Bah. Miller's art is every bit as groundbreaking and influential as Lee's - he got his start as an artist, and I've no problems with him doing his own art.
That said, I think Miller's pretty much out of ideas on Batman. The Dark Knight Strikes Again was total crap - and shipped obnoxiously late too.
I'd be careful where you pre-order from. If you buy from a bookstore, you won't be getting your copy on September 17th - you'll be waiting another week or two. The book is being distributed via comic book distribution, and so it will hit comic shops first, since that is what Diamond distributes to. From Diamond's initial distribution, it will make it to book warehouses and to bookstores, but if you absolutely want it on September 17th, buy from your comic shop. You might have better luck with something like Amazon, but people are still expecting the book to hit comic shops first (Neil Gaiman's blog had something on this earlier today, but it's late, and I don't feel like linkdiving)
They need the money more than Borders or Amazon do anyway.
What are you talking about - neither of these are Gaiman works I'm at all familiar with, and I'm a pretty dedicated Gaiman fanboi. Nor do I know of any substantial anti-Napster stance he's ever taken - he's generally in favor of protecting his copyrights, but not absurdly so at all - he's repeatedly been in favor of people buying his books used or borrowing them from friends, and is quite friendly to the fanfiction community.
Depends on what critics you go for. It's just about the most respected piece of family programming out there. I'm not a big fan either, but for the niche it targets, it does real well for itself, and plenty of people will admit that.
Have you watched WB lately? They've pretty much relegated black comics with sitcoms to one night out of the lineup. They have several shows that post reliable numbers, and are getting very good at tapping distinct niches with shows like Smallville, 7th Heaven, Angel, Charmed, and Gilmore Girls. None of these shows are massive hits, but they're all critical darlings, and are pulling in reliable cash for the WB - enough to make them comparable to the early days of Fox. As for the others... those are cable channels, and in no way comparable with Fox. And Enterprise doesn't air on any of the four listed. That's UPN.
But I suppose facts would just get in the way of your troll.
I am quite certain that I am not overstating things. Drop into your local college library sometime and grab a copy of Critical Inquiry - look at the copyright notices under the articles. In almost all cases (The exceptions mostly being things where CI is already doing a republish of something), it's copyright University of Chicago.
CI is the leading journal in the field. If you want to make it in the field, therefore, you play by their rules. It sucks, and it's unfair, and you do it, because that's the choice you have./shrug
People with money and power make rules. It's the way it works.
Actually, though Metallica owns the copyright on the songs, in all likelihood the label owns distribution rights on those exact recordings of them. So even if Metallica doesn't care if you download one of their songs, the label can still probably kick your ass for distribution of them.
I thought I addressed the argument presented - "Ayn Rand would call you a looter" - quite adequately, in that I argued why Ayn Rand's opinion counts for little in a philosophic debate.
The article was mentioned primarily because it was an easy refutation to the claim of my producing nothing.
As for your discounting of sources - ummm... no. Yes, Einstein was a patent clerk. That, however, is not his only qualification, or even, really, the one people talk about the most when they evaluate whether he's a valid source.
The fact of the matter is that philosophy and ethics are no less of a qualified field than law or science, and that Ayn Rand is more or less the humanistic equivalent of a member of the flat Earth society.
Oh, yeah, an addendum. I do think that it is important to credit people when you use their ideas - my issue with plagiarism, though, is not an issue of theft, but of honesty - you should, when you use someone else's ideas, honestly admit that you read about the idea instead of independently developing it.
The distinction, to me, is that an idea can develop simultaneously and independently in two places at once (c.f. Calculus), whereas a table cannot. Yes, two people can build two identical tables, but they are not the same table. Whereas Newton and Liebnitz can both develop Calculus, and then have a long and drawn out battle over who owns Calculus.
The journal in question, Critical Inquiry, won't publish unless you sign away the copyright - you retain the right to include the piece in any book you are author or editor of, but you still no longer own the piece.
The leftist slant of the academy is far from the only reason Rand is not respected - a lot of it stems from her dismissive and inaccurate summaries of other philosophers.
And, in practice, copyright is ownership of ideas - c.f. the notion of derivative works.
You know they're not so much "illegally digging through your files" as "logging onto KaZaA, using the 'browse all files user shares' command to find users with a bunch of files, grabbing their IP address, and subpoenaing their name", right?
I mean, I'm not disagreeing that the RIAA is in the wrong here, but the basic fact of the matter is that they are legally sound, and we are in fact criminals.
Actually, I was watching a VH1 thingy on Metallica yesterday, and Lars said in one segment that he didn't actually care if people downloaded Metallica music, so long as they didn't do it before the album came out.
It's a total piece of revisionism, but they're now claiming that their only real beef with Napster was that songs were making it out before they were done with them.
Some day, you're going to encounter a serious academic - someone with graduate degrees in philosophy, English, or some other humanistic discipline. Someone who has put a lot of effort into thinking about how people operate, into aesthetics, ethics, and the like.
When you encounter this person, you will likely have a conversation with them. You will probably bring up Ayn Rand.
When this person snickers at the mention of her, I want you to think back to this conversation.
Meanwhile, I'll be reading this journal article I just got published, being really annoyed that someone other than me now claims ownership to my writing, and remembering once again why I hate the idea of owning ideas.
OK. Yes. Very good. You have successfully identified, through your judicious watching of MTV, how a very small percentage of musicians live.
Now flip over to VH1 and watch Behind the Music, and you'll see what happens to them in two years when they cool off, and their income subsides to more normal levels.
Then go find an indy band, even one that's signed to a fairly major indy label, and ask them how much profit they made on their last tour. I know my friend's band, which is signed with one of the biggest goth/industrial labels around, made an amazing $10 off of his six week tour this summer.
When you're done with all of that, come back and try posting again, with a little less of the stupid, and a little more of the productive discussion.
"And also, don't college students have a tendency to rebel against things like this?"
I'm afraid you have college students confused with "people who care". It's a common error, and one that seems to have started in the late 1960s when a bunch of oddball college students started making headlines by giving a shit, and it became briefly cool to dress like they did, while sitting in your dorm room too stoned to actually damn the man.
As for why they're going after kids... well, unfortunately, the people with thousands of dollars to hand over in a settlement are also the people with thousands of dollars to hire lawyers and make it more difficult for them. And, also, not generally the people who are filesharing.
At least in my case, yeah, you hit the nail right on the head.
I think copyright is evil. In its original form it might have been argued to at least be a practical good, and thus worth keeping around, but in its current form it is out and out evil, in that it attempts to squash the development and exchange of ideas in favor of the development and exchange of profit, and ideas are a fundamental part of the development of civilization.
Seeing as I think civil disobedience was one of the better ideas developed lately, I'm pretty much likely to support any user who shares just about any file.
Lose $15,000, because you cannot possibly afford as good a lawyer as they can, and they've already lobbied Congress so that the law is firmly on their side.
The N-Gage has justifiably gotten shitty reviews for its crappy controls, crappy looking screen, the worst system for loading games ever, is overpriced, and is just generally lousy. So, no, I don't plan on giving it a second look. While bluetooth multiplayer and a few of its features are nice, I intend to wait for them to be implemented on a device that doesn't suck.
As for the Phantom... ummm... it's best feature is the fact that DNF is going to be a launch game.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. Well, that was either an obscure grab for a funny, or badly offtopic.
Bah. Miller's art is every bit as groundbreaking and influential as Lee's - he got his start as an artist, and I've no problems with him doing his own art.
That said, I think Miller's pretty much out of ideas on Batman. The Dark Knight Strikes Again was total crap - and shipped obnoxiously late too.
Also... can we say offtopic? =P
I'd be careful where you pre-order from. If you buy from a bookstore, you won't be getting your copy on September 17th - you'll be waiting another week or two. The book is being distributed via comic book distribution, and so it will hit comic shops first, since that is what Diamond distributes to. From Diamond's initial distribution, it will make it to book warehouses and to bookstores, but if you absolutely want it on September 17th, buy from your comic shop. You might have better luck with something like Amazon, but people are still expecting the book to hit comic shops first (Neil Gaiman's blog had something on this earlier today, but it's late, and I don't feel like linkdiving)
They need the money more than Borders or Amazon do anyway.
Justice? Puppets?
What are you talking about - neither of these are Gaiman works I'm at all familiar with, and I'm a pretty dedicated Gaiman fanboi. Nor do I know of any substantial anti-Napster stance he's ever taken - he's generally in favor of protecting his copyrights, but not absurdly so at all - he's repeatedly been in favor of people buying his books used or borrowing them from friends, and is quite friendly to the fanfiction community.
Depends on what critics you go for. It's just about the most respected piece of family programming out there. I'm not a big fan either, but for the niche it targets, it does real well for itself, and plenty of people will admit that.
Have you watched WB lately? They've pretty much relegated black comics with sitcoms to one night out of the lineup. They have several shows that post reliable numbers, and are getting very good at tapping distinct niches with shows like Smallville, 7th Heaven, Angel, Charmed, and Gilmore Girls. None of these shows are massive hits, but they're all critical darlings, and are pulling in reliable cash for the WB - enough to make them comparable to the early days of Fox. As for the others... those are cable channels, and in no way comparable with Fox. And Enterprise doesn't air on any of the four listed. That's UPN.
But I suppose facts would just get in the way of your troll.
All three of those posts seem to be in the Ask Slashdot department.
/.ers who send worthless questions in.
I can only assume that the problem is not with Cliff so much as with the idiot
I am quite certain that I am not overstating things. Drop into your local college library sometime and grab a copy of Critical Inquiry - look at the copyright notices under the articles. In almost all cases (The exceptions mostly being things where CI is already doing a republish of something), it's copyright University of Chicago.
CI is the leading journal in the field. If you want to make it in the field, therefore, you play by their rules. It sucks, and it's unfair, and you do it, because that's the choice you have. /shrug
People with money and power make rules. It's the way it works.
Actually, though Metallica owns the copyright on the songs, in all likelihood the label owns distribution rights on those exact recordings of them. So even if Metallica doesn't care if you download one of their songs, the label can still probably kick your ass for distribution of them.
I thought I addressed the argument presented - "Ayn Rand would call you a looter" - quite adequately, in that I argued why Ayn Rand's opinion counts for little in a philosophic debate.
The article was mentioned primarily because it was an easy refutation to the claim of my producing nothing.
As for your discounting of sources - ummm... no. Yes, Einstein was a patent clerk. That, however, is not his only qualification, or even, really, the one people talk about the most when they evaluate whether he's a valid source.
The fact of the matter is that philosophy and ethics are no less of a qualified field than law or science, and that Ayn Rand is more or less the humanistic equivalent of a member of the flat Earth society.
Oh, yeah, an addendum. I do think that it is important to credit people when you use their ideas - my issue with plagiarism, though, is not an issue of theft, but of honesty - you should, when you use someone else's ideas, honestly admit that you read about the idea instead of independently developing it.
The distinction, to me, is that an idea can develop simultaneously and independently in two places at once (c.f. Calculus), whereas a table cannot. Yes, two people can build two identical tables, but they are not the same table. Whereas Newton and Liebnitz can both develop Calculus, and then have a long and drawn out battle over who owns Calculus.
The journal in question, Critical Inquiry, won't publish unless you sign away the copyright - you retain the right to include the piece in any book you are author or editor of, but you still no longer own the piece.
The leftist slant of the academy is far from the only reason Rand is not respected - a lot of it stems from her dismissive and inaccurate summaries of other philosophers.
And, in practice, copyright is ownership of ideas - c.f. the notion of derivative works.
You know they're not so much "illegally digging through your files" as "logging onto KaZaA, using the 'browse all files user shares' command to find users with a bunch of files, grabbing their IP address, and subpoenaing their name", right?
I mean, I'm not disagreeing that the RIAA is in the wrong here, but the basic fact of the matter is that they are legally sound, and we are in fact criminals.
And Caligula had such a long and prosperous reign.
Oh, wait, no, he was assassinated by the entirety of the Praetorian Guard when they revolted.
Maybe it's not a good idea to take political advice from him after all.
Actually, I was watching a VH1 thingy on Metallica yesterday, and Lars said in one segment that he didn't actually care if people downloaded Metallica music, so long as they didn't do it before the album came out.
It's a total piece of revisionism, but they're now claiming that their only real beef with Napster was that songs were making it out before they were done with them.
Which is progress, I suppose.
Some day, you're going to encounter a serious academic - someone with graduate degrees in philosophy, English, or some other humanistic discipline. Someone who has put a lot of effort into thinking about how people operate, into aesthetics, ethics, and the like.
When you encounter this person, you will likely have a conversation with them. You will probably bring up Ayn Rand.
When this person snickers at the mention of her, I want you to think back to this conversation.
Meanwhile, I'll be reading this journal article I just got published, being really annoyed that someone other than me now claims ownership to my writing, and remembering once again why I hate the idea of owning ideas.
OK. Yes. Very good. You have successfully identified, through your judicious watching of MTV, how a very small percentage of musicians live.
Now flip over to VH1 and watch Behind the Music, and you'll see what happens to them in two years when they cool off, and their income subsides to more normal levels.
Then go find an indy band, even one that's signed to a fairly major indy label, and ask them how much profit they made on their last tour. I know my friend's band, which is signed with one of the biggest goth/industrial labels around, made an amazing $10 off of his six week tour this summer.
When you're done with all of that, come back and try posting again, with a little less of the stupid, and a little more of the productive discussion.
"And also, don't college students have a tendency to rebel against things like this?"
I'm afraid you have college students confused with "people who care". It's a common error, and one that seems to have started in the late 1960s when a bunch of oddball college students started making headlines by giving a shit, and it became briefly cool to dress like they did, while sitting in your dorm room too stoned to actually damn the man.
As for why they're going after kids... well, unfortunately, the people with thousands of dollars to hand over in a settlement are also the people with thousands of dollars to hire lawyers and make it more difficult for them. And, also, not generally the people who are filesharing.
At least in my case, yeah, you hit the nail right on the head.
I think copyright is evil. In its original form it might have been argued to at least be a practical good, and thus worth keeping around, but in its current form it is out and out evil, in that it attempts to squash the development and exchange of ideas in favor of the development and exchange of profit, and ideas are a fundamental part of the development of civilization.
Seeing as I think civil disobedience was one of the better ideas developed lately, I'm pretty much likely to support any user who shares just about any file.
What to do if the RIAA sues you:
Lose $15,000, because you cannot possibly afford as good a lawyer as they can, and they've already lobbied Congress so that the law is firmly on their side.
Next question?
Because they're not stupid?
No, they're not actually saying that. =)
The N-Gage has justifiably gotten shitty reviews for its crappy controls, crappy looking screen, the worst system for loading games ever, is overpriced, and is just generally lousy. So, no, I don't plan on giving it a second look. While bluetooth multiplayer and a few of its features are nice, I intend to wait for them to be implemented on a device that doesn't suck.
As for the Phantom... ummm... it's best feature is the fact that DNF is going to be a launch game.