>Your logic is odd, to say the least. Nearly everybody that this 140 year protection would benefit are Democrats or Progressives. If anything, electing more Democrats might result in copyright protection for an even longer time.
> You do realize, that there is no better, EVER, if there are no content makers, and nobody wants to be one because there is no motivation to do so, so congrats, you've destroyed an industry. What's next?
Hate to break it to you, kid, but there has always been, and will always be, content. It's only in the past century that content was overly monetized and turned into an (arguably criminal) enterprise making billions for a few wealthy individuals and pennies for most creators.
People have always made music, though it wasn't as lucrative for a few lucky individuals as it is now, and although the film industry was born at a bad time, people will continue to make films. If you honestly think that any of the hollywood blockbusters lately are better than something a film student could come up with, let me suggest that you're giving special effects too much weight.
The problem in nearly every system that was affected by an attack comes down to greed (and not just on the malware maker's part). Hospitals are either businesses, expected to make ever greater profits, or government entities expected to save tax dollars (or some combination). They balance the good they do against the money it costs and unfortunately, sick people tend to be on the losing end.
Medical equipment manufacturers are almost universally corporations. If the money is there, they'll keep upgrading equipment forever, but it's usually more profitable to sell something new.
The people responsible for the equipment knew that it was old and out of date. They decided that the money they had should go elsewhere. You're not blaming the victim when someone deliberately stops maintaining his car and gets killed when his brakes fail, even if he didn't have the money to fix them. In fact, I'd say that he's responsible for any injuries to the people in the other car.
There comes a point where hacking has to be considered a force of nature, and the wind does not respect a fool.
How in 2012 are people still unable to distinguish between theft and copyright infringement and how does it get passed slashdot moderators?
For the same reason people have trouble with the difference between "passed" and "past." When written communication is quick and cheap, people don't spend much time on grammatical niceties, assuming that the reader will interpret their meaning.
I agree that it was well executed, but a few issues leapt out at me so fast that it kind of killed the humor of the thing. Saruman's path ends at Isengard. Ugh. Yes, I know the movie only vaguely resembled the books, but it still irks me every time I'm reminded of it.
Money is money because people believe it is money.
Absolutely correct. Any mention of gold after that is only relevant because there's an antique bias toward the metal inflating its worth beyond its actual value.
You mean a multi-billion dollar per annum company, with more money than God, based in a country that doesn't tax them? They paid their stockholders a billion the first quarter of this year. That's a portion of their profits for one quarter. I'm surprised that the antique liability law has survived this long.
I'm not sure that formal comparisons are really going to help anyone. This post is little more than a footnote on a larger report, and it just seems to be stirring up controversy. (Not that I find that surprising here.)
Everyone is going to have different requirements. Try vp8 yourself and draw your own conclusions.
For my purposes, vp8 creates smaller files using higher target bitrates. The only way I can see a difference between two bitsreams of equal size is by scrutinizing individual frames. x264 is still slightly sharper, but not enough to matter to me. They both produce ugly artifacts in dark backgrounds, but you won't see them when viewing the video normally. They both need way too much tweaking to get the best results.
As a general rule, I think I'd change that to, "There is a significant cost to most things, and there are people who want to charge you for everything".
Unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of community standards and stifling of free expression and so on, but we know what's really involved: dirty movies are fun.
You're missing the point. This is not a matter of freedom or the lack thereof, it's a matter of discipline. Since the time of the Spartans battles have often been won by the most disciplined army. Not breaking and running when the enemy charges is important.
Communications discipline is important for the same reasons. In every war the US has been involved in (Viet Nam was the example always taught to me) we learned that not watching what we say can cost us dearly. The military is trying to control information flowing over official military networks. That's strategy, not oppression.
To me this isn't even an issue. I was in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm and I didn't get to do more than glance at a computer network the whole time I was there--and yes, we did have an Internet back then--it didn't do me any permanent harm. I was taught that official computers were for official business. I wouldn't even have considered looking at sports scores on one, and I was a communications/computer technician (most of the time).
You've got a starfaring technology and you want human slaves? Why not simply examine their DNA and clone as many as you need, assuming you don't have the imagination to think up something better?
d. set up trade negotiations for their resources.
You've got a starfaring technology and you want resources from Earth? Like what? You have to spend some amount of energy/time to get here (and back perhaps). Why not use the energy to synthesize any elements/chemical compounds/life you need? I doubt if interstellar travel will ever be that cheap.
The only thing humans could offer that a really advanced civilization might want is amusement. (As in humans and centauri in Babylon 5) The missionary thing falls under that, so I'll give you that one.
Interesting that you have no problem grasping on to an evidenceless belief as long as it doesn't include God and silences any discussion about his existence.
I think Hawking was proposing a trick of mathematics to try to produce a big bang theory that didn't have the problem of a singularity at the beginning. The big bang theory is based on observable evidence. This addition simply creates a theory where mathematics doesn't break down at any point.
To the best of my knowledge, there is very little observable, repeatable evidence of a creator. The question is whether you take the existance of the universe as such.
I seem to recall Stephen Hawking came to the conclusion that the universe had no singularity at zero time because of an imaginary time (?) component that became dominant at the beginning. I don't have a problem picturing the universe as having no beginning, and it short-circuits this sort of mystery.
Larry Niven wrote about this in his Known Space novels. Of course he used thin envelopes made rigid with stasis fields (in other words, massless structure). The stasis blimps were constructed in orbit, then towed to the ground with spacecraft.
As I recall, Hawking concluded in _A Brief History of Time_ that the universe didn't have a beginning per se. I don't remember the details, but he didn't seem to think that the existance of the universe implied a creator.
Slashdot Mirror
>Your logic is odd, to say the least. Nearly everybody that this 140 year protection would benefit are Democrats or Progressives. If anything, electing more Democrats might result in copyright protection for an even longer time.
Citation, or it didn't happen.
> You do realize, that there is no better, EVER, if there are no content makers, and nobody wants to be one because there is no motivation to do so, so congrats, you've destroyed an industry. What's next?
Hate to break it to you, kid, but there has always been, and will always be, content. It's only in the past century that content was overly monetized and turned into an (arguably criminal) enterprise making billions for a few wealthy individuals and pennies for most creators.
People have always made music, though it wasn't as lucrative for a few lucky individuals as it is now, and although the film industry was born at a bad time, people will continue to make films. If you honestly think that any of the hollywood blockbusters lately are better than something a film student could come up with, let me suggest that you're giving special effects too much weight.
The problem in nearly every system that was affected by an attack comes down to greed (and not just on the malware maker's part). Hospitals are either businesses, expected to make ever greater profits, or government entities expected to save tax dollars (or some combination). They balance the good they do against the money it costs and unfortunately, sick people tend to be on the losing end.
Medical equipment manufacturers are almost universally corporations. If the money is there, they'll keep upgrading equipment forever, but it's usually more profitable to sell something new.
The people responsible for the equipment knew that it was old and out of date. They decided that the money they had should go elsewhere. You're not blaming the victim when someone deliberately stops maintaining his car and gets killed when his brakes fail, even if he didn't have the money to fix them. In fact, I'd say that he's responsible for any injuries to the people in the other car.
There comes a point where hacking has to be considered a force of nature, and the wind does not respect a fool.
How in 2012 are people still unable to distinguish between theft and copyright infringement and how does it get passed slashdot moderators?
For the same reason people have trouble with the difference between "passed" and "past." When written communication is quick and cheap, people don't spend much time on grammatical niceties, assuming that the reader will interpret their meaning.
As soon as I read the parent, I thought, "This individual is either exceedingly naive, or really good at trolling." I'm leaning toward the latter.
I agree that it was well executed, but a few issues leapt out at me so fast that it kind of killed the humor of the thing. Saruman's path ends at Isengard. Ugh. Yes, I know the movie only vaguely resembled the books, but it still irks me every time I'm reminded of it.
Money is money because people believe it is money.
Absolutely correct. Any mention of gold after that is only relevant because there's an antique bias toward the metal inflating its worth beyond its actual value.
Money is money because you can spend it.
Look where oil company liability got BP...
You mean a multi-billion dollar per annum company, with more money than God, based in a country that doesn't tax them? They paid their stockholders a billion the first quarter of this year. That's a portion of their profits for one quarter. I'm surprised that the antique liability law has survived this long.
I'm not sure that formal comparisons are really going to help anyone. This post is little more than a footnote on a larger report, and it just seems to be stirring up controversy. (Not that I find that surprising here.)
Everyone is going to have different requirements. Try vp8 yourself and draw your own conclusions.
For my purposes, vp8 creates smaller files using higher target bitrates. The only way I can see a difference between two bitsreams of equal size is by scrutinizing individual frames. x264 is still slightly sharper, but not enough to matter to me. They both produce ugly artifacts in dark backgrounds, but you won't see them when viewing the video normally. They both need way too much tweaking to get the best results.
All that needs to be said about this nonsense has already been said: Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
Trying to reconcile extremely unlikely concepts with reality tends to lead to over-reaction.
Pornography takes a sacred act and makes it profane.
Sacred act? Sex? You're a fundamentalist, aren't you?
As a general rule, I think I'd change that to, "There is a significant cost to most things, and there are people who want to charge you for everything".
Unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of community standards and stifling of free expression and so on, but we know what's really involved: dirty movies are fun.
Queue the song, "Smut".
You're missing the point. This is not a matter of freedom or the lack thereof, it's a matter of discipline. Since the time of the Spartans battles have often been won by the most disciplined army. Not breaking and running when the enemy charges is important.
Communications discipline is important for the same reasons. In every war the US has been involved in (Viet Nam was the example always taught to me) we learned that not watching what we say can cost us dearly. The military is trying to control information flowing over official military networks. That's strategy, not oppression.
To me this isn't even an issue. I was in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm and I didn't get to do more than glance at a computer network the whole time I was there--and yes, we did have an Internet back then--it didn't do me any permanent harm. I was taught that official computers were for official business. I wouldn't even have considered looking at sports scores on one, and I was a communications/computer technician (most of the time).
You've got a starfaring technology and you want human slaves? Why not simply examine their DNA and clone as many as you need, assuming you don't have the imagination to think up something better?
d. set up trade negotiations for their resources.
You've got a starfaring technology and you want resources from Earth? Like what? You have to spend some amount of energy/time to get here (and back perhaps). Why not use the energy to synthesize any elements/chemical compounds/life you need? I doubt if interstellar travel will ever be that cheap.
The only thing humans could offer that a really advanced civilization might want is amusement. (As in humans and centauri in Babylon 5) The missionary thing falls under that, so I'll give you that one.
Then who should we turn to for an objective view of sensitive subjects? Does such a thing exist? Even history books tend to be subjective.
I think Hawking was proposing a trick of mathematics to try to produce a big bang theory that didn't have the problem of a singularity at the beginning. The big bang theory is based on observable evidence. This addition simply creates a theory where mathematics doesn't break down at any point.
To the best of my knowledge, there is very little observable, repeatable evidence of a creator. The question is whether you take the existance of the universe as such.
I seem to recall Stephen Hawking came to the conclusion that the universe had no singularity at zero time because of an imaginary time (?) component that became dominant at the beginning. I don't have a problem picturing the universe as having no beginning, and it short-circuits this sort of mystery.
Larry Niven wrote about this in his Known Space novels. Of course he used thin envelopes made rigid with stasis fields (in other words, massless structure). The stasis blimps were constructed in orbit, then towed to the ground with spacecraft.
As I recall, Hawking concluded in _A Brief History of Time_ that the universe didn't have a beginning per se. I don't remember the details, but he didn't seem to think that the existance of the universe implied a creator.