We live in an enlightened society that recognizes that ideas have value. We live in a society created by the founding fathers, who, in turn, recognized that "information" is not a commodity, and that "information" doesn't just appear out of thin area.
People have to have the time needed to create it. ithave to make the investment needed to create them. They have to have the talent, and the drive, and the abilty, and the INCENTIVE needed to create it.
Many do so on speculation, built on nothing more than the faintest glimmer of a hope of a greater reward. Name a budding artist that doesn't secretly dream of being the next Clancy, or Spielberg, or the next rock star, or starting the next Google.
Such incentive drives them. And we, as a whole, as a society, benefit from it from their efforts. But their books are not our property. Their movies are not our property. Their music is not ours to do with as we would.
The medium is not the message. We pay to experience the book's contents. We pay to be entertained. We pay to be enriched and enlightened and enthralled.
Do I want my favorite author to be writing new books and creating new worlds for me to explore, or flipping burgers at a "real" job? Do I want my favorite singer creating new music, or recycling her old tunes in a bar in Seattle?
Do I want to see what Spielberg comes up with next, or are we better off having him make infomercials because people steal his work the second it's produced, and no one will finance his work because no one has to pay for it?
Open source is a great innovation, and has produced wonderful products. But the majority of the contributors have "real" jobs. Are we better off that they're working someplace "real", or would we as a whole be better off if somehow they were free to concentrate on their creations full time?
Are we better served having the most brilliant artists of our time actually producing art, or spending their time running around searching for patrons and begging for scraps, as was done in the dark ages?
We need the incentives provided by copyright so that such people can create for us. We need to recognize that these people are a gift beyond price. We need to recognize the merits and the value of what they provide, to recognize the time and effort and sweat and tears that it took to create the results of their art, and to encourage them to produce even more of it.
We need to recognize that justice lies in not stealing their work, just because we've "progressed" to the point that we can.
You have to understand that DOF has meaning only in relation to a given print size, as a given CoC (circle of confusion, and no, I'm not making it up) that may be perceived as "sharp" at one print size will be a fat round blur when printed larger.
Second, you have to decide if you're talking about the same final image, which means that, given the crop factor vs a full frame image, you'd either need to decrease focal length and/or increase subject distance to "fit" the same subject in the frame.
So, given the same image at the same proportions, a smaller format will have a slightly larger perceived DOF given the relative magnification factors needed to blow up to the same final print size.
BTW, you know the 1/focal-length handheld rule of thumb to prevent blur? For a 1.6x crop dslr, that's the 1/(FL*1.6) rule... but that's another discussion.
Nope. There'a a major difference between NOT having the money at all, and having the money to buy, but choosing to steal so you can spend your money elsewhere.
If you look at areas that have high piracy rates, you can see that non-pirate goods have lower prices than they do in areas with low piracy rates.
Uh... that could be it. Or it could be that you're in a village in China, Bangladesh, or some other place where income levels, and the cost of living, is 1/50th that of the US.
There's no causality in your assertion. Put simply, they don't have the money to buy western goods, and as such resort to piracy.
I'm pretty sure you forgot #4 freeloaders. Or the why should I pay for it when I can get it free crowd. (Also includes the "I'm entitled to it just because..." crowd.)
I've been watching the wikibooks project and so far I'm tremendously underwhelmed. One of the jobs a publisher has is to make sure that the person writing the book can in fact do so, and that said person is in fact qualified to do so.
Unfortunately, there are no end of self-proclaimed experts who believe that they totally comprehend a subject, and are more than willing to spread their misunderstandings among others.
Examples abound here on/., but for fun, trying going someplace like the Digital Photography Review "professional" forum and asking about, say, the effect of a 1.6x crop factor on DOF and watch the twisted reasoning fly. Yet these same people are wikibook contributors.
As to the DRM-literate comment, I think you forget that the vast majority of those attending college are studying business, law, medicine, english, math, history, and so on. They are not CS majors.
Wow. Calling out to components and embedding tags with code. You're right, the win is that this way you can separate logic from presentation in a much cleaner manner than other web development frameworks.
Of course, what most people seem to forget is that behind the publisher (who does provided some value), there is the AUTHOR, who wrote the silly thing to start with, and, probably, would not choose to give up a couple of years of his life for free.
And at the moment, books transactions between the student and the publishers, with the university in the approval proccess. Asking them to commission paid works, edit them, and "publish" them for their entire curriculum seems a bit much to me...
I think most people are looking at this backwards.
If ebooks become accepted as teaching materials, then this is a prime time for someone to jump in and disintermediate the marketplace, as the barriers to entry (presses, distribution) have just been dramatically lowered.
Someone should start a publishing company with the idea of a) furnishing inexpensive books to education, and b) of offering writers of said books a fair split. Go to the top minds in a field and ask them to write a textbook. Tell them they'll get a 50/50 split on each book sold if they write it and help promote it.
Then sell it for $10-20 DRM'ed. iTunes has shown most people will accept reasonably fair DRM if it occurs at a reasonable price. And a $20 book is a much easier pill to swallow than a $100 one.
If the current crop of publishers get too greedy the market will punish them for it. Heck, there's probably someone in India right now wondering how to put a bunch of their PhDs to work...
If you're talking about databases, there's also the costs of rewriting and debugging all those SQL Server queries and stored procedures. Not an inconsequential task at all.
If someone like mySQL or postgres REALLY wanted to make an impact, they'd add a SQL Server and/or Oracle emulation mode that used [ instead of " (ss), the same function names, the same date formats, and so on. I mean really. Can NO one use the same date function names and parameters?
Lakoff's book actually was a disappointment to me in that I was interested in the techniques behind "framing" topics, which the book is purportedly about. But the book spends practically all of its pages discussing issues and crying about how the republicans have slanted public opinion to their own benefit.
But the message was clear: Dem's need to do more of it... if only they knew what "it" was.
As opposed to Pro-Life? They're not rep/dem terms, pro-life and pro-choice have been tossed about by people on both sides even before Roe.
And he doesn't say dem's don't do it. In fact, the entire book is about the fact they don't do enough of it, and they don't fund a tenth as many multi-million dollar think tanks to do strategic planning on such issues and how to "market" them.
But it doesn't change the fact that the more the words "patriot" or "fairness" appear in an Act's title, the more ALL of us need to look behind the facade to see if all the fancy "who can be against it" words are just a cover for something else entirely...
There's a book out there called "Don't Think of an Elephant" that describes the current Replication tactic of "framing" issues. While tax cuts can be debated, who can be against "tax relief"?
Lakoff commented that the better the title of a given bill sounds, the more we need to hold onto our wallets. Anyone remember the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005"? Who, after all, could possibly be against abuse and protecting consumers? Or adding another $9 billion or so to the creditor's and lender's bottom lines?
Or the "Class Action Fairness Act"? Everyone wants to be fair, right?
The thing that started and sustains the growth of Linux was the need to get something done.
I'll get blasted for this, but IIRC, the thing that started Linux was the fact that Linus wanted to play with Unix at home, and couldn't afford a commercial version. So he wrote his own free version.
The thing that sustains it, makes dinking with it, and makes hiring admins for it worthwhile, is the same fact that it and its core applications are ALSO free.
Tell people they're getting something for "free" and they'll put up with quite a bit. And no, it's not going away soon.
It's the counter-culture alternative to the mainstream mega-corps, and too many people are heavily invested in that identity, and in the time and effort they've spent learning its arcana, and in simply getting it to work...
"I don't see the attraction. A centralized database where your connections can be tracked and you are at the bandwidth mercy of a single uploading server. No thanks. I'll stick with BitTorrent."
You mean, as opposed to a paid ISP where your every connection can be logged and tracked and you are at the bandwidth mercy of a single DSL/cable line?
"It will force game/application developers to write windows-only apps instead of cross-platform."
Ummmm... maybe. Then again, care to guess the percentage of a game that's concerned with talking directly to OpenGL or DirectX, as opposed to managing textures, maps, movement, collision-detection, AI, physics, and various other sundry code?
I would suspect, given pcs, macs, xbox, sega, nintindo, and so on, that such graphics-engine-specific portions of the code are already pretty isolated so that the various platform ports can occur...
Remember Minority Report? There will be readers: to get on public/private transportation, when entering buildings, renting a room, above roads and highways, in malls, and so on. I would expect to prevent fraud and for "security's sake", you'd need to prove you're you for every type of transaction.
As far as that goes, with enough logging of said readers and enough processing power, you could probably figure out everyone who was around the kidnapped kid.
No, you're not getting it. "The local Safeway grocery store, for example, raises prices considerably on many items, and then offers the normal price only to [loyalty] card holders." You can have a "loyalty" card AND pay cash.
"Just like SUV's designed marketed at the city, this thing makes me sick."
Just for giggles and grins, go to AutoByTel and lookup, say, the top three most requested SUVs, and then the top three mini-vans. You might be suprised to find out that for city driving, the "gas-guzzling" SUVs get better millage.
The SUV is just today's station wagon and family vehicle, its size needed when a NASA shuttle couch has nothing on a set of standard baby car seats.
"But hey, you can just copy the new version of Y instead."
After some consideration, I decided this sequence doesn't work. Since everyone copied X and didn't pay for it --or-- for Y, there won't be a Y to copy either.
It would seem that the end result of indiscriminate copying of X is to deprive everyone of X... and Y... and Z.
"You didn't deprive anyone of their copy of X, you just made another one."
And even better, you have all of the value of X, just as if you'd bought X, without having acutally spent your hard-earned dollars buying X. Or buying Y or Z, which you also don't need because you have X.
Of course, there probably won't be an X in the future if no one pays for it. But hey, you can just copy the new version of Y instead.
Of course, there probably won't be an Y after that, because...
How so? A secure OS is ALREADY performing these checks to see if a given user has access privileges to the requested resource. This is just a suggestion for what might could be done should the request fail due to insufficient access.
Or are you suggesting we completely abandon all security on the box itself in the name of a couple of percentage points of speed?
Slashdot Mirror
People have to have the time needed to create it. ithave to make the investment needed to create them. They have to have the talent, and the drive, and the abilty, and the INCENTIVE needed to create it.
Many do so on speculation, built on nothing more than the faintest glimmer of a hope of a greater reward. Name a budding artist that doesn't secretly dream of being the next Clancy, or Spielberg, or the next rock star, or starting the next Google.
Such incentive drives them. And we, as a whole, as a society, benefit from it from their efforts. But their books are not our property. Their movies are not our property. Their music is not ours to do with as we would.
The medium is not the message. We pay to experience the book's contents. We pay to be entertained. We pay to be enriched and enlightened and enthralled.
Do I want my favorite author to be writing new books and creating new worlds for me to explore, or flipping burgers at a "real" job? Do I want my favorite singer creating new music, or recycling her old tunes in a bar in Seattle?
Do I want to see what Spielberg comes up with next, or are we better off having him make infomercials because people steal his work the second it's produced, and no one will finance his work because no one has to pay for it?
Open source is a great innovation, and has produced wonderful products. But the majority of the contributors have "real" jobs. Are we better off that they're working someplace "real", or would we as a whole be better off if somehow they were free to concentrate on their creations full time?
Are we better served having the most brilliant artists of our time actually producing art, or spending their time running around searching for patrons and begging for scraps, as was done in the dark ages?
We need the incentives provided by copyright so that such people can create for us. We need to recognize that these people are a gift beyond price. We need to recognize the merits and the value of what they provide, to recognize the time and effort and sweat and tears that it took to create the results of their art, and to encourage them to produce even more of it.
We need to recognize that justice lies in not stealing their work, just because we've "progressed" to the point that we can.
Second, you have to decide if you're talking about the same final image, which means that, given the crop factor vs a full frame image, you'd either need to decrease focal length and/or increase subject distance to "fit" the same subject in the frame.
So, given the same image at the same proportions, a smaller format will have a slightly larger perceived DOF given the relative magnification factors needed to blow up to the same final print size.
BTW, you know the 1/focal-length handheld rule of thumb to prevent blur? For a 1.6x crop dslr, that's the 1/(FL*1.6) rule... but that's another discussion.
First, do you have some magic method you want to share for automatically logging into, and staying logged onto, an account-based service w/o cookies?
Wow! The 1K max size cookie on my computer stores the IP and info of every single search that is done on google?
Forget search revenues, they need to patent and sell that compression algorithm!
Nope. There'a a major difference between NOT having the money at all, and having the money to buy, but choosing to steal so you can spend your money elsewhere.
Uh... that could be it. Or it could be that you're in a village in China, Bangladesh, or some other place where income levels, and the cost of living, is 1/50th that of the US.
There's no causality in your assertion. Put simply, they don't have the money to buy western goods, and as such resort to piracy.
I'm pretty sure you forgot #4 freeloaders. Or the why should I pay for it when I can get it free crowd. (Also includes the "I'm entitled to it just because..." crowd.)
Unfortunately, there are no end of self-proclaimed experts who believe that they totally comprehend a subject, and are more than willing to spread their misunderstandings among others.
Examples abound here on /., but for fun, trying going someplace like the Digital Photography Review "professional" forum and asking about, say, the effect of a 1.6x crop factor on DOF and watch the twisted reasoning fly. Yet these same people are wikibook contributors.
As to the DRM-literate comment, I think you forget that the vast majority of those attending college are studying business, law, medicine, english, math, history, and so on. They are not CS majors.
Well, other than some, that is...
ColdFusion's only been doing this sort of thing for years now...
And at the moment, books transactions between the student and the publishers, with the university in the approval proccess. Asking them to commission paid works, edit them, and "publish" them for their entire curriculum seems a bit much to me...
If ebooks become accepted as teaching materials, then this is a prime time for someone to jump in and disintermediate the marketplace, as the barriers to entry (presses, distribution) have just been dramatically lowered.
Someone should start a publishing company with the idea of a) furnishing inexpensive books to education, and b) of offering writers of said books a fair split. Go to the top minds in a field and ask them to write a textbook. Tell them they'll get a 50/50 split on each book sold if they write it and help promote it.
Then sell it for $10-20 DRM'ed. iTunes has shown most people will accept reasonably fair DRM if it occurs at a reasonable price. And a $20 book is a much easier pill to swallow than a $100 one.
If the current crop of publishers get too greedy the market will punish them for it. Heck, there's probably someone in India right now wondering how to put a bunch of their PhDs to work...
If someone like mySQL or postgres REALLY wanted to make an impact, they'd add a SQL Server and/or Oracle emulation mode that used [ instead of " (ss), the same function names, the same date formats, and so on. I mean really. Can NO one use the same date function names and parameters?
But the message was clear: Dem's need to do more of it... if only they knew what "it" was.
And it's equally possible to extinguish both...
And he doesn't say dem's don't do it. In fact, the entire book is about the fact they don't do enough of it, and they don't fund a tenth as many multi-million dollar think tanks to do strategic planning on such issues and how to "market" them.
But it doesn't change the fact that the more the words "patriot" or "fairness" appear in an Act's title, the more ALL of us need to look behind the facade to see if all the fancy "who can be against it" words are just a cover for something else entirely...
Lakoff commented that the better the title of a given bill sounds, the more we need to hold onto our wallets. Anyone remember the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005"? Who, after all, could possibly be against abuse and protecting consumers? Or adding another $9 billion or so to the creditor's and lender's bottom lines?
Or the "Class Action Fairness Act"? Everyone wants to be fair, right?
I'll get blasted for this, but IIRC, the thing that started Linux was the fact that Linus wanted to play with Unix at home, and couldn't afford a commercial version. So he wrote his own free version.
The thing that sustains it, makes dinking with it, and makes hiring admins for it worthwhile, is the same fact that it and its core applications are ALSO free.
Tell people they're getting something for "free" and they'll put up with quite a bit. And no, it's not going away soon.
It's the counter-culture alternative to the mainstream mega-corps, and too many people are heavily invested in that identity, and in the time and effort they've spent learning its arcana, and in simply getting it to work...
You mean, as opposed to a paid ISP where your every connection can be logged and tracked and you are at the bandwidth mercy of a single DSL/cable line?
Ummmm... maybe. Then again, care to guess the percentage of a game that's concerned with talking directly to OpenGL or DirectX, as opposed to managing textures, maps, movement, collision-detection, AI, physics, and various other sundry code?
I would suspect, given pcs, macs, xbox, sega, nintindo, and so on, that such graphics-engine-specific portions of the code are already pretty isolated so that the various platform ports can occur...
As far as that goes, with enough logging of said readers and enough processing power, you could probably figure out everyone who was around the kidnapped kid.
No, you're not getting it. "The local Safeway grocery store, for example, raises prices considerably on many items, and then offers the normal price only to [loyalty] card holders." You can have a "loyalty" card AND pay cash.
Just for giggles and grins, go to AutoByTel and lookup, say, the top three most requested SUVs, and then the top three mini-vans. You might be suprised to find out that for city driving, the "gas-guzzling" SUVs get better millage.
The SUV is just today's station wagon and family vehicle, its size needed when a NASA shuttle couch has nothing on a set of standard baby car seats.
After some consideration, I decided this sequence doesn't work. Since everyone copied X and didn't pay for it --or-- for Y, there won't be a Y to copy either.
It would seem that the end result of indiscriminate copying of X is to deprive everyone of X... and Y... and Z.
And even better, you have all of the value of X, just as if you'd bought X, without having acutally spent your hard-earned dollars buying X. Or buying Y or Z, which you also don't need because you have X.
Of course, there probably won't be an X in the future if no one pays for it. But hey, you can just copy the new version of Y instead.
Of course, there probably won't be an Y after that, because...
Or are you suggesting we completely abandon all security on the box itself in the name of a couple of percentage points of speed?
Of course it was about something else. Old Bushy boy wanted to prove he could go in and get the "job" done, unlike his father.
Handing out billions in pork to Halburton and other oil interests was just icing on the cake.