Based on what? Copyright applies to specific words on a page, not the ideas behind those words. Ever hear of the Munsters? Ever wondered why the producers didn't get sued into oblivion by the producers of the Addams Family? Because there is no case in copyright law. There is no room for manouver here.
I don't know about this Harry Potter case, but there is different unrelated law concerning "passing off" - e.g. calling your trainers Hikes or Reebox, or calling your book Henry Potter. Nothing to do with copyright.
The irony is, for most of the consoles to compete with the PC [in MMO titles] they must become more like the PC
This is such a non-sequiteur. If you want to play MMO games that use keyboard and mouse, you already can, on your PC. There is little point for the console makers to move into that space. Console MMOs are being designed differently, to suit the strengths of consoles (we are developing 3 in this office where I'm sitting right now). This comment may be true for a certain limited class of MMOs, but it certainly is not true for MMOs in general, because that's just giving a blinkered view of what MMOs are or can be - namely, that they can only be what's already been done on the PC.
Demon still owe me 160 for the 2 years between the time I cancelled my account with them and the time when I had the offending credit card cancelled (which was apparently the only way to prevent them from charging me month after month after month for dial-up access I never used).
Demon Internet are thieves, plain and simple, and if this post prevents just one person signing up with them then at least I will have hurt them back to the tune of 160 or possibly more.
Nope. DSL in the UK is about $50/month, not $80/month, and that's from BT... you can get wires only much cheaper from Demon. And customer service sucks everywhere... when I was living in the US 2 years ago it was always a 30 minute wait to speak to anyone at the ISP. The UK doesn't have it so bad, although you are screwed if broadband isn't offered in your area.
It is heavy handed banning something outright just because its primary use is antisocial. You don't need to think of a secondary use a priori for this to be the case. A secondary use may pop out of nowhere next week, and it'll be too late because the heavy-handed law has been passed when no-one thought it was too much.
Drugs are different, but ironically drug law is one of the most heavy-handed pieces of legislature there is.
There is a possibility that the elected Allende government would have deteriorated into chaos or civil war or totalitarianism. There is a possibility that it wouldn't. The article you quote obviously assumes this would be the case, by using right-wing economic models. If you use left-wing economic models this isn't so clear. Obviously all we are seeing is a difference of opinion, not "confusion about exactly what Allende was".
I find it difficult to justify CIA intervention in the internal affairs of another country, no matter what any economic model predicts.
Stafford Beer's model has before and since been used in all manner of control situations, with both capitalist and socialist leanings. The model of ownership is independent of the model of control - this is Beer's primary thesis (and the thesis of Cybernetics itself): if there are indeed laws that govern how complex situations are controlled, then they are laws and must apply to all systems.
So yes, you may be right in that this was the intent of Allende's government, but it was not the intent of the system to implement Marxism; it was the intent of the system to allow the efficient implementation of whatever economic system the people, through the democratic process, chose for themselves.
Imagine a business with a really really good computer system that controlled purchasing, distribution, etc. etc. That system could easily be used no matter what the business actually made, and even if the business changed its business from, say, typewriters to computers.
No, crucial design factor. It's a bandwidth issue. Do you have any idea how much bandwidth a true Big Brother system would need? An enormous amount! Modern totalitarian propositions, like tracking every single transaction on the planet, require huge databases and huge pipes. This just wasn't possible in 1973.
Also, I must say that your professor was talking out of his hat. It has been acknowledged by even opponents of the VSM that it's greatest triumph in the Chilean experiment was precisely dealing with a production workers' strike.
The economic theory you're expounding is technically pre-Beer; it doesn't explain why his theories are wrong, it simply assumes they are.
A system which takes individual human actions into account would be totalitarian, and would suffer from information overload. To propose such a system as an alternative to the VSM is to ignore the major design parameters of the VSM.
The point of the VSM is not that it predicts the market, but that it controls the market in real time whatever happens. This is a phenomenon known as ultra-stability and the whole point is that you don't need a perfect model of a black box to control its outputs.
Please read Beer's books... you might learn a thing or two:-)
With respect, Flores is not "the man behind this", although he was by all reports an ardent supporter of Stafford Beer. Dr Beer had developed his Viable System Theory for 20 years prior to the Chilean Experiment and for almost 30 years afterwards.
I disagree with your analysis that this is a centralized system (it was, but only because of technological limitations - i.e. Chile could only afford 2 computers in 1973). We would certainly describe the VSM as a decentralized system today, but the very distinction is somewhat irrelevant - a control system needs to be centralized or decentralized the right amount, neither one extreme nor the other.
It's worse than that. Allende had no particular disagreement with the USA. He just happened to be a socialist, is all.
New Scientist apparently ran a story which stated that what Beer was trying to achieve was impossible, and the article here implies that anything like this "must be" Orwellian in nature, so you can see where the CIA got its extra ammunition from.
What they got was a real-time view of a country falling under CIA coup. Quite a different thing, and says nothing about the functionality of the system (which was fine).
I shall go on.
Cybersyn is the implementation of Stafford Beer's "Viable System Model" which is modelled on the working of the human nervous system.
Totalitarianism would be like if the brain demanded to know every detail of what the hand was doing.
The body doesn't work this way - hand control (for instance) is decentralized, with part being controlled by local "muscle memory", part being controlled where the nerves meet the spinal cord, and part being controlled at different levels of the brain. In order to prevent information overload the information passing upward is filtered at every stage to remove redundancy and irrelevancy.
In Cybersyn, the workings of actual factories was monitored by a couple of IBM/370s (if memory serves) but only statistically, to throw up warning events if the stats went out of whack. These warning events would be passed up to the "industry level", where they would mostly be absorbed since the industry may be operating within tolerances even if the individual factory isnt. Only if the industry had problems would signals be passed to the "master control room".
A highly moving aspect of the whole tale is that the "master control room" is a logical neccessity, but when Beer pointed it out on a system diagram to Allende, his immediate assumption was that the box represented THE PEOPLE.
Actually the Cybersyn implementation couldn't be as decentralized as Beer wanted, because Chile could only afford two computers which, by their nature, had to be centralized processing units. In today's world things would be a lot different, and no doubt Beer would advocate open source as the one way to enforce that the government couldn't be collecting information it shouldn't.
(Repeated because this topic finally made me get an account)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about this Harry Potter case, but there is different unrelated law concerning "passing off" - e.g. calling your trainers Hikes or Reebox, or calling your book Henry Potter. Nothing to do with copyright.
No I didn't. So what? And why does leaving stuff out of a Slashdot post "weaken my position"?
This is such a non-sequiteur. If you want to play MMO games that use keyboard and mouse, you already can, on your PC. There is little point for the console makers to move into that space. Console MMOs are being designed differently, to suit the strengths of consoles (we are developing 3 in this office where I'm sitting right now). This comment may be true for a certain limited class of MMOs, but it certainly is not true for MMOs in general, because that's just giving a blinkered view of what MMOs are or can be - namely, that they can only be what's already been done on the PC.
Demon still owe me 160 for the 2 years between the time I cancelled my account with them and the time when I had the offending credit card cancelled (which was apparently the only way to prevent them from charging me month after month after month for dial-up access I never used). Demon Internet are thieves, plain and simple, and if this post prevents just one person signing up with them then at least I will have hurt them back to the tune of 160 or possibly more.
It's just that 99.99% of successful artists choose to subcontract marketing and distribution to record companies.
Nope. DSL in the UK is about $50/month, not $80/month, and that's from BT ... you can get wires only much cheaper from Demon. And customer service sucks everywhere ... when I was living in the US 2 years ago it was always a 30 minute wait to speak to anyone at the ISP. The UK doesn't have it so bad, although you are screwed if broadband isn't offered in your area.
They don't stand a chance of winning, because no copyright has been broken. They are not copying the text of the books. This lawsuit is frivolous.
Is it copyright infringement? No, because there is no copyright in conceptual material like "vampires can disappear".
Is it "passing off"? No, because there is no claim that this is the same material.
Is it trademark infraction? No, because no trademarks are being misused.
What law exactly are Sony breaking?
Drugs are different, but ironically drug law is one of the most heavy-handed pieces of legislature there is.
There is a possibility that the elected Allende government would have deteriorated into chaos or civil war or totalitarianism. There is a possibility that it wouldn't. The article you quote obviously assumes this would be the case, by using right-wing economic models. If you use left-wing economic models this isn't so clear. Obviously all we are seeing is a difference of opinion, not "confusion about exactly what Allende was".
I find it difficult to justify CIA intervention in the internal affairs of another country, no matter what any economic model predicts.
So yes, you may be right in that this was the intent of Allende's government, but it was not the intent of the system to implement Marxism; it was the intent of the system to allow the efficient implementation of whatever economic system the people, through the democratic process, chose for themselves.
Imagine a business with a really really good computer system that controlled purchasing, distribution, etc. etc. That system could easily be used no matter what the business actually made, and even if the business changed its business from, say, typewriters to computers.
No, crucial design factor. It's a bandwidth issue. Do you have any idea how much bandwidth a true Big Brother system would need? An enormous amount! Modern totalitarian propositions, like tracking every single transaction on the planet, require huge databases and huge pipes. This just wasn't possible in 1973.
Also, I must say that your professor was talking out of his hat. It has been acknowledged by even opponents of the VSM that it's greatest triumph in the Chilean experiment was precisely dealing with a production workers' strike. The economic theory you're expounding is technically pre-Beer; it doesn't explain why his theories are wrong, it simply assumes they are. A system which takes individual human actions into account would be totalitarian, and would suffer from information overload. To propose such a system as an alternative to the VSM is to ignore the major design parameters of the VSM. The point of the VSM is not that it predicts the market, but that it controls the market in real time whatever happens. This is a phenomenon known as ultra-stability and the whole point is that you don't need a perfect model of a black box to control its outputs. Please read Beer's books ... you might learn a thing or two :-)
With respect, Flores is not "the man behind this", although he was by all reports an ardent supporter of Stafford Beer. Dr Beer had developed his Viable System Theory for 20 years prior to the Chilean Experiment and for almost 30 years afterwards. I disagree with your analysis that this is a centralized system (it was, but only because of technological limitations - i.e. Chile could only afford 2 computers in 1973). We would certainly describe the VSM as a decentralized system today, but the very distinction is somewhat irrelevant - a control system needs to be centralized or decentralized the right amount, neither one extreme nor the other.
It's worse than that. Allende had no particular disagreement with the USA. He just happened to be a socialist, is all. New Scientist apparently ran a story which stated that what Beer was trying to achieve was impossible, and the article here implies that anything like this "must be" Orwellian in nature, so you can see where the CIA got its extra ammunition from.
What they got was a real-time view of a country falling under CIA coup. Quite a different thing, and says nothing about the functionality of the system (which was fine).
I shall go on. Cybersyn is the implementation of Stafford Beer's "Viable System Model" which is modelled on the working of the human nervous system. Totalitarianism would be like if the brain demanded to know every detail of what the hand was doing. The body doesn't work this way - hand control (for instance) is decentralized, with part being controlled by local "muscle memory", part being controlled where the nerves meet the spinal cord, and part being controlled at different levels of the brain. In order to prevent information overload the information passing upward is filtered at every stage to remove redundancy and irrelevancy. In Cybersyn, the workings of actual factories was monitored by a couple of IBM/370s (if memory serves) but only statistically, to throw up warning events if the stats went out of whack. These warning events would be passed up to the "industry level", where they would mostly be absorbed since the industry may be operating within tolerances even if the individual factory isnt. Only if the industry had problems would signals be passed to the "master control room". A highly moving aspect of the whole tale is that the "master control room" is a logical neccessity, but when Beer pointed it out on a system diagram to Allende, his immediate assumption was that the box represented THE PEOPLE. Actually the Cybersyn implementation couldn't be as decentralized as Beer wanted, because Chile could only afford two computers which, by their nature, had to be centralized processing units. In today's world things would be a lot different, and no doubt Beer would advocate open source as the one way to enforce that the government couldn't be collecting information it shouldn't. (Repeated because this topic finally made me get an account)