Perhaps you could tell me where I can buy, in the US, Linda's "Vorona?" That is, without the very high probability of paying the russian mafia instead of the artist who made the work. Or perhaps you can tell me an address where I could send some money to the artist herself?
The world does not begin and end at the the doors of US corporations. That's the entire fucking point.
No, it isn't. It's only the end if you live in a totalitairan government - and in that case there's nothing to stop the gov from doing all this anyway. But by making "the public domain" part of our tax base, we give the government (more importantly, the social parasites who inevitably end up elected to office) an incentive to act in our interest, and a reason to adopt enhanced rules that will place our economic interests above those of corporations.
IOW we become our own IP lobbyists.
It's not the "end of free information" - even patented info is freely available today to anyone (that is the whole point of it). Nothing at all to prevent you or I from reading about, and making, our own patented widget in our garage and using it all we like. If we want to profit from that use, however, we now have to negotiate a contract with the patent holder or risk a lawsuit. Protecting your product from commercial exploitation does not, in any way, prohibit me from making personal use of the knowledge contained in your invention.
Giving the government a financial interest in guarding "the public domain," however, will interfere with the ability of corporations to purchase laws and lawmakers that defy this interest.
Ask the people of Poland. Warsaw has a rich legacy of creative and talented artisans filling its hotels and apartments, yet "the public domain" is owned by the government. Mexico is also considering adopting this model - that is, copyright has a limited term (in Mexico's case they are talking an entire century) and then, when it becomes "public domain" you may still have to negotiate a commerce contract with the government, because it now owns "public domain."
Sounds scary, huh? But consider this: if the government - that means all those politicians hungry for tax dollars - had to weigh on the one hand lengthening copyright terms and, on the other, lengthening the time until they could exploit this new tax revenue base, which way do you think they will vote?
Ironically, the solution may very well begin with encouraging Mexico to adopt this model. At that point you can bet the Hollywood lobbyists will then be calling for a century of protection in the US "so we can keep up" - but if we (the people) then advance and lobby for the other side of this enforcement - that is, making sure the government has an economic incentive in preserving "the public domain" - then we could well begin to take back some of the territory lost to Disney and its ilk.
If this passes, it could slow or even halt the development of the open source community.
You mena the way closing napster shut down all that file trading and development of new file trading apps?
SCO and Microsoft could claim an open source OS like SuSE stole something from their OSes
Whoopdeefucking doo. How is that going to stop open source development? How is that going to prevent organizations from using software they can get anywhere on the internet?
If anything, this absurdly extreme scenario you've constructed would be good for worldwide competition, since it's dead certain countries like China and Ukraine would become even MORE wary of signing onto the (extremist) WTO model of "IP enforcement." The only possible responses to this would then be either to adopt more sensical rules or abdandon all hopes of exploiting license agreements across increasingly large chunks of the globe. Ideally it would even cause a complete collapse of the Berne convention, although that's probably far too grand a dream.
It's called creative commons. If more people would register new work here then there could exist a database of prior art such that it would become increasingly hard to defend patents in court.
There's little, however, that can be done (in today's corporatist environment) to prevent the granting of idiotic patents. That pretty much means there's nothing to be done about companies "buying markets" unless (or until) there exists an organization that would have an economic interest in defending against such practices.
No, in theory that could be the creative commons itself - i.e. acting as an IP defense fund in the interest of registrants and using the income from settlements and judgements to fund more actions. The problem there is, of course, that if it actually became successful at this then it's quite easy to see how people would then become critical of the org itself, bitching that it was an organization of judicial elite exploiting "free knowledge" to line it's own pockets. Whether or not there was any validity to thius would, of course, depending on the leadership of the organization. But it is a start, and there does exist a good bit of potential there - both for good, and for abuse.
Re:Turning into Java?
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
PHP still has this->absurdly ugly syntax. It's a pain in the ass to type, and it's an eyesore.
And since everyone else who replied to you thus far seems to disagree, let'em eat cake.
There's a project in vietnam to run fibre from one side to the other. Note it is NOT a project to string wireless transponders one side to the other. They are paying thousands of workers, in a structure that (of course) has its share of corruption but is, nonetheless, providing jobs to thousands of people who had no work before. Paying them to dig, by hand, a two meter trench from east to west in which to bury a single thin strand of fibre.
Why? For one thing, because what it costs to buy one wireless NIC will pay a worker to bury several kilometres of fibre. And those wireless nodes aren't going to support any kind of "infrastructure" - they simply don't have the bandwidth. What WILL support a network of wireless nodes - that everyone could use - is a network of fibre buried in the ground. The fact this would take a trmendous amount of human effort is an asset because the one thing Africa has is people and the one thing it needs is jobs that will help them afford their own food. Warlords have power because they are stealing aid - at the point those people can afford to buy food, the entire dynamic changes and you can be sure where there's profit there will be much stronger enforcement against unfair exploitation.
This "metting" is just an industry looking to pawn off a bunch of goods no one needs in a market where no one can afford the ancillary costs. If we want to lend africa a hand entering the internet age, donate a few thousand KM of fibre and let them learn how to organize a public works project. If the warlords want to "intercept" that, let's see'em figure out how to feed their soldiers with glass fibre.
the problem with making major decisions by referendum is that the populace is largely ignorant, irresponsible and easily swayed. it's putting an enormous amount of power in the hands of the media.
You just described the U.S. to a tee. Of course there are no official referenda - that comes through mob rule at the behest of corporate media.
Really? So apparently you've read one or more of the books? Why don't you link us up a place to buy them?
Given that harry looks quite differhnt than tanya, and a typeface is simply a typeface (how many uses have you seen of the "star trek" typeface?) I really don't see your point.
I don't see anything about "stolen characters." Not even in Rowling's own comments; I've heard nary a mention of Tanya being "stolen." In fact she's a she, a bit of a brat, and dabbles in the dark side - not exactly the good master potter.
The fact this character is an invention of someone else's fantasy (a russian man writing about a girl instead of a british woman writing about a boy) means the characters, even in the overlap, will not be the same.
The girl could have been given any (more dissimilar) name at all and there would have been little anyone could do to stop the publication. Clearly the issue isn't with someone writing a parody, but only with someone besides AOL profiting from that parody. And in that regard, I call shenanigans!
I'm not sop sure I would consider the work inferior myself, since that is so inherently subjective and I have a penchant for russian art. But I suspect the "reviewer" likely has not read the work him (her?) self, but was simply repeating comments made by others - like this one cited at the Tanya Grotter site itself.
I've actually been looking for a translation of this for a while now, but thus far no luck. I do wish the publishers the best and I hope someone will produce a translation even if, for no other reason, than simply to throw mud in the eye of the great AOL.
BTW there have been three radio broadcasts from this series. You perhaps can't yet read Tanya in the US, but you can at least enjoy the radio shows...
Bad idea. It's MP3... just put an MP3 player in the room and use network cable. You can buy an old Vectra (that would do this fine) for like $50. Or you can use dedicated audio widgets like the very open mp3elf.
I just hasn't been the same since they started selling pre-made capacitors. Hell, you can hardly find galena and cat's whiskers anymore! Why, in my day we didn't even have coaxial cable; you licked your fingers and stuck'em in the spark gap to make an antenna, and that's the way we liked it!
Even with my directivo I never skipped through survivor. It's an "event" - I don't surf, and the commercial breaks are filled the old fashioon way: trips to the john and the icebox.
Apparently you don't watch survivor so you've never seen all the placements. Three minutes of footage of castaways frolicking on the beach in a shiny new Outback; starving castaways who have been surviving on rice or wheat savoring (in slow motion) a tiny sliver of a Snickers bar. People bidding hundreds of dollars for a glass of Mountain Dew and a bag of Tostitos...
That's the point: it doesn't matter if the viewers "skip" the commercials, because they just watched a commercial during the last "competition." Then, after the series wraps and the merchandise goes on sale, they pay twenty or forty dollars for their very own DVD; they pay to watch those placements again, and again, and again.
Do you go to sporting event parties? I don't because I despise sports - but I doubt you'll find many people throwing Superbowl parties and watching a recording of the event.
You obviously do not know whgat the hell you are talking about. I have friends who still have weekly Survivor parties. The message boards are still busy with people discussing the shows, betting on their outcome, and searching the globe for spoilers. The people who watch shows like Survivor and Big Brother watch the show with rapt attention - and then many of them pay to watch even more over the internet.Everyone (except those who insist on looking down their noses at the genre) knows this. Duh. That's why companies pay for placements on the goddamn show.
But "Little PBS." the only thing more insulting; more condescending to its audience; more insulting to the intelligence of its viewers than prime time network TV - is PBS during "pledge week."
I used to watch quite a bit of TV. Now I rarely watch at all, save for a few select shows...
Nova
Frontline
Survivor
Big Brother
Fear Factor
Dog Eat Dog
The Great Race
Frasier (when it's not up against one of the above)
Letterman/Leno when there's something to watch and I'm not so annoyed by the commercials I turn the sumbitch off and open winamp
Now, watch any of those prime time shows (except the ones on PBS) and note carefully all the product placement. Then note the comments in the article about fast forwarding during commercials on these "live" shows. So, not only are the "reality" shows more lucrative for advertisers who buy commercial time, they're also more lucrative for the networks because they also get to sell "ads" right in the show itself (he said, as Brooke Burke tuns everyone's attention to "the Circuit City question board."
Frankly, I'm glad they're finally getting this. I would enjoy Letterman much, much more if it were Dave doing "dumb ads" for product placements. Sell product placements for "Will It Float?" and "What's that Smell?" instead of dumping twenty minutes of commercials into the last half hour of the show and they'd command a LOT more eyeballs. Hell, they could even get these folks to sponsor some new outfits for grinder Girl...
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of bitching about stupid patents... but no one offers any practical solutions - on either side of the argument.
Perhaps you can provide some citations to prove your meanderings, huh?
The world does not begin and end at the the doors of US corporations. That's the entire fucking point.
Arising solely out of case law, however, an experimental use exception has been offered as a defense to patent infringement. At this point the experimental use exception can be summarized as offering a defendant an excuse to patent infringement when the use of the patented invention is for the sole purpose of gratifying curiosity or a philosophical taste, or for mere amusement.
Unless the person in your example has a "profit motive" in mowing his lawn, you're wrong.
IOW we become our own IP lobbyists.
It's not the "end of free information" - even patented info is freely available today to anyone (that is the whole point of it). Nothing at all to prevent you or I from reading about, and making, our own patented widget in our garage and using it all we like. If we want to profit from that use, however, we now have to negotiate a contract with the patent holder or risk a lawsuit. Protecting your product from commercial exploitation does not, in any way, prohibit me from making personal use of the knowledge contained in your invention.
Giving the government a financial interest in guarding "the public domain," however, will interfere with the ability of corporations to purchase laws and lawmakers that defy this interest.
Sounds scary, huh? But consider this: if the government - that means all those politicians hungry for tax dollars - had to weigh on the one hand lengthening copyright terms and, on the other, lengthening the time until they could exploit this new tax revenue base, which way do you think they will vote?
Ironically, the solution may very well begin with encouraging Mexico to adopt this model. At that point you can bet the Hollywood lobbyists will then be calling for a century of protection in the US "so we can keep up" - but if we (the people) then advance and lobby for the other side of this enforcement - that is, making sure the government has an economic incentive in preserving "the public domain" - then we could well begin to take back some of the territory lost to Disney and its ilk.
You mena the way closing napster shut down all that file trading and development of new file trading apps?
SCO and Microsoft could claim an open source OS like SuSE stole something from their OSes
Whoopdeefucking doo. How is that going to stop open source development? How is that going to prevent organizations from using software they can get anywhere on the internet?
If anything, this absurdly extreme scenario you've constructed would be good for worldwide competition, since it's dead certain countries like China and Ukraine would become even MORE wary of signing onto the (extremist) WTO model of "IP enforcement." The only possible responses to this would then be either to adopt more sensical rules or abdandon all hopes of exploiting license agreements across increasingly large chunks of the globe. Ideally it would even cause a complete collapse of the Berne convention, although that's probably far too grand a dream.
There's little, however, that can be done (in today's corporatist environment) to prevent the granting of idiotic patents. That pretty much means there's nothing to be done about companies "buying markets" unless (or until) there exists an organization that would have an economic interest in defending against such practices.
No, in theory that could be the creative commons itself - i.e. acting as an IP defense fund in the interest of registrants and using the income from settlements and judgements to fund more actions. The problem there is, of course, that if it actually became successful at this then it's quite easy to see how people would then become critical of the org itself, bitching that it was an organization of judicial elite exploiting "free knowledge" to line it's own pockets. Whether or not there was any validity to thius would, of course, depending on the leadership of the organization. But it is a start, and there does exist a good bit of potential there - both for good, and for abuse.
fuck PHP.
There's a project in vietnam to run fibre from one side to the other. Note it is NOT a project to string wireless transponders one side to the other. They are paying thousands of workers, in a structure that (of course) has its share of corruption but is, nonetheless, providing jobs to thousands of people who had no work before. Paying them to dig, by hand, a two meter trench from east to west in which to bury a single thin strand of fibre.
Why? For one thing, because what it costs to buy one wireless NIC will pay a worker to bury several kilometres of fibre. And those wireless nodes aren't going to support any kind of "infrastructure" - they simply don't have the bandwidth. What WILL support a network of wireless nodes - that everyone could use - is a network of fibre buried in the ground. The fact this would take a trmendous amount of human effort is an asset because the one thing Africa has is people and the one thing it needs is jobs that will help them afford their own food. Warlords have power because they are stealing aid - at the point those people can afford to buy food, the entire dynamic changes and you can be sure where there's profit there will be much stronger enforcement against unfair exploitation.
This "metting" is just an industry looking to pawn off a bunch of goods no one needs in a market where no one can afford the ancillary costs. If we want to lend africa a hand entering the internet age, donate a few thousand KM of fibre and let them learn how to organize a public works project. If the warlords want to "intercept" that, let's see'em figure out how to feed their soldiers with glass fibre.
You just described the U.S. to a tee. Of course there are no official referenda - that comes through mob rule at the behest of corporate media.
Given that harry looks quite differhnt than tanya, and a typeface is simply a typeface (how many uses have you seen of the "star trek" typeface?) I really don't see your point.
The fact this character is an invention of someone else's fantasy (a russian man writing about a girl instead of a british woman writing about a boy) means the characters, even in the overlap, will not be the same.
The girl could have been given any (more dissimilar) name at all and there would have been little anyone could do to stop the publication. Clearly the issue isn't with someone writing a parody, but only with someone besides AOL profiting from that parody. And in that regard, I call shenanigans!
I've actually been looking for a translation of this for a while now, but thus far no luck. I do wish the publishers the best and I hope someone will produce a translation even if, for no other reason, than simply to throw mud in the eye of the great AOL.
BTW there have been three radio broadcasts from this series. You perhaps can't yet read Tanya in the US, but you can at least enjoy the radio shows...
Because the one foe who can defeat SKYNET will be governor by then...
Apparently you ain't been to Dayton. I never encountered any bad attitudes there... not even at 4AM on a beer crawl. FUBAR!
Bad idea. It's MP3... just put an MP3 player in the room and use network cable. You can buy an old Vectra (that would do this fine) for like $50. Or you can use dedicated audio widgets like the very open mp3elf.
I just hasn't been the same since they started selling pre-made capacitors. Hell, you can hardly find galena and cat's whiskers anymore! Why, in my day we didn't even have coaxial cable; you licked your fingers and stuck'em in the spark gap to make an antenna, and that's the way we liked it!
You actually called your radio club PMRC? That's hilarious.
Apparently you don't watch survivor so you've never seen all the placements. Three minutes of footage of castaways frolicking on the beach in a shiny new Outback; starving castaways who have been surviving on rice or wheat savoring (in slow motion) a tiny sliver of a Snickers bar. People bidding hundreds of dollars for a glass of Mountain Dew and a bag of Tostitos...
That's the point: it doesn't matter if the viewers "skip" the commercials, because they just watched a commercial during the last "competition." Then, after the series wraps and the merchandise goes on sale, they pay twenty or forty dollars for their very own DVD; they pay to watch those placements again, and again, and again.
Do you go to sporting event parties? I don't because I despise sports - but I doubt you'll find many people throwing Superbowl parties and watching a recording of the event.
Duh...
Moron.
You obviously do not know whgat the hell you are talking about. I have friends who still have weekly Survivor parties. The message boards are still busy with people discussing the shows, betting on their outcome, and searching the globe for spoilers. The people who watch shows like Survivor and Big Brother watch the show with rapt attention - and then many of them pay to watch even more over the internet. Everyone (except those who insist on looking down their noses at the genre) knows this. Duh. That's why companies pay for placements on the goddamn show.
But "Little PBS." the only thing more insulting; more condescending to its audience; more insulting to the intelligence of its viewers than prime time network TV - is PBS during "pledge week."
Nova
Frontline
Survivor
Big Brother
Fear Factor
Dog Eat Dog
The Great Race
Frasier (when it's not up against one of the above)
Letterman/Leno when there's something to watch and I'm not so annoyed by the commercials I turn the sumbitch off and open winamp
Now, watch any of those prime time shows (except the ones on PBS) and note carefully all the product placement. Then note the comments in the article about fast forwarding during commercials on these "live" shows. So, not only are the "reality" shows more lucrative for advertisers who buy commercial time, they're also more lucrative for the networks because they also get to sell "ads" right in the show itself (he said, as Brooke Burke tuns everyone's attention to "the Circuit City question board."
Frankly, I'm glad they're finally getting this. I would enjoy Letterman much, much more if it were Dave doing "dumb ads" for product placements. Sell product placements for "Will It Float?" and "What's that Smell?" instead of dumping twenty minutes of commercials into the last half hour of the show and they'd command a LOT more eyeballs. Hell, they could even get these folks to sponsor some new outfits for grinder Girl...