Yeah, that's the main problem right there - plenty of cool profiles where the supposed members haven't logged in for weeks or months. In many cases it's my assumption that the profiles are being retained to inflate the numbers of "available" people.
On the other hand, I have met and dated people from online dating sites that I think were okay. Some I dated for months, which in fairness I have to think counts as a success story.
What I have found is that most people are "players." Most sites do not achieve much of a changing inventory of profiles in under several months to a year. So once a year, it might be worth taking that free month or actually subscribing for one month just to see what's there. Some sites even allow you to search before subscribing. Hopefully your memory is good enough that you will remember seeing the same batch of women as last time if that's what's on offer.
One of the things that surpirsed me was the number of available attractive and intelligent women, very active on the sites, who were there again and again and again no matter how much time elapsed. My own answer: players - women who just want something new all of the time. People of both sexes do this. Could they be "shills" for the dating site? Sure, that's possible too. Discovery during the lawsuit should be revealing.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." - George Orwell...or......You could vandalize and destroy the instruments of your own surveillance and control. Maybe those Frenchies are on to something these days...
I get your comment - you are misunderstanding mine. "While" was meant as in "as long as" - so, as long as Han Solo shoots first etc.
I am supporting your view, not contradicting it. That's made clear by the next few sentences in which I discuss a "soul-less" version where it doesn't matter who shoots first because Han is just a tiny part of a story that's really supposed to be a Darth Vader-athon.
This isn't interesting any longer. It's over and done with - a DVD release is hardly a blip on the radar seeing as how it's been available for months via download.
Star Wars (six movies) was a critical failure - and not just with the movie critics, but also with the fans. It is the fans that say "Greedo shot first." Lucas says no and thereby ruins something fans liked from the first. From this no one recovers because it's not your masturbation fantasy that interests Lucas but only his own instead. In fact, it's those kinds of fundamental changes (by which I mean that such a scene completely defines Hand Solo as a character) that tell you that Lucas had no grand scheme in the telling of these stories. These films barely have a plot at all.
I think the relative success of the first 3 movies (the classic trilogy or whatever) is due in large part to the presence of the roguish Hand Solo who serves as a foreground to the fairy tale backdrop about the Force and Jedi Knights and so on. Hand Solo was basically "you" in the movie - he's the guy with whom you can identify while all the fireworks go off around you. And let's not forget that while he still shoots Greedo first, he really is your man. By making the fairy tale the foreground of the story in the new trilogy, we soon discovered that the story line not only lacked a soul but whatever it did have was infested with Midi-chlorians. So now it doesn't matter who shoots first because there is no deeper meaning to this jerk-off of paired trilogies.
BTW, the real name is obviously "Hand Solo" because all he represents is a wank, and I should know check my user name. If Lucas ever had a joke to tell it was usually in the names of various things. Here Lucas is telling you that your "hero" is a masturbatory fantasy. Obviously, Hand Solo used to be Lucas' masturbatory fantasy too but he got rich and moved on to fresher territories.
Good Lord, I tried to stick it out - I swear I did. But by the time I finished "The Waste Lands" I was thinking that I was reading the author's equivalent of wanking in text form. Apparently I was right, see:
Yikes! How he starts this as a reply to Robert Browning's amazing "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is just the stuff of nightmares. It is the authorial equivalent of slicing up an original manuscript of Browning's and then using the paper strips to wipe one's ass.
There's a sad tendency among writers today to create vast universes of interconnected stories among all of their works so that every novel and short story must be purchased and read to see the whole fabric of the author's imagined universe. This unifying tendency reminds me of Michael Moorcock who has revised his many stories to link up in ever neater ways to complete his Eternal Champion/Multiverse series. The chief problem is starting off with seminal works of fantasy fiction like the "Elric of Melnibone" series and ending up with something that is so self-referential it borders on parody of both reader and writer (not that I recommend you actually read the latest 3 Elric novels - Ugh!).
What part don't you get? Copyrights are a legally created right - no one respects them otherwise.
Why should copyrights extend practically forever? Why should an estate get control of copyrights once the original creator is dead? Why should corporations get any rights at all (I mean, they aren't even alive as such)?
Some of this stuff wouldn't even be an issue except for the perception that corporations should be granted some kind of ridiculous personhood status. It makes sense to me that a potentially immortal entity wants continuing control of it's perceived property.
But you know, once upon a time copyrights of a maximum of 28 years seemed to make everyone happy. Why should it have leaned so far away from that good start in little more than 200 years?
You also know that these "persons" also want to do nonsense like patent formatting techniques like "frames" on the internet. I mean, how stupid is that? And see, this is where it starts to get hard to explain why any ideas deserve protection while others do not. You would protect authorship of a book - and many would agree with you; but protecting a formatting technique for the display of webpages does seem a little over the top doesn't it? Where do you draw the line? You would seem to want to protect something as utilitarian as typesetting.
That's not how it works in the real world. In the real world if your work is similar enough to something a big studio or publisher has spent millions on, you get sued and an injunction placed against the further distribution of your work. You would then have to have the means to fight for your rights in court or lose by default.
Anyway, and for the umpteenth ad nauseam time, all anyone wants is for those unique expressions of ideas to enter the public domain within a reasonable period of time - just as it always was before. We also want our rights of fair use well protected and respected - not DRMed out of existence.
BTW, I can describe who something like P2P might aid. Another poster already mentioned rap, I will mention comic artists. Once upon a time a whole industry was born around the idea and need of the "swipe" - a panel of art that was needed to fill out a comic book story. Swipes were common if not precisely respected. No one really cared until you could potentially sue for this act. But artists have always borrowed from each since ancient times. The use of perspective would not have swept through the art of the Renaissance if someone had been able to clearly own the licensing to its use.
And this is not the first time I have mentioned this before either, but Pablo Picasso famously said: "Good artists copy; great artists steal." Such is the life of art. Art is a communication that borrows and gives back again. The idea of owning these unique expressions is kind of ridiculous. In today's world, Warhol would get sued out of existence. Now maybe that's not a great loss to you or me, but someone out there thinks Warhol is god.
Just at the moment all Google wants to do is to be able to catalogue the works in question so that they can be searched, thereby actually increasing their value as protected works by putting them under the eyes of people that might otherwise never have known about the works in question except for having searched a particular term appearing in those very works.
What the big corporations want are exceptions to the rules so that they can control the means of distribution ad infinitum. It's pretty obvious and very obnoxious.
Why shouldn't Disney's version eventually enter public domain also? Why single out several generations of books, music, art, and film as somehow unique? Everything always eventually entered the public domain before, right?
And that's the weird part here too, the complete denial of how these works are hardly original themselves. Not Disney's stuff anyway...
And for the upteenth time, you can't give Disney a special extension without giving it to everyone. That's several generations of all kinds of work that will not now enter the public domain within the lifetimes of those that enjoyed it first. That has never happened before in the whole of american history. And you can't give these things to the private sector without taking these things from the commons - and let's not forget that all copyrights are legal creations in the first place, without those fictions of law all work is immediately in the public domain.
> You fail to mention that authors, you know the ones who own the damn material, are also protesting this.
Yeah, so what?
This is about public policy and everyone should be concerned. If the only people that mattered were those that had a financial interest or acted in a works creation - well, then the tactics of the Association of American Publishers, the MPAA and the RIAA would make complete sense and we would all just shut up about it. But they are not the only people that matter because very few works are acts of such originality that they do not derive from culture as a whole - so while a brief monopoly is good in order to encourage acts of creation, most things still really belong to culture as a whole and should get tossed back into that great melting pot of ideas pretty soon. How to decide where the lines get drawn is a matter for everyone to be involved in.
Here's an example of what I mean: Fairy tales exist. Disney thought it would be cool to make some movies based on fairy tales. The estate of Charles Perrault did not come knocking looking for a slice of the pie so Disney made his movies undisturbed because the works in question were absolutely in the public domain - which means anyone could make a derivative work with impunity. So now we have "Disney classics" like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and so forth. Now here is the greedy bastard part: Disney wants to extend their own control over these admittedly derivative works forever if they can. That is simply unfair and untenable.
It's lucky for us that Disney does not get to decide the issue. It is unlucky for us that the likes of Disney can pay our politicians better than we can.
As far as the amazing creative act of authorship is concerned, I seem to recall a UCLA English professor who made the interesting claim that there are only 12 basic plot lines and all works are based on those 12 basic stories. Look at it another way: Shakespeare is himself considered by many to have been the best writer of his own or any other age, and yet most of his works are derivative in nature. The stories for Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet were well known before Shakespeare got to them. So that raises a question: How much of the material of the plays Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet should really be attributed to Shakespeare? He didn't really come up with the stories, he just framed the context interestingly and came up with some great and memorable dialog - a worthy accomplishment surely, but why should it be said that he owns those works per se? Would it have been fair for someone like Marlowe or Webster to come along and simultaneously come up with their own versions of Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet? Why or why not?
Originality is not all it is cracked up to be. There is nothing new under the sun.
Add to that my being totally unimpressed with HDTV resolutions as compared to computers. One of the reasons that computer and TV conflation is stuck at pause is that the resolutions for computers and TVs remains apples and oranges.
Once broadcasters simply start streaming video with commercials through the internet I will need a TV for zero reasons - what I will want is a really big flatscreen computer monitor tied to a quiet pc. I only watch three shows now and the occasional episode of 60 Minutes, Masterpiece Theater, Frontline (already online), and Nova (already online).
The air? Fuck the air. Let the pirates take over, and it's about time we saw something interesting and original after all.
> Never start a business focused on solving a big company's problem. They don't know they have a problem...and they are probably right.
Really dumb article - a string of obviously failed business strategies is all it is. In what way did Napster hope to move from a free music model to one in which customers would pay? I still can't see the advantage of something like iTunes considering the very poor quality of files being sold.
I do see the advantage of buying CDs and ripping them for myself. I also see the advantage of downloading free songs I probably wouldn't have paid for to begin with via P2P networks, so thanks Napster.
Copyright laws make no sense any longer. That's a well plowed subject here.
> You honestly believe that you should be given a job, money and personal wealth.
No. I think Capitalism is a failed experiment that doesn't treat all people the same way. The american dream is dead.
Socialism makes far more sense, and most of the Western world agrees with me. Big shock. And at very nearly the same level of taxation as most socialist countries I just have to wonder what the government is doing with our money that we have so few services to show for it all.
You and I both know they use our tax money to support their illegal war instead of helping out the poor and homeless in this country.
Why are we trying to "gift" democracy to people half a world away instead of providing basic dignity and a solid education to the poor of our own country? I suppose they should just have to work for it all themselves, eh genius? I guess no one ever gave you a hand up or a real opportunity out of poverty?
Classic american rightwing bullshit to not recognize how we are a nation built from the middle class out. You now earn your keep based on the struggles of former union workers and an epic battle for civil rights for all people regardless of race or gender. I guess those roads you drive on are just commie propaganda, right?
Better check that U.S. pay stub again, Buddy - it's pretty much the same deal here in the states. And that's not all, what of all of the hidden excise taxes we pay too?
And what, you are another free market fanatic? Care to show me a country that actually has a free market anywhere in the world? Pretty please...?
Right. You can't - mainly because it's all smoke and mirrors that favors the monied elites.
Anyway, employment is a rights issue. Have you ever stopped to think that being given equal opportunity should mean having the same basic wealth, education, medical care, and social acceptance as anyone else enjoys? But that's not exactly how it works in reality is it? Without those basics it is hard to rise to the level of fundamental dignity. And no, people do not lack those things just because people are created differently, with different strengths and weaknesses - a lot of it has to do with social circumstances, inheritance, and so on. And the monied elite have been enjoying lives of privilege in the states denied to many others for far too long.
I see no reason why those with the most capital should actually be able to dictate to the rest of us how we live our lives. And that's pretty much how it's working out now. Without labor you can't accomplish shit.
Your degree of apparent conformity, misinformation, and possible xenophobia would likely have shocked William Burroughs, whose memory you denigrate by appropriating the title of one of his finest works. Or is the point that you are the Ugly American? Maybe that might have been a better screen name for you and your "fantasy" publication...
More importantly, where can one find a balanced critique of a more respected reference source? I'd say such a thing deosn't exist. Everyone has something at stake here and that becomes their bias.
The reality is that an encyclopedia is not intended to be the definitive references on any given subject - at best it is a primer and more materials should always be gathered together for a serious project. Once you realize that a "hodge-podge of dubious factoids" is probably a perfectly apt description for a primer you don't happen to like, then that phrase stings a whole lot less. I read the Gates article, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. But no, it was a definitive work on the man or his life. The real question is: should it be a definitive source?
An encyclopedia just has to be a useful set of verifiable and cross-referenced information that can lead one to further more comprehensive research. In the case of Wiki, that service is being fulfilled.
Let's face it, if people can just carry a tiny device that loads all their stuff from location to location - then laptops are dead and stationary desktops are the new black.
And finally people can watch the movies on planes again...
Re:This sort of thing...
on
RIAA Sues a Child
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· Score: 3, Insightful
>Tell me again, since when copyright infringement became theft? >> Whenever it deals with something under the GPL being infringed.
No, violation of the GPL is not theft - it is violation of a gentleperson's agreement to give back what you take. Mainly, it is commercial and closed-source exploitation of ideas that belong to everyone that has given to the project in question. So people get angry because their work is being used counter to an agreement while simultaneously being denied access to closed source information based on their collective work. That's exactly why Stallman wanted the GPL in the first place. You have to play nice.
Bringing up the GPL specifically raises the issues of commercial versus non-commercial exploitation of ideas, and I think it's useful to think about those things.
When congress created copyrights in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, they did so with the following limitations: "the Congress shall have power . ..to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" The First Congress implemented this copyright provision with The Copyright Act of 1790. It granted authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years, renewable for another fourteen years. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of "science and the useful arts" through wide public access to works in the "public domain." http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html
Okay, so let's get this nice and tidy. 1. The idea of copyrights doesn't exist by itself, separate from the legal entity that creates it - in our case copyrights are very closely linked to certain ideas in the U.S. Constitution, ideas like the "public domain" and the promotion of science and the useful arts. 2. Copyrights were originally intended to secure monopolistic commercial rights to a given work for 14 years, at which time it could be renewed (presumably if the copyright was understood to still be commercially useful) for another 14 years. 3. When a copyright lapsed, the work in question entered the public domain so that the ideas that had proven useful could stimulate creativity and advancements in science and the "useful arts."
We are living in a world where this careful balancing act of competing ideas and needs as originally intended has utterly collapsed in favor of meeting the needs of the deathless and psychopathic "persons" we call corporations, which now have most of the rights of individuals and some we never dreamed of attaining (like the possibility of virtual immortality as enjoyed by the likes of Lloyd's). It makes sense to a deathless entity like a corporation to want copyrights to be extended nearly forever if it can get those kinds of rights legislated on its behalf - and it turns out that it can. U.S. Congress works for the lootocracy that gets it reelected and not for you and not for the public domain.
But what about the public domain? The sad fact is...
So there are real victims here. We are ALL OF US the victims of corporate control when overweening corporate desires become untenable. When the corporation overreaches with copyrights, it denigrates the well-intentioned purpose behind copyrights and foments disrespect for the law.
THAT'S WHY PEOPLE ARE DOWNLOADING - THEY DON'T RESPECT THE LAWS CONCERNING COPYRIGHTS AS THEY ARE WRITTEN AND ENFORCED RIGHT NO
The U.S. is a third world country in the making. They have already killed the unions, people live on borrowed means, etc. Yes, once upon a time we were great - then the "lootocracy" moved in.
Why would he want that? Are the puppetmasters gearing up for the betterment of the world's economic outlook by simply killing the unemployed - or as Dickens called them "the surplus population"?
This shit in Finland is the same old story: one neck being fitted for one collar and one leash. You can extrapolate that out to the EU, if it pleases you to do so. Obviously Finland and the EU have some of the best politicians money can buy - just like in the U.S.! Same old, same old...
What you want is small, mobile, agile.
I am looking forward to the future, when only the nation state of Northern California will matter to me. We have the water. We have the brains. We can overrule the central California nitwits from (recent immigrants from Dumbfuckistan) by simply voting our progressive politics into action over their objections.
Gays will get married and no one will give a shit because there is obviously ten thousand things more important than how people fuck in their own bedrooms.
Actually, this is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Having read the Ender series, I was left somewhat unsettled by it but I didn't give it enough of my focus to figure out why - and then I read this: "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality" by John Kessel http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
Given OSC's political views, I think it can pretty safely be said that the guy is basically a fascist sympathesizer or something else equally distasteful.
What's interesting is that there are many parallels between Hitler and Ender, watered down only by the fact that Card carefully constructed the story so as to ameliorate Ender's personal culpability - but when you think about it, the story is so contrived as to make that possibility somewhat implausible even within the context of a rather far out sci-fi story.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's the main problem right there - plenty of cool profiles where the supposed members haven't logged in for weeks or months. In many cases it's my assumption that the profiles are being retained to inflate the numbers of "available" people.
On the other hand, I have met and dated people from online dating sites that I think were okay. Some I dated for months, which in fairness I have to think counts as a success story.
What I have found is that most people are "players." Most sites do not achieve much of a changing inventory of profiles in under several months to a year. So once a year, it might be worth taking that free month or actually subscribing for one month just to see what's there. Some sites even allow you to search before subscribing. Hopefully your memory is good enough that you will remember seeing the same batch of women as last time if that's what's on offer.
One of the things that surpirsed me was the number of available attractive and intelligent women, very active on the sites, who were there again and again and again no matter how much time elapsed. My own answer: players - women who just want something new all of the time. People of both sexes do this. Could they be "shills" for the dating site? Sure, that's possible too. Discovery during the lawsuit should be revealing.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." - George Orwell ...or... ...You could vandalize and destroy the instruments of your own surveillance and control. Maybe those Frenchies are on to something these days...
I want something that can display a full page of an illustrated book and for under $200 - that will be a tablet I might buy.
This thing is a fancy PDA, nothing more.
I get your comment - you are misunderstanding mine. "While" was meant as in "as long as" - so, as long as Han Solo shoots first etc.
I am supporting your view, not contradicting it. That's made clear by the next few sentences in which I discuss a "soul-less" version where it doesn't matter who shoots first because Han is just a tiny part of a story that's really supposed to be a Darth Vader-athon.
This isn't interesting any longer. It's over and done with - a DVD release is hardly a blip on the radar seeing as how it's been available for months via download.
Star Wars (six movies) was a critical failure - and not just with the movie critics, but also with the fans. It is the fans that say "Greedo shot first." Lucas says no and thereby ruins something fans liked from the first. From this no one recovers because it's not your masturbation fantasy that interests Lucas but only his own instead. In fact, it's those kinds of fundamental changes (by which I mean that such a scene completely defines Hand Solo as a character) that tell you that Lucas had no grand scheme in the telling of these stories. These films barely have a plot at all.
I think the relative success of the first 3 movies (the classic trilogy or whatever) is due in large part to the presence of the roguish Hand Solo who serves as a foreground to the fairy tale backdrop about the Force and Jedi Knights and so on. Hand Solo was basically "you" in the movie - he's the guy with whom you can identify while all the fireworks go off around you. And let's not forget that while he still shoots Greedo first, he really is your man. By making the fairy tale the foreground of the story in the new trilogy, we soon discovered that the story line not only lacked a soul but whatever it did have was infested with Midi-chlorians. So now it doesn't matter who shoots first because there is no deeper meaning to this jerk-off of paired trilogies.
BTW, the real name is obviously "Hand Solo" because all he represents is a wank, and I should know check my user name. If Lucas ever had a joke to tell it was usually in the names of various things. Here Lucas is telling you that your "hero" is a masturbatory fantasy. Obviously, Hand Solo used to be Lucas' masturbatory fantasy too but he got rich and moved on to fresher territories.
That's just so damned cute though!
Good Lord, I tried to stick it out - I swear I did. But by the time I finished "The Waste Lands" I was thinking that I was reading the author's equivalent of wanking in text form. Apparently I was right, see:
e s)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(seri
Yikes! How he starts this as a reply to Robert Browning's amazing "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is just the stuff of nightmares. It is the authorial equivalent of slicing up an original manuscript of Browning's and then using the paper strips to wipe one's ass.
There's a sad tendency among writers today to create vast universes of interconnected stories among all of their works so that every novel and short story must be purchased and read to see the whole fabric of the author's imagined universe. This unifying tendency reminds me of Michael Moorcock who has revised his many stories to link up in ever neater ways to complete his Eternal Champion/Multiverse series. The chief problem is starting off with seminal works of fantasy fiction like the "Elric of Melnibone" series and ending up with something that is so self-referential it borders on parody of both reader and writer (not that I recommend you actually read the latest 3 Elric novels - Ugh!).
What part don't you get? Copyrights are a legally created right - no one respects them otherwise.
Why should copyrights extend practically forever? Why should an estate get control of copyrights once the original creator is dead? Why should corporations get any rights at all (I mean, they aren't even alive as such)?
Some of this stuff wouldn't even be an issue except for the perception that corporations should be granted some kind of ridiculous personhood status. It makes sense to me that a potentially immortal entity wants continuing control of it's perceived property.
But you know, once upon a time copyrights of a maximum of 28 years seemed to make everyone happy. Why should it have leaned so far away from that good start in little more than 200 years?
You also know that these "persons" also want to do nonsense like patent formatting techniques like "frames" on the internet. I mean, how stupid is that? And see, this is where it starts to get hard to explain why any ideas deserve protection while others do not. You would protect authorship of a book - and many would agree with you; but protecting a formatting technique for the display of webpages does seem a little over the top doesn't it? Where do you draw the line? You would seem to want to protect something as utilitarian as typesetting.
I can take your argument apart also.
That's not how it works in the real world. In the real world if your work is similar enough to something a big studio or publisher has spent millions on, you get sued and an injunction placed against the further distribution of your work. You would then have to have the means to fight for your rights in court or lose by default.
Anyway, and for the umpteenth ad nauseam time, all anyone wants is for those unique expressions of ideas to enter the public domain within a reasonable period of time - just as it always was before. We also want our rights of fair use well protected and respected - not DRMed out of existence.
BTW, I can describe who something like P2P might aid. Another poster already mentioned rap, I will mention comic artists. Once upon a time a whole industry was born around the idea and need of the "swipe" - a panel of art that was needed to fill out a comic book story. Swipes were common if not precisely respected. No one really cared until you could potentially sue for this act. But artists have always borrowed from each since ancient times. The use of perspective would not have swept through the art of the Renaissance if someone had been able to clearly own the licensing to its use.
And this is not the first time I have mentioned this before either, but Pablo Picasso famously said: "Good artists copy; great artists steal." Such is the life of art. Art is a communication that borrows and gives back again. The idea of owning these unique expressions is kind of ridiculous. In today's world, Warhol would get sued out of existence. Now maybe that's not a great loss to you or me, but someone out there thinks Warhol is god.
Just at the moment all Google wants to do is to be able to catalogue the works in question so that they can be searched, thereby actually increasing their value as protected works by putting them under the eyes of people that might otherwise never have known about the works in question except for having searched a particular term appearing in those very works.
What the big corporations want are exceptions to the rules so that they can control the means of distribution ad infinitum. It's pretty obvious and very obnoxious.
Why shouldn't Disney's version eventually enter public domain also? Why single out several generations of books, music, art, and film as somehow unique? Everything always eventually entered the public domain before, right?
And that's the weird part here too, the complete denial of how these works are hardly original themselves. Not Disney's stuff anyway...
And for the upteenth time, you can't give Disney a special extension without giving it to everyone. That's several generations of all kinds of work that will not now enter the public domain within the lifetimes of those that enjoyed it first. That has never happened before in the whole of american history. And you can't give these things to the private sector without taking these things from the commons - and let's not forget that all copyrights are legal creations in the first place, without those fictions of law all work is immediately in the public domain.
> You fail to mention that authors, you know the ones who own the damn material, are also protesting this.
Yeah, so what?
This is about public policy and everyone should be concerned. If the only people that mattered were those that had a financial interest or acted in a works creation - well, then the tactics of the Association of American Publishers, the MPAA and the RIAA would make complete sense and we would all just shut up about it. But they are not the only people that matter because very few works are acts of such originality that they do not derive from culture as a whole - so while a brief monopoly is good in order to encourage acts of creation, most things still really belong to culture as a whole and should get tossed back into that great melting pot of ideas pretty soon. How to decide where the lines get drawn is a matter for everyone to be involved in.
Here's an example of what I mean:
Fairy tales exist. Disney thought it would be cool to make some movies based on fairy tales. The estate of Charles Perrault did not come knocking looking for a slice of the pie so Disney made his movies undisturbed because the works in question were absolutely in the public domain - which means anyone could make a derivative work with impunity. So now we have "Disney classics" like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and so forth. Now here is the greedy bastard part: Disney wants to extend their own control over these admittedly derivative works forever if they can. That is simply unfair and untenable.
It's lucky for us that Disney does not get to decide the issue. It is unlucky for us that the likes of Disney can pay our politicians better than we can.
As far as the amazing creative act of authorship is concerned, I seem to recall a UCLA English professor who made the interesting claim that there are only 12 basic plot lines and all works are based on those 12 basic stories. Look at it another way: Shakespeare is himself considered by many to have been the best writer of his own or any other age, and yet most of his works are derivative in nature. The stories for Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet were well known before Shakespeare got to them. So that raises a question: How much of the material of the plays Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet should really be attributed to Shakespeare? He didn't really come up with the stories, he just framed the context interestingly and came up with some great and memorable dialog - a worthy accomplishment surely, but why should it be said that he owns those works per se? Would it have been fair for someone like Marlowe or Webster to come along and simultaneously come up with their own versions of Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet? Why or why not?
Originality is not all it is cracked up to be. There is nothing new under the sun.
::raises hand::
Add to that my being totally unimpressed with HDTV resolutions as compared to computers. One of the reasons that computer and TV conflation is stuck at pause is that the resolutions for computers and TVs remains apples and oranges.
Once broadcasters simply start streaming video with commercials through the internet I will need a TV for zero reasons - what I will want is a really big flatscreen computer monitor tied to a quiet pc. I only watch three shows now and the occasional episode of 60 Minutes, Masterpiece Theater, Frontline (already online), and Nova (already online).
The air? Fuck the air. Let the pirates take over, and it's about time we saw something interesting and original after all.
> Never start a business focused on solving a big company's problem. They don't know they have a problem...and they are probably right.
Really dumb article - a string of obviously failed business strategies is all it is. In what way did Napster hope to move from a free music model to one in which customers would pay? I still can't see the advantage of something like iTunes considering the very poor quality of files being sold.
I do see the advantage of buying CDs and ripping them for myself. I also see the advantage of downloading free songs I probably wouldn't have paid for to begin with via P2P networks, so thanks Napster.
Copyright laws make no sense any longer. That's a well plowed subject here.
> You honestly believe that you should be given a job, money and personal wealth.
No. I think Capitalism is a failed experiment that doesn't treat all people the same way. The american dream is dead.
Socialism makes far more sense, and most of the Western world agrees with me. Big shock. And at very nearly the same level of taxation as most socialist countries I just have to wonder what the government is doing with our money that we have so few services to show for it all.
You and I both know they use our tax money to support their illegal war instead of helping out the poor and homeless in this country.
Why are we trying to "gift" democracy to people half a world away instead of providing basic dignity and a solid education to the poor of our own country? I suppose they should just have to work for it all themselves, eh genius? I guess no one ever gave you a hand up or a real opportunity out of poverty?
Classic american rightwing bullshit to not recognize how we are a nation built from the middle class out. You now earn your keep based on the struggles of former union workers and an epic battle for civil rights for all people regardless of race or gender. I guess those roads you drive on are just commie propaganda, right?
A reported 45% is "crushing"?
Better check that U.S. pay stub again, Buddy - it's pretty much the same deal here in the states. And that's not all, what of all of the hidden excise taxes we pay too?
And what, you are another free market fanatic? Care to show me a country that actually has a free market anywhere in the world? Pretty please...?
Right. You can't - mainly because it's all smoke and mirrors that favors the monied elites.
Anyway, employment is a rights issue. Have you ever stopped to think that being given equal opportunity should mean having the same basic wealth, education, medical care, and social acceptance as anyone else enjoys? But that's not exactly how it works in reality is it? Without those basics it is hard to rise to the level of fundamental dignity. And no, people do not lack those things just because people are created differently, with different strengths and weaknesses - a lot of it has to do with social circumstances, inheritance, and so on. And the monied elite have been enjoying lives of privilege in the states denied to many others for far too long.
I see no reason why those with the most capital should actually be able to dictate to the rest of us how we live our lives. And that's pretty much how it's working out now. Without labor you can't accomplish shit.
Your degree of apparent conformity, misinformation, and possible xenophobia would likely have shocked William Burroughs, whose memory you denigrate by appropriating the title of one of his finest works. Or is the point that you are the Ugly American? Maybe that might have been a better screen name for you and your "fantasy" publication...
Dude, don't feel so bad. I'm an American!
Yeah, that's right. Mod me funny - throw away your points...
More importantly, where can one find a balanced critique of a more respected reference source? I'd say such a thing deosn't exist. Everyone has something at stake here and that becomes their bias.
The reality is that an encyclopedia is not intended to be the definitive references on any given subject - at best it is a primer and more materials should always be gathered together for a serious project. Once you realize that a "hodge-podge of dubious factoids" is probably a perfectly apt description for a primer you don't happen to like, then that phrase stings a whole lot less. I read the Gates article, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. But no, it was a definitive work on the man or his life. The real question is: should it be a definitive source?
An encyclopedia just has to be a useful set of verifiable and cross-referenced information that can lead one to further more comprehensive research. In the case of Wiki, that service is being fulfilled.
Let's face it, if people can just carry a tiny device that loads all their stuff from location to location - then laptops are dead and stationary desktops are the new black.
And finally people can watch the movies on planes again...
>Tell me again, since when copyright infringement became theft?
.to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" The First Congress implemented this copyright provision with The Copyright Act of 1790. It granted authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years, renewable for another fourteen years. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of "science and the useful arts" through wide public access to works in the "public domain." http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html
>> Whenever it deals with something under the GPL being infringed.
No, violation of the GPL is not theft - it is violation of a gentleperson's agreement to give back what you take. Mainly, it is commercial and closed-source exploitation of ideas that belong to everyone that has given to the project in question. So people get angry because their work is being used counter to an agreement while simultaneously being denied access to closed source information based on their collective work. That's exactly why Stallman wanted the GPL in the first place. You have to play nice.
Bringing up the GPL specifically raises the issues of commercial versus non-commercial exploitation of ideas, and I think it's useful to think about those things.
When congress created copyrights in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, they did so with the following limitations: "the Congress shall have power . .
Okay, so let's get this nice and tidy.
1. The idea of copyrights doesn't exist by itself, separate from the legal entity that creates it - in our case copyrights are very closely linked to certain ideas in the U.S. Constitution, ideas like the "public domain" and the promotion of science and the useful arts.
2. Copyrights were originally intended to secure monopolistic commercial rights to a given work for 14 years, at which time it could be renewed (presumably if the copyright was understood to still be commercially useful) for another 14 years.
3. When a copyright lapsed, the work in question entered the public domain so that the ideas that had proven useful could stimulate creativity and advancements in science and the "useful arts."
We are living in a world where this careful balancing act of competing ideas and needs as originally intended has utterly collapsed in favor of meeting the needs of the deathless and psychopathic "persons" we call corporations, which now have most of the rights of individuals and some we never dreamed of attaining (like the possibility of virtual immortality as enjoyed by the likes of Lloyd's). It makes sense to a deathless entity like a corporation to want copyrights to be extended nearly forever if it can get those kinds of rights legislated on its behalf - and it turns out that it can. U.S. Congress works for the lootocracy that gets it reelected and not for you and not for the public domain.
But what about the public domain? The sad fact is...
WHEN YOU GRANT COPYRIGHTS AND PATENTS TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR,
YOU TAKE FROM THE COMMONS.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=163846&cid =13682728
So there are real victims here. We are ALL OF US the victims of corporate control when overweening corporate desires become untenable. When the corporation overreaches with copyrights, it denigrates the well-intentioned purpose behind copyrights and foments disrespect for the law.
THAT'S WHY PEOPLE ARE DOWNLOADING - THEY DON'T RESPECT THE LAWS CONCERNING COPYRIGHTS AS THEY ARE WRITTEN AND ENFORCED RIGHT NO
The U.S. is a third world country in the making. They have already killed the unions, people live on borrowed means, etc. Yes, once upon a time we were great - then the "lootocracy" moved in.
i ndex.html?section=cnn_topstories
Funny how rather than plan to avoid the next flu pandemic, Bush seems to want to focus on how to control people with the military in opposition to standing law on using the military on U.S. soil: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/05/bush.reax/
Why would he want that? Are the puppetmasters gearing up for the betterment of the world's economic outlook by simply killing the unemployed - or as Dickens called them "the surplus population"?
This shit in Finland is the same old story: one neck being fitted for one collar and one leash. You can extrapolate that out to the EU, if it pleases you to do so. Obviously Finland and the EU have some of the best politicians money can buy - just like in the U.S.! Same old, same old...
What you want is small, mobile, agile.
I am looking forward to the future, when only the nation state of Northern California will matter to me. We have the water. We have the brains. We can overrule the central California nitwits from (recent immigrants from Dumbfuckistan) by simply voting our progressive politics into action over their objections.
Gays will get married and no one will give a shit because there is obviously ten thousand things more important than how people fuck in their own bedrooms.
What can I say? Suck my dick, or just fuck off?
Like I care...
Could you make your point more plainly please? I'm not going to read a whole essay or book just to understand your vague reference to it.
Oh Dude, that Xenu guy is gonna have to find you and nibble your bum for that one.
And yeah, the angel Moroni used to be my co-pilot - but we crash landed in the Andes and I had to eat him in order to survive.
Take it easy, Cornface!
That other stuff's cool, but lighting your genitals on fire is likely to be fairly nasty. Just use a blowtorch, it's probably quicker.
Actually, this is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Having read the Ender series, I was left somewhat unsettled by it but I didn't give it enough of my focus to figure out why - and then I read this: "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality" by John Kessel http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
Given OSC's political views, I think it can pretty safely be said that the guy is basically a fascist sympathesizer or something else equally distasteful.
FWIW, you could check out Wiki on "Ender's Game" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_game
What's interesting is that there are many parallels between Hitler and Ender, watered down only by the fact that Card carefully constructed the story so as to ameliorate Ender's personal culpability - but when you think about it, the story is so contrived as to make that possibility somewhat implausible even within the context of a rather far out sci-fi story.