I have digital cable and I've never changed the channel since setting up my MythTV box. $20 in parts from the 'shack and I had a lirc transmitter sitting in front of the IR window of my Comcast digital cable box. (this one doesn't have the serial port enabled)
Agreed.. most cases brought by big, rabid corporations against fanfic or other trademark / copyright violations are pretty heinous (umm Paramount, for example.) They have the legal right to defend their trademarks and copyrights, but fans should be able to at least show their appreciation and dedication to their favorite characters or shows.
These cases are tough on the fanfic authors, and can be tough on the authors of the original works as well. When you mix big business into the soup, the ideas of courtesy, gratitude, and forbearance go out the window.
>Ah - I have no right to anything >they create, in your opinion?
Actually, you don't, it belongs to the author. At least until it falls into public domain.
>What if the writers a friend of mine, >and the characters based on me? I've had >the good fortune to have that happen, and >the gentleman was kind enough to ask for >my consent.
Well, there are other issues here.. If the writer acknowledges that the character was based on you publicly, or if it's undeniably obvious that the character is based on you, then the author had no choice but to ask your permission. (and the nature of the work is fiction.. ) Non-fictional works based on real people have their own problems.
Short answer, no, you couldn't take up a character _created_ by another author, _based_ on you, and create new works. The author created it, you didn't ('it' being the character, not you..)
>If I don't have that control over myself, >why should Anne Rice or George Lucas get more >control over the observations the fans write of >people that do not exist. Can I libel them? Can >I slander them? Will I ruin their reputations? >Break up Han and Leia's marriage perhaps?
Hrmm.. if they're people who don't exist, how can someone else observe them? Okay, cheap shot:)
From an author's perspective you can muddle the character.. ruin a character's image, making the work that you put into it less valuable.
From a publisher's standpoint, you could be decreasing the value of the character, series, movie, blah blah..
All of this is not to say that you can't use an author's characters for parody, satire, or political statement.. fair use comes into play.
Copyright is implicit, not explicit. If I publish an original work, as its author, I'm entitled to the copyright. I don't have to have a symbol, or a date, or even acknowledge my copyright. It's inherent in the act of 'fixing'. 'Fixing' being writing it down, etc.. (still in dispute whether magnetic media counts toward 'fixing'.)
Sure, pasting copyright notices on everything may discourage some people from stealing your work, but it's not necessary.
So a company who publishes a book or movie, but doesn't trademark every character is still protected. You could not write a derivative work. It's copyright that protects that, not trademarks.
Imagine you were an author.. you work for a couple of years on your 'Great American Novel' (TM). You pour your blood, sweat, and tears into characters that become like members of your family.
Your characters take on aspects of yourself, your life, your experiences. Maybe one of your characters faces a life crisis that matches one of your own. You work through your turmoil by writing for the character.
Imagine that you grow as you write this character. He becomes so fleshed out, so real, that you can see your emotional development mirrored in his..
Imagine how it must feel when someone takes your character and puts him into a situation anathema to you.. guess what, your character was actually gay, and has wild, anonymous sex in bath-house orgies. Or maybe he is actually an axe-murder- a psychopath with homicidal tendencies, standing knee-deep in the blood of children.
Or he's actually a fundamentalist preacher on the side, baptising sinners in the blood of the fold. Or he's a republican. Whatever.
What a horror it must be to imagine a person that you identify with defamed in such a way. What a travesty!
What right does someone have to toy with the work that you have done, to define this character. You are in the mind of the character. Part of this character _IS_ you. You are the _ONLY_ person qualified to say 'He would do this.', or 'He wouldn't do that.'
It's unthinkable to most authors to see other people take what they have worked so hard on, and turn it 180 degrees.
One other note.. If you create your setting, and it is not based on reality, it cannot be used by another author without permission. Therefore, you could write a story set in the same area as Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (so long as you don't use her characters), but you couldn't write a story about Starfleet, or the United Federation of Planets.
I work for a high-tech in Austin, TX, and I'd say my average is between 48-56 hours per week. 45 of those are probably in the office, but since I carry a laptop, a two-way pager, and a palm vii, I'm never more than 10 minutes from access to work.
Our company acknowledges how hard we work with bonuses, stock options, and free food / recreation all the time (not to mention yoga, massages, tai kwan do, etc). We don't get paid overtime, but we don't feel that we're being taken advantage of, either.
It's a balancing act that seems to work for us. Job satisfaction is pretty high, and turnover is almost nonexistant, in spite of the fact that Austin is a booming tech town.
So yeah, we work our butts off, but it's no secret, and we get compensated for it (in one fashion or another.)
One of the main purposes for BBSs were to distribute manufacturers' updates / drivers / patches.. Oy the phone bills. A one hour call to San Mateo to get updated video drivers, a forty-five minute call to Sierra's Wildcat BBS to get the patch for Aces of the Pacific, maybe an hour getting tips from infocom's bbs on how to beat Zork II.
On that same note.. anyone remember printing out those looong lists of 1-800 BBSs (on every BBS that I found it, it was always named 800BBS.TXT) and spending all night trying to find a BBS that had guest access via an 800 number?
The closest thing that I've found to those BBS days are local area computer groups. They're all local (usually), so there is a good chance that you'll be able to meet them face to face at least once. These kind of meetings might be a little too topical for you (CTLUG = Central Texas Linux Users Group), but after meeting some of these people, you can usually find other things to talk about.
I have a casio replacement remote that I picked up at circuit city (of all places).. the cool thing about this one is that it "learns" ANY button by reading the signal from the existing remote.
Just put the casio in "read" mode, point the remote at a sensor on the casio, and press the button. boom. no codes, dip switches, etc. blah!
It also had a selector switch for up to five different devices.. it got a little confusing, because it had a bank of twelve unmarked buttons in a grid. total of 40 buttons x 5 settings = 200 different remote buttons can be programmed.
I picked this thing up about two years ago but recently packed it away. Wish I had the model number. Hrmm.. I remember seeing a gemini brand remote that did the same thing as mine, but was slimmer looking.
We used to have many women characters names in our server room.. when problems happenned, you could get some really funny dialog going..
"Margaret's going down on me.. help!" "Probe Lisa and see what she says." "Lisa says she's fine. Finger Margaret's sql user." "Looks good, but she's kind of slow to respond." "Well, take her down, I'll blow her out later."
I wonder how the DMA size (Designated Market Area) affects these figures. They mention that Pennsylvania is included, and I know a few neighborhoods that have people who commute to Philly and people who commute to DC.
If these areas are included in the DC DMA, then there's probably a lot of people who work in Philly included in the figures. Same thing for Baltimore.
Is it really fair to include these 'mixed' neighborhoods in any one DMA? Especially if a large percentage consider themselves to be 'residents-in-self-imposed-exile' of another area?
I wonder if a person could have taken CDs harvested from alt.binaries.cd.image, gathered from warez sites, and traded at lan parties and traded them for licensed copies? Hrmm.. Somebody could have walked away with $10,000 or more in new licensed software.
I've had RR in both Tampa, FL and Austin, TX. Tampa wasn't bad, but I lived in an upscale apartment in a high-tech neighborhood- everyone had cable modems. There was a definite, noticeable slowdown from about 3pm to midnight.
Pings would creep up to the unacceptable level over time, and when anough people complained (it seemed), they would split the load and pings would return to normal.
I was in the 'beta test' period, and I know how good it could be- it's now being bogged and throttled from both ends. Bad routing through Cable & Worthless (cw.net) meant 20-30% packet loss at times. At other times, it was blazingly fast (the highest I ever downloaded a file was from their 'speed test' server at 520k/s).
Austin, being the 'Silicon Hills', is another area that has an oversaturated market. Just last night, I tried to get in a friendly game of TFC, but pings were in the 160-180 range. (They normally run about 80-100). And I couldn't post to the newsgroups to find out if it was widepspread because the news server was down- again.
Overall, the service has been decent at best- I'd trade speed for greater reliability in a heartbeat, though. And it's not quite as cheap as the cable companies like to proclaim, either. RR charges $15/month for additional dynamic IPs, and prohibits routing through a linux box, or even wingate / sygate / etc. (At least it's in their terms of service). So for my three computers, the total is $85. Which is $5 less than the cost of 384k/128k ADSL from a local provider with 5 static ips and no restrictions on what you can and can't do. Tampa RR recently blocked a huge number of ports that took out 113 - ident, 40xx - ICQ, and numerous other services. They unblocked the ports as people called to complain about 'Widget Pro doesn't work anymore.. it used to..'. But that was only after hearing 'Oh, Widget Pro, we don't support that software.' *Click* In addition to that, other RR franchises are beginning to cash in on the 'oh, so you have multiple computers connected? well that's a *pro* package' crowd. Midsouth RR recently introduced packages that would make my level of connection about $150 per month.
I've had RR in both Tampa, FL and Austin, TX. Tampa wasn't bad, but I lived in an upscale apartment in a high tech neighborhood- everyone had cable modems. There was a definite, noticeable slowdown from about 3pm to midnight.
Pings would creep up to the unacceptable level, and when anough people complained (it seemed), they would split the load and pings would return to normal.
I was in the 'beta test' period, and I know how good it could be- it's now being bogged and throttled from both ends. Bad routing through Cable & Worthless (cw.net) meant 20-30% packet loss at times. At other times, it was blazingly fast (the highest I ever downloaded a file was from their 'speed test' server at 320k/s).
Austin, being the 'Silicon Hills', is another area that has an oversaturated market. Just last night, I tried to get in a friendly game of TFC, but pings were in the 160-180 range. (They normally run about 80-100).
Overall, the service has been decent at best- I'd trade speed for greater reliability in a heartbeat. And it's not quite as cheap as the cable companies like to proclaim, either. RR charges $15/month for additional IPs, and prohibits routing through a linux box, or even wingate / sygate / etc. (At least it's in their terms of service). So for my three computers, the total is $85. Which is $5 less than the cost of 384k/12k ADSL from Jump.net with 5 static ips and no restrictions on what you can and can't run (other than programs that compromise network security).
Slashdot Mirror
I have digital cable and I've never changed the channel since setting up my MythTV box. $20 in parts from the 'shack and I had a lirc transmitter sitting in front of the IR window of my Comcast digital cable box. (this one doesn't have the serial port enabled)
Myth changes the channel without a hitch.
http://www.rowerules.com/mythtv
Agreed.. most cases brought by big, rabid corporations against fanfic or other trademark / copyright violations are pretty heinous (umm Paramount, for example.) They have the legal right to defend their trademarks and copyrights, but fans should be able to at least show their appreciation and dedication to their favorite characters or shows.
These cases are tough on the fanfic authors, and can be tough on the authors of the original works as well. When you mix big business into the soup, the ideas of courtesy, gratitude, and forbearance go out the window.
Sad, but true.
>Ah - I have no right to anything
:)
>they create, in your opinion?
Actually, you don't, it belongs to the author. At least until it falls into public domain.
>What if the writers a friend of mine,
>and the characters based on me? I've had
>the good fortune to have that happen, and
>the gentleman was kind enough to ask for
>my consent.
Well, there are other issues here.. If the writer acknowledges that the character was based on you publicly, or if it's undeniably obvious that the character is based on you, then the author had no choice but to ask your permission. (and the nature of the work is fiction.. ) Non-fictional works based on real people have their own problems.
Short answer, no, you couldn't take up a character _created_ by another author, _based_ on you, and create new works. The author created it, you didn't ('it' being the character, not you..)
>If I don't have that control over myself,
>why should Anne Rice or George Lucas get more
>control over the observations the fans write of
>people that do not exist. Can I libel them? Can
>I slander them? Will I ruin their reputations?
>Break up Han and Leia's marriage perhaps?
Hrmm.. if they're people who don't exist, how can someone else observe them? Okay, cheap shot
From an author's perspective you can muddle the character.. ruin a character's image, making the work that you put into it less valuable.
From a publisher's standpoint, you could be decreasing the value of the character, series, movie, blah blah..
All of this is not to say that you can't use an author's characters for parody, satire, or political statement.. fair use comes into play.
Copyright is implicit, not explicit. If I publish an original work, as its author, I'm entitled to the copyright. I don't have to have a symbol, or a date, or even acknowledge my copyright. It's inherent in the act of 'fixing'. 'Fixing' being writing it down, etc.. (still in dispute whether magnetic media counts toward 'fixing'.)
Sure, pasting copyright notices on everything may discourage some people from stealing your work, but it's not necessary.
So a company who publishes a book or movie, but doesn't trademark every character is still protected. You could not write a derivative work. It's copyright that protects that, not trademarks.
Imagine you were an author.. you work for a couple of years on your 'Great American Novel' (TM). You pour your blood, sweat, and tears into characters that become like members of your family.
Your characters take on aspects of yourself, your life, your experiences. Maybe one of your characters faces a life crisis that matches one of your own. You work through your turmoil by writing for the character.
Imagine that you grow as you write this character. He becomes so fleshed out, so real, that you can see your emotional development mirrored in his..
Imagine how it must feel when someone takes your character and puts him into a situation anathema to you.. guess what, your character was actually gay, and has wild, anonymous sex in bath-house orgies. Or maybe he is actually an axe-murder- a psychopath with homicidal tendencies, standing knee-deep in the blood of children.
Or he's actually a fundamentalist preacher on the side, baptising sinners in the blood of the fold. Or he's a republican. Whatever.
What a horror it must be to imagine a person that you identify with defamed in such a way. What a travesty!
What right does someone have to toy with the work that you have done, to define this character. You are in the mind of the character. Part of this character _IS_ you. You are the _ONLY_ person qualified to say 'He would do this.', or 'He wouldn't do that.'
It's unthinkable to most authors to see other people take what they have worked so hard on, and turn it 180 degrees.
One other note.. If you create your setting, and it is not based on reality, it cannot be used by another author without permission. Therefore, you could write a story set in the same area as Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (so long as you don't use her characters), but you couldn't write a story about Starfleet, or the United Federation of Planets.
I work for a high-tech in Austin, TX, and I'd say my average is between 48-56 hours per week. 45 of those are probably in the office, but since I carry a laptop, a two-way pager, and a palm vii, I'm never more than 10 minutes from access to work.
Our company acknowledges how hard we work with bonuses, stock options, and free food / recreation all the time (not to mention yoga, massages, tai kwan do, etc). We don't get paid overtime, but we don't feel that we're being taken advantage of, either.
It's a balancing act that seems to work for us. Job satisfaction is pretty high, and turnover is almost nonexistant, in spite of the fact that Austin is a booming tech town.
So yeah, we work our butts off, but it's no secret, and we get compensated for it (in one fashion or another.)
One of the main purposes for BBSs were to distribute manufacturers' updates / drivers / patches.. Oy the phone bills. A one hour call to San Mateo to get updated video drivers, a forty-five minute call to Sierra's Wildcat BBS to get the patch for Aces of the Pacific, maybe an hour getting tips from infocom's bbs on how to beat Zork II.
On that same note.. anyone remember printing out those looong lists of 1-800 BBSs (on every BBS that I found it, it was always named 800BBS.TXT) and spending all night trying to find a BBS that had guest access via an 800 number?
The closest thing that I've found to those BBS days are local area computer groups. They're all local (usually), so there is a good chance that you'll be able to meet them face to face at least once. These kind of meetings might be a little too topical for you (CTLUG = Central Texas Linux Users Group), but after meeting some of these people, you can usually find other things to talk about.
I have a casio replacement remote that I picked up at circuit city (of all places).. the cool thing about this one is that it "learns" ANY button by reading the signal from the existing remote.
Just put the casio in "read" mode, point the remote at a sensor on the casio, and press the button. boom. no codes, dip switches, etc. blah!
It also had a selector switch for up to five different devices.. it got a little confusing, because it had a bank of twelve unmarked buttons in a grid. total of 40 buttons x 5 settings = 200 different remote buttons can be programmed.
I picked this thing up about two years ago but recently packed it away. Wish I had the model number. Hrmm.. I remember seeing a gemini brand remote that did the same thing as mine, but was slimmer looking.
We used to have many women characters names in our server room.. when problems happenned, you could get some really funny dialog going..
"Margaret's going down on me.. help!"
"Probe Lisa and see what she says."
"Lisa says she's fine. Finger Margaret's sql user."
"Looks good, but she's kind of slow to respond."
"Well, take her down, I'll blow her out later."
I wonder how the DMA size (Designated Market Area) affects these figures. They mention that Pennsylvania is included, and I know a few neighborhoods that have people who commute to Philly and people who commute to DC.
If these areas are included in the DC DMA, then there's probably a lot of people who work in Philly included in the figures. Same thing for Baltimore.
Is it really fair to include these 'mixed' neighborhoods in any one DMA? Especially if a large percentage consider themselves to be 'residents-in-self-imposed-exile' of another area?
I wonder if a person could have taken CDs harvested from alt.binaries.cd.image, gathered from warez sites, and traded at lan parties and traded them for licensed copies? Hrmm.. Somebody could have walked away with $10,000 or more in new licensed software.
I've had RR in both Tampa, FL and Austin, TX. Tampa wasn't bad, but I lived in an upscale apartment in a high-tech neighborhood- everyone had cable modems. There was a definite, noticeable slowdown from about 3pm to midnight.
Pings would creep up to the unacceptable level over time, and when anough people complained (it seemed), they would split the load and pings would return to normal.
I was in the 'beta test' period, and I know how good it could be- it's now being bogged and throttled from both ends. Bad routing through Cable & Worthless (cw.net) meant 20-30% packet loss at times. At other times, it was blazingly fast (the highest I ever downloaded a file was from their 'speed test' server at 520k/s).
Austin, being the 'Silicon Hills', is another area that has an oversaturated market. Just last night, I tried to get in a friendly game of TFC, but pings were in the 160-180 range. (They normally run about 80-100). And I couldn't post to the newsgroups to find out if it was widepspread because the news server was down- again.
Overall, the service has been decent at best- I'd trade speed for greater reliability in a heartbeat, though. And it's not quite as cheap as the cable companies like to proclaim, either. RR charges $15/month for additional dynamic IPs, and prohibits routing through a linux box, or even wingate / sygate / etc. (At least it's in their terms of service). So for my three computers, the total is $85. Which is $5 less than the cost of 384k/128k ADSL from a local provider with 5 static ips and no restrictions on what you can and can't do. Tampa RR recently blocked a huge number of ports that took out 113 - ident, 40xx - ICQ, and numerous other services. They unblocked the ports as people called to complain about 'Widget Pro doesn't work anymore.. it used to..'. But that was only after hearing 'Oh, Widget Pro, we don't support that software.' *Click* In addition to that, other RR franchises are beginning to cash in on the 'oh, so you have multiple computers connected? well that's a *pro* package' crowd. Midsouth RR recently introduced packages that would make my level of connection about $150 per month.
I've had RR in both Tampa, FL and Austin, TX. Tampa wasn't bad, but I lived in an upscale apartment in a high tech neighborhood- everyone had cable modems. There was a definite, noticeable slowdown from about 3pm to midnight.
Pings would creep up to the unacceptable level, and when anough people complained (it seemed), they would split the load and pings would return to normal.
I was in the 'beta test' period, and I know how good it could be- it's now being bogged and throttled from both ends. Bad routing through Cable & Worthless (cw.net) meant 20-30% packet loss at times. At other times, it was blazingly fast (the highest I ever downloaded a file was from their 'speed test' server at 320k/s).
Austin, being the 'Silicon Hills', is another area that has an oversaturated market. Just last night, I tried to get in a friendly game of TFC, but pings were in the 160-180 range. (They normally run about 80-100).
Overall, the service has been decent at best- I'd trade speed for greater reliability in a heartbeat. And it's not quite as cheap as the cable companies like to proclaim, either. RR charges $15/month for additional IPs, and prohibits routing through a linux box, or even wingate / sygate / etc. (At least it's in their terms of service). So for my three computers, the total is $85. Which is $5 less than the cost of 384k/12k ADSL from Jump.net with 5 static ips and no restrictions on what you can and can't run (other than programs that compromise network security).
We should give europe back to the huns!! and France back to the Romans! Wait, I sense a chicken and egg thing here.. :)
Depends on how far you want to go back when it comes to 'claiming the motherland'..
Damn those Neanderthals, we have to give everything to them?!?!?