The secret is that without government there is no capital.
Tell that to the Warlords in Somalia.
The difference between physical property and intellectual property is that it is possible to defend physical property, and loss of said property deprives you of it. In the absence of government, if someone hums a tune you made up, you have lost nothing. In the absence of government, if someone takes your cheeseburger, you have no more cheeseburger.
I might be missing some sarcasm here; but aren't copyrights and patents pretty much constitutionally mandated?
Indeed they are! Does that mean our founding fathers were socialists????:)
But then again the more someone utters the term "Constitution" the less they generally understand it, and the less they have actually spent time thinking about it.
That's why it is fun to point out the socialist stuff in the constitution to these people.
Out of curiosity, why do you consider patents, the postal service, postal roads, and copyrights to be socialist?
The postal service is pretty straightforward - you give the government a monopoly over delivering mail, which at the time was the only reasonable way to communicate over any distance. It would be like charging the government with maintenance of the internet or the telephone system today.
Roads are similar - I'm quite surprised that you'd ask how they are socialized... when is the last time you traveled any significant distance on a private road?
So then we get to intellectual property. Not only is the entire concept invented by the government, but they then grant monopolies on this pretend "property". It's a neat concept, and I think it has worked toward its intended purpose, but how in the world it is anything but socialism is beyond me. Even the Constitution says it is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." What's missing is "public or collective ownership" maybe? Oh wait, there's the concept of "public domain", which would not exist without IP laws. The whole point of patents in particular is to bring trade secrets out of the woodwork so that we don't have things like lost arts or processes.
Maybe you still don't want to call it "socialist", and that's fine. But it sure ain't capitalist! Since when is a government-created monopoly capitalist?
That is, in fact, pretty much opposite of the way art / literature / invention works in a true socialist/communist *cough* utopia.
Socialist/communist? They aren't the same, nor do they necessarily even correlate.
Anyway, socialism in practice typically means that either the state or a state-sponsored monopoly takes over some industry in order to benefit society at large. So yes, copyright pretty much fits this idea exactly, except that the state also invented the concept of intellectual property itself. So in Canada the government took over health care and runs it. In 18th century England, the government took over publishing and granted a monopoly. Same thing. The US reformed the system by allowing more than one publisher - but the socialist principle is still there. Hell, it even says so in the Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..."
HBO and Showtime put out such a small fraction of all TV content that it is almost negligible. You have like 400 stations on digital cable, and a handful are pay TV.
I've got news for you: "socialist" doesn't mean "anything I don't like".
Thanks.
Copyright is strictly capitalist.
???
So it is "capitalist" for the government to grant monopolies? Please say that into the mirror and then get back to me... this is exactly what I was lamenting.
The underlying purposes of copyright and fine points of intellectual property are far too abstract for the majority of Americans to even begin to comprehend.
And that's a shame, because the entire concept of intellectual property was pulled out of a British man's ass in the 18th century. Prior to that, people kept secrets by not telling them to anyone. Great composers made their money with piano lessons and performances. IP law has only been with us for perhaps 5% of the time since we started writing, so it's not exactly fundamental.
I happen to think that IP law is valuable and I like that it reduces lost arts and provides us with more entertainment than our ancestors could have imagined... but it has taken on a life of its own!
If you don't like ad ware, find a pirate and repeatedly kick him in the nuts until he goes unconscious. He and other like him, are literally the reason why we all suffer with ad ware on Android.
I don't think so. I think most people are willing to put up with ads in order to get free content. Pay TV barely exists compared to ad-supported TV. Shall we blame the pirates there too?
I need more people like you. People seem to think that copyright is about "compensating" people or "being fair". The funny thing is that people who claim to be conservative and for small government often seem pro-copyright. Which is bizarre, since it is really one of the first socialist policies enacted by the young US government, along with patents, the postal service, and postal roads. I'm at a loss...:)
Yes. I think that having the government involved in non-commercial infringement at all is way over the line.
If Sony wants to sue my kid for copyright infringement, fine. If my kid is selling copyrighted materials and the government arrests him, fine. But having the government do Sony's contract enforcement is just plain horrid.
They're free to release their content and for free if they want to.
His point wasn't that people can't create content freely.
His point is that the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of creative works. Today, with the existing system, there are PLENTY of creative works being produced. Therefore, copyright certainly does not need to be made more restrictive, and in fact the opposite may be true.
Yeah, that's called "shitting in your own bed", and teenagers are known for it. Then we sit at the board meeting and listen to sob stories about how they have to share computers.
Sorry that you don't like my opinion, but it stands.
LOL, I didn't say that I didn't like your opinion. I even asked questions to understand it better!
Apple has no logical reason to keep from supporting Flash, other than that they don't want people watching videos Apple doesn't sell them.
You are wrong about Apple only allowing videos that they sell. I mean, the phone even comes with a YouTube app! But there are free Netflix and Hulu apps for people who'd rather pay those companies, and Apple makes nothing. There's also the free Joost, and some websites - like NBC - directly support the video formats playable on the iPhone. I'm not saying that Apple has only altruistic motivations - in fact, it would be silly to assume that. But your thesis that Apple is trying to prevent free video viewing is not at all supported by the facts.
That means Android + cell manufactures are trying to control me less than Apple.
I'd rephrase that and say that they are trying to control you differently than Apple. In your case, the way they are controlling you is more palatable than the way Apple is. In my case, once I have to start rooting or jailbreaking the device, I don't really care what the company's intentions are anymore. In my case, I needed to jailbreak an old iPhone to make it work on T-Mobile. Had I bought a T-Mobile sanctioned Samsung, I'd have had to root it to get the latest Android update. To me, I'm getting screwed either way, so a big f-you to Apple/AT&T and a big f-you to Samsung/T-Mobile. I'm glad there are hackers:)
Not in the US. The iPhone did more to open up the restrictive carriers here than anything else. That Verizon lets you install applications from somewhere other than their own store still kind of blows my mind.
They most certainly are! They want you to buy a new phone with the newest bells and whistles, not add them with a free software update.
Regarding Flash, what do you do with it? Watch video? The pc games are difficult to use if they aren't designed for a touch screen. I'm biased, since I generally block Flash on my pc, so I can't imagine wanting it on my phone:)
And isn't telling people that "Apple sucks" just a bit disengenuous? It may not be what you like, but it may be a good fit for someone else. I know quoits a few people happy with iPhones and others quite happy with Blackberries. And of course the people with higher end Android phones seem pretty happy. Hell, I even know one guy who likes his WinMo7 thing. I'd hate to recommend a frequent emailer a touch screen device, for instance.
A situation where I have to even figure out if Apple just doesn't give a crap abou it's customers, or Apple is deliberately making things worse for them to make more money.
You mean like when getting the vendors to push Android updates is completely futile?
You know, the same situation where Apple just up and chose not to support Flash on iPod, iPhone and now iPad. A decision which is partly some platform concerns, more likely Steve Jobs still being in a snit about some early actions of Adobe, and is really most likely where Apple doesn't want to support anyone being able to watch a movie without buying it from iTunes.
Whatever the reason, they make it clear that it will not be supporting Flash at purchase time. If that's a big deal, then you can steer clear. If enough people steer clear, they will have to include Flash. So far it doesn't seem to have harmed them terribly.
I'd rather deal with sloppy apps then a locked-down system that Apple is the only one holding the keys to.
Jailbreaking is just as easy as rooting. Most Android sets need to be rooted just to apply updates. iPhones need to be rooted to run the wild west apps. Six of one, half dozen of the other...
Whether you "need to load a module" or not is a question of distribution and packaging, not the office suite.
It's a feature that is included by default in Word, therefore Word was the simpler solution here. My company already licenses Word, so cost is not a factor here. But even if it were, we'd have to include my time to "package" the solution up. With Word I have users download a doc file and run a macro. With OO.org, they'd have to download the file, download and install a package, and then run a macro. How is the OO.org solution a "match"?
I find Google Apps a lot easier to script.
Google Apps scripts are nice, but the spreadsheet is not anywhere near as powerful as Excel. Charts alone, which Excel doesn't exactly - ahem - excel at, are far below Excel's ability... almost useless for any kind of scientific work.
I'm not an Office fanboy - I use OO.org to track my hours, for instance. I keep simple spreadsheets on Google Apps. At home, I prefer Apple's Pages word processor and Keynote to Word and Powerpoint. But the fact is that Office has more features than any of those packages. Even when it does something poorly, it can almost always be wrestled into submission. Except Word - I've never been able to totally tame Word.:)
And love it or hate it, there is no real desktop competition for Access. OO.org is coming along nicely, but it still isn't there. At work I mostly use PHP/MySQL/javascript apps to avoid Access, but I still get pressure to use it sometimes since it seems "easy" at first blush and everyone has it installed.
Yes, but with video you have to keep at least a minimum frame rate or it will look jerky. Lets say the rate is around 24 fps, which limits your exposure times to 1/24 second or less. It also limits features such as the red spot used to help with autofocus, and redeye reduction or flash usage becomes impossible.
Your solution also requires me to sift through many more "photos" than I would otherwise (at least 24 per second!), and increases the file size tremendously, since video compression schemes look miserable when not used as intended.
Cameras already have burst mode and framing options, as well as video modes. I think all will continue to have a place. If you want a picture of your co-worker and there is some kind of action going on, you can use burst mode. If you want to try different exposure settings, use framing.
I think you'll see more and more video taken with still cameras, and the line may blur - but even the lens design is very difficult to optimize for both uses. At this point, I still purchase two separate devices even though the video camera is capable of recording crappy "stills" and the still camera is capable of video when the lighting is good and you don't need too much zoom.
Yes it is. You have auto calculation turned on, so the contents of the copied cell might have changed. The clipboard might behave in an unexpected way, so they invalidate it.
There is room for improvement - they could have the copy action reset only when a calculation is performed or only when one of the copied cells changes, but then the behavior would be even more vexing to people who don't know what is going on. I can definitely see why they made this particular design decision.
Contrast this with OO.org - it always will paste a value based on the value at the time of the copy, not the time of the paste. Also reasonable, and I'm comfortable with this as well since I know what the behavior is. But you have to admit, it's not as idiot-proof as the Excel method.
MS Office was not the best when it achieved dominance, but it is the "best" now - for most definitions of best.
Yes, Word is overkill for writing letters and underpowered for book writing and Powerpoint is not as pretty as Keynote. But Excel is simply unmatched in its balance of ease-of-use and ease in scripting, despite it's many warts. I use OpenOffice whenever I can, but sometimes you just have to fire up MS Office.
As a concrete example, I tried to set up a mail merge that included pictures. This was impossible in OO.org without loading a module, and I can't ask users to do that. Word is kludgy, and I had to write some macros to support it, but it did work. This is somewhat ironic, because Word handles images terribly in general.
Slashdot Mirror
The secret is that without government there is no capital.
Tell that to the Warlords in Somalia.
The difference between physical property and intellectual property is that it is possible to defend physical property, and loss of said property deprives you of it. In the absence of government, if someone hums a tune you made up, you have lost nothing. In the absence of government, if someone takes your cheeseburger, you have no more cheeseburger.
I might be missing some sarcasm here; but aren't copyrights and patents pretty much constitutionally mandated?
Indeed they are! Does that mean our founding fathers were socialists???? :)
But then again the more someone utters the term "Constitution" the less they generally understand it, and the less they have actually spent time thinking about it.
That's why it is fun to point out the socialist stuff in the constitution to these people.
Out of curiosity, why do you consider patents, the postal service, postal roads, and copyrights to be socialist?
The postal service is pretty straightforward - you give the government a monopoly over delivering mail, which at the time was the only reasonable way to communicate over any distance. It would be like charging the government with maintenance of the internet or the telephone system today.
Roads are similar - I'm quite surprised that you'd ask how they are socialized... when is the last time you traveled any significant distance on a private road?
So then we get to intellectual property. Not only is the entire concept invented by the government, but they then grant monopolies on this pretend "property". It's a neat concept, and I think it has worked toward its intended purpose, but how in the world it is anything but socialism is beyond me. Even the Constitution says it is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." What's missing is "public or collective ownership" maybe? Oh wait, there's the concept of "public domain", which would not exist without IP laws. The whole point of patents in particular is to bring trade secrets out of the woodwork so that we don't have things like lost arts or processes.
Maybe you still don't want to call it "socialist", and that's fine. But it sure ain't capitalist! Since when is a government-created monopoly capitalist?
That is, in fact, pretty much opposite of the way art / literature / invention works in a true socialist/communist *cough* utopia.
Socialist/communist? They aren't the same, nor do they necessarily even correlate.
Anyway, socialism in practice typically means that either the state or a state-sponsored monopoly takes over some industry in order to benefit society at large. So yes, copyright pretty much fits this idea exactly, except that the state also invented the concept of intellectual property itself. So in Canada the government took over health care and runs it. In 18th century England, the government took over publishing and granted a monopoly. Same thing. The US reformed the system by allowing more than one publisher - but the socialist principle is still there. Hell, it even says so in the Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..."
HBO and Showtime have sizable budgets
HBO and Showtime put out such a small fraction of all TV content that it is almost negligible. You have like 400 stations on digital cable, and a handful are pay TV.
I've got news for you: "socialist" doesn't mean "anything I don't like".
Thanks.
Copyright is strictly capitalist.
???
So it is "capitalist" for the government to grant monopolies? Please say that into the mirror and then get back to me... this is exactly what I was lamenting.
The underlying purposes of copyright and fine points of intellectual property are far too abstract for the majority of Americans to even begin to comprehend.
And that's a shame, because the entire concept of intellectual property was pulled out of a British man's ass in the 18th century. Prior to that, people kept secrets by not telling them to anyone. Great composers made their money with piano lessons and performances. IP law has only been with us for perhaps 5% of the time since we started writing, so it's not exactly fundamental.
I happen to think that IP law is valuable and I like that it reduces lost arts and provides us with more entertainment than our ancestors could have imagined... but it has taken on a life of its own!
If you don't like ad ware, find a pirate and repeatedly kick him in the nuts until he goes unconscious. He and other like him, are literally the reason why we all suffer with ad ware on Android.
I don't think so. I think most people are willing to put up with ads in order to get free content. Pay TV barely exists compared to ad-supported TV. Shall we blame the pirates there too?
I need more people like you. People seem to think that copyright is about "compensating" people or "being fair". The funny thing is that people who claim to be conservative and for small government often seem pro-copyright. Which is bizarre, since it is really one of the first socialist policies enacted by the young US government, along with patents, the postal service, and postal roads. I'm at a loss... :)
What we need is a Democrat president who is not a puppet of the corporations.
Yeah, being tied to public labor unions and intellectual property companies (Hollywood) is at least 3 times the awesome.
Is that to goddamn much to ask?
Yes. I think that having the government involved in non-commercial infringement at all is way over the line.
If Sony wants to sue my kid for copyright infringement, fine. If my kid is selling copyrighted materials and the government arrests him, fine. But having the government do Sony's contract enforcement is just plain horrid.
They're free to release their content and for free if they want to.
His point wasn't that people can't create content freely.
His point is that the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of creative works. Today, with the existing system, there are PLENTY of creative works being produced. Therefore, copyright certainly does not need to be made more restrictive, and in fact the opposite may be true.
Yeah, that's called "shitting in your own bed", and teenagers are known for it. Then we sit at the board meeting and listen to sob stories about how they have to share computers.
Sorry that you don't like my opinion, but it stands.
LOL, I didn't say that I didn't like your opinion. I even asked questions to understand it better!
Apple has no logical reason to keep from supporting Flash, other than that they don't want people watching videos Apple doesn't sell them.
You are wrong about Apple only allowing videos that they sell. I mean, the phone even comes with a YouTube app! But there are free Netflix and Hulu apps for people who'd rather pay those companies, and Apple makes nothing. There's also the free Joost, and some websites - like NBC - directly support the video formats playable on the iPhone. I'm not saying that Apple has only altruistic motivations - in fact, it would be silly to assume that. But your thesis that Apple is trying to prevent free video viewing is not at all supported by the facts.
That means Android + cell manufactures are trying to control me less than Apple.
I'd rephrase that and say that they are trying to control you differently than Apple. In your case, the way they are controlling you is more palatable than the way Apple is. In my case, once I have to start rooting or jailbreaking the device, I don't really care what the company's intentions are anymore. In my case, I needed to jailbreak an old iPhone to make it work on T-Mobile. Had I bought a T-Mobile sanctioned Samsung, I'd have had to root it to get the latest Android update. To me, I'm getting screwed either way, so a big f-you to Apple/AT&T and a big f-you to Samsung/T-Mobile. I'm glad there are hackers :)
FREEDOM WAS LOST!!!
Not in the US. The iPhone did more to open up the restrictive carriers here than anything else. That Verizon lets you install applications from somewhere other than their own store still kind of blows my mind.
it doesn't mean they're trying to control me
They most certainly are! They want you to buy a new phone with the newest bells and whistles, not add them with a free software update.
Regarding Flash, what do you do with it? Watch video? The pc games are difficult to use if they aren't designed for a touch screen. I'm biased, since I generally block Flash on my pc, so I can't imagine wanting it on my phone :)
And isn't telling people that "Apple sucks" just a bit disengenuous? It may not be what you like, but it may be a good fit for someone else. I know quoits a few people happy with iPhones and others quite happy with Blackberries. And of course the people with higher end Android phones seem pretty happy. Hell, I even know one guy who likes his WinMo7 thing. I'd hate to recommend a frequent emailer a touch screen device, for instance.
A situation where I have to even figure out if Apple just doesn't give a crap abou it's customers, or Apple is deliberately making things worse for them to make more money.
You mean like when getting the vendors to push Android updates is completely futile?
You know, the same situation where Apple just up and chose not to support Flash on iPod, iPhone and now iPad. A decision which is partly some platform concerns, more likely Steve Jobs still being in a snit about some early actions of Adobe, and is really most likely where Apple doesn't want to support anyone being able to watch a movie without buying it from iTunes.
Whatever the reason, they make it clear that it will not be supporting Flash at purchase time. If that's a big deal, then you can steer clear. If enough people steer clear, they will have to include Flash. So far it doesn't seem to have harmed them terribly.
I'd rather deal with sloppy apps then a locked-down system that Apple is the only one holding the keys to.
Jailbreaking is just as easy as rooting. Most Android sets need to be rooted just to apply updates. iPhones need to be rooted to run the wild west apps. Six of one, half dozen of the other...
But it just isn't putting me into an ecosystem with a situation like that.
A situation like what? The apps still work just as well as they did prior to an update - they just didn't speed UP. Nothing was "lost".
The correct way of saying that would be "Apple takes 100% of the royalties of most apps!"
It's worse than that... they take an arbitrary amount and they never inform the developer.
Whether you "need to load a module" or not is a question of distribution and packaging, not the office suite.
It's a feature that is included by default in Word, therefore Word was the simpler solution here. My company already licenses Word, so cost is not a factor here. But even if it were, we'd have to include my time to "package" the solution up. With Word I have users download a doc file and run a macro. With OO.org, they'd have to download the file, download and install a package, and then run a macro. How is the OO.org solution a "match"?
I find Google Apps a lot easier to script.
Google Apps scripts are nice, but the spreadsheet is not anywhere near as powerful as Excel. Charts alone, which Excel doesn't exactly - ahem - excel at, are far below Excel's ability... almost useless for any kind of scientific work.
I'm not an Office fanboy - I use OO.org to track my hours, for instance. I keep simple spreadsheets on Google Apps. At home, I prefer Apple's Pages word processor and Keynote to Word and Powerpoint. But the fact is that Office has more features than any of those packages. Even when it does something poorly, it can almost always be wrestled into submission. Except Word - I've never been able to totally tame Word. :)
And love it or hate it, there is no real desktop competition for Access. OO.org is coming along nicely, but it still isn't there. At work I mostly use PHP/MySQL/javascript apps to avoid Access, but I still get pressure to use it sometimes since it seems "easy" at first blush and everyone has it installed.
If you have a video, you have still pictures.
Yes, but with video you have to keep at least a minimum frame rate or it will look jerky. Lets say the rate is around 24 fps, which limits your exposure times to 1/24 second or less. It also limits features such as the red spot used to help with autofocus, and redeye reduction or flash usage becomes impossible.
Your solution also requires me to sift through many more "photos" than I would otherwise (at least 24 per second!), and increases the file size tremendously, since video compression schemes look miserable when not used as intended.
Cameras already have burst mode and framing options, as well as video modes. I think all will continue to have a place. If you want a picture of your co-worker and there is some kind of action going on, you can use burst mode. If you want to try different exposure settings, use framing.
I think you'll see more and more video taken with still cameras, and the line may blur - but even the lens design is very difficult to optimize for both uses. At this point, I still purchase two separate devices even though the video camera is capable of recording crappy "stills" and the still camera is capable of video when the lighting is good and you don't need too much zoom.
Oh, and if you want a persistent clipboard in Excel, just go to the Edit menu and select "Office Clipboard".
Yes it is. You have auto calculation turned on, so the contents of the copied cell might have changed. The clipboard might behave in an unexpected way, so they invalidate it.
There is room for improvement - they could have the copy action reset only when a calculation is performed or only when one of the copied cells changes, but then the behavior would be even more vexing to people who don't know what is going on. I can definitely see why they made this particular design decision.
Contrast this with OO.org - it always will paste a value based on the value at the time of the copy, not the time of the paste. Also reasonable, and I'm comfortable with this as well since I know what the behavior is. But you have to admit, it's not as idiot-proof as the Excel method.
And then Microsoft copied it... see? So evil that when another company creates something evil they steal it!
MS Office was not the best when it achieved dominance, but it is the "best" now - for most definitions of best.
Yes, Word is overkill for writing letters and underpowered for book writing and Powerpoint is not as pretty as Keynote. But Excel is simply unmatched in its balance of ease-of-use and ease in scripting, despite it's many warts. I use OpenOffice whenever I can, but sometimes you just have to fire up MS Office.
As a concrete example, I tried to set up a mail merge that included pictures. This was impossible in OO.org without loading a module, and I can't ask users to do that. Word is kludgy, and I had to write some macros to support it, but it did work. This is somewhat ironic, because Word handles images terribly in general.