Whoops! In the last part of the first paragraph, I think I meant to say "other evolutionarily advanced traits" or something like that. Sorry!
Re:Have some patience, we'll run across them... ev
on
The Fermi Paradox is Back
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· Score: 2, Interesting
DNA is a late comer. Before that, we think primitive organisms used RNA as a code instead of DNA. We think this is true because the oldest DNA based fossils are the Stromatolites, mats of cyanobacteria which date to about 3 Billion years. From there back to about 3.5 Billion back, the various trace fossils remaining are thought to be mostly RNA based life. DNA is an advanced replicator. The sort of DNA found in eubacteria is more advanced (in that it has some additional error correction mechanisms, meaning it does a more reliable job of copying itself. DNA in multicelular organisms is more advanced still - in fact it can be argued that sexual reproduction, putting the reproductive organs deep inside a parent so they are protected from some chemicals and radiation, and many other evolutionary advanced are all about improving copying fidelity.
Lower mutation probability seems to be something nature is heavily selecting for (which makes sense). Lower mutation probability actually increase the evolution rate (which seems counter-intuitive, but which is just what modern Biologists such as Dawkins will claim, that is lower mutation rate = increased selection rate is the orthodox version of the theory I'm presenting, not some crackpottery. I can go into why this is, but I'd rather people read Gould, Dawkins, and others for themselves and get it from the horse's mouth).
So if modern DNA evolved from more primitive DNA about 1 Billion years ago and Earliest DNA about 3 Billion years back, what happened before? RNA seems to takes us back to about 3.5 Billion years, so given the age of the earth, we have to squeeze probably at least 5 sequentially more primitive replicators, maybe many more than that, into that first 1/2 billion years that are left. Plus, each step back means sloppier copying and a slower overall evolution rate, so each step is more 'miraculous' than the next. (I'm not claiming an automatically supernatural explanation here, just saying that the probabilities seem to be getting really incredibly unlikely, reaching odds of billions to one and then zooming up into really improbable odds, on a par with all the air molecules in the room just happening to all jump to one side type events, when we talk about the first few steps from inorganic clays with various crystaline microstructures to something a little more like a true self replicating molecule).
Now this talk about the 'soup' behaving like it's gonna evolve automagically is another thing. When people run experiments with glass globes full of Methane and Ammonia and electrical arcs and UV for energy sources they very quickly get Amino Acids, usually within a few hours, which is where these 'soup' claims start. But when they first did these same experiments the researchers assumed that they would see Proteins within a few weeks or months, and that part just didn't happen. Getting from Amino Acids to self replication turns out to be Quintillions of times or more harder than these early experiments suggested. Saying that self replication might be a mysterious property distributed throughout the 'soup' as a whole is just another way of ignoring how long the actual hard data tells us those odds are.
Something is fishy as hell with the whole origin of life question, and not just with the Fermi Paradox. Darwin himself knew it - that's why he carefully titled his first book "The Origin of Species" and not "The Origin of Life". By his own writing, he thought he had explained why life, once started, divides up into species and why the fossil record shows species have changed, died out, or been replaced by new one species, but he didn't think he had solved the more ultimate origin problem as well, and in fact thought his theory might pose whole new difficulties in solving it.
Huxley's related book "On the Origin of Species, Or, The Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature", is mostly where people get the idea tha
or are just so different from us that we wouldn't even recognize them as life.
I'm starting to think we need some words or short phrases for very complex patterns that we don't necessarily want to call life. One needs to be a word for something broad enough to include life as a subset, and perhaps one needs to be a word for all the stuff that gets described as "life, Jim, but not as we know it!", Saberhagen's Berserkers, etc.
I just today helped move the furnishings of two young people who had to leave their apartment. They got a cat, and didn't want to pay the 500$ deposit to add a pet. I thought the extra deposit was actually reasonable for a damned fur covered meatloaf that occasionally tears up couches*, but the apartment management also wanted to tack on a 25$ a month additional fee. No change in floor space, and possible damages are already covered, so what's this for? They explained that the management had sent a list around a few months ago with lots of these - 10$/month for keeping a BBQ grill stored on the patio, 10$/month/bike locked in the racks out front, 25$/month extra if you had a motorcycle instead of a car and didn't use 'your' parking space (with this being in reference to on street parking provided by the city, not the apartment management), etc.
When I heard this, I immediately thought of the RIAA/MPAA.
*just keeping the one that keeps climbing onto my desk as I type this humble:-)
Pure unfettered greed is control! Millions of dollars buys a lifestyle. The only thing that only Billions can buy is Power. Look at the situation with films. A few people, i.e. Roger Corman, turn out movies on shoestring budgets. Corman never had a single over budget film or a single flop. His Autoiography is entitled "How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime". He trained some of the best modern directors still working today in their fledgling years, and people such as Speilberg have given him praise for his skill. While his own work was chiefly 'B' movies such as the many Edgar Allen Poe 'adaptations' he directed, his guidance and funding played a large part in many more prestigious films such as "The Lion in Winter" (O'Toole/Hopkins/Hepburn version, not the Patrick Stewart remake). But while directors and actors generally like Corman, He still gets no respect at all from most of the Hollywood producers and certainly not from studio management, and is often treated in a way no one else who even once had the clout to get even a single picture made would expect. With admittedly a very few exceptions, the studios have ignored his methods of getting pictures out on time and budget totally.
Why? Because it's not just about making money to them - it's more about having a film that gets number one's right and left in publicity, that afterwards people will be saying it impacted a whole nation or generation, a film that says you have had more power over the rest of reality, particularly political reality, than all the other guys in the business. Studios routinely take huge chances and lose millions without anyone getting fired.
People who want another good example might read up on the original Planet of the Apes series and what the studio did with the profits from those films.
Or look at Audio. Why did an RIAA member decide that, with rumors of child molestation already developing before they started negotiation, they should put nearly their full year's promotion budget into a Michael Jackson comeback album? Especially, when his last album had sold less than half what Triller did, and he also had developed physical problems with his appearance (also pretty well known within the industry by then)? Maybe you can claim that's still all about money, but to me, it looks more like somebody thought they could reshape public taste any way they wanted, that they had the sheer power to override all the negatives accumulating and turn him back into a literal billion buck ultra-platinum income source. Scarier, there's talk of another comeback attempt this fall. If this is all about money, do you think there there are any real financial arguments for such a second attempt that can sway even a semi-rational corporation into taking such a gamble again? Powerlust makes people take gambles even greed can't.
well IANAL, but if I record a movie could I not just claim it's a set of 20 second clips? I probably wouldn't be able to get away with that,
This is actually well established case law. Over two dozen multiple US decisions in the 1930's, and several cases brought by Bollywood industry agents right after the Berne convention was signed, have all created a remarkably impregnable body of case law, and tlat law says: NO, you can not claim a whole movie is just a collection of 20 second clips. NO, you can't leave just a few 20 second clips out and claim you weren't infringing. and YES, any clip shorter than a single reel of a multi-real feature, or less than 25% of a single reel feature, definitely falls under fair use. (Longer ones also may, if the court determines there was educational, artistic, critical or social purpose in using more of the film, but shorter than that definitely does. An example of fair use comprising more than a single reel's worth of a multi reel film is a documentary on the violence in the film Bonnie and Clyde, that showed ever bit of footage with actual blood visible).
why should they even foot any legal bills arguing the case.
Uhm, how about your 'they' are trying to overturn those two dozen precedents and a body of international law the US has ratified? Also, the very laws that let the movie theatres claim selling you a ticket equals entering into an implied contract stem from some of those very same decisions. If the distributers are now ignoring them, then they can go back to getting the customer's signature on an actual written contract with each sale and keeping those copies for legal record. Oh, but they don't want to do that part!
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
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The DRM Scorecard
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· Score: 1
It has never been legal in your lifetime. Your parents. Your grandparents.
It used to be legal to copy something 14 years after it was made. Hopefully, you and I will both live another 14 years plus. That means there are things coming out right now that would have once been legal to copy in your lifetime, and your parents and grandparents both enjoyed more, much more of the same situation. Then 28 years became the norm, then more. Now it's up to life + 70 years. Since you and the first poster are both writing about corporate copyright, that's up to 99 years.
Right now, there are new releases it will never be legal for you, your children, or your possibly your grandchildren to copy. That's NOT the way it was historically.
The rights agencies are trade associations representing companies that have been given a huge transfer of rights from the individual citizens to their corporate portfolios in my generation, yet whine like spoiled children about how their profit model is still threatened. I guess from the time of the founding fathers to 1976, no entertainment industry ever made a profit.
The plaintiff in this case is in a position where he is conceivably likely to be judged with exceptional harshness by his employer when it comes to possessing perfectly legal porn (or at least it's the common perception of his job situation). His position in the society strongly suggests that the RIAA made a deliberate choice to include the irrelevant information because it would bring extra pressure to settle.
If the Sargent's position and the choice to include the porn info are really more than a coincidence, then the RIAA lawyers lied in court when they claimed it was merely an oversight.
By extension, they likely had intent to damage the Sgt. with his employer, and took the opportunity (Note: If a deliberate lie occurred, then malice is clearly established, and a modus operandi has already been demonstrated and admitted to by the RIAA. Intent, opportunity, method, a grand jury would see at least half the elements of a crime here as solidly proven, others as probable, and likely find plenty of cause to indite.).
The RIAA were also trying to use the courts to accomplish this. That's a general abuse of the legal system that can warrent disbarment, at the very least. Claiming in court that it was just a coincidental mistake would be perjury if there's any evidence the Sgt's position was discussed in this context, and some of the related remarks would likely be multiple counts of contempt of court. There's certainly enough evidence at this point for a judge to subpoena all RIAA documents relating to this case (although Attny/Client privilege will of course limit that). Worse, some possible evidence comes in the form of the RIAA's legal letters to the Sgt. - the RIAA certainly can't prevent him from using them in the civil suite. Those are available to the court, and the RIAA may be sweating over how they were worded even now.
Alternately, RIAA had the full intent to actually threaten the Sgt. with revealing this irrelevant information unless he settled out of court for whatever amount they chose. There's not as much evidence for this, yet, but even that claim already has some supporting evidence established, and something as simple as one sentence in the wording of a letter pressuring the Sgt. to settle could be enough to make a solid case. That action's extortion. Extortion is a major felony. Using the court system to attempt to do it is an aggravating circumstance which normally calls for additional penalties.
Proving either of these to a full legal standard would be challenging, given who's involved. It's still reasonable to suspect that at least one of these two scenarios is true. Maybe the RIAA's lawyers didn't make an actual threat, or even consider it. Maybe they are either more aware of the law or more decent minded. It's still reasonable to figure that if they went that far down the path towards a very serious crime, they likely have done enough to deserve at least the lesser charges.
The only way to know for sure if there's a slippery slope is if the system starts being used more broadly than just for the car thefts and fugitive felon cases described. Even then, I can think of cases most people would like to see included, such as possibly catching pedophiles cruising school areas even if they weren't prior felons, so not all broadening would justify a slippery slope argument in most citizens eyes.
What would? Maybe if the system seemed to be selectively aiding in enforcing just some felonies - but which ones? How about defining something that would justify a slippery slope argument? If we try this for a few years, and somehow, the license plate camera and analysis system seem to be spotting a lot of individual car thieves, but chop shop arrests involving organized theft rings are actually down rather than up to follow, are we on that slope then? How about if a huge percentage of the felonies are drug related busts, and the system isn't catching repeat drunken drivers at nearly the same rates?
Personally, I hold the opinion that any broadening of police powers beyond the stated goals that have been used to sell a law to the general public is a constitutional issue. For example, many RICO and anti-drug laws allow seizure of assets. This was justified to the public by the example of taking fast boats and cars that could aid in interstate flight to avoid prosecution. I hold that extending the principle to houses, which can't be directly used to flee, and can't be sold without a chance for the police to publicly intervene, is unconstitutional thanks to the 'deprived without due process' clause. But SCOTUS disagrees with me on this. I hold that extending copyright as far as we already have violates the 'for a limited time' clause in the constitution, but SCOTUS says 1 day short of eternity is still a limited time. What if the new system results in very selective prosecution, with some minor crimes getting disproportionate emphasis over more major ones? Will SCOTUS say "Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean the 'cruel and unusual' clause is being violated"?
All of these cases involve some people denying any slippery slope exists unless at least one more step, maybe more, happens. In all of them, I think we are pretty far down that slope already, but someone is still saying "No, we're not even on the slope until and unless some more stuff occurs.". So this time, I'd like to know what that more stuff could be, before my tax dollars pay for it all. If you can't conceive of a way this technology could be abused, does that mean there is no way, or that you just didn't think of one?
I'm a little puzzled at those four being linked together myself. Hofstadter is, I'm assuming, Douglas R. Hofstadter. Yes, intellectually challenging, but generally non-fiction. Douglas apparently appreciates Umberto Eco, but I've never seen much overlap between the people who like Hofstadter and the ones who like William Burroughs and George Orwell. These are four authors who have generally been divided into two camps by the 'elite', as in Snow's "Two Cultures". People broad minded enough to read all four might want to broaden a little more and figure TV can't all be a vast wasteland, and popular fiction just might be an OK read, etc.
I've seen specific cases where the increase in copyright duration caused a very non-linear increase in the cost of legal enforcement. In fact, I've seen enough to think this is describable by some sort of exponential function, something in the general range of:
N x existing copyright duration = A x N^3 x existing enforcement cost
The exact function could probably be accurately calculated after enough cases are sampled, but there are so many privacy issues in these court decisions, that knowing how much somebody had to pay their lawyers is often impossible unless the government approves the formal study.
One reason I have suggested a cube as the exponent in the example above is that the number of different copyright holders that have sold or transfered a copyright in its history seems to be going up faster than a square would fit, particularly as one goes farther back in its history. The exact number is doubtless not a simple whole number, but it's probably fairly close to 3. In particular, there's a spike in the great depression years, when many copyrights changed hands very quickly, among a lot of little known publishers. It may seem a bit unfair of me to derive even a rough equation from what looks like data from a very atypical period, but remember, the real cost of enforcing copyright for older works will include researching ownership and transfer happening this far back until at least 2025 AD, by current U. S. law. The theoretical, long term average, perfect model costs of these laws may be lower, but it's the real costs as affected by such events as the great depression's impact on copyright exchange that our society will really be paying. Individual owners will have to pay these for civil copyright enforcement, and the taxpayers as a whole for criminal enforcement.
Now if duration alone actually has such a non-linear effect, what about other changes to the copyright laws? How many of them also, independently, add to enforcement costs with more than unity gain? What about synergistic effects, where these combinations may interact to boost the total costs further, but are unlikely statistically to reduce them? If the cost of litigating over copyright violations is driven high enough, no individual author or small business will be able to get a case into court, and copyright law becomes something that only protects mammoth companies, because they are the only entities left that can afford to invoke it.
Suppose we argue that the EFF is an effective protection against some abuses. If the average cost goes high enough, then the EFF starts needing contributions at a rate similar to or greater than the NRA or ACLU to stay effective. I really don't see the public at large deciding to contribute more to the EFF's cause than they do to these larger organizations. I suspect that's also the sort of "drag(ging)anyone else under" the above poster meant, although he (quite correctly, IMHO) focused on all the damage to hardware makers and non-entertainment business that would be entailed.
I'd bet that if you used windows you'd probably have the same problems.
No, more probably Windows would have dealt with his odd configuration just fine. Now somebody else, somewhere else, has an equally unusual configuration that is running fine in Linux, and Windows would have choked and died over that one, but the two systems have a lot more individual incompatibilities than they do ones in common.
You could add the presentation Powell gave on the Iraqi UAV design. Discussing how much open internal volume was on board to possibly hold a nuke as payload, but not mentioning how those open areas were divided and in some cases irregularly shaped, and totally avoiding the question of whether the tiny aircraft could still fly with such an added payload in an off center of mass location.
This was also used as a proof by circularity in some government arguements. 1. Saddam will soon gain the ability to put something nuke sized aboard an unmanned observer aircraft and thereby get a basic (prop driven) cruise missile THEREFORE building a UAV helps prove Saddam has a nuke program. (Essentially the argument Powell presented to the UN). 2. It would have to be a very small, efficient design, THEREFORE Saddam must be extremely committed to having nukes, to try and hide all the intermediate stages of development needed. (the argument Donald Rumsfield presented when reporters here in the US asked what kind of nuke the UAV might carry, after Powell's presentation)) 3. Saddam would have to devote all the resources of his country to achieve such an ambitious project as developing a 3rd or better generation thermonuclear device small enough to fit in this UAV, especially with no intermediate model testing. THEREFORE he must plan to actually use it against a target that could detect a missile launch. (Again Rumsfield in response to reporters at press conferences) 4. THEREFORE He also must have a massive network of spies in the western nations, trying to steal much of our nuke technology. (Homeland security whitepapers, various interdepartmental press releases. AFAIK, this is the one point where no single name like Rumsfield's, really stands out)
There have been 375 Million copies of these books sold, and probably more than that for movie tickets so far. Normal odds mean quite a few of those readers are bound to be nuts, even if the books don't have any effect on average. In fact, if the books actually helped people's mental state on average, that many readers would still include a bunch of highly visible weirdos who didn't get enough help fast enough. This plagues everything really popular, i.e. Star Trek is judged by the people who get married in Klingon costumes, not the ones who decide to become engineers and/or work for NASA.
There's some good arguments to support your claim - yet I doubt it.
Pro: The classic argument for survival of the fittest religion is Circumcision for the early Hebrews. Other area religions sacrificed their first born sons to the various Bels (Baals in the OT spelling) and Tiamat types. The Jews made it a symbolic sacrifice, their populations grew faster, and they won a series of wars by it, or so the argument goes.
Con: A sexually transmitted disease is a half-assed infectious disease that can't spread by any better means. Sex will transmit even very sensitive germs, easily destroyed by a few seconds exposure to the rest of the environment. Germs that will die from a little cool air or a few seconds exposure to solar UV will manage to pass through intercourse. The real professional infectious diseases have developed methods such as surviving long term in dirty drinking water, exploiting fast multiplying insect species as intermediate hosts, or even the aerosol spread of some plagues, that make them literally billions of times more efficient than STDs at surviving and multiplying. So if a religion tended to survive by discouraging the spread of STDs, One could have done a lot better by discouraging the spread of other diseases. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" would have really caught on. The movement by the dark ages Europeans to reduce bathing (supposedly started to conserve increasingly scarce firewood) would have faltered quickly and not lasted for over 500 years. Similarly, bad beliefs, such as believing that black cats are unlucky and so hunting down animals that slowed the spread of plagues by killing rats, would have died off swiftly as people who believed otherwise tended to survive. If the selection pressure from the black plague and a dozen other major epidemics wasn't enough to make the old black cat superstition die out, then the selection pressure from STDs would just about have to be pretty minimal.
We could have elected a Vietnam veteran (Gore), a Vietnam veteran (Kerry), a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and POW (McCain), a full General who recieved a Silver Star in Vietnam as an infantry Captain and also served in the armor branch (Wes Clark), etc. This is what really puzzles me about the right - even if we totally believe the Swift Boat veterans, the people who have supported GWB's claims to have done proper service, etc, what made Bush 43 a better choice in what's basically a war situation than ALL the other options? Is there some swift boat type group out there that offered proof Clark wasn't really ever promoted above Major, never served in a combat environment, etc? Proof that Gore didn't go to nam? Proof that ALL the alternative candidates whose war time records beat serving stateside were ALL severely tarnished?
1. The current case re. Georgia, with a state atny. general passing out kiddy porn to private citizens in an attempt to justify a malicious prosecution, is all the proof I need that the administrators of justice are not always error free. That's not hypothetical.
2. I offered for the original poster to cite specific circumstances of their lifestyle, and I would attempt to show how those might be used by police to justify further investigation. Baring that poster or someone else having some specific examples, of course the discussion is hypothetical. The only way to turn the discussion into a non-hypothetical one would be if someone wants to cite a real circumstance so I can look for references to that being used in real cases. You seem to be mad because I don't want to do all the work for your side of the arguement as well as my own.
3. The use of the word lying in your post clearly constitutes libel in both uses. That makes you not just another coward, but a criminally minded one. So to take your own question: Why should anyone listen to YOU?
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Don't you mean Irwin's cat?
Whoops! In the last part of the first paragraph, I think I meant to say "other evolutionarily advanced traits" or something like that. Sorry!
DNA is a late comer. Before that, we think primitive organisms used RNA as a code instead of DNA. We think this is true because the oldest DNA based fossils are the Stromatolites, mats of cyanobacteria which date to about 3 Billion years. From there back to about 3.5 Billion back, the various trace fossils remaining are thought to be mostly RNA based life.
DNA is an advanced replicator. The sort of DNA found in eubacteria is more advanced (in that it has some additional error correction mechanisms, meaning it does a more reliable job of copying itself. DNA in multicelular organisms is more advanced still - in fact it can be argued that sexual reproduction, putting the reproductive organs deep inside a parent so they are protected from some chemicals and radiation, and many other evolutionary advanced are all about improving copying fidelity.
Lower mutation probability seems to be something nature is heavily selecting for (which makes sense). Lower mutation probability actually increase the evolution rate (which seems counter-intuitive, but which is just what modern Biologists such as Dawkins will claim, that is lower mutation rate = increased selection rate is the orthodox version of the theory I'm presenting, not some crackpottery. I can go into why this is, but I'd rather people read Gould, Dawkins, and others for themselves and get it from the horse's mouth).
So if modern DNA evolved from more primitive DNA about 1 Billion years ago and Earliest DNA about 3 Billion years back, what happened before? RNA seems to takes us back to about 3.5 Billion years, so given the age of the earth, we have to squeeze probably at least 5 sequentially more primitive replicators, maybe many more than that, into that first 1/2 billion years that are left. Plus, each step back means sloppier copying and a slower overall evolution rate, so each step is more 'miraculous' than the next. (I'm not claiming an automatically supernatural explanation here, just saying that the probabilities seem to be getting really incredibly unlikely, reaching odds of billions to one and then zooming up into really improbable odds, on a par with all the air molecules in the room just happening to all jump to one side type events, when we talk about the first few steps from inorganic clays with various crystaline microstructures to something a little more like a true self replicating molecule).
Now this talk about the 'soup' behaving like it's gonna evolve automagically is another thing. When people run experiments with glass globes full of Methane and Ammonia and electrical arcs and UV for energy sources they very quickly get Amino Acids, usually within a few hours, which is where these 'soup' claims start. But when they first did these same experiments the researchers assumed that they would see Proteins within a few weeks or months, and that part just didn't happen. Getting from Amino Acids to self replication turns out to be Quintillions of times or more harder than these early experiments suggested. Saying that self replication might be a mysterious property distributed throughout the 'soup' as a whole is just another way of ignoring how long the actual hard data tells us those odds are.
Something is fishy as hell with the whole origin of life question, and not just with the Fermi Paradox. Darwin himself knew it - that's why he carefully titled his first book "The Origin of Species" and not "The Origin of Life". By his own writing, he thought he had explained why life, once started, divides up into species and why the fossil record shows species have changed, died out, or been replaced by new one species, but he didn't think he had solved the more ultimate origin problem as well, and in fact thought his theory might pose whole new difficulties in solving it.
Huxley's related book "On the Origin of Species, Or, The Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature", is mostly where people get the idea tha
or are just so different from us that we wouldn't even recognize them as life.
I'm starting to think we need some words or short phrases for very complex patterns that we don't necessarily want to call life. One needs to be a word for something broad enough to include life as a subset, and perhaps one needs to be a word for all the stuff that gets described as "life, Jim, but not as we know it!", Saberhagen's Berserkers, etc.
I just today helped move the furnishings of two young people who had to leave their apartment. They got a cat, and didn't want to pay the 500$ deposit to add a pet. I thought the extra deposit was actually reasonable for a damned fur covered meatloaf that occasionally tears up couches*, but the apartment management also wanted to tack on a 25$ a month additional fee. No change in floor space, and possible damages are already covered, so what's this for? They explained that the management had sent a list around a few months ago with lots of these - 10$/month for keeping a BBQ grill stored on the patio, 10$/month/bike locked in the racks out front, 25$/month extra if you had a motorcycle instead of a car and didn't use 'your' parking space (with this being in reference to on street parking provided by the city, not the apartment management), etc.
:-)
When I heard this, I immediately thought of the RIAA/MPAA.
*just keeping the one that keeps climbing onto my desk as I type this humble
Pure unfettered greed is control! Millions of dollars buys a lifestyle. The only thing that only Billions can buy is Power.
Look at the situation with films. A few people, i.e. Roger Corman, turn out movies on shoestring budgets. Corman never had a single over budget film or a single flop. His Autoiography is entitled "How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime". He trained some of the best modern directors still working today in their fledgling years, and people such as Speilberg have given him praise for his skill. While his own work was chiefly 'B' movies such as the many Edgar Allen Poe 'adaptations' he directed, his guidance and funding played a large part in many more prestigious films such as "The Lion in Winter" (O'Toole/Hopkins/Hepburn version, not the Patrick Stewart remake). But while directors and actors generally like Corman, He still gets no respect at all from most of the Hollywood producers and certainly not from studio management, and is often treated in a way no one else who even once had the clout to get even a single picture made would expect. With admittedly a very few exceptions, the studios have ignored his methods of getting pictures out on time and budget totally.
Why? Because it's not just about making money to them - it's more about having a film that gets number one's right and left in publicity, that afterwards people will be saying it impacted a whole nation or generation, a film that says you have had more power over the rest of reality, particularly political reality, than all the other guys in the business. Studios routinely take huge chances and lose millions without anyone getting fired.
People who want another good example might read up on the original Planet of the Apes series and what the studio did with the profits from those films.
Or look at Audio. Why did an RIAA member decide that, with rumors of child molestation already developing before they started negotiation, they should put nearly their full year's promotion budget into a Michael Jackson comeback album? Especially, when his last album had sold less than half what Triller did, and he also had developed physical problems with his appearance (also pretty well known within the industry by then)? Maybe you can claim that's still all about money, but to me, it looks more like somebody thought they could reshape public taste any way they wanted, that they had the sheer power to override all the negatives accumulating and turn him back into a literal billion buck ultra-platinum income source. Scarier, there's talk of another comeback attempt this fall. If this is all about money, do you think there there are any real financial arguments for such a second attempt that can sway even a semi-rational corporation into taking such a gamble again? Powerlust makes people take gambles even greed can't.
Sometimes I think we need a "+!, prior mod has Asperger's Syndrome" mod.
well IANAL, but if I record a movie could I not just claim it's a set of 20 second clips? I probably wouldn't be able to get away with that,
This is actually well established case law. Over two dozen multiple US decisions in the 1930's, and several cases brought by Bollywood industry agents right after the Berne convention was signed, have all created a remarkably impregnable body of case law, and tlat law says:
NO, you can not claim a whole movie is just a collection of 20 second clips.
NO, you can't leave just a few 20 second clips out and claim you weren't infringing.
and
YES, any clip shorter than a single reel of a multi-real feature, or less than 25% of a single reel feature, definitely falls under fair use. (Longer ones also may, if the court determines there was educational, artistic, critical or social purpose in using more of the film, but shorter than that definitely does. An example of fair use comprising more than a single reel's worth of a multi reel film is a documentary on the violence in the film Bonnie and Clyde, that showed ever bit of footage with actual blood visible).
why should they even foot any legal bills arguing the case.
Uhm, how about your 'they' are trying to overturn those two dozen precedents and a body of international law the US has ratified? Also, the very laws that let the movie theatres claim selling you a ticket equals entering into an implied contract stem from some of those very same decisions. If the distributers are now ignoring them, then they can go back to getting the customer's signature on an actual written contract with each sale and keeping those copies for legal record. Oh, but they don't want to do that part!
It has never been legal in your lifetime. Your parents. Your grandparents.
It used to be legal to copy something 14 years after it was made. Hopefully, you and I will both live another 14 years plus. That means there are things coming out right now that would have once been legal to copy in your lifetime, and your parents and grandparents both enjoyed more, much more of the same situation. Then 28 years became the norm, then more. Now it's up to life + 70 years. Since you and the first poster are both writing about corporate copyright, that's up to 99 years.
Right now, there are new releases it will never be legal for you, your children, or your possibly your grandchildren to copy. That's NOT the way it was historically.
The rights agencies are trade associations representing companies that have been given a huge transfer of rights from the individual citizens to their corporate portfolios in my generation, yet whine like spoiled children about how their profit model is still threatened. I guess from the time of the founding fathers to 1976, no entertainment industry ever made a profit.
The plaintiff in this case is in a position where he is conceivably likely to be judged with exceptional harshness by his employer when it comes to possessing perfectly legal porn (or at least it's the common perception of his job situation). His position in the society strongly suggests that the RIAA made a deliberate choice to include the irrelevant information because it would bring extra pressure to settle.
If the Sargent's position and the choice to include the porn info are really more than a coincidence, then the RIAA lawyers lied in court when they claimed it was merely an oversight.
By extension, they likely had intent to damage the Sgt. with his employer, and took the opportunity (Note: If a deliberate lie occurred, then malice is clearly established, and a modus operandi has already been demonstrated and admitted to by the RIAA. Intent, opportunity, method, a grand jury would see at least half the elements of a crime here as solidly proven, others as probable, and likely find plenty of cause to indite.).
The RIAA were also trying to use the courts to accomplish this. That's a general abuse of the legal system that can warrent disbarment, at the very least. Claiming in court that it was just a coincidental mistake would be perjury if there's any evidence the Sgt's position was discussed in this context, and some of the related remarks would likely be multiple counts of contempt of court. There's certainly enough evidence at this point for a judge to subpoena all RIAA documents relating to this case (although Attny/Client privilege will of course limit that). Worse, some possible evidence comes in the form of the RIAA's legal letters to the Sgt. - the RIAA certainly can't prevent him from using them in the civil suite. Those are available to the court, and the RIAA may be sweating over how they were worded even now.
Alternately, RIAA had the full intent to actually threaten the Sgt. with revealing this irrelevant information unless he settled out of court for whatever amount they chose. There's not as much evidence for this, yet, but even that claim already has some supporting evidence established, and something as simple as one sentence in the wording of a letter pressuring the Sgt. to settle could be enough to make a solid case. That action's extortion. Extortion is a major felony. Using the court system to attempt to do it is an aggravating circumstance which normally calls for additional penalties.
Proving either of these to a full legal standard would be challenging, given who's involved. It's still reasonable to suspect that at least one of these two scenarios is true. Maybe the RIAA's lawyers didn't make an actual threat, or even consider it. Maybe they are either more aware of the law or more decent minded. It's still reasonable to figure that if they went that far down the path towards a very serious crime, they likely have done enough to deserve at least the lesser charges.
The only way to know for sure if there's a slippery slope is if the system starts being used more broadly than just for the car thefts and fugitive felon cases described. Even then, I can think of cases most people would like to see included, such as possibly catching pedophiles cruising school areas even if they weren't prior felons, so not all broadening would justify a slippery slope argument in most citizens eyes.
What would? Maybe if the system seemed to be selectively aiding in enforcing just some felonies - but which ones? How about defining something that would justify a slippery slope argument? If we try this for a few years, and somehow, the license plate camera and analysis system seem to be spotting a lot of individual car thieves, but chop shop arrests involving organized theft rings are actually down rather than up to follow, are we on that slope then? How about if a huge percentage of the felonies are drug related busts, and the system isn't catching repeat drunken drivers at nearly the same rates?
Personally, I hold the opinion that any broadening of police powers beyond the stated goals that have been used to sell a law to the general public is a constitutional issue. For example, many RICO and anti-drug laws allow seizure of assets. This was justified to the public by the example of taking fast boats and cars that could aid in interstate flight to avoid prosecution. I hold that extending the principle to houses, which can't be directly used to flee, and can't be sold without a chance for the police to publicly intervene, is unconstitutional thanks to the 'deprived without due process' clause. But SCOTUS disagrees with me on this. I hold that extending copyright as far as we already have violates the 'for a limited time' clause in the constitution, but SCOTUS says 1 day short of eternity is still a limited time. What if the new system results in very selective prosecution, with some minor crimes getting disproportionate emphasis over more major ones? Will SCOTUS say "Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean the 'cruel and unusual' clause is being violated"?
All of these cases involve some people denying any slippery slope exists unless at least one more step, maybe more, happens. In all of them, I think we are pretty far down that slope already, but someone is still saying "No, we're not even on the slope until and unless some more stuff occurs.". So this time, I'd like to know what that more stuff could be, before my tax dollars pay for it all. If you can't conceive of a way this technology could be abused, does that mean there is no way, or that you just didn't think of one?
Keith doesn't need a shuttle.
Who did write 'The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod'?
P. J. Farmer
I'm a little puzzled at those four being linked together myself. Hofstadter is, I'm assuming, Douglas R. Hofstadter. Yes, intellectually challenging, but generally non-fiction. Douglas apparently appreciates Umberto Eco, but I've never seen much overlap between the people who like Hofstadter and the ones who like William Burroughs and George Orwell. These are four authors who have generally been divided into two camps by the 'elite', as in Snow's "Two Cultures". People broad minded enough to read all four might want to broaden a little more and figure TV can't all be a vast wasteland, and popular fiction just might be an OK read, etc.
I've seen specific cases where the increase in copyright duration caused a very non-linear increase in the cost of legal enforcement. In fact, I've seen enough to think this is describable by some sort of exponential function, something in the general range of:
N x existing copyright duration = A x N^3 x existing enforcement cost
The exact function could probably be accurately calculated after enough cases are sampled, but there are so many privacy issues in these court decisions, that knowing how much somebody had to pay their lawyers is often impossible unless the government approves the formal study.
One reason I have suggested a cube as the exponent in the example above is that the number of different copyright holders that have sold or transfered a copyright in its history seems to be going up faster than a square would fit, particularly as one goes farther back in its history. The exact number is doubtless not a simple whole number, but it's probably fairly close to 3. In particular, there's a spike in the great depression years, when many copyrights changed hands very quickly, among a lot of little known publishers. It may seem a bit unfair of me to derive even a rough equation from what looks like data from a very atypical period, but remember, the real cost of enforcing copyright for older works will include researching ownership and transfer happening this far back until at least 2025 AD, by current U. S. law. The theoretical, long term average, perfect model costs of these laws may be lower, but it's the real costs as affected by such events as the great depression's impact on copyright exchange that our society will really be paying. Individual owners will have to pay these for civil copyright enforcement, and the taxpayers as a whole for criminal enforcement.
Now if duration alone actually has such a non-linear effect, what about other changes to the copyright laws? How many of them also, independently, add to enforcement costs with more than unity gain? What about synergistic effects, where these combinations may interact to boost the total costs further, but are unlikely statistically to reduce them? If the cost of litigating over copyright violations is driven high enough, no individual author or small business will be able to get a case into court, and copyright law becomes something that only protects mammoth companies, because they are the only entities left that can afford to invoke it.
Suppose we argue that the EFF is an effective protection against some abuses. If the average cost goes high enough, then the EFF starts needing contributions at a rate similar to or greater than the NRA or ACLU to stay effective. I really don't see the public at large deciding to contribute more to the EFF's cause than they do to these larger organizations. I suspect that's also the sort of "drag(ging)anyone else under" the above poster meant, although he (quite correctly, IMHO) focused on all the damage to hardware makers and non-entertainment business that would be entailed.
I'd bet that if you used windows you'd probably have the same problems.
No, more probably Windows would have dealt with his odd configuration just fine. Now somebody else, somewhere else, has an equally unusual configuration that is running fine in Linux, and Windows would have choked and died over that one, but the two systems have a lot more individual incompatibilities than they do ones in common.
Yellow cake uranium, lie. Aluminum tubes, lie
You could add the presentation Powell gave on the Iraqi UAV design. Discussing how much open internal volume was on board to possibly hold a nuke as payload, but not mentioning how those open areas were divided and in some cases irregularly shaped, and totally avoiding the question of whether the tiny aircraft could still fly with such an added payload in an off center of mass location.
This was also used as a proof by circularity in some government arguements.
1. Saddam will soon gain the ability to put something nuke sized aboard an unmanned observer aircraft and thereby get a basic (prop driven) cruise missile THEREFORE building a UAV helps prove Saddam has a nuke program. (Essentially the argument Powell presented to the UN).
2. It would have to be a very small, efficient design, THEREFORE Saddam must be extremely committed to having nukes, to try and hide all the intermediate stages of development needed.
(the argument Donald Rumsfield presented when reporters here in the US asked what kind of nuke the UAV might carry, after Powell's presentation))
3. Saddam would have to devote all the resources of his country to achieve such an ambitious project as developing a 3rd or better generation thermonuclear device small enough to fit in this UAV, especially with no intermediate model testing. THEREFORE he must plan to actually use it against a target that could detect a missile launch.
(Again Rumsfield in response to reporters at press conferences)
4. THEREFORE He also must have a massive network of spies in the western nations, trying to steal much of our nuke technology. (Homeland security whitepapers, various interdepartmental press releases. AFAIK, this is the one point where no single name like Rumsfield's, really stands out)
You do understand, don't you, that you've just proved Star Trek is fantasy, not that Harry Potter is SF?
or Burroughs even
Yeah, I grew up on Edgar Rice - those Barsoom books made me a life long fan of reading!
Good on you - Uh, wait, you mean William don't you?
There have been 375 Million copies of these books sold, and probably more than that for movie tickets so far. Normal odds mean quite a few of those readers are bound to be nuts, even if the books don't have any effect on average. In fact, if the books actually helped people's mental state on average, that many readers would still include a bunch of highly visible weirdos who didn't get enough help fast enough. This plagues everything really popular, i.e. Star Trek is judged by the people who get married in Klingon costumes, not the ones who decide to become engineers and/or work for NASA.
There's some good arguments to support your claim - yet I doubt it.
Pro: The classic argument for survival of the fittest religion is Circumcision for the early Hebrews. Other area religions sacrificed their first born sons to the various Bels (Baals in the OT spelling) and Tiamat types. The Jews made it a symbolic sacrifice, their populations grew faster, and they won a series of wars by it, or so the argument goes.
Con: A sexually transmitted disease is a half-assed infectious disease that can't spread by any better means. Sex will transmit even very sensitive germs, easily destroyed by a few seconds exposure to the rest of the environment. Germs that will die from a little cool air or a few seconds exposure to solar UV will manage to pass through intercourse. The real professional infectious diseases have developed methods such as surviving long term in dirty drinking water, exploiting fast multiplying insect species as intermediate hosts, or even the aerosol spread of some plagues, that make them literally billions of times more efficient than STDs at surviving and multiplying. So if a religion tended to survive by discouraging the spread of STDs, One could have done a lot better by discouraging the spread of other diseases.
"Cleanliness is next to Godliness" would have really caught on. The movement by the dark ages Europeans to reduce bathing (supposedly started to conserve increasingly scarce firewood) would have faltered quickly and not lasted for over 500 years. Similarly, bad beliefs, such as believing that black cats are unlucky and so hunting down animals that slowed the spread of plagues by killing rats, would have died off swiftly as people who believed otherwise tended to survive. If the selection pressure from the black plague and a dozen other major epidemics wasn't enough to make the old black cat superstition die out, then the selection pressure from STDs would just about have to be pretty minimal.
We could have elected a Vietnam veteran (Gore), a Vietnam veteran (Kerry), a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and POW (McCain), a full General who recieved a Silver Star in Vietnam as an infantry Captain and also served in the armor branch (Wes Clark), etc. This is what really puzzles me about the right - even if we totally believe the Swift Boat veterans, the people who have supported GWB's claims to have done proper service, etc, what made Bush 43 a better choice in what's basically a war situation than ALL the other options? Is there some swift boat type group out there that offered proof Clark wasn't really ever promoted above Major, never served in a combat environment, etc? Proof that Gore didn't go to nam? Proof that ALL the alternative candidates whose war time records beat serving stateside were ALL severely tarnished?
Does your sister by any chance know an Oslo dentist, who stared in "The Huge Nolars of Horst Nordfink"?
You mean Slashdot isn't a hotbed of Libertarian radicalism?
No, I just mean the Fed hasn't all caught on yet.
1. The current case re. Georgia, with a state atny. general passing out kiddy porn to private citizens in an attempt to justify a malicious prosecution, is all the proof I need that the administrators of justice are not always error free. That's not hypothetical.
2. I offered for the original poster to cite specific circumstances of their lifestyle, and I would attempt to show how those might be used by police to justify further investigation. Baring that poster or someone else having some specific examples, of course the discussion is hypothetical. The only way to turn the discussion into a non-hypothetical one would be if someone wants to cite a real circumstance so I can look for references to that being used in real cases. You seem to be mad because I don't want to do all the work for your side of the arguement as well as my own.
3. The use of the word lying in your post clearly constitutes libel in both uses. That makes you not just another coward, but a criminally minded one. So to take your own question: Why should anyone listen to YOU?
So in effect, you're saying it's just that 80% minority of Vista licences that give the other 20% majority a bad name? :-)