'll pick up on it with little to no fuss. It's like how if you play console games, they all have different options menus with their own layout and quirks, but it's pretty easy to figure out how to make your X button be the jump button or whatever even when you've never played a particular game before.
That said, I prefer putting my own PC together. And no, it's not some half-assed cobbled together, about to come apart at the seams, piece of crap. All the components work fine. Everything works together perfectly functioning as a whole system. It's fast (LOOK AT THOSE PHOTOSHOP BENCHMARKS FLY ZOOOOOM!). It's stable. Both Windows and Linux run on it fine. The case, being just a black cube, isn't much to write home about, but I needed one that could accomdate a few DVD burners and 8 sata drives and to that end it's a great case.
I didn't have to jump through hoops to make get it set up. It all "just worked" (Jesus I hate myself for uttering that phrase.) It's a good system and I'll put it up against any Mac for performance. From where I'm sitting, Macs (along with that piece of crap Hip-e) are the standard machines trying to come off as luxurious with a fancy exterior. Market yourself to the in crowd so people will have to get one so no one accidentally thinks they aren't cool, and there you go. Instant loyalists. There are Abercrombie loyalists, Nike loyalists, Pepsi, Al... well there are loyalists for pretty much every goddamn thing in the universe. Having an army of cool kids vehemently defending your product doesn't mean your crap is better, it just means you have an image.
I was going to go through and make a half assed attempt at nitpicking every sentence you write in an effort to make your entire argument appear thoroughly debunked, but I decided to just take issue with a couple things that caught my eye first. I was also going to mention logic a lot in an effort to make my points seem somehow more factual when they really arent. Then I remembered I'm not an idiot basement dwelling Spock worshipper.
"And like the parent to my reply, you simply make up what I don't say. I never said there was a missing profit; I said someone takes a profit away."
Um, ok. Where's the "taken away" profit? All better now? Christ.
"Yeah, the people who created Unreal Tournament 2004 worked their asses off, as did the people who are working on Doom III. But hey, what right do they have to make money off their hard work?"
I could work my ass off doing a lot of things. It doesn't automatically mean anybody who benefits from my work "owes" me anything. I took a risk working on something that anyone could get for free with ease once I was done.
"This is too funny. Show me where in copyright law it says that no one may place their work into the public domain until it would naturally do so? Oh, you can place your copyrighted work into public domain whenever you wish? Defeats that logic."
Ok, I guess I'm going to have to spell this out for you. Copyright law allows corporations to control the rights to works indefinately instead of like before, when after a reasonable amount of time they would go to the public domain. So essentially if you wanted to keep making money for your art you had to make something else.
"...and taking away a profit from those who created it"
Sorry. Wrong answer. You established in your cute little scenerio that the guy wouldn't buy it anyways, so the possible outcomes are as follows:
a) Guy doesn't buy or use software. Software company doesn't get money.
b) Guy doesn't buy but uses software. Software company doesn't get money.
Where's the missing profit? Answer: nowheresville. The simple truth is we don't need record companies anymore. They used to distribute music because no one else could really make records or tapes with any reasonable amount of quality. That's not a service anyone needs anymore. People can obtain a copy on their own. Sure you need a source and the source worked hard to create their art and everything, but so the ass what? You don't have a god given right to be a rich rock star. At most you have the government telling people they ought to not make a copy of a song because of some misguided notion that no one will want to record new and interesting songs if they don't get compensated.
The fact that the MPAA and RIAA lobby to have copyright terms extended nigh indefinitely tells you all you need to know about the purpose of modern copyright law's existence. I'll give you a clue if you still aren't sure, though. It has to do with shareholders and government officials liking money a lot. That these corporations have effectively removed the part where works are supposed to go into the public domain for society's benefit as a whole pretty much nullifies any moral ground copyright laws once had. In my eyes (and I'm sure hundreds of you will disagree) downloading songs or what have you is pretty much the only effective form of civil disobedience against these fuckholes.
Incidentally, since I began using peer to peer programs a number of years ago, I've bought around three times as many cds as I had been prior to that. Take that for what it's worth.
I almost totally agree. Any Apple related story on slashdot is going to be swarming with Mac users who will mod you down as flamebait in spite of the fact that almost everything you said is spot on. So I wish I had some mod points to toss your way. I especially liked the bit about luxury cars or whatever. It's pretty much exactly the same thing Mac users say over and over. You call them on it and they say it anyways. Yet that guy gets moderated insightful. He says the same exact stuff Mac users say on here all the time, and somehow there's a bit of insight to be found in that. My mind won't let me believe that there are actually people who think that Mac owners congratulating themselves for "computing in style" is insightful. Wow.
Whether or not scientists believe in God or not is irrelevant. They seek to understand the way the universe works on its own terms. Why does this giant circle of light cross the sky every day? Because God put it there? That's fine. But it turns out it's also because the Earth is going around the Sun.
Scientists just try to find answers and the only time religion typically enters into it one way or the other is when Christians are like, "No it's because God made it happen now shut up about your dinosaurs being here for millions of years nonsense because I'm not in the mood to think of bizarre bible interpretations that allow for it."
Oops. I forgot to end my italics tag looks like. I guess preview is there for a reason.
Anyhow, I guess that makes sense. I suppose what threw me off initially was the link you were establishing between the equipment and the physician. I took it to mean you were saying that because human error exists, it's pointless to eliminate all of the machine errors possible. This at first sounded absurd to me because they each have their own sets of problems and I'm all about getting rid of the ones you can, be it equipment or otherwise. So basically I thought your position was along the lines of, "Since there are going to be errors anyways, we may as well not fix these ones. There will still be other mistakes. We can't reach for perfection so why fix what we can?" I agree with the basics of what you're saying though, the whole doing the most you can with what you have bit. I'm not sure I agree to the point of always going with "the cheapest way to improve results" though, unless you meant with the magnitude of said results being equal.
there's no point in making it more than a couple of orders of magnitude more reliable than physicians>
I'm not entirely sure I follow your logic on that bit. Because a doctor might accidently hit a wrong button or something, there's no point in making sure equipment will work without failing?
Slashdot Mirror
And their reply... I don't know if it's their official stance or just this one guy's opinion but it seems worth considering anyways.
Please be real.
I'm pretty sure the networks have the 'teen drama but with a twist' area more than covered without Star Trek's help. And speaking as a fan, I would rather Trek never existed at all ever in any form than see it reduced to such inanity.
Yeah, Donkey Kong Country doesn't have anything extra in terms of processing. And as for Mario Kart, it didn't have extra processors either. It just used the snes's built in mode 7. If Mario Kart had issues being emulated, it's probably because they never got around to emulating mode 7 in whatever particular emulator has the problems.
Except for how it isn't. It's no more of an emulator than whatever handles the API calls in Windows itself is an emulator. It's like saying GAIM is an AOL instant messenger emulator. I mean I guess you could say it is, but it's more accurate to say it's just some software that adheres to the same set of protocols.
The pdtv lol torrents on suprnova usually came from one of a handful of irc channels. They're pretty swamped at the moment so I'm not going to mention them by name, but I'm sure several other people already have.
And he's especially more generous than the Exeem people.
Now that you mention it, it kind of irks me when movie reviewers go on about movies like I've seen them or something. Why don't they wise up and start reviewing only the stuff I have seen? But really, I'm sure hip hop culture will survive Zonk's crushing blow and you can get back to discussing important culture topics like rims and the latest word with missing syllables that you can use to call someone's mom. And the reason why he didn't tell you much about the show and instead went on about advertising and such was because that's pretty much all there was to it. Pretty embarrassing.
Please cite examples of possibly missed subtle smart jokes because I have to agree with that other guy. The jokes weren't funny and neither was the dubbing no matter how many levels of irony you apply to it. Of course I only watched it a few times, but it did seem like it would be a better show had I muted it.
On the subject of the Jaguar, it's 64 bit. It had a 16 bit cpu, but it contained other processors (an object and a blitter) that were each 64 bit RISC chips. It's not that a "16 bit chip contained a lot of 64 bit instructions," whatever you meant by that.
A niche doesn't necessarily refer to something small. You just made that up or assumed it from the context you usually hear it in. It pretty much refers to a particular segment of something, not a particular segment just so long as it's a small one.
I guess you're forgetting that the cgi in Titanic is powered by Linux!
Um, touché?
Damn my human eyes. They can not possibly roll high enough.
Hmm, a Macintosh compared to a BMW you say? I have never before been witness to such an astute and novel analogy! In all seriousness, it is unbelievable how many Mac users compare their computers to luxury cars. And I use Macs on a semi daily basis. Does Apple send out these car analogies in its newsletter as some sort of purchase affirmation? Nice way to end your post there, too. Like, "Well if you're happy using your Ford Escort, who am I to argue?" I long for the day when Mac users will acts like their computers are just computers. Like the reason it has such a small marketshare really isn't because no one wants one, it's because it is some super great exclusive club that only those with a sense of style and taste (NOT TO MENTION BIG POCKETBOOKS LOL!!!) make it into. Whatever. I have more style than the collective body of Mac owners I've ever met. "in the club" Jesus fucking Christ. (Not you, Steve. Sit down!)
There are not enough mod points in the world for you.
Waaaaait a minute. What about those car analogies you Mac people love to go on about? Like how you have your cool Ferraris and everyone else has their Ford Taurus or whatever. As often as not, people think their stuff is cool precisely because they think it makes them somehow edgy and unique. Don't even try to play dumb with me, mister. "Us Mac users do not think our computers are cool!" Yeah.
You don't *need* to yet that's exactly what you're doing. OSX is decent, but it's certainly not the holy grail of operating systems the Mac fanboys would have you believe it is. I'd say the only thing that stood out to me was consistency across thrid party apps, but that isn't the fault of the operating system. And personally speaking, I've used enough different systems that as long as the interface isn't deliberately bad, I'll pick up on it with little to no fuss. It's like how if you play console games, they all have different options menus with their own layout and quirks, but it's pretty easy to figure out how to make your X button be the jump button or whatever even when you've never played a particular game before.
That said, I prefer putting my own PC together. And no, it's not some half-assed cobbled together, about to come apart at the seams, piece of crap. All the components work fine. Everything works together perfectly functioning as a whole system. It's fast (LOOK AT THOSE PHOTOSHOP BENCHMARKS FLY ZOOOOOM!). It's stable. Both Windows and Linux run on it fine. The case, being just a black cube, isn't much to write home about, but I needed one that could accomdate a few DVD burners and 8 sata drives and to that end it's a great case.
I didn't have to jump through hoops to make get it set up. It all "just worked" (Jesus I hate myself for uttering that phrase.) It's a good system and I'll put it up against any Mac for performance. From where I'm sitting, Macs (along with that piece of crap Hip-e) are the standard machines trying to come off as luxurious with a fancy exterior. Market yourself to the in crowd so people will have to get one so no one accidentally thinks they aren't cool, and there you go. Instant loyalists. There are Abercrombie loyalists, Nike loyalists, Pepsi, Al... well there are loyalists for pretty much every goddamn thing in the universe. Having an army of cool kids vehemently defending your product doesn't mean your crap is better, it just means you have an image.
So why are you trying to score more hundreds of free minutes on slashdot, Mister Low Volume?
I was going to go through and make a half assed attempt at nitpicking every sentence you write in an effort to make your entire argument appear thoroughly debunked, but I decided to just take issue with a couple things that caught my eye first. I was also going to mention logic a lot in an effort to make my points seem somehow more factual when they really arent. Then I remembered I'm not an idiot basement dwelling Spock worshipper.
"And like the parent to my reply, you simply make up what I don't say. I never said there was a missing profit; I said someone takes a profit away."
Um, ok. Where's the "taken away" profit? All better now? Christ.
"Yeah, the people who created Unreal Tournament 2004 worked their asses off, as did the people who are working on Doom III. But hey, what right do they have to make money off their hard work?"
I could work my ass off doing a lot of things. It doesn't automatically mean anybody who benefits from my work "owes" me anything. I took a risk working on something that anyone could get for free with ease once I was done.
"This is too funny. Show me where in copyright law it says that no one may place their work into the public domain until it would naturally do so? Oh, you can place your copyrighted work into public domain whenever you wish? Defeats that logic."
Ok, I guess I'm going to have to spell this out for you. Copyright law allows corporations to control the rights to works indefinately instead of like before, when after a reasonable amount of time they would go to the public domain. So essentially if you wanted to keep making money for your art you had to make something else.
"...and taking away a profit from those who created it"
Sorry. Wrong answer. You established in your cute little scenerio that the guy wouldn't buy it anyways, so the possible outcomes are as follows:
a) Guy doesn't buy or use software. Software company doesn't get money.
b) Guy doesn't buy but uses software. Software company doesn't get money.
Where's the missing profit? Answer: nowheresville. The simple truth is we don't need record companies anymore. They used to distribute music because no one else could really make records or tapes with any reasonable amount of quality. That's not a service anyone needs anymore. People can obtain a copy on their own. Sure you need a source and the source worked hard to create their art and everything, but so the ass what? You don't have a god given right to be a rich rock star. At most you have the government telling people they ought to not make a copy of a song because of some misguided notion that no one will want to record new and interesting songs if they don't get compensated.
The fact that the MPAA and RIAA lobby to have copyright terms extended nigh indefinitely tells you all you need to know about the purpose of modern copyright law's existence. I'll give you a clue if you still aren't sure, though. It has to do with shareholders and government officials liking money a lot. That these corporations have effectively removed the part where works are supposed to go into the public domain for society's benefit as a whole pretty much nullifies any moral ground copyright laws once had. In my eyes (and I'm sure hundreds of you will disagree) downloading songs or what have you is pretty much the only effective form of civil disobedience against these fuckholes.
Incidentally, since I began using peer to peer programs a number of years ago, I've bought around three times as many cds as I had been prior to that. Take that for what it's worth.
I almost totally agree. Any Apple related story on slashdot is going to be swarming with Mac users who will mod you down as flamebait in spite of the fact that almost everything you said is spot on. So I wish I had some mod points to toss your way. I especially liked the bit about luxury cars or whatever. It's pretty much exactly the same thing Mac users say over and over. You call them on it and they say it anyways. Yet that guy gets moderated insightful. He says the same exact stuff Mac users say on here all the time, and somehow there's a bit of insight to be found in that. My mind won't let me believe that there are actually people who think that Mac owners congratulating themselves for "computing in style" is insightful. Wow.
I mean it turns out it's because the Earth is spinny. My bad!
Whether or not scientists believe in God or not is irrelevant. They seek to understand the way the universe works on its own terms. Why does this giant circle of light cross the sky every day? Because God put it there? That's fine. But it turns out it's also because the Earth is going around the Sun.
Scientists just try to find answers and the only time religion typically enters into it one way or the other is when Christians are like, "No it's because God made it happen now shut up about your dinosaurs being here for millions of years nonsense because I'm not in the mood to think of bizarre bible interpretations that allow for it."
Oops. I forgot to end my italics tag looks like. I guess preview is there for a reason. Anyhow, I guess that makes sense. I suppose what threw me off initially was the link you were establishing between the equipment and the physician. I took it to mean you were saying that because human error exists, it's pointless to eliminate all of the machine errors possible. This at first sounded absurd to me because they each have their own sets of problems and I'm all about getting rid of the ones you can, be it equipment or otherwise. So basically I thought your position was along the lines of, "Since there are going to be errors anyways, we may as well not fix these ones. There will still be other mistakes. We can't reach for perfection so why fix what we can?" I agree with the basics of what you're saying though, the whole doing the most you can with what you have bit. I'm not sure I agree to the point of always going with "the cheapest way to improve results" though, unless you meant with the magnitude of said results being equal.
there's no point in making it more than a couple of orders of magnitude more reliable than physicians>
I'm not entirely sure I follow your logic on that bit. Because a doctor might accidently hit a wrong button or something, there's no point in making sure equipment will work without failing?