If someone is running Parallels they are doing so to use Windows XP. My main use for Parallels these days is to run OpenOffice under Ubuntu. NeoOffice (OpenOffice port for mac) is, shall we say, slow.
I've not seen the photo but even like that I gave the dude about 10 more likely explanations (the panel was at a different angle, so not reflecting light, so the dust is less visible, or the panel was in a shadow, or behind a part, etc. etc.), but can someone point me to the said photo so I can shut this guy up once and for all. Don't waste your time trying. People like that generally don't believe in conspiracy theories because the theories themselves are particularly compelling or believable. They believe in them because they have a burning need within them to do so. If you want to change his mind, you probably need to employ psychology rather than science.
By putting in such a tax, they'll telling people who are already in favor of legally purchasing downloaded music and are proving it with their purchases, "You're downloading music. Even though it's legal, you're somehow responsible for the fact that some other people are downloading illegal copies and not paying for it. Therefore, we're going to tax you honest people to make up for the losses by the dishonest people." I rather think that what they're saying (and how it will be understood) is "you're buying this from us and you're paying us the protection money so, hey, feel free to make copies for your friends".
I'm thinking that, when future generations look back on this period of time, it will be known as "The Age of Unreason". I think they will be kinder. I think they will remember it as the turbulent times in which we came to terms with being an information society. It's a huge and painful transformation and I think they will realise this and cut us some slack:-)
Now self publishing is very possible, it's getting shelf-space that's difficult. Shelf-space is obsolete. It's google-space you want, and you can get that either by throwing money at it or by being creative. Publishers have no problem doing the former, and writers really shouldn't find the latter much of a problem.
So, your theory is that in some way the strong are mysteriously unable to use guns? This time I must be missing something. A strong man with a gun is about as strong as a weak man with a gun. Take their guns away, and the weak man is toast.
once they work out the bugs they'll be overrunning everybody else I think it'll take a little more effort than just a few rounds of work-out at the local gym for mere bugs to be overrunning us. Now, if instead they could arrange for an automated gamma ray "accident" in army ant territory,/then/ we're talking . . .
(...) Also, I don't think airline staff (that is the flight attentands) will want to mediate the disputes between people loudly yapping on the phone and people who want to sleep quietly. I suspect that till now the airlines were rather thappy to say "the government says you can't use your phone" and not have to worry about this. In the future they'll have to come down on one side or the other. Surely, the airlines have been here before - this is hardly going to be a problem for them.
That's a good point actually. I bought the Radiohead album on their website, and the site truly sucked. They might have done better with an easier to use interface. That really is spot on. I went to the site to see what was going on with the new album, and I couldn't even figure out how I might have bought the damn thing had I wanted to.
My working theory is that in addition to the confusingly psychedelic web site design, they probably rely on JavaScript or somesuch to get to the parts of the site where you can give them money and since I don't tend to activate scripting, that kept me at bay. Once they offload their money-gathering operation to someone who knows how to do that sort of thing right (e.g. amazon), I might even be able to buy their stuff.
(Note to the record companies: this indicates that the middle man isn't going to die anytime soon - artists can't even/collect money/ in a reliable manner . ..)
I suppose I could hold a hand close to a lightbulb, and since I feel the heat on the light side, not along the sides where "friction" should be the greatest... I don't think that would work. The heat output from a lightbulb is likely dominated by the heat generated by the current that is powering its dark-sucking device and so the dark friction heat involved is unlikely to be noticed in comparison. You would probably need considerably more sensitive equipment than a human hand to measure it. The sun only gets as hot as it does because of its/mindboggling/ dark-sucking capabilities. Lightbulbs aren't even wimps in comparison:-)
What you might do, however, is put a bulb in a room with no other dark-suckers in it and then see if dark accumulates on the part of your hand facing away from the bulb. I also suspect you could use reflection to test the theory, but we would first need to know how reflection is supposed to work in the dark-sucking hypothesis.
You're kidding me, right? I mean, I like Led Zep and all, but it's painfully clear that most of their songs have riffs that are "borrowed" from blues artists and others, or are straight out covers. It used to be that you were/expected/ to try and build new culture upon old.
Nowadays, the expectation seems to be that an artist should put himself in the mindset of 10,000BC musician wannabe and build his cultural input from scratch without the benefit of the generations that have come and gone in the intervening millenia.
Too many idiots are opening graphical web development tools and putting together sites that are based on code that to put is simple is total shite. a.k.a. web shites:-)
(. ..) the idea that we should spend ourselves into ruination to transform the world into a magical Disneyland where everything is written in braille, all phones have TDDs and strobes, and all elevations are reached via gradual inclined planes is pure self-important folly. You need to be a bit careful with those strawmen of yours - they burn very easily.
Demanding that a country live up to the agreements it signed is not "overriding its sovereignity". Perhaps not, but demanding that it change its domestic laws certainly is.
So the Belgians who currently pay $100 for a product from the US will pay $150 after the tariff or pay $110 to buy the product from Australia or pay $125 to make it in Belgium itself. Yeah that'll show them!! Well, perhaps, but it might also mean that the US manufacturer is forced to sell much cheaper than he would otherwise have preferred to - even to the extent of selling at a loss just to keep stocks moving.
I've never understood the logic of imposing tariffs to punish the other country - you are only punishing your own citizens by denying them access to cheap goods. It does benefit special interests at home though. It's not a perfect tool by any means, but taking realpolitik into account it's really the only way to punish another nation for violating their trade agreements with you. You're taking a small hit yourself, but the manufacturers in the target nation probably feel the pain more than you do.
It's certainly something that can backfire badly if not handled well.
Who enforces this fine? As I understand it, WTO sanctions can typically be enforced by member nations putting in place tariffs on goods imported from the sanctioned member. That is, Belgium might demand a 50% additional tariff on foodstuffs imported from the US in order to fill up "its" part of the fine. (I have no idea if Belgium is involved or not.)
So you think that US gambling laws are byzantine and contradictory? Fine, take it up with your local state or federal senator. The WTO has NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in this issue. It's simply trying to override the sovereignty of an independent state/nation. When the WTO is trying to override US sovereignty, it is only after the sovereign US said to the WTO "yeah, sure, we'll let you override our sovereignty, no problem" and signed papers to that effect.
You are only as sovereign as your leaders permit you to be.
I personally knew at least one grammy nominated musician who DIED due to complications from diabetes that was never treated properly because he couldn't afford health insurance. And are many more that I don't know or didn't know personally.
How does that fit into your let the punishment fit the crime approach? Heh. There are countless more - COUNTLESS I tell you - that die from disease/every year/ because their employers aren't paying them enough to get it treated. Surely, all these employers should be executed for their horrid crimes!!??
File sharing DOES take the life out of peoples mouths, dude. This is another fallacy. File sharing is the cheapest promotion an artist can get. You see, fans/want/ to buy their idols' music. What is holding them back these days is that pretty much the only thing you can get is either DRM- and/or rootkit-laden crap, or else it's on obsolete media (CDs, etc.).
Given the problems we have with political stuff on Wikipedia, this seems like the worst possible idea for a specialized wiki. (...) Well, if wikipedia is plagued by too much politics, perhaps the hope is that a wikipolitica will be plagued by too many facts?
It may seem like a hopeless idea, but desperate times do call for desparate measures. "No shot too long, no straw too short!"
I would like to point out that you started by saying that copyright does not cover distribution, but that you now say that it/does/ cover distribution so long as it follows after copying. I disagree with the former, not so much with the latter (although that might also be technically wrong for all I know).
To quote para 2 of my country's copyright law (Get. It. Here.):
2. Subject to the limitations laid down in this Act, copyright shall confer the exclusive right to dispose of a literary, scientific or artistic work by producing permanent or temporary copies thereof and by making it available to the public, be it in the original or an altered form, in translation or adaptation, in another literary or artistic form, or by other technical means. The work is made available to the public when a) copies of the work are offered for sale, rental or lending, or otherwise distributed to the public, b) copies of the work are displayed publicly without the use of technical aids, or c) the work is performed publicly. As public performance is also included broadcasting or other transmission by wire or wireless means to the public, hereunder when the work is made available in such a way that the individual can choose the time and place of access to the work.
(my apologies if the formatting is off.)
The above seems to amply cover putting copyrighted works in a publicly accessible directory thereby making it available to the general public, by calling such activity "performing" and making it illegal.
Please note that the English translation of the law is not legally official. It should be more than good enough for a layman's debate though. Also note that the above isn't the full extent of Norwegian copyright law. It goes on to para 61.
Historically a society based on the intellectually elite assuming power is one which benefits the intellectually elite. But surely that is a good thing! Just ask the intellectual elite - they should know. After all, they are the intellectual elite. They know these things:-)
On a more serious note, it should rarely be necessary to cater especially to the intellectual elite. If they are actually worthy of the title, they'll be doing well regardless of the system. (Notwithstanding explicit crusades against the intellectual elite of course - such as Mao's cultural revolution and Pol Pot's little experiment in nation building.)
No-one's ruining this woman's life but herself. She cavalierly helped herself to something she didn't pay anything for, and then made it available for anyone else to do the same. That act certainly denied the record companies a considerably greater sum of money than the value of each copy of each song that she obtained for herself. In the old days, stealing a piece of cheese (or anything really) was a hanging offense. Presumably, most people at the time found this reasonable enough. After all - they had it coming for taking what wasn't theirs. As time went on, however, the British navy found that killing someone just because they misappropriated their neighbour's cards, or dice, or whatever, was a needless waste of human life (and sailor manpower) and they started introducing more lenient punishment for smaller crimes. On a ship of the British navy, stealing a piece of cheese might only get you flogged. Eventually, the idea of "the punishment should fit the crime" worked its way into mainstream society and got adopted into common law.
Yay to Duluth for taking us back to the golden age of 1200AD.
Copyright governs copying, not distribution. I'll start with giving you the benefit of the doubt: you may be living in a very exotic country.
For the rest of us, however, copyright legislation contains more than just the one word "copyright". For the most part, it contains numerous paragraphs with restrictions on copying, distributing and performing the work in question as well as many other restrictions around use of the work.
Slashdot Mirror
That, and the odd game of Konquest, of course
aka "Just because you can't prevent all shooting deaths doesn't mean you shouldn't be putting $billions into the pockets of organized crime."
This has been a public service enlightenment.
"Will that be cellphone or non-cellphone, sir?"
My working theory is that in addition to the confusingly psychedelic web site design, they probably rely on JavaScript or somesuch to get to the parts of the site where you can give them money and since I don't tend to activate scripting, that kept me at bay. Once they offload their money-gathering operation to someone who knows how to do that sort of thing right (e.g. amazon), I might even be able to buy their stuff.
(Note to the record companies: this indicates that the middle man isn't going to die anytime soon - artists can't even
What you might do, however, is put a bulb in a room with no other dark-suckers in it and then see if dark accumulates on the part of your hand facing away from the bulb. I also suspect you could use reflection to test the theory, but we would first need to know how reflection is supposed to work in the dark-sucking hypothesis.
Nowadays, the expectation seems to be that an artist should put himself in the mindset of 10,000BC musician wannabe and build his cultural input from scratch without the benefit of the generations that have come and gone in the intervening millenia.
Why is this a good idea?
It would probably help if you were to point out how what I said is in any way in conflict with what you just said.
It's certainly something that can backfire badly if not handled well.
You are only as sovereign as your leaders permit you to be.
How does that fit into your let the punishment fit the crime approach? Heh. There are countless more - COUNTLESS I tell you - that die from disease
It may seem like a hopeless idea, but desperate times do call for desparate measures. "No shot too long, no straw too short!"
To quote para 2 of my country's copyright law (Get. It. Here.):
(my apologies if the formatting is off.)
The above seems to amply cover putting copyrighted works in a publicly accessible directory thereby making it available to the general public, by calling such activity "performing" and making it illegal.
Please note that the English translation of the law is not legally official. It should be more than good enough for a layman's debate though. Also note that the above isn't the full extent of Norwegian copyright law. It goes on to para 61.
On a more serious note, it should rarely be necessary to cater especially to the intellectual elite. If they are actually worthy of the title, they'll be doing well regardless of the system. (Notwithstanding explicit crusades against the intellectual elite of course - such as Mao's cultural revolution and Pol Pot's little experiment in nation building.)
Yay to Duluth for taking us back to the golden age of 1200AD.
For the rest of us, however, copyright legislation contains more than just the one word "copyright". For the most part, it contains numerous paragraphs with restrictions on copying, distributing and performing the work in question as well as many other restrictions around use of the work.