At roughly a billion dollars per launch.... you really think the Space Shuttle was a good return on investment?
How many billion dollars do you think all of that expenditure was worth to build the X-37? Was it really worth the $150-$200 billion dumped on the shuttle program over the years?
Yeah, It was great for the investors into North American Rockwell (and subsequently Boeing), but that was because they got a sweet scam going with NASA. Want to try again?
I have a friend of mine who is going the lawsuit route. It has caused all kinds of grief including some actions that IMHO ought to raise some eyebrows when the full facts of the case are presented before the judiciary... and I expect that it will see the state supreme court by the time it is done. Oral arguments are going to happen next month, so it will be interesting to see how it finally works out.
It will rock the state political system, if they are successful. The downside is that the potential exists that they will have to pay legal costs for the opposing counsel if they lose. I wish there was a better way to deal with this particular issue without that sort of financial disaster waiting just to have a judge review the law. This friend has asked me to join in as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.... but I'm still weighing my options on that issue.
I do understand if you want to cut and run instead. It is the easier thing to do in that situation.
This is why you need to verify what is being printed out. The voting machines I use print the physical ballot out, at least a record of who I voted for and in what office.... including "write-in" candidates and referendum issues. If the voter can't see what is being printed out, then the whole point of using the printer is useless.
Then again, most voters likely don't even look at the paper receipt, but if that receipt is different than your voting intentions I blame the voter rather than the would-be election hacker.
That doesn't stop ballot stuffing in terms of the election judges having a machine in a back room with somebody voting on behalf of dead people, but it at least would make sure your vote would be recorded and registered how you would like the votes counted and cast.
If something like that happens in a federal election (house/president/senate) in America, it would be time to call in the Feds.... who would investigate such an election in a New York minute. The trick is trying to document that kind of behavior by poll workers was really happening and getting plenty of witnesses for that kind of activity.
Yes, I know how small town politics works and how some election workers don't really take election laws seriously. Let them spend some time in a federal prison (especially the county clerk) and they'll get a new religion on the topic in a real hurry. Standing up to this kind of behavior is the real issue, where somebody has to be a real squeaky wheel... and to squeal in the right place. Of course the deputy isn't going to, I don't know, enforce the law. They aren't really trained to deal with election laws as they really don't have the authority to arrest somebody or to get involved. That is why you need to go up the food chain and be an ass about it.
If you are willing to take the step, a lawsuit can also bring about change. That route isn't easy though, even if you are right. When a judicial ruling comes down, however, people start to take cover and run for their lives... especially if laws are being broken. Messing with federal elections especially is not a good thing to try.
In a typical voting precinct... at least the ones I'm familiar with... the ability to take a machine like the Diebold machine in the video and pull it apart such as is shown in the video can only be done during the set-up and take-down of the voting machines, or as also mentioned in the video to be performed while the machines are not being watched.
Then again, even paper ballots can be compromised if you have a corrupt precinct election staff. This can range from simply replacing the votes cast to "ballot stuffing" or having dead people vote (presumably somebody casting ballots with the assistance of a judge).
Here is the 100% "secure" way to implement this: Make the machines print out the "ballot" in a human & machine readable format, and only count the "paper" ballots which have been verified by the voter previous to being counted.
The problem here is attempting to take shortcuts and do the counting electronically simultaneous to the act of casting the ballot. It really is two completely different issues (actually more than that) which are being dealt with here as if it was a single problem. A voter needs to be assured that the ballot they are casting is the votes they intend, those votes need to be "anonymized" in some way so the voter themselves aren't tied to the vote (aka a "secret ballot"), the "container" into which those votes have been placed must be held secure before the counting takes place, and the counting must be independently verified with multiple trustworthy "judges" to ensure that the count is accurate.
The only realistic way of performing most of this, using current technology, is with a physical device, usually a piece of paper because of cost constraints, which records that ballot and is stored in a physical box before it is counted.
I have no problem with electronic ballot preparation so far as the fact that often some voters have problems making a consistent mark, and it gets rid of some problems such as candidate order as the physical displays of viable candidates can vary for each voter.
Actually the highway system was designed with one thing in mind: the US military. It was built to efficiently move tanks from one half of the country to the other and to also provide backup runways in the event of a war.
I think you are mistaking the Interstate Highway System to the much older Federal Highway System. There are also so many fallacies in what you are talking about here I don't know where to begin, most especially the runway issue. For WW II era planes, they might have been able to use something like an interstate highway, but modern jet fighters have a few more problems. The rocks and "foreign object" problems on these highways alone would make merely landing on most interstates a one-way trip where the military aircraft would never be flying again without massive repairs... and that is presuming law enforcement or other agencies even bothered to shut the highway down for the exercise.
There is a story about how then General Dwight Eisenhower had the dubious responsibility of moving a division overland across the continental United States in the 1930's without the railroads, as instead his division used the federal highway system. It took nearly two months simply because they had to stop at every small town along the route, deal with local law enforcement, and became such a massive headache that he argued they would have gone faster had they been fighting the German Army the whole way. When he arrived in Germany at the end of WWII, he saw the Autobahn and compared his experience in logistical advantages of that highway compared to what he went through prior to the war.
Still, the grandparent post is talking about something quite a bit different, and pointing out that the federal numbered highway system was a huge improvement over the highway system that existed earlier. That certainly wasn't built for military purposes.... unless you consider the Overland Trail to be a military highway. That cavalry units in the U.S. Army may have patrolled that trail may be true, but neither that route nor successive highways which followed that route were necessarily intended for the military.
The real purpose for declaring the Interstate Highway System as a "military project" was as a means to justify its creation as one of the enumerated powers under the U.S. Constitution.... back when the U.S. Congress at least gave lip service to the concept that they had to actually pay attention to the idea as if their legislation followed that document.
As an alternate timeline concept, I've wondered at times how awful World War I would have been had the Analytical Engine (or its successor more likely) been in use at the time. Certainly the artillery tables would have been much more accurate and possibly some "computers" running the gun sights for even more deadly accuracy.... especially on the bigger guns. Keep in mind that one of the first tasks for ENIAC was to calculate trigonometry tables for the U.S. Army. Logarithm tables would also be incredibly valuable in such an environment.
One of the side effects here would also have been fewer computers as these monster computers would not be something that is nearly so common as computers are today. I have a very hard time seeing somebody playing Star Trek, Oregon Trail, or Hunt the Wumpus on an Analytical Engine... particularly when other more "pressing" calculating work would have precedence.
While the "digital age" might have been pushed back some, I think the era of the computer high priests would have been much longer and have become even more entrenched into corporate culture than exists even now. It may have even delayed entrepreneurs like Steve Wozniak or Ed Roberts from doing their creative operations and may have even put Bill Gates into a middle management position. Come to think of it, that may not have been half bad either.
Hmmm....... I need to think about this one some more. It would shift around technological development had this kind of computing power been available. Just imagine what Marie Curie or Albert Einstein might have done with advanced computational power that most certainly would have been at their disposal.
At the very least, if courts recognized standards bodies and invalidated patents not disclosed for standards widely published after a certain period of time, I think that would go a long way in terms of stopping trolls. Part of the problem with a patent is that you don't have to enforce it like you do with trademarks and copyright. With copyright, if you ignore enforcement.... the infringement is held to be legal. With patent law, you can file a lawsuit decades after infringement and even seek compensation for infringement in the past.
In the case of the GIF format, had Unisys been up front about the fact they held the patent, most people would have either dealt with the licensing or not used the format but would have done so with knowledge of what they were doing. It might have even pushed the development of the PNG format to a much earlier time frame. Disclosure is the key, and the problem was that disclosure didn't happen.
Unisys did contemplate the idea of going after previous infringement, as technically the law permitted them to essentially "own the internet" and demand billions of dollars from nearly every internet user. They risked the potential, however, of somebody willing to stand up to such a tactic and invalidating the patent altogether.... so they chose instead the path of least resistance. Their licensing terms were screwy at best, and I did try to negotiate a license with them at one point in my professional career explicitly for a product that used GIF images. I ended up telling Unisys to get lost after they came back with a counter-offer.
If you don't want to worry about patents, stick with MPEG-1 video. It does a pretty good job, both software and hardware implementations are ubiquitous, and you have test data of almost anything you would like.
Ogg Theora is nearly as old as Ogg Vorbis, although its adoption has been much slower in part because MPEG-1 has been available to fill in any niche application that might have used it.
Yes, compression on MPEG-1 stinks compared to some of the newer codecs. That is what you pay for with the new fangled formats. Also.... don't buy into the BS that you can't have 1080p video with MPEG1, as you most certainly can. The difference is strictly the compression levels... and possibly an implementation which can handle that much data.
The issue with GIF wasn't even Compuserve, but rather some patent trolls at Unisys who discovered that they held a patent on the LZW compression algorithm. Unisys went to Compuserve with a legal threat, but also a licensing scheme where they and their customers could be absolved of past and future infringement if they would submit to the license.... and they capitulated.
In fairness to Compuserve, the developers who created the GIF standard intended it to be patent and royalty free. Their mistake was picking up an ACM Journal and discovering the LZW algorithm when they were trying to establish the format, thus adopting that algorithm into the standard. Typically at the time, algorithms published in such a manner were considered "in the public domain"... or at least assumed so if you were formally publishing how they were working in an internationally recognized journal of that nature. Certainly in the article where this algorithm appeared there was no mention of intellectual property other than a copyright on the article itself. Software patents were presumed to be something you would do to something that you also protected via trade secrets and deliberately tried to keep from your competitors except for a begrudging filing with the USPTO that was usually obfuscated enough that you couldn't really figure the algorithm out from the patent application anyway.
It should be noted that IBM also seemed to have a patent on LZW algorithm, so the claim by Unisys could have been challenged from multiple fronts. The problem was that nobody wanted to take them on so it was either ignored or people capitulated to Unisys.
The largest problem with the GIF format was the issue that web browsers had adopted the GIF standard as a de facto image standard and the only universal image format across multiple operating systems and browsers that displayed images. JPEG images were starting to come into use, but there are limitations on JPEG images and it wasn't nearly so universal. Furthermore, most image editing software at the time Unisys started to demand royalty payments supported the GIF standard.... in part because it was thought to be patent and royalty free.
This stands out because it was one of the first software patents that really impacted a broad swath of software developers and pretty much hit nearly every internet user at about the same time. Few companies are willing to let such "submarine patents" languish without enforcement any more because too much money can be made through enforcement before the concept becomes essentially an international standard. Unisys got lucky after a fashion too, as they certainly didn't contribute to the development of the GIF standard.
In terms of "official standard", I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. I do believe that the W3C did archive the GIF standard and provided links to Compuseve's documents on the format as a recommended image format for web browsers before the patent issue hit the fan. It certainly was hard to avoid the use of GIFs even if you tried, and was a pretty universal image format even before web browsers were created.
Perhaps you might be correct here.... so far as the ideas expressed in a patentable video codec would need to be rather narrow in definition where the patent really only covers the specific approach used with a particular codec.
Sadly, particularly with software patents, they are typically interpreted very broadly where you are being held liable for infringement merely because you wrote a single line of code.... in whatever language you are writing that software.
If you could write some software completely from scratch without having seen the work of somebody else, I don't think you should even be capable of infringing somebody's patent. Sadly, I think most programmers at the moment unintentionally violate several patents, often on a daily basis, merely because they can't constantly search the USPTO website to make sure they aren't infringing on somebody's patent. Where is the justice in that?
Only if the patient are valid in your country, which i'm fairly sure is not here. Don't know about exporting the finished product back to US though but no ones going to extradite over that.
Which implies that any engineering, design work, or for that matter manufacturing can't happen in America without paying off this protection racket. Yeah, that really helps promote a competitive "free market". And people wonder why manufacturing companies are leaving America?
It has nothing at all to do with 'open', well if it does, its only in that the MPEG-LA license is pretty much the definition of open license. It also has nothing at all to do with 'Free as in speech', it does however have something to do with 'free as in beer'. The open part may not be what you define open as, but it fits pretty accurately for everyone not part of the RMS cult.
I don't know where you get this impression, as the MPEG-LA isn't really even "free as in beer".... or at least you need to check their licenses out a little better before you make such statements.
The problem is that the royalties are sent downstream, and represent barriers to entry in the form that developers of products have a minimum price they must sell software or devices simply due to how the licensing scheme is set up. It is also a protection racket where content authors or even patent holders (in the case of MPEG-LA royalties) almost never get anything from the money collected. Most of it goes into the overhead of simply operating the MPEG-LA.
If you are selling a high-end audio editing software suite or a commercial MP3 player, the royalty payments for the MPEG-LA really are inconsequential.... but they aren't free.
Most significantly, their licensing terms are completely incompatible with something like an "open source" software project, particularly with the GPL. It isn't so much that the GPL or "open source" licenses are explicitly prohibited, but that the royalty collection system simply isn't in place for that kind of software or product. Even building an MP3 player or a hand-held computer with video playback with an Arduino home-brew kit where you publish the source code and schematics is incompatible with anything under the terms of the MPEG-LA.
Simply put, you can't call that an "open license" other than it doesn't discriminate against multi-national companies wishing to produce commercial products using formats claimed under licenses offered by the MPEG-LA. They are no different than ASCAP, but then again I'm not a big fan of that organization either.
That's not important. There is still no requirement to send a takedown notice (or anything else) before suing, even if the content was posted by a user of the site and not the site operators.
There may not be a requirement to a takedown notice, but if one isn't made it can show bad faith on the part of the plaintiff in such a lawsuit that lesser measures weren't taken in the first place. This would be especially true if the infringement is relatively minor such as a couple photos out of hundreds of otherwise legal photos or related kinds of "intellectual property" that might be on the website or other medium which is being used to display the disputed content.
Certainly a judge would look at such a plaintiff as having a much higher bar to prove willful infringement and to a jury you could simply raise the lack of a takedown notice as a sign that the plaintiff really didn't care to negotiate in good faith or take any preliminary steps to enforce copyright in a reasonable fashion.
While not strictly necessary, a takedown notice is a pretty damn good idea and one that I would recommend to anybody trying to properly enforce copyright.... because it is cheap, usually effective in stopping infringement, establishes legal precedent that you in fact are enforcing copyright on that item, and continued infringement after the notice is prima fascia evidence that the defendant is a jerk (legally speaking with prettier words if you care for them). Essentially, it places the burden of proof on the defendant to demonstrate they have a legal right to the copyrighted content or forces the issue into if the content is even copyrightable (aka in the public domain or not or even who "owns" the content).
Basically, if you actually end up in a court room, having sent the takedown notice move the issues away from willful copyright infringement (those become incontestable legal facts instead... you either keep the content up or you take it down) and instead the arguments move to the copyright status of the content itself. If the ownership of the copyrighted material is quite clear, then the case is slam dunk and you've won even before you reach the courtroom as a plaintiff. If there is a dispute over the material, it is that dispute which is the focus of the trial where the plaintiff could even become liable if their copyright claim is weak or non existent.
Without the takedown notice, a judge and/or jury could simply treat the trial as a takedown notice with no award of damages. I'd love to see an IP attorney explain that one to a client where earlier they recommended against a takedown notice. A judicial warning of "next time, try the notice" would go a long way. The defendant would still be required to take down the content (this time as a judicial order instead of a takedown notice), but the end result would have been the same as if the notice had simply been sent.
BTW, I wouldn't necessarily quote Righthaven as an example of skilled attorneys that are effective in lawsuits. They have cut corners legally a few too many times and are getting judges to slap them down because of legal missteps and failure to even follow the law in many cases.
Consider even the case of Luke keeping his Skywalker name. It's plausible that Vader is unaware of Leia being his child due to her adoption by Bail Organa, even giving her the adopted Organa name. And he didn't sense both of his children on the Death Star together, but he sensed the presence of Obi Wan. But Luke remained a Skywalker, on the same planet that his father, Vader, grew up on. It's like going into witness protection but keeping your same name and not relocating. Logically, if Vader were looking for his son to begin with, he would have been pretty easy to find.
Note that Vader's half-brother was the person who raised Luke, who lived in the same home that Vader's mother died in where Shimi was even buried at. Then his own soldiers went and killed his half brother as well as desecrated the grave of his mother to really make things nice and tidy.
Yeah, that makes a whole lot of logical sense and was well planned out years in advance. Considering one of the reasons Anakin went to the dark side of the force was explicitly because of the death of his mother, it seems strange that he didn't even give it a second thought about the death of his blood relatives or even wonder where his nephew might be, presuming he didn't realize that Luke was his son when his Star Destroyer was orbiting his old home planet.
except Lucas didn't barge into my home and remove my decaying old VHS tapes.
No, but if you tried to make your VHS experience available to other fans on a mass scale, you'd have legal copyright proceedings against you which could end in jail time. Is that any different?
This is precisely why the "Copyright Term Extension Act" was awful law to begin with. 17+17 years should be plenty of time to make a heap of money off of a movie, book, or piece of music. Certainly George Lucas has made more than his fair share of money off of Star Wars, and that money did incentivize him to go out and make the prequels. Had the original 17+17 rule for copyright been in effect today, the copyright on Star Wars would be expiring this year instead of 100 years after the death of George Lucas.
The role of copyright is intended to be a temporary monopoly only, after which it should be available to the rest of humanity to explore, adapt, change, and use to add to our culture. We should be seeing Chad Vader meet Darth Vader, but copyright is going to keep that from happening.
Also, copyright violations ought to be a civil violation, not a criminal act. Widespread mass duplication where you have violated a restraining order after being caught and repeat violations.... perhaps those folks could be incarcerated. For ordinary folks like you or I, we should only have to face a legal team that might take our house, or car, but not our liberty. That is just plain wrong and was not the point of the copyright clause in the U.S. Constitution nor does that really fit the crime in terms of reasonable punishment to fit what is happening if you violate copyright.
Partially agreeing with the grandparent post, I'd agree that particular view would be worth seeing for about $20-$40 million, assuming I had that kind of money. It would be especially worth watching from the Cupola of the ISS or something similar. That several wealthy people have paid that sort of price for the privilege, I'd have to say that particular view of the Earth is precisely what those folks are paying that kind of money to see.
The gravitational forces alone on Jupiter are more than enough to hang onto the full atmosphere it currently holds, even if it were at the position that the Earth is at. Yes, even if Jupiter was "heated" to the temperatures that we find on Earth today from solar flux radiation, the Hydrogen gas would do just fine. Some would be pulled off due to solar wind and increased thermal pressure, but it would take the lifetime of the Universe before it would be something you would notice.
It is for this reason I was agreeing to the original grandparent post about the skepticism in terms of this particular theory. There must have been some other factor than just pure radiation from the Sun due to nuclear fusion to account for the lack of significant quantities of Hydrogen and Helium in our atmosphere.... presuming that the Earth started out as a gas giant even the size of Neptune much less Jupiter. Those gasses, even though they might eventually be driven off, also contribute mass to the planet and in and of themselves help to keep the atmosphere of the planet in place.
BTW, most of the current thermal radiation near Jupiter comes from Jupiter itself rather than from the Sun... left over residual heat from its formation billions of years ago. In order for a planet the size of Jupiter to completely lose its atmosphere through thermal radiation, it would have to be inside the orbit of Mercury to make a difference. Do the math.... the GP poster certainly did.
Oxygen is about the heaviest element that was left over from the Big Bang in any substantial quantity, which is what I was referring to. Most of the heavier elements like even Carbon or Sodium needed nuclear fusion processes in order to form them in the quantities we see in the Solar System today.
Yes, I do realize that Iron is at the "bottom" of the fusion well in terms of what element starts supernovas. Perhaps I should have made that more clear what I was trying to suggest here. Likely nearly every element on the periodic table was in the early universe (including the recently discovered elements), but the dominance of Hydrogen and Helium with traces of some of the lighter elements is pretty much all there was originally.... certainly not enough material to form a rocky core even in a very large and relatively concentrated interstellar nebular cloud when the universe was formed.
Is that sail or sale? Or is that a sail sale? I suppose you can hold a sale around Neptune in a submarine having fun on Triton, especially if something like the Battleship Yamato actually makes the trip into space. If a battleship can do that, I suppose a submarine can too.
I also suppose these "scientists" haven't been able to really prove the existence of China to your satisfaction either. Yes, Marco Polo brought back some amazing legendary stories and a few trinkets he claims to have come from there. I guess the theory of China is just the figment in the imaginations of a whole bunch of people too, in spite of what the Sam Walton family has done with more trinkets supposedly discovered from that mythical place.
The Sun (Sol in Latin and derivative languages) is more like a 3rd or 4th generation star in terms of material recycled from previous stars that has gone through supernovas and reformed to become new stars. At least that is where exotic elements like Uranium, Gold, Silver, and just about everything heavier than Oxygen have come from.
I presume the objection here is that 1st generation stars (which at this point are very old stars which likely have had any planets around them ripped off simply by passing near other stars on any journey they have made going around the galactic core or even a small globular cluster) would behave differently than something you would see around the Sun. Certainly compounds more exotic than water would be quite rare and even water would be minor.
Still, of the planets that are being considered with this model, I think the GP post is fairly on spot in terms of skepticism on this theory. EM radiation alone is unlikely to be able to provide the energy needed to strip gas giants of their atmosphere, where I think you would need some kind of gravitational actor as well. The problem with that theory is it introduces a 3-body problem and requires an explanation for where that object went, whatever it was. The 3-body problem is a big deal because at the very least any planet would likely be in a highly elliptical orbit where the presence of that gravitational anomaly would leave some evidence behind. I don't think that is necessarily a good idea either.
The environment in a stellar nursery would be rather complex, where perhaps a "nearby" neutron star emitting x-rays and other complex aspects of the environment might also be a factor. The ignition sequence of what happens with a star finally starts the fusion process could also be a factor here, where there might be some added complexity in the protostar cloud before the star finally settles down into a stable main sequence pattern. A brief (on the scale of a typical star's lifetime) period of intense radiation and/or stellar wind when this ignition starts might be something to consider. Current theory suggest this is a rather benign event where gravity merely starts compressing the gasses that gradually start producing more fusion before it becomes stable, but that might be mistaken. For small stars (stellar class M objects, for instance) that may be the case, but larger stars certainly do have their own peculiar life cycles anyway so the "birth" of a large star might be nearly as dramatic as its death, just as the death of class M stars is rather wimpy too.
How does this square with the idea that gas giants have materials like metallic hydrogen at their cores? I can see how accretion can occur without the necessity for a rocky core, and I can see how it would occur with one.
There isn't necessarily a dilemma here as the theory still can be consistent for both results, in terms of rocky "terrestrial" bodies being naked gas giants and "traditional" gas giants still having a metallic hydrogen core.
Planets like Jupiter and Saturn, while certainly the bulk of their current mass is Hydrogen and Helium, they do have other elements that comprise their structure and more than likely you would find at the core of these planets a "rocky" core that would include Iron, Nickle, and other elements that would be more identifiable with what we have here on the Earth. The question would be how large would that tiny "rocky" core would be if you stripped off the outer gaseous layers.
The problem with this theory is mainly how you go about stripping off that outer layer. The presumption here is that objects close in to a star like the Earth, Mars, and Venus are at the moment would have had this outer "shell" being stripped off at some point in the distant past as the Solar System was being formed.
I'll admit there isn't an absolute here, but I should note that harm is still happening in spite of the claim this was a "victimless crime". At the very least, this particular individual (the wildlife photographer in this case) was perpetrating a fraud that he was creating these photographs as something original when in fact he was merely mining photographic databases and taking credit of that work for himself.
As the son of a professional photographer (I'll admit I'm not one myself), I can tell you some of the incredible difficulty it can take to obtain some of these photos as I've seen my father in action getting the genuine article. And the photographs he got was not blind luck as he not only worked hard but had the trained eye and the proper equipment (knowing what equipment even to bring) to make what would have been a poorly done snapshot into a true masterpiece of art. The true victims here is that these efforts were done in vain by several skilled photographers just so this particular guy could claim for himself credit and wealth based upon the work of others.
In other words, this guy is a leech on society and is not contributing to our culture but rather sucking life from it.
This relates to my original post so far as there are victims involved here, even if they may not be so apparent or immediate. It is a more diffuse sort of "crime" so far as individually he really didn't hurt any particular person to a large degree (I don't think he is being accused of claiming the work of a specific photographer as his own, like claiming the creation of photographs by Ansel Adams as his own), but in this sense he has hurt a great many people. It is also misrepresentation of this work to his editors, and apparently even to his own family and spouse.
I can't even imagine what he must have been thinking when claiming to be off on a shoot when all he was doing was sitting at a Starbucks rummaging through a stock photo catalog on his laptop. Apparently there was guilt in there too, where he knew what he was doing was wrong.... especially because he kept this whole thing from his wife. The lengths he had to go in order to keep this lie going must have gone to an extreme, as shoots like this would keep you away from your family for days or even weeks at a time. I really wonder how he justified the "travel" to different places when in fact he never really took the photos or what he really accomplished when he went to those places.
Ultimately, immoral behavior has its own penalties imposed upon you, and creeps into your life in a great many other ways if you try to hide that immorality. He knew what he was doing was wrong, yet he persisted to do it. If he were merely a clueless individual thinking that what he was doing was perfectly fine and following his own moral code, that is one thing, but he even violated his own moral code and misrepresented himself to others claiming one thing and doing another. Had he merely been up from and honest to everybody in terms of telling everybody involved what he was doing, it wouldn't have been nearly so bad.
He also would likely not have made so much money, but the act of selecting spectacular images from a photo dump isn't an easy and does take skill on its own. He also would have been spending more nights in bed with his wife instead of trying to justify his actions.
BTW, one photographer that not only made a name for himself but even became even a legend in the field of photography for his use of stock photography is Sergei Eisenstein. He shot some original footage, but much of his work was unabashedly the work of others only presented in a new way. The only difference here is that Mr. Eisenstein acknowledged the fact that he was using stock footage and gave proper credit when it was known. He didn't have to be "caught" because there was nothing to "catch" himself with.
That is why we try to pound them into kids at an early age
Well, children are easy to brainwash. So I guess that is a good time to do it. Make sure to include the fact that your morals are absolute universal fact.
I take it that you don't have kids of your own. Good luck with that.
BTW, why the restriction of making "sure to include the fact that your morals are [an] absolute universal fact"? I don't think that is necessarily required to pass on ethics and moral values. Even a belief or lack thereof of some higher power or divine influence is not necessarily a prerequisite. I personally think that having an open mind to better philosophies is always a good thing, but some sort of standard of behavior is always needed at some point, at least if you want a functioning society where people can at least interact with one another.
It sounds like you are a bit closed minded on this point, so I won't belabor this issue too much.
Slashdot Mirror
At roughly a billion dollars per launch.... you really think the Space Shuttle was a good return on investment?
How many billion dollars do you think all of that expenditure was worth to build the X-37? Was it really worth the $150-$200 billion dumped on the shuttle program over the years?
Yeah, It was great for the investors into North American Rockwell (and subsequently Boeing), but that was because they got a sweet scam going with NASA. Want to try again?
I have a friend of mine who is going the lawsuit route. It has caused all kinds of grief including some actions that IMHO ought to raise some eyebrows when the full facts of the case are presented before the judiciary... and I expect that it will see the state supreme court by the time it is done. Oral arguments are going to happen next month, so it will be interesting to see how it finally works out.
It will rock the state political system, if they are successful. The downside is that the potential exists that they will have to pay legal costs for the opposing counsel if they lose. I wish there was a better way to deal with this particular issue without that sort of financial disaster waiting just to have a judge review the law. This friend has asked me to join in as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.... but I'm still weighing my options on that issue.
I do understand if you want to cut and run instead. It is the easier thing to do in that situation.
This is why you need to verify what is being printed out. The voting machines I use print the physical ballot out, at least a record of who I voted for and in what office.... including "write-in" candidates and referendum issues. If the voter can't see what is being printed out, then the whole point of using the printer is useless.
Then again, most voters likely don't even look at the paper receipt, but if that receipt is different than your voting intentions I blame the voter rather than the would-be election hacker.
That doesn't stop ballot stuffing in terms of the election judges having a machine in a back room with somebody voting on behalf of dead people, but it at least would make sure your vote would be recorded and registered how you would like the votes counted and cast.
If something like that happens in a federal election (house/president/senate) in America, it would be time to call in the Feds.... who would investigate such an election in a New York minute. The trick is trying to document that kind of behavior by poll workers was really happening and getting plenty of witnesses for that kind of activity.
Yes, I know how small town politics works and how some election workers don't really take election laws seriously. Let them spend some time in a federal prison (especially the county clerk) and they'll get a new religion on the topic in a real hurry. Standing up to this kind of behavior is the real issue, where somebody has to be a real squeaky wheel... and to squeal in the right place. Of course the deputy isn't going to, I don't know, enforce the law. They aren't really trained to deal with election laws as they really don't have the authority to arrest somebody or to get involved. That is why you need to go up the food chain and be an ass about it.
If you are willing to take the step, a lawsuit can also bring about change. That route isn't easy though, even if you are right. When a judicial ruling comes down, however, people start to take cover and run for their lives... especially if laws are being broken. Messing with federal elections especially is not a good thing to try.
In a typical voting precinct... at least the ones I'm familiar with... the ability to take a machine like the Diebold machine in the video and pull it apart such as is shown in the video can only be done during the set-up and take-down of the voting machines, or as also mentioned in the video to be performed while the machines are not being watched.
Then again, even paper ballots can be compromised if you have a corrupt precinct election staff. This can range from simply replacing the votes cast to "ballot stuffing" or having dead people vote (presumably somebody casting ballots with the assistance of a judge).
Here is the 100% "secure" way to implement this: Make the machines print out the "ballot" in a human & machine readable format, and only count the "paper" ballots which have been verified by the voter previous to being counted.
The problem here is attempting to take shortcuts and do the counting electronically simultaneous to the act of casting the ballot. It really is two completely different issues (actually more than that) which are being dealt with here as if it was a single problem. A voter needs to be assured that the ballot they are casting is the votes they intend, those votes need to be "anonymized" in some way so the voter themselves aren't tied to the vote (aka a "secret ballot"), the "container" into which those votes have been placed must be held secure before the counting takes place, and the counting must be independently verified with multiple trustworthy "judges" to ensure that the count is accurate.
The only realistic way of performing most of this, using current technology, is with a physical device, usually a piece of paper because of cost constraints, which records that ballot and is stored in a physical box before it is counted.
I have no problem with electronic ballot preparation so far as the fact that often some voters have problems making a consistent mark, and it gets rid of some problems such as candidate order as the physical displays of viable candidates can vary for each voter.
Actually the highway system was designed with one thing in mind: the US military. It was built to efficiently move tanks from one half of the country to the other and to also provide backup runways in the event of a war.
I think you are mistaking the Interstate Highway System to the much older Federal Highway System. There are also so many fallacies in what you are talking about here I don't know where to begin, most especially the runway issue. For WW II era planes, they might have been able to use something like an interstate highway, but modern jet fighters have a few more problems. The rocks and "foreign object" problems on these highways alone would make merely landing on most interstates a one-way trip where the military aircraft would never be flying again without massive repairs... and that is presuming law enforcement or other agencies even bothered to shut the highway down for the exercise.
There is a story about how then General Dwight Eisenhower had the dubious responsibility of moving a division overland across the continental United States in the 1930's without the railroads, as instead his division used the federal highway system. It took nearly two months simply because they had to stop at every small town along the route, deal with local law enforcement, and became such a massive headache that he argued they would have gone faster had they been fighting the German Army the whole way. When he arrived in Germany at the end of WWII, he saw the Autobahn and compared his experience in logistical advantages of that highway compared to what he went through prior to the war.
Still, the grandparent post is talking about something quite a bit different, and pointing out that the federal numbered highway system was a huge improvement over the highway system that existed earlier. That certainly wasn't built for military purposes.... unless you consider the Overland Trail to be a military highway. That cavalry units in the U.S. Army may have patrolled that trail may be true, but neither that route nor successive highways which followed that route were necessarily intended for the military.
The real purpose for declaring the Interstate Highway System as a "military project" was as a means to justify its creation as one of the enumerated powers under the U.S. Constitution.... back when the U.S. Congress at least gave lip service to the concept that they had to actually pay attention to the idea as if their legislation followed that document.
As an alternate timeline concept, I've wondered at times how awful World War I would have been had the Analytical Engine (or its successor more likely) been in use at the time. Certainly the artillery tables would have been much more accurate and possibly some "computers" running the gun sights for even more deadly accuracy.... especially on the bigger guns. Keep in mind that one of the first tasks for ENIAC was to calculate trigonometry tables for the U.S. Army. Logarithm tables would also be incredibly valuable in such an environment.
One of the side effects here would also have been fewer computers as these monster computers would not be something that is nearly so common as computers are today. I have a very hard time seeing somebody playing Star Trek, Oregon Trail, or Hunt the Wumpus on an Analytical Engine... particularly when other more "pressing" calculating work would have precedence.
While the "digital age" might have been pushed back some, I think the era of the computer high priests would have been much longer and have become even more entrenched into corporate culture than exists even now. It may have even delayed entrepreneurs like Steve Wozniak or Ed Roberts from doing their creative operations and may have even put Bill Gates into a middle management position. Come to think of it, that may not have been half bad either.
Hmmm....... I need to think about this one some more. It would shift around technological development had this kind of computing power been available. Just imagine what Marie Curie or Albert Einstein might have done with advanced computational power that most certainly would have been at their disposal.
At the very least, if courts recognized standards bodies and invalidated patents not disclosed for standards widely published after a certain period of time, I think that would go a long way in terms of stopping trolls. Part of the problem with a patent is that you don't have to enforce it like you do with trademarks and copyright. With copyright, if you ignore enforcement.... the infringement is held to be legal. With patent law, you can file a lawsuit decades after infringement and even seek compensation for infringement in the past.
In the case of the GIF format, had Unisys been up front about the fact they held the patent, most people would have either dealt with the licensing or not used the format but would have done so with knowledge of what they were doing. It might have even pushed the development of the PNG format to a much earlier time frame. Disclosure is the key, and the problem was that disclosure didn't happen.
Unisys did contemplate the idea of going after previous infringement, as technically the law permitted them to essentially "own the internet" and demand billions of dollars from nearly every internet user. They risked the potential, however, of somebody willing to stand up to such a tactic and invalidating the patent altogether.... so they chose instead the path of least resistance. Their licensing terms were screwy at best, and I did try to negotiate a license with them at one point in my professional career explicitly for a product that used GIF images. I ended up telling Unisys to get lost after they came back with a counter-offer.
If you don't want to worry about patents, stick with MPEG-1 video. It does a pretty good job, both software and hardware implementations are ubiquitous, and you have test data of almost anything you would like.
Ogg Theora is nearly as old as Ogg Vorbis, although its adoption has been much slower in part because MPEG-1 has been available to fill in any niche application that might have used it.
Yes, compression on MPEG-1 stinks compared to some of the newer codecs. That is what you pay for with the new fangled formats. Also.... don't buy into the BS that you can't have 1080p video with MPEG1, as you most certainly can. The difference is strictly the compression levels... and possibly an implementation which can handle that much data.
The issue with GIF wasn't even Compuserve, but rather some patent trolls at Unisys who discovered that they held a patent on the LZW compression algorithm. Unisys went to Compuserve with a legal threat, but also a licensing scheme where they and their customers could be absolved of past and future infringement if they would submit to the license.... and they capitulated.
In fairness to Compuserve, the developers who created the GIF standard intended it to be patent and royalty free. Their mistake was picking up an ACM Journal and discovering the LZW algorithm when they were trying to establish the format, thus adopting that algorithm into the standard. Typically at the time, algorithms published in such a manner were considered "in the public domain"... or at least assumed so if you were formally publishing how they were working in an internationally recognized journal of that nature. Certainly in the article where this algorithm appeared there was no mention of intellectual property other than a copyright on the article itself. Software patents were presumed to be something you would do to something that you also protected via trade secrets and deliberately tried to keep from your competitors except for a begrudging filing with the USPTO that was usually obfuscated enough that you couldn't really figure the algorithm out from the patent application anyway.
It should be noted that IBM also seemed to have a patent on LZW algorithm, so the claim by Unisys could have been challenged from multiple fronts. The problem was that nobody wanted to take them on so it was either ignored or people capitulated to Unisys.
The largest problem with the GIF format was the issue that web browsers had adopted the GIF standard as a de facto image standard and the only universal image format across multiple operating systems and browsers that displayed images. JPEG images were starting to come into use, but there are limitations on JPEG images and it wasn't nearly so universal. Furthermore, most image editing software at the time Unisys started to demand royalty payments supported the GIF standard.... in part because it was thought to be patent and royalty free.
This stands out because it was one of the first software patents that really impacted a broad swath of software developers and pretty much hit nearly every internet user at about the same time. Few companies are willing to let such "submarine patents" languish without enforcement any more because too much money can be made through enforcement before the concept becomes essentially an international standard. Unisys got lucky after a fashion too, as they certainly didn't contribute to the development of the GIF standard.
In terms of "official standard", I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. I do believe that the W3C did archive the GIF standard and provided links to Compuseve's documents on the format as a recommended image format for web browsers before the patent issue hit the fan. It certainly was hard to avoid the use of GIFs even if you tried, and was a pretty universal image format even before web browsers were created.
Perhaps you might be correct here.... so far as the ideas expressed in a patentable video codec would need to be rather narrow in definition where the patent really only covers the specific approach used with a particular codec.
Sadly, particularly with software patents, they are typically interpreted very broadly where you are being held liable for infringement merely because you wrote a single line of code.... in whatever language you are writing that software.
If you could write some software completely from scratch without having seen the work of somebody else, I don't think you should even be capable of infringing somebody's patent. Sadly, I think most programmers at the moment unintentionally violate several patents, often on a daily basis, merely because they can't constantly search the USPTO website to make sure they aren't infringing on somebody's patent. Where is the justice in that?
Only if the patient are valid in your country, which i'm fairly sure is not here.
Don't know about exporting the finished product back to US though but no ones going to extradite over that.
Which implies that any engineering, design work, or for that matter manufacturing can't happen in America without paying off this protection racket. Yeah, that really helps promote a competitive "free market". And people wonder why manufacturing companies are leaving America?
I don't know where you get this impression, as the MPEG-LA isn't really even "free as in beer".... or at least you need to check their licenses out a little better before you make such statements.
The problem is that the royalties are sent downstream, and represent barriers to entry in the form that developers of products have a minimum price they must sell software or devices simply due to how the licensing scheme is set up. It is also a protection racket where content authors or even patent holders (in the case of MPEG-LA royalties) almost never get anything from the money collected. Most of it goes into the overhead of simply operating the MPEG-LA.
If you are selling a high-end audio editing software suite or a commercial MP3 player, the royalty payments for the MPEG-LA really are inconsequential.... but they aren't free.
Most significantly, their licensing terms are completely incompatible with something like an "open source" software project, particularly with the GPL. It isn't so much that the GPL or "open source" licenses are explicitly prohibited, but that the royalty collection system simply isn't in place for that kind of software or product. Even building an MP3 player or a hand-held computer with video playback with an Arduino home-brew kit where you publish the source code and schematics is incompatible with anything under the terms of the MPEG-LA.
Simply put, you can't call that an "open license" other than it doesn't discriminate against multi-national companies wishing to produce commercial products using formats claimed under licenses offered by the MPEG-LA. They are no different than ASCAP, but then again I'm not a big fan of that organization either.
That's not important. There is still no requirement to send a takedown notice (or anything else) before suing, even if the content was posted by a user of the site and not the site operators.
There may not be a requirement to a takedown notice, but if one isn't made it can show bad faith on the part of the plaintiff in such a lawsuit that lesser measures weren't taken in the first place. This would be especially true if the infringement is relatively minor such as a couple photos out of hundreds of otherwise legal photos or related kinds of "intellectual property" that might be on the website or other medium which is being used to display the disputed content.
Certainly a judge would look at such a plaintiff as having a much higher bar to prove willful infringement and to a jury you could simply raise the lack of a takedown notice as a sign that the plaintiff really didn't care to negotiate in good faith or take any preliminary steps to enforce copyright in a reasonable fashion.
While not strictly necessary, a takedown notice is a pretty damn good idea and one that I would recommend to anybody trying to properly enforce copyright.... because it is cheap, usually effective in stopping infringement, establishes legal precedent that you in fact are enforcing copyright on that item, and continued infringement after the notice is prima fascia evidence that the defendant is a jerk (legally speaking with prettier words if you care for them). Essentially, it places the burden of proof on the defendant to demonstrate they have a legal right to the copyrighted content or forces the issue into if the content is even copyrightable (aka in the public domain or not or even who "owns" the content).
Basically, if you actually end up in a court room, having sent the takedown notice move the issues away from willful copyright infringement (those become incontestable legal facts instead... you either keep the content up or you take it down) and instead the arguments move to the copyright status of the content itself. If the ownership of the copyrighted material is quite clear, then the case is slam dunk and you've won even before you reach the courtroom as a plaintiff. If there is a dispute over the material, it is that dispute which is the focus of the trial where the plaintiff could even become liable if their copyright claim is weak or non existent.
Without the takedown notice, a judge and/or jury could simply treat the trial as a takedown notice with no award of damages. I'd love to see an IP attorney explain that one to a client where earlier they recommended against a takedown notice. A judicial warning of "next time, try the notice" would go a long way. The defendant would still be required to take down the content (this time as a judicial order instead of a takedown notice), but the end result would have been the same as if the notice had simply been sent.
BTW, I wouldn't necessarily quote Righthaven as an example of skilled attorneys that are effective in lawsuits. They have cut corners legally a few too many times and are getting judges to slap them down because of legal missteps and failure to even follow the law in many cases.
Consider even the case of Luke keeping his Skywalker name. It's plausible that Vader is unaware of Leia being his child due to her adoption by Bail Organa, even giving her the adopted Organa name. And he didn't sense both of his children on the Death Star together, but he sensed the presence of Obi Wan. But Luke remained a Skywalker, on the same planet that his father, Vader, grew up on. It's like going into witness protection but keeping your same name and not relocating. Logically, if Vader were looking for his son to begin with, he would have been pretty easy to find.
Note that Vader's half-brother was the person who raised Luke, who lived in the same home that Vader's mother died in where Shimi was even buried at. Then his own soldiers went and killed his half brother as well as desecrated the grave of his mother to really make things nice and tidy.
Yeah, that makes a whole lot of logical sense and was well planned out years in advance. Considering one of the reasons Anakin went to the dark side of the force was explicitly because of the death of his mother, it seems strange that he didn't even give it a second thought about the death of his blood relatives or even wonder where his nephew might be, presuming he didn't realize that Luke was his son when his Star Destroyer was orbiting his old home planet.
except Lucas didn't barge into my home and remove my decaying old VHS tapes.
No, but if you tried to make your VHS experience available to other fans on a mass scale, you'd have legal copyright proceedings against you which could end in jail time. Is that any different?
This is precisely why the "Copyright Term Extension Act" was awful law to begin with. 17+17 years should be plenty of time to make a heap of money off of a movie, book, or piece of music. Certainly George Lucas has made more than his fair share of money off of Star Wars, and that money did incentivize him to go out and make the prequels. Had the original 17+17 rule for copyright been in effect today, the copyright on Star Wars would be expiring this year instead of 100 years after the death of George Lucas.
The role of copyright is intended to be a temporary monopoly only, after which it should be available to the rest of humanity to explore, adapt, change, and use to add to our culture. We should be seeing Chad Vader meet Darth Vader, but copyright is going to keep that from happening.
Also, copyright violations ought to be a civil violation, not a criminal act. Widespread mass duplication where you have violated a restraining order after being caught and repeat violations.... perhaps those folks could be incarcerated. For ordinary folks like you or I, we should only have to face a legal team that might take our house, or car, but not our liberty. That is just plain wrong and was not the point of the copyright clause in the U.S. Constitution nor does that really fit the crime in terms of reasonable punishment to fit what is happening if you violate copyright.
Partially agreeing with the grandparent post, I'd agree that particular view would be worth seeing for about $20-$40 million, assuming I had that kind of money. It would be especially worth watching from the Cupola of the ISS or something similar. That several wealthy people have paid that sort of price for the privilege, I'd have to say that particular view of the Earth is precisely what those folks are paying that kind of money to see.
The gravitational forces alone on Jupiter are more than enough to hang onto the full atmosphere it currently holds, even if it were at the position that the Earth is at. Yes, even if Jupiter was "heated" to the temperatures that we find on Earth today from solar flux radiation, the Hydrogen gas would do just fine. Some would be pulled off due to solar wind and increased thermal pressure, but it would take the lifetime of the Universe before it would be something you would notice.
It is for this reason I was agreeing to the original grandparent post about the skepticism in terms of this particular theory. There must have been some other factor than just pure radiation from the Sun due to nuclear fusion to account for the lack of significant quantities of Hydrogen and Helium in our atmosphere.... presuming that the Earth started out as a gas giant even the size of Neptune much less Jupiter. Those gasses, even though they might eventually be driven off, also contribute mass to the planet and in and of themselves help to keep the atmosphere of the planet in place.
BTW, most of the current thermal radiation near Jupiter comes from Jupiter itself rather than from the Sun... left over residual heat from its formation billions of years ago. In order for a planet the size of Jupiter to completely lose its atmosphere through thermal radiation, it would have to be inside the orbit of Mercury to make a difference. Do the math.... the GP poster certainly did.
Oxygen is about the heaviest element that was left over from the Big Bang in any substantial quantity, which is what I was referring to. Most of the heavier elements like even Carbon or Sodium needed nuclear fusion processes in order to form them in the quantities we see in the Solar System today.
Yes, I do realize that Iron is at the "bottom" of the fusion well in terms of what element starts supernovas. Perhaps I should have made that more clear what I was trying to suggest here. Likely nearly every element on the periodic table was in the early universe (including the recently discovered elements), but the dominance of Hydrogen and Helium with traces of some of the lighter elements is pretty much all there was originally.... certainly not enough material to form a rocky core even in a very large and relatively concentrated interstellar nebular cloud when the universe was formed.
Is that sail or sale? Or is that a sail sale? I suppose you can hold a sale around Neptune in a submarine having fun on Triton, especially if something like the Battleship Yamato actually makes the trip into space. If a battleship can do that, I suppose a submarine can too.
I also suppose these "scientists" haven't been able to really prove the existence of China to your satisfaction either. Yes, Marco Polo brought back some amazing legendary stories and a few trinkets he claims to have come from there. I guess the theory of China is just the figment in the imaginations of a whole bunch of people too, in spite of what the Sam Walton family has done with more trinkets supposedly discovered from that mythical place.
The Sun (Sol in Latin and derivative languages) is more like a 3rd or 4th generation star in terms of material recycled from previous stars that has gone through supernovas and reformed to become new stars. At least that is where exotic elements like Uranium, Gold, Silver, and just about everything heavier than Oxygen have come from.
I presume the objection here is that 1st generation stars (which at this point are very old stars which likely have had any planets around them ripped off simply by passing near other stars on any journey they have made going around the galactic core or even a small globular cluster) would behave differently than something you would see around the Sun. Certainly compounds more exotic than water would be quite rare and even water would be minor.
Still, of the planets that are being considered with this model, I think the GP post is fairly on spot in terms of skepticism on this theory. EM radiation alone is unlikely to be able to provide the energy needed to strip gas giants of their atmosphere, where I think you would need some kind of gravitational actor as well. The problem with that theory is it introduces a 3-body problem and requires an explanation for where that object went, whatever it was. The 3-body problem is a big deal because at the very least any planet would likely be in a highly elliptical orbit where the presence of that gravitational anomaly would leave some evidence behind. I don't think that is necessarily a good idea either.
The environment in a stellar nursery would be rather complex, where perhaps a "nearby" neutron star emitting x-rays and other complex aspects of the environment might also be a factor. The ignition sequence of what happens with a star finally starts the fusion process could also be a factor here, where there might be some added complexity in the protostar cloud before the star finally settles down into a stable main sequence pattern. A brief (on the scale of a typical star's lifetime) period of intense radiation and/or stellar wind when this ignition starts might be something to consider. Current theory suggest this is a rather benign event where gravity merely starts compressing the gasses that gradually start producing more fusion before it becomes stable, but that might be mistaken. For small stars (stellar class M objects, for instance) that may be the case, but larger stars certainly do have their own peculiar life cycles anyway so the "birth" of a large star might be nearly as dramatic as its death, just as the death of class M stars is rather wimpy too.
How does this square with the idea that gas giants have materials like metallic hydrogen at their cores? I can see how accretion can occur without the necessity for a rocky core, and I can see how it would occur with one.
There isn't necessarily a dilemma here as the theory still can be consistent for both results, in terms of rocky "terrestrial" bodies being naked gas giants and "traditional" gas giants still having a metallic hydrogen core.
Planets like Jupiter and Saturn, while certainly the bulk of their current mass is Hydrogen and Helium, they do have other elements that comprise their structure and more than likely you would find at the core of these planets a "rocky" core that would include Iron, Nickle, and other elements that would be more identifiable with what we have here on the Earth. The question would be how large would that tiny "rocky" core would be if you stripped off the outer gaseous layers.
The problem with this theory is mainly how you go about stripping off that outer layer. The presumption here is that objects close in to a star like the Earth, Mars, and Venus are at the moment would have had this outer "shell" being stripped off at some point in the distant past as the Solar System was being formed.
I'll admit there isn't an absolute here, but I should note that harm is still happening in spite of the claim this was a "victimless crime". At the very least, this particular individual (the wildlife photographer in this case) was perpetrating a fraud that he was creating these photographs as something original when in fact he was merely mining photographic databases and taking credit of that work for himself.
As the son of a professional photographer (I'll admit I'm not one myself), I can tell you some of the incredible difficulty it can take to obtain some of these photos as I've seen my father in action getting the genuine article. And the photographs he got was not blind luck as he not only worked hard but had the trained eye and the proper equipment (knowing what equipment even to bring) to make what would have been a poorly done snapshot into a true masterpiece of art. The true victims here is that these efforts were done in vain by several skilled photographers just so this particular guy could claim for himself credit and wealth based upon the work of others.
In other words, this guy is a leech on society and is not contributing to our culture but rather sucking life from it.
This relates to my original post so far as there are victims involved here, even if they may not be so apparent or immediate. It is a more diffuse sort of "crime" so far as individually he really didn't hurt any particular person to a large degree (I don't think he is being accused of claiming the work of a specific photographer as his own, like claiming the creation of photographs by Ansel Adams as his own), but in this sense he has hurt a great many people. It is also misrepresentation of this work to his editors, and apparently even to his own family and spouse.
I can't even imagine what he must have been thinking when claiming to be off on a shoot when all he was doing was sitting at a Starbucks rummaging through a stock photo catalog on his laptop. Apparently there was guilt in there too, where he knew what he was doing was wrong.... especially because he kept this whole thing from his wife. The lengths he had to go in order to keep this lie going must have gone to an extreme, as shoots like this would keep you away from your family for days or even weeks at a time. I really wonder how he justified the "travel" to different places when in fact he never really took the photos or what he really accomplished when he went to those places.
Ultimately, immoral behavior has its own penalties imposed upon you, and creeps into your life in a great many other ways if you try to hide that immorality. He knew what he was doing was wrong, yet he persisted to do it. If he were merely a clueless individual thinking that what he was doing was perfectly fine and following his own moral code, that is one thing, but he even violated his own moral code and misrepresented himself to others claiming one thing and doing another. Had he merely been up from and honest to everybody in terms of telling everybody involved what he was doing, it wouldn't have been nearly so bad.
He also would likely not have made so much money, but the act of selecting spectacular images from a photo dump isn't an easy and does take skill on its own. He also would have been spending more nights in bed with his wife instead of trying to justify his actions.
BTW, one photographer that not only made a name for himself but even became even a legend in the field of photography for his use of stock photography is Sergei Eisenstein. He shot some original footage, but much of his work was unabashedly the work of others only presented in a new way. The only difference here is that Mr. Eisenstein acknowledged the fact that he was using stock footage and gave proper credit when it was known. He didn't have to be "caught" because there was nothing to "catch" himself with.
That is why we try to pound them into kids at an early age
Well, children are easy to brainwash. So I guess that is a good time to do it. Make sure to include the fact that your morals are absolute universal fact.
I take it that you don't have kids of your own. Good luck with that.
BTW, why the restriction of making "sure to include the fact that your morals are [an] absolute universal fact"? I don't think that is necessarily required to pass on ethics and moral values. Even a belief or lack thereof of some higher power or divine influence is not necessarily a prerequisite. I personally think that having an open mind to better philosophies is always a good thing, but some sort of standard of behavior is always needed at some point, at least if you want a functioning society where people can at least interact with one another.
It sounds like you are a bit closed minded on this point, so I won't belabor this issue too much.