Yep, they are doing it again - claiming to be all about creators' rights when they are really only concerned about owners' rights. We need a copyright systems that creates an incentive to create, not just to own.
Very few mothers in Nigeria breastfeed. According to WHO, Nigeria has one of the lowest rates for breastfeeding in the world. What's worse, they mix formula with bad water. Now that AIDS is a problem, many won't breastfeed because of the possibility of transfering the virus from mother to child.
Notice that reportedly 2% of the babies in Nigeria are breastfed while in the UK, the percentage is over 60%. I can't find stats on which country has better sanitation.
I sorta like the slashdot system for moderation, but for some reason, I don't like metamodding.
My idea for a mod system would be sorta diggish, in that everyone who reads can give a thumb up or down at any time, but different users would have different weights based on their karma. Metamodding wouldn't be necessary because the system would be able to see whether your mods were out of whack. The more out of line your mods, the lowing your mod weight would become. Please no fat jokes!
"Alarm Clock that Runs and Hides" is currently on Digg's front page. Didnt/. get that one a month or two ago? I know NPR mentioned it at least a week ago. Either it's a dupe or digg is really slow.
The first thing I do when I come to/. is read the replies to my messages. It is cool to see how and why various people disagree or, occasionally, agree with me. I noticed you got a lot of replies to your Stallman messages, so I will have to go there next.
I just went to Digg and checked a few threads, the Apple sweatshop thing and another which I forgot. The comments were stupid and uninteresting./. has more threads that are interesting including quite a few that are both stupid and interesting. Heiarchial threading (sp?) does a better job of displaying the conversation structure. Why don't more websites use it? It's not a new idea, it's also one of the things I like about usenet.
Minor complaint about new/. design: I have a harder time following the structure, children seem to be nowhere near their parent.
Writers Cramp, when I type everything, I don't get writers cramp. I can type all day and maybe get a backache but no writers cramp.
Back in the old days, I like to type for that very reason, but if I made a mistake, I had to retype it or put x's over my mistake if it was casual writing, but a lot of that and I figured even my friends would think I was stupid.
Now, I can type accurately most of the time and fix mistakes quite quickly, so I can go on all day and all night if I like, this box gives me plenty of room. And if I screw up, I doubt the/. community will come and kill me or do anything to my reputation that I didn't deserve.
The "best in the world" doesn't need to work for bargain basement wages. The "best in the world" will be comparing offers from multiple employers in multiple countries. H1B lock is only a problem for the so-so employee whose only competitive advantage is the willingness to work in whatever conditions it takes to land a job in the US.
At this time copyright registration is too easy, it is automatic. Legally everytime you quote my/. message in your/. message, you have infringed my automatic copyright. Of course, that would be rediculous in something that is clearly a forum, a conversation doesn't make sense if you can't tell what is being replied to.
Similarly, books and articles can be seen as messages in threads. This metaphor predates computers. The publishers of the Great Books of the Western World and others have used the metaphor of the The Great Conversation. That all of writing was a conversation where newer authors were responding to older authors. We certainly expect anyone writing a significant work to cite references and even quote when necessary without jumping through too many hoops.
Moving into other media, documentary films can't be made if they can't show what they are documenting. That is the issue beyond the "Eyes on the Prize" controversy where so much of Dr. King's life and words were captured on copyrighted news reels.
Registering and renewing a copyright would be no more difficult than registering and renewing your car. Defending it might require a lawyer, but then, sometimes we use lawyers to handle car related problems, too.
Actually, ranked voting scored by the Condorcet method isn't difficult or confusing. You simply take a list of names and put a 1 next to your first choice, a 2 next to your second choice, a 3 next to your third choice, etc. You do not have to consider the candidates in pairs if that isn't how your brain works.
Scoring is a bit trickier. Using a computerized system would make it easy, but can we trust computers?
There are quite a few voting systems. I like any of the ranked systems over the current plurality system which is ruined by a principle originally credited to Duverger which asserts that a first-past-the-post election system naturally leads to a two-party system.
Having a two party system creates a game where the players fight over the middle while attempting to portray the opposition as extremists. Like in football, a strong defense can be just as useful as a strong offense.
If we had anything other than the current system, the Libertarian Party would attract better candidates. Currently, politicians who care about winning run as Democrats or Republicans. Sure, independents and thirds can make a statement during the campaign season if the media lets them, but a Democrat or a Republican with libertarian leanings can have more influence in the legislature.
Ron Paul is the prime example of how top Libertarians manage their political careers.
I used to think the same up until just recently. Everyone agrees that there is a problem when only 50% of people bother to vote. But, there is no legal imperative for those in power to do anything about it. In fact, they probably like it that way.
So, now we have a situation where an awful lot of people think that their vote doesn't matter, that they have better things to do than wander over to ye ole voting booth. Unfortunately, research indicates that they are probably correct. The elections are always held on a weekday in a precinct close to home when most Americans work nowhere near their home. This problem is being dealt with with advance voting programs and liberalization of absentee ballots, but there is opposition to that, too.
So, if voting was mandatory, most of these nonvoters would probably make it to the polls, where they would vote for someone. Since they were habitual vote wasters anyway, they would be more inclined to waste their vote stratically. By this, I mean protest votes, or maybe what I do. Since in Georgia, the Libertarian Party is the only third party that has ballot access, I vote for them so that they will continue to have ballot access. It is very hard to get on the ballot if you aren't already on it, even if you have a lot of publicity. The petitioning process is very time consuming and expensive. Our state, in it's practical wisdom, has decided that established parties should be allowed to skip that process and spend their resources on other things.
So nonvoters can be considered and ignored. But, protest voters can't. As it is, few nonvoters can be persuaded to voluntarily become protest voters. I still don't like mandatory anything, but high levels of nonvoting have essentially handed our political system over to an elite which comprises ranking members of both predominant parties.
This decade may be the best opportunity in a long time to fix the system. The Democrats are wobbling. The Republicans were able to attract a lot of people who normally vote Democrat, but the Bush administration is messing up that party. Incumbant parties have no inclination to change the system so that other people might take over, but if they keep screwing up, third parties who cooperate with each other might be able to get some feet in the door.
Maybe we'd rather they didn't know these things. While it is scary to think of how technologically unsophisticated some of the people in government are, it is also scary to think of how knowledgable they might be. I'm afraid that they might know just enough to cause problems because they don't know enough to anticipate them.
In fact, isn't it usually the other way around? If your neighbor plays his music loud enough for you to hear, you can have him arrested for disturbing the peace. We have a neighborhood bar that has that problem, it was built to close to some houses. The houses were built first, so they keep shutting down the joint, which sits vacant for a few months until a new victim rents the building.
If you look at the picture, (LTFP), you will see the shop has a private parking lot. While, like with most American strip malls, there probably isn't an attendant verifying that you are a paying customer, you can be told to stay out of the lot if someone notices you or your car there too often. This law is normally used to chase off panhandlers, people who live in a car, and those people who use a parking lot as a shortcut.
But the proper charge for arrest would be trespassing, not theft of services. This is no more a theft than "stealing" a cat that prefers to eat your cat food than that of it's owner who lets it roam.
I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with corporations holding copyright. If Corporation X organized and funded the effort to find a cure for such-and-such a disease or develop a more efficient engine, I've got no problems with said corporation making a profit off of that. After all, without the work provided by that group of people, those innovations probably wouldn't have come about.
What you say has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. Patents, maybe, but that's another IP issue.
A Pirate Party would be much easier to market then an EFF or Libertarian or Green or whatever that wants to be taken seriously. Pirate Party doesn't even bother fighting that battle. People who understand IP issues might vote for them because of that, but plenty of people who can't tell an IP from an AO will vote because it's a fun way to waste a vote.
First, we need to do something about how in the USA, it is almost impossible for a third, fourth, or fifth, not to mention more, party to win an election. When the Repulicrats talk about election reform, they talk about small tweaks that don't do much of anything useful. They stay from any fixes that give more than 2 parties a fighting chance. The Libertarians, Greens, Pirates, etc, don't have much in common except that they aren't electable under the current system. Everyone needs to get together with only one plank, to replace the current election system, then we can hold another election a month or two later. There are democratic governments all over the world we could study and emulate. I kinda like what they do in Australia - voting is mandatory for all citizens, but they have some really cool parties ye can choose as a protest or whatever.
They probably do whatever secret shoppers in brick/mortar stores do. I'm sure they get rid of it somehow, returning may even be specified in the contract.
they'd rather see a spike that gets them $10 million this year than steady growth that gets them $100 over ten years
I would too, unless we experience some really horrible depression. Yeah, I'll take $10 million now and risk that it won't be worth less than $100 in ten years.
then shazaam! we will have the tiered service levels. Those who want superior connections will pay the phone company, the cable company, or someone for a wire while others go wireless.
While I do support the idea of a worldwide wireless mesh, especially in countries that aren't wired, I would like to see the market for paid access operate by free market rules. As is, there is little real competition and too much regulation by the wrong sort of people.
As an engineer, I absolutely hate the idea of offering multiple grades of service by intentionally crippling a product. If a company wants to offer multiple service levels, they should be different in some tangible way. I mean, we aren't all demanding T1 to the house, it would be nice, but I do understand how it would involve a different sort of cabling and more resources especially if I used all the bandwidth.
You make a good point in that the contracts in some industries are more exploitive than in others. This problem might be eliminated by making new acts less eager to sign anything handed to them, but it could also be fixed by making copyrights nonsellable assets. The talent itself is nontransferable, why should the copyright? It isn't much of an incentive to create if it is owned by someone without the necessary talent or if the original creator has died. Sure, a collection of copyrights might make a nice legacy for the kids, but artists can do what everyone else does, buy traditional financial assets such as mutual funds.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, they are doing it again - claiming to be all about creators' rights when they are really only concerned about owners' rights. We need a copyright systems that creates an incentive to create, not just to own.
Very few mothers in Nigeria breastfeed. According to WHO, Nigeria has one of the lowest rates for breastfeeding in the world. What's worse, they mix formula with bad water. Now that AIDS is a problem, many won't breastfeed because of the possibility of transfering the virus from mother to child.
_ global_uptake
Here's a nifty little table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding#Recent
Notice that reportedly 2% of the babies in Nigeria are breastfed while in the UK, the percentage is over 60%. I can't find stats on which country has better sanitation.
I sorta like the slashdot system for moderation, but for some reason, I don't like metamodding.
My idea for a mod system would be sorta diggish, in that everyone who reads can give a thumb up or down at any time, but different users would have different weights based on their karma. Metamodding wouldn't be necessary because the system would be able to see whether your mods were out of whack. The more out of line your mods, the lowing your mod weight would become. Please no fat jokes!
"Alarm Clock that Runs and Hides" is currently on Digg's front page. Didnt /. get that one a month or two ago? I know NPR mentioned it at least a week ago. Either it's a dupe or digg is really slow.
me2
/. is read the replies to my messages. It is cool to see how and why various people disagree or, occasionally, agree with me. I noticed you got a lot of replies to your Stallman messages, so I will have to go there next.
/. has more threads that are interesting including quite a few that are both stupid and interesting. Heiarchial threading (sp?) does a better job of displaying the conversation structure. Why don't more websites use it? It's not a new idea, it's also one of the things I like about usenet.
/. design: I have a harder time following the structure, children seem to be nowhere near their parent.
The first thing I do when I come to
I just went to Digg and checked a few threads, the Apple sweatshop thing and another which I forgot. The comments were stupid and uninteresting.
Minor complaint about new
Writers Cramp, when I type everything, I don't get writers cramp. I can type all day and maybe get a backache but no writers cramp.
/. community will come and kill me or do anything to my reputation that I didn't deserve.
Back in the old days, I like to type for that very reason, but if I made a mistake, I had to retype it or put x's over my mistake if it was casual writing, but a lot of that and I figured even my friends would think I was stupid.
Now, I can type accurately most of the time and fix mistakes quite quickly, so I can go on all day and all night if I like, this box gives me plenty of room. And if I screw up, I doubt the
The "best in the world" doesn't need to work for bargain basement wages. The "best in the world" will be comparing offers from multiple employers in multiple countries. H1B lock is only a problem for the so-so employee whose only competitive advantage is the willingness to work in whatever conditions it takes to land a job in the US.
A Mexican Florida, I can see that!
At this time copyright registration is too easy, it is automatic. Legally everytime you quote my /. message in your /. message, you have infringed my automatic copyright. Of course, that would be rediculous in something that is clearly a forum, a conversation doesn't make sense if you can't tell what is being replied to.
Similarly, books and articles can be seen as messages in threads. This metaphor predates computers. The publishers of the Great Books of the Western World and others have used the metaphor of the The Great Conversation. That all of writing was a conversation where newer authors were responding to older authors. We certainly expect anyone writing a significant work to cite references and even quote when necessary without jumping through too many hoops.
Moving into other media, documentary films can't be made if they can't show what they are documenting. That is the issue beyond the "Eyes on the Prize" controversy where so much of Dr. King's life and words were captured on copyrighted news reels.
Registering and renewing a copyright would be no more difficult than registering and renewing your car. Defending it might require a lawyer, but then, sometimes we use lawyers to handle car related problems, too.
Actually, ranked voting scored by the Condorcet method isn't difficult or confusing. You simply take a list of names and put a 1 next to your first choice, a 2 next to your second choice, a 3 next to your third choice, etc. You do not have to consider the candidates in pairs if that isn't how your brain works.
Scoring is a bit trickier. Using a computerized system would make it easy, but can we trust computers?
There are quite a few voting systems. I like any of the ranked systems over the current plurality system which is ruined by a principle originally credited to Duverger which asserts that a first-past-the-post election system naturally leads to a two-party system.
Having a two party system creates a game where the players fight over the middle while attempting to portray the opposition as extremists. Like in football, a strong defense can be just as useful as a strong offense.
If we had anything other than the current system, the Libertarian Party would attract better candidates. Currently, politicians who care about winning run as Democrats or Republicans. Sure, independents and thirds can make a statement during the campaign season if the media lets them, but a Democrat or a Republican with libertarian leanings can have more influence in the legislature.
Ron Paul is the prime example of how top Libertarians manage their political careers.
I used to think the same up until just recently. Everyone agrees that there is a problem when only 50% of people bother to vote. But, there is no legal imperative for those in power to do anything about it. In fact, they probably like it that way.
So, now we have a situation where an awful lot of people think that their vote doesn't matter, that they have better things to do than wander over to ye ole voting booth. Unfortunately, research indicates that they are probably correct. The elections are always held on a weekday in a precinct close to home when most Americans work nowhere near their home. This problem is being dealt with with advance voting programs and liberalization of absentee ballots, but there is opposition to that, too.
So, if voting was mandatory, most of these nonvoters would probably make it to the polls, where they would vote for someone. Since they were habitual vote wasters anyway, they would be more inclined to
waste their vote stratically. By this, I mean protest votes, or maybe what I do. Since in Georgia, the Libertarian Party is the only third party that has ballot access, I vote for them so that they will continue to have ballot access. It is very hard to get on the ballot if you aren't already on it, even if you have a lot of publicity. The petitioning process is very time consuming and expensive. Our state, in it's practical wisdom, has decided that established parties should be allowed to skip that process and spend their resources on other things.
So nonvoters can be considered and ignored. But, protest voters can't. As it is, few nonvoters can be persuaded to voluntarily become protest voters. I still don't like mandatory anything, but high levels of nonvoting have essentially handed our political system over to an elite which comprises ranking members of both predominant parties.
This decade may be the best opportunity in a long time to fix the system. The Democrats are wobbling. The Republicans were able to attract a lot of people who normally vote Democrat, but the Bush administration is messing up that party. Incumbant parties have no inclination to change the system so that other people might take over, but if they keep screwing up, third parties who cooperate with each other might be able to get some feet in the door.
Maybe we'd rather they didn't know these things. While it is scary to think of how technologically unsophisticated some of the people in government are, it is also scary to think of how knowledgable they might be. I'm afraid that they might know just enough to cause problems because they don't know enough to anticipate them.
In fact, isn't it usually the other way around? If your neighbor plays his music loud enough for you to hear, you can have him arrested for disturbing the peace. We have a neighborhood bar that has that problem, it was built to close to some houses. The houses were built first, so they keep shutting down the joint, which sits vacant for a few months until a new victim rents the building.
If you look at the picture, (LTFP), you will see the shop has a private parking lot. While, like with most American strip malls, there probably isn't an attendant verifying that you are a paying customer, you can be told to stay out of the lot if someone notices you or your car there too often. This law is normally used to chase off panhandlers, people who live in a car, and those people who use a parking lot as a shortcut.
But the proper charge for arrest would be trespassing, not theft of services. This is no more a theft than "stealing" a cat that prefers to eat your cat food than that of it's owner who lets it roam.
I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with corporations holding copyright. If Corporation X organized and funded the effort to find a cure for such-and-such a disease or develop a more efficient engine, I've got no problems with said corporation making a profit off of that. After all, without the work provided by that group of people, those innovations probably wouldn't have come about.
What you say has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. Patents, maybe, but that's another IP issue.
A Pirate Party would be much easier to market then an EFF or Libertarian or Green or whatever that wants to be taken seriously. Pirate Party doesn't even bother fighting that battle. People who understand IP issues might vote for them because of that, but plenty of people who can't tell an IP from an AO will vote because it's a fun way to waste a vote.
Pirates like global warming. It creates large archipelagoes without so many of those nuisance ice bergs floating around.
First, we need to do something about how in the USA, it is almost impossible for a third, fourth, or fifth, not to mention more, party to win an election. When the Repulicrats talk about election reform, they talk about small tweaks that don't do much of anything useful. They stay from any fixes that give more than 2 parties a fighting chance. The Libertarians, Greens, Pirates, etc, don't have much in common except that they aren't electable under the current system. Everyone needs to get together with only one plank, to replace the current election system, then we can hold another election a month or two later. There are democratic governments all over the world we could study and emulate. I kinda like what they do in Australia - voting is mandatory for all citizens, but they have some really cool parties ye can choose as a protest or whatever.
They probably do whatever secret shoppers in brick/mortar stores do. I'm sure they get rid of it somehow, returning may even be specified in the contract.
they'd rather see a spike that gets them $10 million this year than steady growth that gets them $100 over ten years
I would too, unless we experience some really horrible depression. Yeah, I'll take $10 million now and risk that it won't be worth less than $100 in ten years.
then shazaam! we will have the tiered service levels. Those who want superior connections will pay the phone company, the cable company, or someone for a wire while others go wireless.
While I do support the idea of a worldwide wireless mesh, especially in countries that aren't wired, I would like to see the market for paid access operate by free market rules. As is, there is little real competition and too much regulation by the wrong sort of people.
As an engineer, I absolutely hate the idea of offering multiple grades of service by intentionally crippling a product. If a company wants to offer multiple service levels, they should be different in some tangible way. I mean, we aren't all demanding T1 to the house, it would be nice, but I do understand how it would involve a different sort of cabling and more resources especially if I used all the bandwidth.
Is it because they are plain stupids?
/. type people prefer our stupids fancy and complicated?
Don't they know that I and most
You make a good point in that the contracts in some industries are more exploitive than in others. This problem might be eliminated by making new acts less eager to sign anything handed to them, but it could also be fixed by making copyrights nonsellable assets. The talent itself is nontransferable, why should the copyright? It isn't much of an incentive to create if it is owned by someone without the necessary talent or if the original creator has died. Sure, a collection of copyrights might make a nice legacy for the kids, but artists can do what everyone else does, buy traditional financial assets such as mutual funds.