Not that I was Tolkien's personal friend but I don't recall anyone funding him specifically to write those books.
Given that I specicically asked how the LOTR *movies* would get made without funding, your point regarding the books is irrelevant. Secondly, are you claiming he made no money from the books? The poster to whom I responded claimed, "Without property and money there would still exist art and good art as well." It may be that art would still exist, but there's no evidence to support the notion that it would exist in the same quantity. And it could very well be that the LOTR books wouldn't have been written without some expectation of compensation. We KNOW that the LOTR *movies* wouldn't have been made "Without property and money".
As for the production... performers will always perform good works. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Bach... any of them. They were all performed long before the long reaching arm of intellectual property laws.
The artists that you cite were paid, so this again doesn't support the claim, "Without property and money there would still exist art and good art as well. "
LotR is just that good. Someone, at some point, was going to fund its performance sooner or later. Maybe Jackson wouldn't have been in on it. Maybe the actors would've been different. It would have always been just as good.
Each of the LOTR movies cost over 100 million dollars to produce. So I again ask, how would big epics get made without funding?
It's not surprising that programmers that think it's the highest virtue to program for free think that artists should work for free as well. And that "starving" artists are inherently superior to paid artists. Both notions are laughable, both from a practicle standpoint and from a historical one. Maybe you want to return to an era where "art" was available mainly to the rich that were able to serve as artists' patrons for their own amusement and where artists that weren't the beneficiaries of patrons were "starving artists". But just like we got rid of the fuedal system, so we got rid of the patronage and starving artist systems as well, and this is a GOOD thing.
Many here spout that content producers should embrace the modern economic realites of today's technology, while at the same time sing the virtues of regressive economic systems of the past. Wow.
Yah, sure, Microsoft = teh "evil". Gates is right up there with Stalin when it comes to "evil", after all, "Micro$oft" did bundle a browser in an OS, right? Can't get much more "evil" than that!
I wish that WordPerfect was still its own company. It went downhill after the Novell buy-out and hasn't recovered (well, they started going downhill with a sloppy transition from DOS to Win3.x, but the buy-out accelerated the fall).
I got a better idea! Novel should license Microsoft's tech at any price, so as to produce a Linux that runs Windows apps without a hitch (screw WINE). This will allow Novel to distinguish its Linux distro from the rest!!
I hear you. It's like how speeding, DUI, and vehicular homicide are all Traffic Violations. Anyone who would condone one but not the other two is just a hypocritical bastard because you can't respect traffic law in one instance and not in another.
That's interesting. What state (or country) do you live in? In my state, speeding is a "traffic violation", while DUI and Vehiculare Homicide are "crimes" (i.e. you get a criminal record and all that goes with it). Excessive speeding (I think it's 15 mph over the speed limit) is classified not as merely "speeding", but as "Wreckless Driving", which is also a "crime" rather than just a "traffic violation".
It's hypocrisy because P2P copyright violation is shrugged off, and suing individual downloaders (which is the very thing Slashdot was calling for in 2000 during the Napster lawsuit--I love that people have forgotten this...all those +5 comments that are now meaningless, I guess) is somehow really bad and evil.
LOL
Slashdotters called for the suing of individual downloaders in 2000 because they didn't believe that anyone would actually do it. So it was a suggestion made in bad faith, or it was a bluff. Once the bluff was called, the same Slashdotters began declaring the suing of individual downloaders as "evil". Hilarious!!
"Three, copyright violation in regards to media content can be seen as a civil disobedience issue."
LOL - I love how you guys like to throw yourselves in with the likes of Ghandi and MLK. You don't have the first idea what "civil disobedience" is, do you? "Civil disobedience" is the act of defying an unjust law in public view with the full expectation of going to jail for breaking the unjust law in order to bring attention to the unjust nature of the law. This is what Ghandi and MLK did. "Civil disobedience" is not sitting at a computer in the comfort of your home, anonymously illegally downlading free warez, and bitching when others of your ilk are caught.
"Steamboat Willie" and "Gone with the Wind" should be public domain. Both these works are well over 50 years but still copyrighted. Even 50 years is too long but I am willing to compromise on the Berne Convention. But now we can probably never expedct to see these works enter the Public Domain. The media megacorps are robbing us of our cultural heritage. Think of the references that new works make to existing Public Domain works. How often has Moby Dick or Huck Finn or Jeckyl and Hyde been referenced."
Seeing as "Gone With The Wind" is referred to many times in other works, despite it not being in "public domain", what point are you making? Besides that, you're being intelledtually dishonest by pretending that only "old" media are downloaded when we all know that the vast majority of downloaded warez does not consist of "old" media like that which you cite.
If OSS is so great, why do you need government mandates to compete? In the future, history books will write about OSS taking over the software industry thru government mandate, and you guys look upon that as some kind of vindicaton for your ideology? What a joke! LOL
You do understand that government's ultimate enforcement mechanism is the barrel of a gun, don't you? That's the ultimate way that laws are enforced. So, OSS takes over the world at gunpoint. Sounds like "freedom" (as in speech) to me - NOT.
A couple of years ago Apple released an iTunes update whose installation script erased major portions of some users' drives (I think it had to do with a bug in the installation script regarding root volumes with spaces in their names or some such).
"They don't have an unblemished record for publishing *all* the API"
Microsoft does publish *all* APIs that are meant to be published. Internal functions are not meant to be "published", as internal functions by their nature can change or be removed altogether.
Microsoft will probably follow the same patter as they did with the Win95->Win98 transition. Much of what was Win98 was technology that Microsoft made available to Win95 (and NT 3.x/4) in the years following Win95's release. Win98 had some stuff on its own, but most Win98 "upgrades" came by way of new PC purchases. Look for the same in the WinXP->Longhorn transition.
When enabling file and printer sharing, Windows XP SP2 opens the ports you mention only on the local subnet. The ports are still blocked to the outside world.
Who cares? I don't write robotics software and have no desire to. If you guys think that the robotics software idustry is large enough to support the programming profession, you're crazy.
The problem is that most people DID NOT "buy Windows 98 at or around this date...". Most people got it with their computer, and the OEM price of Windows is very low such that OEM Windows was not part of this case.
Of course, people could just lie, as many of the posts here seem to be advoating, but the general populace is more honest than that of the Slashdot community. LOL
Calculators that did nothing but add, subtract, multiply, and divide cost hundreds of dollars when first released, and now they are given away for free when you open a bank account.
Same thing for digital watches.
Game consoles are sold at below cost. Nintendo is basically giving the GameCube away as we speak. Low end DVD players cost next to nothing. Much hardware is "free" today.
You obviously have no idea what Office does. But know that in 1990 Word and Excel each cost $500, and today Office 2003 Pro (inclueds Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and smaller applets) costs $300 (probably $200 in 1990 dollars). The price of Office has plummeted, despite being much more powerful.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not surprising that programmers that think it's the highest virtue to program for free think that artists should work for free as well. And that "starving" artists are inherently superior to paid artists. Both notions are laughable, both from a practicle standpoint and from a historical one. Maybe you want to return to an era where "art" was available mainly to the rich that were able to serve as artists' patrons for their own amusement and where artists that weren't the beneficiaries of patrons were "starving artists". But just like we got rid of the fuedal system, so we got rid of the patronage and starving artist systems as well, and this is a GOOD thing.
Many here spout that content producers should embrace the modern economic realites of today's technology, while at the same time sing the virtues of regressive economic systems of the past. Wow.
Yah, sure, Microsoft = teh "evil".
Gates is right up there with Stalin when it comes to "evil", after all, "Micro$oft" did bundle a browser in an OS, right? Can't get much more "evil" than that!
LOL - You guys are hilarious! LOL
"Without property and money there would still exist art and good art as well."
How would big epics like the LOTR movies get made without money? Much potential creativity would be squashed without the means to fund it.
I wish that WordPerfect was still its own company. It went downhill after the Novell buy-out and hasn't recovered (well, they started going downhill with a sloppy transition from DOS to Win3.x, but the buy-out accelerated the fall).
I got a better idea! Novel should license Microsoft's tech at any price, so as to produce a Linux that runs Windows apps without a hitch (screw WINE). This will allow Novel to distinguish its Linux distro from the rest!!
it can't compete on merit.
Sad that.
If OSS is so great, why do you need government mandates to compete? In the future, history books will write about OSS taking over the software industry thru government mandate, and you guys look upon that as some kind of vindicaton for your ideology? What a joke! LOL
You do understand that government's ultimate enforcement mechanism is the barrel of a gun, don't you? That's the ultimate way that laws are enforced. So, OSS takes over the world at gunpoint. Sounds like "freedom" (as in speech) to me - NOT.
Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx
You can use Mac Word to read Word files, so the ability to read a Word file is NOT dependent on Windows XP or any Windows for that matter.
A couple of years ago Apple released an iTunes update whose installation script erased major portions of some users' drives (I think it had to do with a bug in the installation script regarding root volumes with spaces in their names or some such).
"They don't have an unblemished record for publishing *all* the API"
Microsoft does publish *all* APIs that are meant to be published. Internal functions are not meant to be "published", as internal functions by their nature can change or be removed altogether.
Pirates give legit BitTorrent users a bad name.
"Toshiba had agreed to pick up BeOS but MS forced them down."
Toshiba should've sent Microsoft a thank you note. BeOS sucks badly.
Microsoft will probably follow the same patter as they did with the Win95->Win98 transition. Much of what was Win98 was technology that Microsoft made available to Win95 (and NT 3.x/4) in the years following Win95's release. Win98 had some stuff on its own, but most Win98 "upgrades" came by way of new PC purchases. Look for the same in the WinXP->Longhorn transition.
When enabling file and printer sharing, Windows XP SP2 opens the ports you mention only on the local subnet. The ports are still blocked to the outside world.
I see no article.
(BTW, First Post!!)
Who cares?
I don't write robotics software and have no desire to. If you guys think that the robotics software idustry is large enough to support the programming profession, you're crazy.
The problem is that most people DID NOT "buy Windows 98 at or around this date...". Most people got it with their computer, and the OEM price of Windows is very low such that OEM Windows was not part of this case.
Of course, people could just lie, as many of the posts here seem to be advoating, but the general populace is more honest than that of the Slashdot community. LOL
The price of the bundled Mac software (the Mac OS and various iApps and whatnot) is built into the price of the Mac.
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Linux = 1%
Windows = 91%
Mac = 4%
'Nuff said
It couldn't possibly be that Firefox sucks, could it?
Calculators that did nothing but add, subtract, multiply, and divide cost hundreds of dollars when first released, and now they are given away for free when you open a bank account.
Same thing for digital watches.
Game consoles are sold at below cost. Nintendo is basically giving the GameCube away as we speak. Low end DVD players cost next to nothing.
Much hardware is "free" today.
You obviously have no idea what Office does.
But know that in 1990 Word and Excel each cost $500, and today Office 2003 Pro (inclueds Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and smaller applets) costs $300 (probably $200 in 1990 dollars). The price of Office has plummeted, despite being much more powerful.