These aren't exactly separate issues. If copyright was only 20 years (from creation, like say, patents), I don't think you'd have such an issue with 80 year old abandoned copyrights. It's obvious that this is just a first step/compromise, because the battle for limiting copyright lengths has been effectively lost. I laud the idea, and I suppose I will sign the petition, but don't go around saying it's a separate issue. It isn't.
I am an intellectual property owner. Would anyone care to explain why I can spend six years working my butt off on a technological creation, and I get rights to it for 20 years, paying fees every few years, but Andrew Lloyd Weber can hold the rights to "Cats" until the end of time?
Yeah, their liberal bias is so blatant. I mean, just look at the leftist looneys they have commenting on NPR: heritage.org
I think if you follow the link, you'll see that NPR allows all kind of views on their programming. I mean, have you ever listened to Marketplace? It's not exactly Communist Party material. I agree with the parent - ultraconservatives have gotten to the point where they believe that anyone who doesn't think as they do must be a liberal pinko.
Perhaps the "Newton-caliber breakthrough" will be in the manner of increasing the constraints on the problem. Many problems which are insoluble in the general case are quite solvable in more specific cases. Say you had a language which limited the inputs and handling of each sofware module to agreed-upon standards which could not cause a crash (such things are often done on a per-project basis; I do not know of any research on a more general language). In a case like this, the halting problem is solvable. FYI, IANACS, but IAAP.
I realize that is the way the system is now. That doesn't mean that I think that is the way it should be, which was my point. Perhaps taxes should be used to pay for campaigns. Perhaps campaigners out to get their message out through cheaper methods (internet, marches, or town meetings god forbid!). I don't have all the answers, but I realize that the system is the way it is because of the competitive nature of campaigning, and the fact that buying advertising gives the buyer an unequal voice in our civic procedings. The only way you can NOT think this is a problem is if you have an idea which needs an unequal voice in order to compete for votes (see RIAA/DCMA postings on/.) and money to spend. Frankly I have much cheaper ways of getting 5 votes than spending $1000 (I hope you misplaced a decimal or two in that figure), like talking to people reasonably. I bet you that I convince 5 people that my viewpoint on this subject is correct, with only a post to/. $$$'s shouldn't speak louder than reasoned voices. Currently, they do. Our current system is like selling moderations here on/. (hey, new business idea!) There is nothing against that in the rules of/., nor in our society at large, yet it is easy to see the abuses this can lead to. We need something in our society which is the equivalent of the popular moderation which occurs on/., so that people can hear the ideas of those who don't have money and don't sell their voices to those who do. I know what the game is, and it is a game we (the people) are losing, so yes I want to change the rules. Moderators, I can't afford to pay you $1000 to mod me up, but maybe you will see the sense in what I am saying and mod me up, free! (as in beer, and very much as in speech!)
"A couple of thousand dollars and a couple of hundred votes later, you will have them eating out of your hand."
Speaking as a whiney brat who would never give a dollar to a campaign, I always thought democracy was about the votes, not the $$$. I guess I'm just naive and old fashioned, but at least I'm not being part of the problem (and yes, I do vote, even in local elections). The problem is when your $100,000 and 100 votes outweighs the desires of the 100,000 other voters who don't give any money. I pay my taxes - that should be all the vote buying I need to do!
MS is also the name of a disease: Microsof...er, Multiple Sclerosis. Some great quotes from the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation website: "Common symptoms of MS include fatigue, weakness, spasticity, balance problems, bladder and bowel problems, numbness, vision loss, tremors and depression...More than 90% of men and 70% of women with MS report some change in their sexual life after the onset of the disease. Some problems include decreased sexual drive, impaired sensation, diminished orgasmic response, and loss of sexual interest."
And I thought having to reboot three times a day was bad! (My sympathies go out to those with the non-computerized form of MS, esp. Dean K.).
Re:NO ONE with ANY sense trusts INDYMEDIA
on
DVRs for Cop Cars
·
· Score: 1
I agree with you that Indymedia has an obvious axe-to-grind. However, they often cover stories which are completely ignored or distorted by more moderate or rightwing media outlets. This is a GOOD THING (tm). The most blatant bias in media is not ~how~ stories are covered, but whether they are covered at all. I know to take what Indymedia puts out with a grain of salt, but I appreciate that they cover the stories that they do.
I have both Griffith's and Bohm's books. I bought Bohm's because I saw it in a bookstore for $12. $12! Later I was required to buy Griffith's for an undergrad class. It was about $90. I like both books, although the styles are different. I think having both makes a good complement. Whichever expensive book you buy, buy Bohm too.
I am so glad to see other physicists on/. I was beginning to think that scientists weren't nerds NEmore, and the computer geeks had stolen our title.
Thanks for the link, Hot Needle. My kzin-furred hat's off to you.
It's been said that every good idea in science was done in sci-fi first. This idea is strongly reminicent of Fredrick Pohl's "The Gold at the Starbow's End" (also published in longer form as "Starburst") in which the protogonists send a hail of subatomic particles at the Earth which melts down every nuclear weapon and reactor on Earth. I don't remember if the particles were neutrinos or not, but I think it may have been impiled. By the way, as someone who has built accelerators for a living, the proposal in the paper seems rather unrealistic on many levels (100 Billion dollars, World Government, 50 GW, century long project). But I think its always good to come up with new ideas, so kudos to Mssrs. Sugawara, Hagura and Sanami.
"When someone prints, the bell would sound, the light would flash, and the speaker would declare 'Joe Smith is now printing 150 pages. The file name is Kama_Sutra.doc'"
Hmm, most girls like a guy who knows his Kama Sutra... Ah, so ~that's~ how geeks get dates!
Yes, it was a very good learning experience in the importance of "follow-up". It was also a good learning experience in "living cheaply". I learned many important things in college, such as: 1) Ramen is cheap, but spaghetti with butter is cheaper. 2) All-you-can-eat buffets are best utilized from 9am to closing time. Bring your homework. 3) Your friends will feed you if you do their mundane chores (dishes, laundry, etc.). Make lots of friends.
I wonder if someone mailing-list-bombed the home address of every congresscritter, federal judge and cabinet member, how long it would take for spam to rise to number 1 on the govt's priority list? Not that I'm gonna be the dude stupid enough to try such a thing. Hello, Guantanamo! (what do you think the chances are of this post showing up on an Echelon-type scan? "someone...bomb...home address of every...federal judge...cabinet member..." I'm guessing the Men in Black are already on their way.;)
Well, I had a rather important letter go missing in the mail... During my senior year of high school, I visited a college that I was interested in attending. They were very interested in me, and offered me a full scholarship. They gave me some papers to fill out while I was there. I filled those out, but apparently there were some papers they forgot to have me fill out while I was there, so they mailed them to me. They didn't call to say they had sent anything. Those papers never arrived. Later, when I called the financial aid office to check on my status, they said that I hadn't sent back the papers in time ("papers? what papers?") and the scholarship was awarded to another student. I don't know for certain that the US mail was at fault (it could have been the college just screwing me over, but I can't see their incentive to do so), but we lost an awful lot of bills when we had that particular mailman. Eventually they gave my mom a new mailman, and she stopped losing mail, but I was already going to a college I couldn't afford. Oh, well, $60,000 down the hole. Thanks US Postal Service!
Number of Linux users as of today (source: the Linux counter, http://counter.li.org/): 134107
Sales figures of Cryptonomicon, as of 3/19/01 (source Publisher's Weekly (http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com), sorry figures are so old, I don't have time to search for new ones):116,330
Yep. I agree. We ought to cover Star Trek and The Matrix, and not obscure stuff like Linux and Neal Stephenson. That stuff is for nerds!
I apologize for doing a poor job of expressing my point. Perhaps I should be modded "off-topic". I was simply drawing a link between the Pete Townshend quote of quite a ways back and the current news regarding PT. Today I read in the paper that PT was fined for doing research on the web about pedophilia. The police have no doubt that he was only doing research, yet still merely veiwing materials for research is considered no excuse. I believe that limiting what information people can view and research legally is a BAD THING, much worse than a lawsuit over sampling. I support Pete Townshend and think he is getting screwed over. I just saw the quote and it reminded me of what I had just read.
Who needs nano for that? Try reading "The Space Merchants" by Fredrick Pohl & Cyril Kornbluth. It's a world where advertising has run amok (written 1952 - and it sounds remarkably like today). In it the advertisers project ads onto people retinas, using a kind of video projector. I think the only reason we aren't experiencing that ourselves is that we live in a world where liability lawsuits have also run amok... (In this case a good thing).
Yes, true, but then, we hadn't invented transistors yet in 1942. If Smith had anticipated ~those~, I think that more people would know who he was. I actually really liked the matter transmitter/duplicator stories. He was one of the first (to my knowledge) sci-fi writers to address the effects of a "replicator"-type technology on an economy. He suggested that only "unique" items: original works of art, non-reproduced items, etc. would have value in such an economy. I don't know if "hand-made" objects cost more in the 1940's, but they certainly did once the age of plastic had begun. BTW, Smith did consider the effects of using the vacuum of space as the vacuum for a vacuum tube. In the story in which they create a device to generate energy from the sun, they use the sun as the cathode and the receiver as the anode, and the space in between as, well, the vacuum. Of course, the device only works in space, which is how they defeat the evil money-grubbing lawyer/politician villians from Earth (because you can't use the device in an atmosphere, and lawyers are lusers who wouldn't know that). They are great stories, some of the best of 40's sci-fi (despite the sometimes cheesey humor - "Oh, your matter transmitter doesn't work? Yeah. It doesn't matter."). I haven't read them in about 12 years or so, but obviously they left an imprint.
"It should be noted that Tsiolkovsky was talking about geosynchronous orbits around 1900, and radio engineer George O. Smith wrote about communication satellites in "QRM Interplanetary" in 1942. However, Smith's communication satellites/stations were generally placed at Trojan points in order to give line-of-sight between planets around the sun (hence the name of the novel/story collection "Venus Equilateral"). Of course, no one made a movie of one of Smith's books, so everyone forgets him..."
I have nothing against Arthur C. Clarke, but credit should go where it is due. And when life on Europa or diamonds on Jupiter are discovered, THEN it will be a prediction. Until then, it's called "speculation".
Yeah, that's why whenever I shoot someone in Florida, I always make sure to drag the body onto my property. They were breaking in, officer! I was just defending my property!
Not that I would defend the above lawsuit, but removing liability for actions against criminals is too easily abused. If I shoot you while you are speeding, is that ok? The problem is with the suit for falling down and breaking his arm, not for the fact that he sued for being injured while commiting a crime. If he just walked into the school during normal business hours and fell, the school would be liable. And therein lies the real problem.
I love USENET. When I first started using it in '92, sci.* ~was~ the internet to me. The discussion level then was about the same as/. is now - the only difference is that./ provides a nice little ratings system to separate the wheat from the chaff. After a little while online, I learned how to quickly distinguish a flamewar from a serious discussion, and learned to avoid reading the 50 page posts from Archimedes Plutonium. I found it useful, and still occasionally do (about once a month). Many of the people who used to be on USENET moved on to places like/. The question would be why? Saying that USENET has problems is like saying the Internet has problems: spam, junk, hard to find the signal amongst the noise... Nobody is suggesting dumping TCP/IP, why dump USENET? The problem isn't the tool that exists, but how people use it. May I suggest a solution: someone should write an application (open source, of course;) which brings to USENET many of the same features which lure people to its competition: rateability, lack of address spamming, etc. The basic model was good, is good, and can be better than NEthing else out there once again!
In case you are wondering why I don't write such a thing myself, well, I don't code. I'm just a lowly nuclear physicist. I just wanted to make a useless suggestion, in the original spirit of USENET.
Slashdot Mirror
These aren't exactly separate issues. If copyright was only 20 years (from creation, like say, patents), I don't think you'd have such an issue with 80 year old abandoned copyrights. It's obvious that this is just a first step/compromise, because the battle for limiting copyright lengths has been effectively lost. I laud the idea, and I suppose I will sign the petition, but don't go around saying it's a separate issue. It isn't.
I am an intellectual property owner. Would anyone care to explain why I can spend six years working my butt off on a technological creation, and I get rights to it for 20 years, paying fees every few years, but Andrew Lloyd Weber can hold the rights to "Cats" until the end of time?
Yeah, their liberal bias is so blatant. I mean, just look at the leftist looneys they have commenting on NPR: heritage.org
I think if you follow the link, you'll see that NPR allows all kind of views on their programming. I mean, have you ever listened to Marketplace? It's not exactly Communist Party material. I agree with the parent - ultraconservatives have gotten to the point where they believe that anyone who doesn't think as they do must be a liberal pinko.
Perhaps the "Newton-caliber breakthrough" will be in the manner of increasing the constraints on the problem. Many problems which are insoluble in the general case are quite solvable in more specific cases. Say you had a language which limited the inputs and handling of each sofware module to agreed-upon standards which could not cause a crash (such things are often done on a per-project basis; I do not know of any research on a more general language). In a case like this, the halting problem is solvable. FYI, IANACS, but IAAP.
I realize that is the way the system is now. That doesn't mean that I think that is the way it should be, which was my point. Perhaps taxes should be used to pay for campaigns. Perhaps campaigners out to get their message out through cheaper methods (internet, marches, or town meetings god forbid!). I don't have all the answers, but I realize that the system is the way it is because of the competitive nature of campaigning, and the fact that buying advertising gives the buyer an unequal voice in our civic procedings. The only way you can NOT think this is a problem is if you have an idea which needs an unequal voice in order to compete for votes (see RIAA/DCMA postings on /.) and money to spend. Frankly I have much cheaper ways of getting 5 votes than spending $1000 (I hope you misplaced a decimal or two in that figure), like talking to people reasonably. I bet you that I convince 5 people that my viewpoint on this subject is correct, with only a post to /. $$$'s shouldn't speak louder than reasoned voices. Currently, they do. Our current system is like selling moderations here on /. (hey, new business idea!) There is nothing against that in the rules of /., nor in our society at large, yet it is easy to see the abuses this can lead to. We need something in our society which is the equivalent of the popular moderation which occurs on /., so that people can hear the ideas of those who don't have money and don't sell their voices to those who do. I know what the game is, and it is a game we (the people) are losing, so yes I want to change the rules. Moderators, I can't afford to pay you $1000 to mod me up, but maybe you will see the sense in what I am saying and mod me up, free! (as in beer, and very much as in speech!)
"A couple of thousand dollars and a couple of hundred votes later, you will have them eating out of your hand."
Speaking as a whiney brat who would never give a dollar to a campaign, I always thought democracy was about the votes, not the $$$. I guess I'm just naive and old fashioned, but at least I'm not being part of the problem (and yes, I do vote, even in local elections). The problem is when your $100,000 and 100 votes outweighs the desires of the 100,000 other voters who don't give any money. I pay my taxes - that should be all the vote buying I need to do!
MS is also the name of a disease: Microsof...er, Multiple Sclerosis.
Some great quotes from the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation website: "Common symptoms of MS include fatigue, weakness, spasticity, balance problems, bladder and bowel problems, numbness, vision loss, tremors and depression...More than 90% of men and 70% of women with MS report some change in their sexual life after the onset of the disease. Some problems include decreased sexual drive, impaired sensation, diminished orgasmic response, and loss of sexual interest."
And I thought having to reboot three times a day was bad! (My sympathies go out to those with the non-computerized form of MS, esp. Dean K.).
I agree with you that Indymedia has an obvious axe-to-grind. However, they often cover stories which are completely ignored or distorted by more moderate or rightwing media outlets. This is a GOOD THING (tm). The most blatant bias in media is not ~how~ stories are covered, but whether they are covered at all. I know to take what Indymedia puts out with a grain of salt, but I appreciate that they cover the stories that they do.
I have both Griffith's and Bohm's books. I bought Bohm's because I saw it in a bookstore for $12. $12! Later I was required to buy Griffith's for an undergrad class. It was about $90. I like both books, although the styles are different. I think having both makes a good complement. Whichever expensive book you buy, buy Bohm too.
/. I was beginning to think that scientists weren't nerds NEmore, and the computer geeks had stolen our title.
I am so glad to see other physicists on
Thanks for the link, Hot Needle. My kzin-furred hat's off to you.
It's been said that every good idea in science was done in sci-fi first. This idea is strongly reminicent of Fredrick Pohl's "The Gold at the Starbow's End" (also published in longer form as "Starburst") in which the protogonists send a hail of subatomic particles at the Earth which melts down every nuclear weapon and reactor on Earth. I don't remember if the particles were neutrinos or not, but I think it may have been impiled.
By the way, as someone who has built accelerators for a living, the proposal in the paper seems rather unrealistic on many levels (100 Billion dollars, World Government, 50 GW, century long project). But I think its always good to come up with new ideas, so kudos to Mssrs. Sugawara, Hagura and Sanami.
"When someone prints, the bell would sound, the light would flash, and the speaker would declare 'Joe Smith is now printing 150 pages. The file name is Kama_Sutra.doc'"
Hmm, most girls like a guy who knows his Kama Sutra...
Ah, so ~that's~ how geeks get dates!
Yes, it was a very good learning experience in the importance of "follow-up". It was also a good learning experience in "living cheaply". I learned many important things in college, such as: 1) Ramen is cheap, but spaghetti with butter is cheaper. 2) All-you-can-eat buffets are best utilized from 9am to closing time. Bring your homework. 3) Your friends will feed you if you do their mundane chores (dishes, laundry, etc.). Make lots of friends.
I wonder if someone mailing-list-bombed the home address of every congresscritter, federal judge and cabinet member, how long it would take for spam to rise to number 1 on the govt's priority list? ;)
Not that I'm gonna be the dude stupid enough to try such a thing. Hello, Guantanamo!
(what do you think the chances are of this post showing up on an Echelon-type scan? "someone...bomb...home address of every...federal judge...cabinet member..." I'm guessing the Men in Black are already on their way.
Well, I had a rather important letter go missing in the mail...
During my senior year of high school, I visited a college that I was interested in attending. They were very interested in me, and offered me a full scholarship. They gave me some papers to fill out while I was there. I filled those out, but apparently there were some papers they forgot to have me fill out while I was there, so they mailed them to me. They didn't call to say they had sent anything. Those papers never arrived. Later, when I called the financial aid office to check on my status, they said that I hadn't sent back the papers in time ("papers? what papers?") and the scholarship was awarded to another student. I don't know for certain that the US mail was at fault (it could have been the college just screwing me over, but I can't see their incentive to do so), but we lost an awful lot of bills when we had that particular mailman. Eventually they gave my mom a new mailman, and she stopped losing mail, but I was already going to a college I couldn't afford. Oh, well, $60,000 down the hole. Thanks US Postal Service!
Yeah, he's pretty obscure:
Number of Linux users as of today (source: the Linux counter, http://counter.li.org/): 134107
Sales figures of Cryptonomicon, as of 3/19/01 (source Publisher's Weekly (http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com), sorry figures are so old, I don't have time to search for new ones):116,330
Yep. I agree. We ought to cover Star Trek and The Matrix, and not obscure stuff like Linux and Neal Stephenson. That stuff is for nerds!
I apologize for doing a poor job of expressing my point. Perhaps I should be modded "off-topic". I was simply drawing a link between the Pete Townshend quote of quite a ways back and the current news regarding PT. Today I read in the paper that PT was fined for doing research on the web about pedophilia. The police have no doubt that he was only doing research, yet still merely veiwing materials for research is considered no excuse. I believe that limiting what information people can view and research legally is a BAD THING, much worse than a lawsuit over sampling. I support Pete Townshend and think he is getting screwed over. I just saw the quote and it reminded me of what I had just read.
click here
He's obviously not a pedophile, but try explaining that to the law... click here
Who needs nano for that? Try reading "The Space Merchants" by Fredrick Pohl & Cyril Kornbluth. It's a world where advertising has run amok (written 1952 - and it sounds remarkably like today). In it the advertisers project ads onto people retinas, using a kind of video projector. I think the only reason we aren't experiencing that ourselves is that we live in a world where liability lawsuits have also run amok... (In this case a good thing).
I am an American, and I agree with what the parent post said too. I'm also not a coward.
When it comes to eating in restaurants, in my experience choosing to be vegan is equivalent to choosing not to eat at all.
Yes, true, but then, we hadn't invented transistors yet in 1942. If Smith had anticipated ~those~, I think that more people would know who he was. I actually really liked the matter transmitter/duplicator stories. He was one of the first (to my knowledge) sci-fi writers to address the effects of a "replicator"-type technology on an economy. He suggested that only "unique" items: original works of art, non-reproduced items, etc. would have value in such an economy. I don't know if "hand-made" objects cost more in the 1940's, but they certainly did once the age of plastic had begun.
BTW, Smith did consider the effects of using the vacuum of space as the vacuum for a vacuum tube. In the story in which they create a device to generate energy from the sun, they use the sun as the cathode and the receiver as the anode, and the space in between as, well, the vacuum. Of course, the device only works in space, which is how they defeat the evil money-grubbing lawyer/politician villians from Earth (because you can't use the device in an atmosphere, and lawyers are lusers who wouldn't know that).
They are great stories, some of the best of 40's sci-fi (despite the sometimes cheesey humor - "Oh, your matter transmitter doesn't work? Yeah. It doesn't matter."). I haven't read them in about 12 years or so, but obviously they left an imprint.
From an earlier post:
"It should be noted that Tsiolkovsky was talking about geosynchronous orbits around 1900, and radio engineer George O. Smith wrote about communication satellites in "QRM Interplanetary" in 1942. However, Smith's communication satellites/stations were generally placed at Trojan points in order to give line-of-sight between planets around the sun (hence the name of the novel/story collection "Venus Equilateral"). Of course, no one made a movie of one of Smith's books, so everyone forgets him..."
I have nothing against Arthur C. Clarke, but credit should go where it is due. And when life on Europa or diamonds on Jupiter are discovered, THEN it will be a prediction. Until then, it's called "speculation".
Yeah, that's why whenever I shoot someone in Florida, I always make sure to drag the body onto my property. They were breaking in, officer! I was just defending my property!
Not that I would defend the above lawsuit, but removing liability for actions against criminals is too easily abused. If I shoot you while you are speeding, is that ok? The problem is with the suit for falling down and breaking his arm, not for the fact that he sued for being injured while commiting a crime. If he just walked into the school during normal business hours and fell, the school would be liable. And therein lies the real problem.
its the spam that comes from it that has people complaining. See recently slashdotted article: click here
I love USENET. When I first started using it in '92, sci.* ~was~ the internet to me. The discussion level then was about the same as /. is now - the only difference is that ./ provides a nice little ratings system to separate the wheat from the chaff. After a little while online, I learned how to quickly distinguish a flamewar from a serious discussion, and learned to avoid reading the 50 page posts from Archimedes Plutonium. I found it useful, and still occasionally do (about once a month). Many of the people who used to be on USENET moved on to places like /. The question would be why? Saying that USENET has problems is like saying the Internet has problems: spam, junk, hard to find the signal amongst the noise... Nobody is suggesting dumping TCP/IP, why dump USENET? The problem isn't the tool that exists, but how people use it. May I suggest a solution: someone should write an application (open source, of course ;) which brings to USENET many of the same features which lure people to its competition: rateability, lack of address spamming, etc. The basic model was good, is good, and can be better than NEthing else out there once again!
In case you are wondering why I don't write such a thing myself, well, I don't code. I'm just a lowly nuclear physicist. I just wanted to make a useless suggestion, in the original spirit of USENET.