Those are being installed all around Atlanta as we speak. I was at a public feedback meeting for adding HOV lanes to I-285 a month or so ago, and happened to find out that, at least in Atlanta, they were planning to control those onramp lights manually, using cameras and human operators. I don't know how many onramps a single operator is supposed to control, but I could easily imagine him not paying sufficient attention and leaving a ramp sitting on red for a few minutes, or going to the bathroom, or any number of other things.
Because the constitution says so. In Article I, in fact.
WRONG!
Let's examine the clause you cite (which I know very well, because I have a habit of quoting it around here quite often):
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.
So, first part: "Congress shall have power..." but not obligation. Congress may choose to do this, but it doesn't have to. That, right there, makes the "right" described by the clause entirely different than the sort of "God-given," inalienable, fundamental human Right such as the Right to life or liberty. This "right" is not given by God but rather by the whim of Congress, and is much more similar in character to the "right" of driving on public roads, which is really a privilege subject to licensing, and not a Right at all.
Next: "...to promote the progress of science and the useful arts..." Not "to give creators artistic control over their work," and not "to compensate creators for their effort," but to promote progress. This explicitly states that the goal is to place the needs of society as a whole over and above the needs of the creator.
Third: "...by securing for limited times..." The keyword here is limited. Fundamental human rights don't expire. The ownership of real property doesn't expire. But copyrights and patents do expire. Obviously the writers of the Constitution intended copyrights and patents to be different -- and lesser, and more limited -- than real property rights, because otherwise they would have allowed them to extend in perpetuity.
And finally: "...to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." So there's the "right." But as I've already explained, it's not actually a Right (in the "God-given," inalienable, etc. sense that I was referring to originally). Instead, this last phrase has to be considered in it's context. It's actually the least important part of the clause; merely an example of the suggested means of achieving the goal listed at the beginning (i.e., "promoting progress"). I think it's rather unfortunate that it's here, in fact, and would have preferred that the writers of the Constitution leave the question of how best to "promote progress" up to Congress, rather than enshrining this particular method into the most difficult to change body of law.
So, the answer to "why does the copyright holder have to be okay with it?" is not "because the Constitution says so," because the Constitution is all about "promoting progress" not "pleasing the copyright holder!"
No, but we're not talking about being judged by God here; we're talking about being judged by the courts, who use the laws which have their basis in the constitution
I was talking about what would theoretically be best for society, not what the current situation is. If you think I was arguing about the courts' interpretation of things, you're mistaken. Also, when I said "God-given" I didn't mean literally "given by God" (in fact, I'm not even religious), I meant "inherent" or "preceding government." A "God-given" or inherent right is one that's not subject to the opinion of society. For example, black people had the inherent right to fair and equal treatment, by virtue of being human, before 1860; it's just that the people and government of the United States failed to acknowledge that right until the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were ratified. But it still existed. I was asking if you thought that sort of right existed regarding copyright.
The guys who wrote the constitution. For what it's worth, it was
For the hypo where Alice and Bob each own an authorizedly made copy of the CD, where those copies are fungible, and Alice makes an additional copy which she gifts to Bob, I honestly don't see it mattering whether Alice made the copy using her own copy as the source, or Bob's.
You honestly don't see it mattering, and I honestly don't see it mattering, but IIRC the lawyers do see it mattering. That's all I'm trying to say.
No, simple interest is a rate too. Compound interest is when the interest charged to date is rolled into the principal for the next period, while simple interest is when the interest amount per period is calculated based on the original principal. For example, say you've got a loan for $100 at 10% interest for 5 periods (could be months, years, whatever). With simple interest, you'd be charged ($100 * 10%) = $10 interest for the first period, $10 for the second, $10 for the third, etc. With compound interest, you'd be charged ($100 * 10%) = $10 interest for the first period, ($110 * 10%) = $11 for the second, ($121 * 10%) = $12.10 for the third, etc.
But that's not the point. The point is that either way, you're paying interest per period. If you pay back the loan after 1 period (say, with the simple interest example), you pay $110. If you pay it back after 5 periods, you pay $150. You pay more for the privilege of not having to pay the loan back for a longer time. You're essentially renting the money. In the West (where usury is legal and common practice), this is the mechanism that encourages people to pay the loans back. Otherwise, why would they? If they pay $110 whether they "rent" the money for 1 month or 50 years, why not go for the 50 years? Why ever pay it back?
That's what I don't get about the O.P.'s description of Islamic money-lending. I suspect the answer is something simple, like "pay it back in X amount of time, or we cut your hands off." But that's just a guess, and I was asking so that I could learn the real method.
...that's why you can legaly[sic] format shift... [emphasis added]
No, that's why you can legally format shift your copy for your own consumption. According to current copyright law, that's magically somehow different than you shifting your copy for someone else's consumption, or you shifting their copy for their consumption, or any other permutation thereof. No, it doesn't make sense. Yes, I think it's stupid to. But yes, that is the current reality of the situation!
...because of the license she already purchased..
According to the RIAA, she didn't purchase a license (which, in theory, would give her the right to obtain the music in a different format). Nor did she purchase a copy (which, in theory, would give her the right to do what she wanted with that property, including shifting it into a different format). She purchased the intersection (not the union) of a license and a copy, which allows her neither to obtain a format-shifted version, nor format-shift it herself, but only to listen to the particular copy in the original format.
That's according to the RIAA. According to current copyright law, including Fair Use, she purchased a copy (but still not a license), so she's allowed to do the format shifting herself but not obtain a format-shifted version from any other party.
CURRENTLY fair use allows me to do this legally, they are trying to change that into the form that you describe though.
No, what they're trying to change is to make it so that nobody can format shift anybody's copy for anybody's consumption, including their own.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I play one on Slashdot and I'm pretty sure I'm correct.
Which is worse: a nuclear plant giving a few people cancer every once in a while because of an accident, or a coal-fired plant giving a whole bunch of people respiratory disease all of the time because of its normal operation?
If Israel really wanted to nuke the Muslim countries, it would have done so already. Unlike with us and the Soviets, there would be no threat of retaliation in kind (and with all their enemies nuked, there'd be no conventional military retaliation either). So other than the guilt of genocide and the disapproval of the UN (big whoop!), what's the downside?
But Israel hasn't nuked anybody. Therefore, it's not going to.
...and a customizable anti-American slogan at startup.
See, that's where Microsoft went wrong. If they'd allowed "pro-American" slogans too they could have sold it to the Bush administration! Unless, of course, "[the Constitution is] just a God-damned piece of paper" is on the list...?
Does your Mumm own a copy of each song on that CD you cut for her? If so, that cd you gave her as a gift is fair use.
No it's not. Your mom would have had to have owned the particular copy that was used as the source for each of those tracks. Otherwise, you're giving her a "different" thing and it's still copyright infringement.
...it's not automatically "culture" so that anyone in the population can copy and share willy-nilly, without the consent of the work's originator.
Why not? Maybe it should be!
I say that the value of a creative work is precisely it's cultural value, and that that value is maximized when it is in the Public Domain. What makes you think otherwise?
Sharing "culture" isn't stealing nor illegal, as long as the copyright owner of said culture is OK with it.
Why does the copyright owner have to be okay with it? Does he have some God-given Right to say how the work could be used, including the Right to prevent other people from creating new culture based off it? If not, then who decided this privilege should exist? Did society get a vote on it? Is it actually worth it for society to go along with it (i.e., at the expense of the Public Domain)? Have you ever considered any of these issues?
So instead of an HD movie being 50GB, it'll be 100GB? I think broadband has a long way to go before people will stop caring about compression efficiency.
Not to mention that HD is still lower-def than the human brain can perceive.
Then just transcode it for whatever device you want, from the "original" FLAC's. Admittedly, what is lacking (at last in Linux) is some easy software to do this, at least as far as I'm aware.
Transcoding the audio is one thing (in Linux, it can be as easy as piping the output of the FLAC player into the input of the lossy encoder), but translating the metadata is another. FLAC isn't necessarily stored in an Ogg container, you know, nor is it necessarily easy to find things that can translate between Ogg and whatever else.
(It's much worse on Mac OS X, because iTunes does not support FLAC).
Since I keep my music collection on my Mac (although I use Linux and Windows too), I ripped it to Apple Lossless. In theory, I should be able to transcode it into whatever I want. In reality, I wish I could find an ALAC (Apple Lossless) FLAC converter -- I'm pretty sure no such thing existed last time I checked.
So if we assume we need 3 locations to get 1GW of base load, suddenly we need 51,000 acres of wind farm to produce the base load of a 100 acre reactor.
First of all, I don't doubt that that's true. Hell, for the purposes of this argument we'll pad your calculations and assume wind farms will take 100,000 acres (i.e., double your estimate) instead.
But you know what? Your whole argument is bullshit anyway!
Why? Because, unlike with other technologies (including everything from coal to solar), the footprint of a wind farm is mostly made up of the empty space between the turbines! Take a look at that map you cited. Do you notice that much of those high-wind areas (e.g. the entire area between Texas and North Dakota) are currently used for farming? Well, here's a newsflash: you can install a wind farm in those areas and still use them for farming too! The turbines end up taking up very little space, especially compared to razing the whole farm to put up solar collectors or something.
How much environmental damage are we willing to do in the name of wind power providing base load?
We'd need to do less damage than continuing to use coal, I'd bet, and that's all that matters because it'd still be an improvement!
People complain that there's no "silver bullet" that would solve all our energy needs and have no environmental consequences. To this I say, "so the fuck what?" We do have the ability to make incremental improvements, and incremental improvements are still better than the status quo!
What I want to know is that, with hemp being so easy to grow, why the Hell didn't the cotton (and timber!*) growers just switch to it themselves?! For that matter, why don't corn growers just switch to some other crop instead of lobbying for subsidies (or rather, why aren't they forced to do so instead of receiving them)?
(*IIRC, the paper (i.e., timber) industry was a bigger factor than the cotton one, because some big newspaper owner had investments in it, and used his paper to demonize marijuana, black people, and especially the combination thereof.)
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Those are being installed all around Atlanta as we speak. I was at a public feedback meeting for adding HOV lanes to I-285 a month or so ago, and happened to find out that, at least in Atlanta, they were planning to control those onramp lights manually, using cameras and human operators. I don't know how many onramps a single operator is supposed to control, but I could easily imagine him not paying sufficient attention and leaving a ramp sitting on red for a few minutes, or going to the bathroom, or any number of other things.
WRONG!
Let's examine the clause you cite (which I know very well, because I have a habit of quoting it around here quite often):
So, first part: "Congress shall have power..." but not obligation. Congress may choose to do this, but it doesn't have to. That, right there, makes the "right" described by the clause entirely different than the sort of "God-given," inalienable, fundamental human Right such as the Right to life or liberty. This "right" is not given by God but rather by the whim of Congress, and is much more similar in character to the "right" of driving on public roads, which is really a privilege subject to licensing, and not a Right at all.
Next: "...to promote the progress of science and the useful arts..." Not "to give creators artistic control over their work," and not "to compensate creators for their effort," but to promote progress. This explicitly states that the goal is to place the needs of society as a whole over and above the needs of the creator.
Third: "...by securing for limited times..." The keyword here is limited. Fundamental human rights don't expire. The ownership of real property doesn't expire. But copyrights and patents do expire. Obviously the writers of the Constitution intended copyrights and patents to be different -- and lesser, and more limited -- than real property rights, because otherwise they would have allowed them to extend in perpetuity.
And finally: "...to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." So there's the "right." But as I've already explained, it's not actually a Right (in the "God-given," inalienable, etc. sense that I was referring to originally). Instead, this last phrase has to be considered in it's context. It's actually the least important part of the clause; merely an example of the suggested means of achieving the goal listed at the beginning (i.e., "promoting progress"). I think it's rather unfortunate that it's here, in fact, and would have preferred that the writers of the Constitution leave the question of how best to "promote progress" up to Congress, rather than enshrining this particular method into the most difficult to change body of law.
So, the answer to "why does the copyright holder have to be okay with it?" is not "because the Constitution says so," because the Constitution is all about "promoting progress" not "pleasing the copyright holder!"
I was talking about what would theoretically be best for society, not what the current situation is. If you think I was arguing about the courts' interpretation of things, you're mistaken. Also, when I said "God-given" I didn't mean literally "given by God" (in fact, I'm not even religious), I meant "inherent" or "preceding government." A "God-given" or inherent right is one that's not subject to the opinion of society. For example, black people had the inherent right to fair and equal treatment, by virtue of being human, before 1860; it's just that the people and government of the United States failed to acknowledge that right until the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were ratified. But it still existed. I was asking if you thought that sort of right existed regarding copyright.
You honestly don't see it mattering, and I honestly don't see it mattering, but IIRC the lawyers do see it mattering. That's all I'm trying to say.
Half-Life 1 (at least, the old non-Steam version) could be played as a music CD too.
What I'd like to know is how to find versions that sound exactly like the originals.
No, simple interest is a rate too. Compound interest is when the interest charged to date is rolled into the principal for the next period, while simple interest is when the interest amount per period is calculated based on the original principal. For example, say you've got a loan for $100 at 10% interest for 5 periods (could be months, years, whatever). With simple interest, you'd be charged ($100 * 10%) = $10 interest for the first period, $10 for the second, $10 for the third, etc. With compound interest, you'd be charged ($100 * 10%) = $10 interest for the first period, ($110 * 10%) = $11 for the second, ($121 * 10%) = $12.10 for the third, etc.
But that's not the point. The point is that either way, you're paying interest per period. If you pay back the loan after 1 period (say, with the simple interest example), you pay $110. If you pay it back after 5 periods, you pay $150. You pay more for the privilege of not having to pay the loan back for a longer time. You're essentially renting the money. In the West (where usury is legal and common practice), this is the mechanism that encourages people to pay the loans back. Otherwise, why would they? If they pay $110 whether they "rent" the money for 1 month or 50 years, why not go for the 50 years? Why ever pay it back?
That's what I don't get about the O.P.'s description of Islamic money-lending. I suspect the answer is something simple, like "pay it back in X amount of time, or we cut your hands off." But that's just a guess, and I was asking so that I could learn the real method.
No, that's why you can legally format shift your copy for your own consumption. According to current copyright law, that's magically somehow different than you shifting your copy for someone else's consumption, or you shifting their copy for their consumption, or any other permutation thereof. No, it doesn't make sense. Yes, I think it's stupid to. But yes, that is the current reality of the situation!
According to the RIAA, she didn't purchase a license (which, in theory, would give her the right to obtain the music in a different format). Nor did she purchase a copy (which, in theory, would give her the right to do what she wanted with that property, including shifting it into a different format). She purchased the intersection (not the union) of a license and a copy, which allows her neither to obtain a format-shifted version, nor format-shift it herself, but only to listen to the particular copy in the original format.
That's according to the RIAA. According to current copyright law, including Fair Use, she purchased a copy (but still not a license), so she's allowed to do the format shifting herself but not obtain a format-shifted version from any other party.
No, what they're trying to change is to make it so that nobody can format shift anybody's copy for anybody's consumption, including their own.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I play one on Slashdot and I'm pretty sure I'm correct.
Sure it does, if you put wind turbines in enough different places.
Which is worse: a nuclear plant giving a few people cancer every once in a while because of an accident, or a coal-fired plant giving a whole bunch of people respiratory disease all of the time because of its normal operation?
Hey, neat! Does Tehran have a good public transportation system?
If Israel really wanted to nuke the Muslim countries, it would have done so already. Unlike with us and the Soviets, there would be no threat of retaliation in kind (and with all their enemies nuked, there'd be no conventional military retaliation either). So other than the guilt of genocide and the disapproval of the UN (big whoop!), what's the downside?
But Israel hasn't nuked anybody. Therefore, it's not going to.
Well, it's not interest, is it? Interest is calculated as a rate over time, but this is just a flat 10% fee.
How do they ensure they get paid back in a timely fashion?
See, that's where Microsoft went wrong. If they'd allowed "pro-American" slogans too they could have sold it to the Bush administration! Unless, of course, "[the Constitution is] just a God-damned piece of paper" is on the list...?
Because we should get privacy FOR FREE BY DEFAULT!
I applaud their effort so far, but it needs FLAC.
No it's not. Your mom would have had to have owned the particular copy that was used as the source for each of those tracks. Otherwise, you're giving her a "different" thing and it's still copyright infringement.
Yes, copyright law really is that fucked up!
Why not? Maybe it should be!
I say that the value of a creative work is precisely it's cultural value, and that that value is maximized when it is in the Public Domain. What makes you think otherwise?
Why does the copyright owner have to be okay with it? Does he have some God-given Right to say how the work could be used, including the Right to prevent other people from creating new culture based off it? If not, then who decided this privilege should exist? Did society get a vote on it? Is it actually worth it for society to go along with it (i.e., at the expense of the Public Domain)? Have you ever considered any of these issues?
Not to mention that HD is still lower-def than the human brain can perceive.
That's not reasonable. DRM shouldn't be possible!
Transcoding the audio is one thing (in Linux, it can be as easy as piping the output of the FLAC player into the input of the lossy encoder), but translating the metadata is another. FLAC isn't necessarily stored in an Ogg container, you know, nor is it necessarily easy to find things that can translate between Ogg and whatever else.
Since I keep my music collection on my Mac (although I use Linux and Windows too), I ripped it to Apple Lossless. In theory, I should be able to transcode it into whatever I want. In reality, I wish I could find an ALAC (Apple Lossless) FLAC converter -- I'm pretty sure no such thing existed last time I checked.
Hey, they wouldn't if all the energy used in manufacturing was electricity produced by wind and solar!
First of all, I don't doubt that that's true. Hell, for the purposes of this argument we'll pad your calculations and assume wind farms will take 100,000 acres (i.e., double your estimate) instead.
But you know what? Your whole argument is bullshit anyway!
Why? Because, unlike with other technologies (including everything from coal to solar), the footprint of a wind farm is mostly made up of the empty space between the turbines! Take a look at that map you cited. Do you notice that much of those high-wind areas (e.g. the entire area between Texas and North Dakota) are currently used for farming? Well, here's a newsflash: you can install a wind farm in those areas and still use them for farming too! The turbines end up taking up very little space, especially compared to razing the whole farm to put up solar collectors or something.
We'd need to do less damage than continuing to use coal, I'd bet, and that's all that matters because it'd still be an improvement!
People complain that there's no "silver bullet" that would solve all our energy needs and have no environmental consequences. To this I say, "so the fuck what?" We do have the ability to make incremental improvements, and incremental improvements are still better than the status quo!
What I want to know is that, with hemp being so easy to grow, why the Hell didn't the cotton (and timber!*) growers just switch to it themselves?! For that matter, why don't corn growers just switch to some other crop instead of lobbying for subsidies (or rather, why aren't they forced to do so instead of receiving them)?
(*IIRC, the paper (i.e., timber) industry was a bigger factor than the cotton one, because some big newspaper owner had investments in it, and used his paper to demonize marijuana, black people, and especially the combination thereof.)