Many people today only understand these nebulous dual concepts of negative and positive. You can imagine a little scorechart in their heads, and them tallying whatever people say to them, whatever they read, into either one of those lists.
If you were to say to an American nationalist example of one of these people that "America is a great nation!" their positive side lights up. If you were to say "America" has issues with their large prison population. Their negative side lights up and a tick goes into the negative column for you.
Depending on how strongly they feel, going above a threshold ratio of negative ticks to positive ticks will make them hate you. And depending on how energetic they are, they will lash out with just whatever negative comments come to mind. Doesn't matter what, because, hey, who cares what people are actually saying, it just matters that you give negativity back to counter "negativity." All that matters are these general concepts of negative and positive. Love and hate. Good and evil if you will. Always easy symbolism, always the most banal ideas. Thought of anything in between these two concepts is just "self-defeating," "moral relativism," "nihilism," whatever word they latched onto that some "really smart and witty" Coulter-type character said. Criticism is always interpreted as hate, and so emotionally abusive attacks are always returned. Support is always interpreted as love, and so the most fellatio-like praises are always given back.
This almost definitely scores me a negative tick on their scorechart. And if this is all they know of me, they now hate me.
Objectivism is the most baroque, grotesque, venal, intellectually masturbatory philosophy ever constructed.
Just plain disturbing. Pseudo-philosophy for people who have some brains but think they are much smarter than they are and so fail to respect many of the complexities of the world. Just a pet fundamentalism for them to latch onto. If you like some of the ideals in Objectivism, then read some Nozick and Rawls for the love of God, and put down the Rand trash for a little while. They at least have rigor in their philosophy and respect for complexities. Rand just spirals off in petty intellectual obscurantism.
Bitrate, yeah. Not sample rate, that's what I mean. 44.1 doesn't divide too well into 96. And you're lucky to get perfect working samplers in the first place.
"And of course tape can be driven to +9dB recording levels in some cases, but a digital system will clip hard at 0dB."
That's is what it's all about: use.
Theoretically you can absolutely duplicate an analog recording sound in a way that no human can tell the difference. You can at least duplicate it in a way that recreates it when you transfer it to a CD later; this is necessarily true seeing as they're both are just accessible bits.
The thing is, how hard is it to do this, at least, right now? Ridiculously hard. There's no DirectX plugin yet, and it's a long, long, long, long way off.
Though analog can be expensive and tape is finnicky in it's own way, if you're looking for an "analog sound"(as you see written on oh so many digital devices) you'll find that a computer + sound card + pro tools is much more finnicky and/or expensive.
Not to mention that it's not nearly the same to work in front of a computer as it is to work in front of a reel to reel. Being 'virtualized' in the screen is a much different experience than merely being plugged in to a reel to reel. For an artistic process(I hope you're making art, otherwise I'll probably have a minimal interest in your music) these things are important for what you want to do. Even if digital offered a total simulation of analog, it's still just a simulation. Although a lot of Slahdot readers most likely apply a sort of functionalism to a lot that they do, artists are not all total functionalists, and for good reason. The non-functional difference between a simulation and the real thing can still be quite important. Even if just in the process. I don't like quoting it, but "the medium is the message" can be very true for many works of art.
No studio would though, and neither would you if you have any brains. The standard is 44.1khz/16 bit. And that's what you record at. You don't record at one frequency and just to resample when you want it in a consumer format.
"Legislate" is the wrong term. It's best desribed as "asking." He's asking you to call it GNU/Linux. That's all. You don't have to do it, you don't have to listen. But he's asking you.
He doesn't want to take it away from you. He never says that, and he says quite the opposite.
"Why not sue people who call the whole system "Linux"?
There are no legal grounds to sue them, but since we believe in freedom of speech, we wouldn't want to do that anyway. We ask people to call the system "GNU/Linux" because that is the right thing to do.
Shouldn't you put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system "GNU"?
The purpose of the GNU GPL is to protect the users' freedom from those who would make proprietary versions of free software. While it is true that those who call the system "Linux" often do things that limit the users' freedom, such as bundling non-free software with the GNU/Linux system or even developing non-free software for such use, the mere act of calling the system "Linux" does not, in itself, deny users their freedom. It seems improper to make the GPL restrict what name people can use for the system."
The political blogs are largely just internet fantasy sites usually repleat with a dose of pure hatred. They have no connection to the actual world and just go on spiralling out into space with their own fantasies about how the world is and how it should be. (Easy to do when you're largely fuelled by hate and you have plenty of "friends" to back you up). Truly the world extremely complex, in comparison to the simplicity spouted out, it's random, yet these numerologists of economy and policy believe they've cracked it's code and they've reduced the world to a ridiculously simple set of laws. "The islamo-left media/euro alliance is destroying the world!" a la Little Green Footballs. "The megacorp-right/zionist alliance is destroying the world!" a la the left wing blogs.
To be effective you have to adress how it actual is. And you must treat your opponents with respect. You see the people on these sites imagining effective people on their side as just as rabid in hate as they are, but it never happens. Does Dick Cheney hate Jacques Chirac? Maybe deep down, we wouldn't know, and most likely not, and even if, he certainly wouldn't let that affect how he treats the man. Does he call him a "stupid euro leftist" like the people on these political blogs insist? No, because he's not: he's the president of a very rich country and wields a tremendous amount of power(or we're supposed to imagine that he does).
Your true opponents are not morons. They have a coherent set of beliefs and are able to defend them. Opponents who actually are morons, those are people you're supposed to ignore. If you address morons as if they are an actual opponent, except to make some other point, you could be a moron as well.
Treat people with respect, ignore people who use insults. This is what your mom teaches you when you are five. It's as if people get the internet and all of sudden they're four years old again.
Maybe it's telling when you hear very hateful pundits like Michael Savage say that he had a hard childhood, that his parents were mean to him. Perhaps he just missed the lessons of treating others with respect that most kids got. I don't wish to single out the right-wing here. I can't think of a prominent hateful left-wing personality who has told of a harsh childhood. I'd mention them too if I knew. I don't wish to suggest that any sort of a childhood guarantees a certain disposition either; I'm not a big fan of the myths of psychoanalysis.
No one said there was a need or entitlement to support it. It was said that there is a "pressure" to support it. Just like if I save your child from a burning building then you pull me over for speeding(your a cop see) there's a pressure for you not to give me a ticket. I have no right not to get a ticket. There's no need for you not to give me a ticket. But there's a pressure, a moral one, a camaraderie.
People involved want support for it. So they pressure the company. Are they going to the courts saying they have an entitlement? No. They use pressure, forces, to try to get what they want. Just like every single person on this entire planet, except for the most depressed.
No one yet has had the nerve to set off a nuclear device after now that their destructive force has been fully demonstrated. As violent as the terrorists are, they're not completely unthinking people(no matter how much rhetoric one can throw around). Even they may quite possibly deem the idea of creating a radioactive wasteland a bad idea.
What number of these blogs do any research either? It seems to me they mainly all just link to mainstream articles as their source. So what's the difference? You have the occasions where people will get their own information and then post it on a blog, but then, what's special about a blog for that? Any publication would have worked. I have a strong suspicion that blogs are not popular for their functionality, but for the fact that people feel more involved with them, and that's it: a sense of empowerment. A self-esteem promotion for an alienated population. Really they have no positive effect whatsoever, unless you consider giving the bloggers power trips* and the commenters information boners a positive effect.
* The sheer number of blogs that I've read where the blogger repeats something like "we're really changing the world here!" makes me say this. I don't believe they're changing the world much at all, unless they do something particularly special. And I don't know of one blogging event that has been of any significance(don't even mention the Rather thing -- he was an ineffectual, empty, shitty television personality, and he'll be replaced by an equally ineffectual, empty, shitty television personality). Really all they're doing is linking information and adding their own shitty opinion through spin on the story. And then everyone who shares the blog's fundamentalism gather and make comments to each other that can best be described as intellectual fellatio(they'll get blue balls if they don't settle the hard-on the original posting gave them).
But apart from my rants, I'm happy with seeing this proliferation of blogging in the public sphere. Bloggers as a whole being given awards. "Blog" the number one word. One million and one blogs. This proliferation can only mean one thing: its total move into banality. The media of the masses is always banal: it pretends to capture much, but it has far too little to do so. The proliferation will be blogging's own argumentum ad absurdum against it.
The term is moral relativism, and guess who's one of the most influential moral relativist theorists of the 20th century? Leo Strauss. Yeah the neo-con philosopher-king that every one of the "true American" new-guard Republican thinkers praises the hell out of.
Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Kristol(s), the whole PNAC thing: firmly rooted in moral relativism.
Quit repeating punditry and realize the left isn't just morally bankrupt, the right is too.
What do you think of 'child porn' that does not involve children? Like porn with of-age people made to look like children, or just non-photographic, generated images(drawings, CG)?
It is still illegal in the U.S. and many other countries(Japan would be an exception that I know of). Would you agree with it's illegality?
People don't look at what's presented to them anymore.
They can only see common arguments and then when things are said related to those common arguments they try to reduce what is happening around them to those commonalities. So the common argument is "file-trading is legal in Canada because we pay levies" with the response, "no, only downloading is legal, not uploading."
So the one poster says "downloading is legal in Canada" and the brain dead must reduce it to the common argument. So instead of seeing "downloading" he can only see "file-trading." And so gives the canned response.
So that is "WTF." It does make sense in a sad, sad way. Just the argument doesn't.
Looks like it could be San Marino, a small city-state in Italy. But a quick browse of San Marino pictures doesn't come up with anything conclusive. Could be somewhere else in Italy as well.
How can anyone be pretentious about just another run of the mill store? It's a freaking public store. The bathrooms are dirty, high school kids serve you, and any trash can be in there with you. Maybe I'm just overly nilhilistic(people do tell me this, but for this issue I really don't see how it could apply), but what's there to be pretentious about? It's like being proud of your Honda Civic or your clothes: silly.
I guess what I'm asking is, do Starbucks snobs exist? And, if so, may we laugh at them?
The whole internet has turned into LiveJournal. Blog was voted "word of the year" by some group, and that's what the internet shall become: a big, steaming(as in mad, because everyone always seems to be extremely angry and hateful, and as given off some putrid fumes) blog.
See the little line under the image in that BBC article, "Blogs proved useful to many during the US election." And the stakes were so high too! It was either a millionaire, white, old, male, blue-blood, east-coast, lying, corrupt, big-government, big business Republicrat, or a millionaire, white, old, male, blue-blood, east-coast, lying, corrupt big government, big business Republicrat. Truly an historic event!
There could be like two sites. Wikipedia as it is now, is like a Beta, and then you have the assured Release version. When articles are deemed to be correct and of acceptable quality they can be thrown into the Release version, which is not editable.
It's released under the GPL, and all revision are stored. There is correct information on Wikipeida, and lots of it.
In the future, someone could easily compile all of it, do quality assurance and fact checking, choose the best revisions, etc. and then release that with their name behind it with the tag "as correct as any other encyclopedia, but with a whole lot more."
I have all audio things I make and images and various other stuff in folders on my desktop. In various dialogs, it's always easiest in Windows to access the desktop, so that's where I put files.
...what if, instead of trading movie data in which algorithms are used to play, you trade complicated(large!) algorithms which then "play" data that already exists on your computer.
Would this be copyright infringement? You're not trading the work, you're trading a tool to create a simulation of the work. Just like a tool like Windows or BitTorrent can be used to commit copyright infringement, so can this.
Perhaps a better example...
Say in the future when the internet has grown much larger: it has just taken on such a massive proportion. Say there's a billion fansites for the movie Pulp Fiction, each one with a still from the movie, certainly fairuse: a single still from a movie on a fansite. (For the sake of this argument, let's just assume they're fair use). That if you traded an algorithm(MUCH less complicated than the first one!) that could collect all the stills from these sites? Again, would distributing this algorithm be copyright infringement?
Say you had a very large computer with much storage space. You then develop some algorithm which can generate a long string of random data forever. Constantly, and at some amazing speed, creating new data. The algorithm can also allow a user to select a beginning and ending position in the string to extract whatever string of bits as a seperate "work" and then apply whichever DivX and mpeg and jpeg codecs they have. This algorithm can effectively create movies, images, songs that seem intelligble. And, at such a rate that when people create works, they have already been creating in a way not significantly distinguishable to be a different work, by this machine. I could already create this algorithm/program, wouldn't be too hard, although I couldn't use it to create such an amount of data considering resources. But I could create the algorithm. Considering such a situation, it doesn't look like an algorithm for creating a work is sufficient to achieve a copyright on the work it can create. If it was I'm sure someone would do this and gather a monopoly on all possible future works.
From this I link to my original question: are algorithms like the ones described in the first two questions copyright infringing? If they are, then, considering the inverse, how is the algorithm in the third example not copyright creating?
But, let's say the largest copyrighted work is some movie that's 10 hours long for argument. It can be stored with significant semblance in some avi file that is 10GB big, say. I think the current suits have shown that avi files of movies with significant semblance are copyright infringing. Say, though, that you had a file of just 10GB of totally random data. This theoretical, largest copyrighted work can be played from this file with some algorithm and all other copyrighted works can too, with various algorithms. Is trading this file copyright infringment? It's just random data.
If the conclusion of the first three examples and questions is that trading an algorithm that can play from "random" data works with significant semblance to copyrighted works is not copyright infringement, and the conclusion of the last example is that trading random data is not copyright infringment, then...what the hell is copyright infringement?
I wouldn't say I'm pretending to be dense. I'm definitely "pretending" in a sense though. Pretending a position in order to argue, not that I really care. Like accepting a postulate for reasons of logical discourse.
Anyway, moving on.
"A matter of record." This is the sticking point for me. What is the matter of record? Where is the line between accusation and idea? This is my obvious question.
Okay this is what I can extract. Tell me if I got it.
An accusation is recorded in a "record." It can be disproven or proven because it is recorded. It can definitely be seen as either untrue or true.
Unlike ideas, which are not recorded in a "record." Because ideas aren't recorded in this way, there's no way of telling if they're true or not except in completely deductive systems like mathematics(although I think Lakatos would have something to say about that).
But...where or what is this record? How does the event-"accusation" "you raped a child" become eligible to entry to, or exclusion from, this record, while the event-"idea" "you lied about the earth being round", does not? These statements don't seem different in essence to me: they claim something about the world.
So, I guess, I'm sorry(I can't tell you what you plead me to)....no, I don't know the essential difference between an abstract concept and an accusation. I know differences, yes, but none that seem essential to me. Both just claim something about the world and, as you said, can, at most be said to be "either popular or unpopular."
Although a court may say someone did something or not, I wouldn't say that means as much actually happened. So yes(I can tell you what you plead me to!), I know the difference between an abstract concept and an accusation: an accusation can be dealt with in court in cases of libel and slander, while an abstract concept cannot. Unfortunately, this is useless tautology. As I said before, no, I don't see any essential differences.
Slashdot Mirror
Many people today only understand these nebulous dual concepts of negative and positive. You can imagine a little scorechart in their heads, and them tallying whatever people say to them, whatever they read, into either one of those lists.
If you were to say to an American nationalist example of one of these people that "America is a great nation!" their positive side lights up. If you were to say "America" has issues with their large prison population. Their negative side lights up and a tick goes into the negative column for you.
Depending on how strongly they feel, going above a threshold ratio of negative ticks to positive ticks will make them hate you. And depending on how energetic they are, they will lash out with just whatever negative comments come to mind. Doesn't matter what, because, hey, who cares what people are actually saying, it just matters that you give negativity back to counter "negativity." All that matters are these general concepts of negative and positive. Love and hate. Good and evil if you will. Always easy symbolism, always the most banal ideas. Thought of anything in between these two concepts is just "self-defeating," "moral relativism," "nihilism," whatever word they latched onto that some "really smart and witty" Coulter-type character said. Criticism is always interpreted as hate, and so emotionally abusive attacks are always returned. Support is always interpreted as love, and so the most fellatio-like praises are always given back.
This almost definitely scores me a negative tick on their scorechart. And if this is all they know of me, they now hate me.
If you look hard enough you'll see a link for downloads for manual installs which says something like "for people who prefer to use other browsers..."
Objectivism is the most baroque, grotesque, venal, intellectually masturbatory philosophy ever constructed.
Just plain disturbing. Pseudo-philosophy for people who have some brains but think they are much smarter than they are and so fail to respect many of the complexities of the world. Just a pet fundamentalism for them to latch onto. If you like some of the ideals in Objectivism, then read some Nozick and Rawls for the love of God, and put down the Rand trash for a little while. They at least have rigor in their philosophy and respect for complexities. Rand just spirals off in petty intellectual obscurantism.
Hmm, this is good information for me. I guess I was mistaken...
Bitrate, yeah. Not sample rate, that's what I mean. 44.1 doesn't divide too well into 96. And you're lucky to get perfect working samplers in the first place.
"And of course tape can be driven to +9dB recording levels in some cases, but a digital system will clip hard at 0dB."
That's is what it's all about: use.
Theoretically you can absolutely duplicate an analog recording sound in a way that no human can tell the difference. You can at least duplicate it in a way that recreates it when you transfer it to a CD later; this is necessarily true seeing as they're both are just accessible bits.
The thing is, how hard is it to do this, at least, right now? Ridiculously hard. There's no DirectX plugin yet, and it's a long, long, long, long way off.
Though analog can be expensive and tape is finnicky in it's own way, if you're looking for an "analog sound"(as you see written on oh so many digital devices) you'll find that a computer + sound card + pro tools is much more finnicky and/or expensive.
Not to mention that it's not nearly the same to work in front of a computer as it is to work in front of a reel to reel. Being 'virtualized' in the screen is a much different experience than merely being plugged in to a reel to reel. For an artistic process(I hope you're making art, otherwise I'll probably have a minimal interest in your music) these things are important for what you want to do. Even if digital offered a total simulation of analog, it's still just a simulation. Although a lot of Slahdot readers most likely apply a sort of functionalism to a lot that they do, artists are not all total functionalists, and for good reason. The non-functional difference between a simulation and the real thing can still be quite important. Even if just in the process. I don't like quoting it, but "the medium is the message" can be very true for many works of art.
No studio would though, and neither would you if you have any brains. The standard is 44.1khz/16 bit. And that's what you record at. You don't record at one frequency and just to resample when you want it in a consumer format.
As a man who listens to Jandek and is apolitical, I can attest to this. I've always felt very loved.
Wait, I shouldn't have told you about Jandek...
Notice how the big news on the site is the fact that he actually played a live show!
"Legislate" is the wrong term. It's best desribed as "asking." He's asking you to call it GNU/Linux. That's all. You don't have to do it, you don't have to listen. But he's asking you.
He doesn't want to take it away from you. He never says that, and he says quite the opposite.
From his site:
"Why not sue people who call the whole system "Linux"?
There are no legal grounds to sue them, but since we believe in freedom of speech, we wouldn't want to do that anyway. We ask people to call the system "GNU/Linux" because that is the right thing to do.
Shouldn't you put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system "GNU"?
The purpose of the GNU GPL is to protect the users' freedom from those who would make proprietary versions of free software. While it is true that those who call the system "Linux" often do things that limit the users' freedom, such as bundling non-free software with the GNU/Linux system or even developing non-free software for such use, the mere act of calling the system "Linux" does not, in itself, deny users their freedom. It seems improper to make the GPL restrict what name people can use for the system."
Could that be any clearer?
The political blogs are largely just internet fantasy sites usually repleat with a dose of pure hatred. They have no connection to the actual world and just go on spiralling out into space with their own fantasies about how the world is and how it should be. (Easy to do when you're largely fuelled by hate and you have plenty of "friends" to back you up). Truly the world extremely complex, in comparison to the simplicity spouted out, it's random, yet these numerologists of economy and policy believe they've cracked it's code and they've reduced the world to a ridiculously simple set of laws. "The islamo-left media/euro alliance is destroying the world!" a la Little Green Footballs. "The megacorp-right/zionist alliance is destroying the world!" a la the left wing blogs.
To be effective you have to adress how it actual is. And you must treat your opponents with respect. You see the people on these sites imagining effective people on their side as just as rabid in hate as they are, but it never happens. Does Dick Cheney hate Jacques Chirac? Maybe deep down, we wouldn't know, and most likely not, and even if, he certainly wouldn't let that affect how he treats the man. Does he call him a "stupid euro leftist" like the people on these political blogs insist? No, because he's not: he's the president of a very rich country and wields a tremendous amount of power(or we're supposed to imagine that he does).
Your true opponents are not morons. They have a coherent set of beliefs and are able to defend them. Opponents who actually are morons, those are people you're supposed to ignore. If you address morons as if they are an actual opponent, except to make some other point, you could be a moron as well.
Treat people with respect, ignore people who use insults. This is what your mom teaches you when you are five. It's as if people get the internet and all of sudden they're four years old again.
Maybe it's telling when you hear very hateful pundits like Michael Savage say that he had a hard childhood, that his parents were mean to him. Perhaps he just missed the lessons of treating others with respect that most kids got. I don't wish to single out the right-wing here. I can't think of a prominent hateful left-wing personality who has told of a harsh childhood. I'd mention them too if I knew. I don't wish to suggest that any sort of a childhood guarantees a certain disposition either; I'm not a big fan of the myths of psychoanalysis.
No one said there was a need or entitlement to support it. It was said that there is a "pressure" to support it. Just like if I save your child from a burning building then you pull me over for speeding(your a cop see) there's a pressure for you not to give me a ticket. I have no right not to get a ticket. There's no need for you not to give me a ticket. But there's a pressure, a moral one, a camaraderie.
People involved want support for it. So they pressure the company. Are they going to the courts saying they have an entitlement? No. They use pressure, forces, to try to get what they want. Just like every single person on this entire planet, except for the most depressed.
No one yet has had the nerve to set off a nuclear device after now that their destructive force has been fully demonstrated. As violent as the terrorists are, they're not completely unthinking people(no matter how much rhetoric one can throw around). Even they may quite possibly deem the idea of creating a radioactive wasteland a bad idea.
What number of these blogs do any research either? It seems to me they mainly all just link to mainstream articles as their source. So what's the difference? You have the occasions where people will get their own information and then post it on a blog, but then, what's special about a blog for that? Any publication would have worked. I have a strong suspicion that blogs are not popular for their functionality, but for the fact that people feel more involved with them, and that's it: a sense of empowerment. A self-esteem promotion for an alienated population. Really they have no positive effect whatsoever, unless you consider giving the bloggers power trips* and the commenters information boners a positive effect.
* The sheer number of blogs that I've read where the blogger repeats something like "we're really changing the world here!" makes me say this. I don't believe they're changing the world much at all, unless they do something particularly special. And I don't know of one blogging event that has been of any significance(don't even mention the Rather thing -- he was an ineffectual, empty, shitty television personality, and he'll be replaced by an equally ineffectual, empty, shitty television personality). Really all they're doing is linking information and adding their own shitty opinion through spin on the story. And then everyone who shares the blog's fundamentalism gather and make comments to each other that can best be described as intellectual fellatio(they'll get blue balls if they don't settle the hard-on the original posting gave them).
But apart from my rants, I'm happy with seeing this proliferation of blogging in the public sphere. Bloggers as a whole being given awards. "Blog" the number one word. One million and one blogs. This proliferation can only mean one thing: its total move into banality. The media of the masses is always banal: it pretends to capture much, but it has far too little to do so. The proliferation will be blogging's own argumentum ad absurdum against it.
The term is moral relativism, and guess who's one of the most influential moral relativist theorists of the 20th century? Leo Strauss. Yeah the neo-con philosopher-king that every one of the "true American" new-guard Republican thinkers praises the hell out of.
Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Kristol(s), the whole PNAC thing: firmly rooted in moral relativism.
Quit repeating punditry and realize the left isn't just morally bankrupt, the right is too.
Well I'm not sure of all the various laws...but it's illegal to posess in Canada and the US for any reason except for holding it as legal evidence.
So making it or selling it would be illegal as you would posess it in some way.
What do you think of 'child porn' that does not involve children? Like porn with of-age people made to look like children, or just non-photographic, generated images(drawings, CG)?
It is still illegal in the U.S. and many other countries(Japan would be an exception that I know of). Would you agree with it's illegality?
People don't look at what's presented to them anymore.
They can only see common arguments and then when things are said related to those common arguments they try to reduce what is happening around them to those commonalities. So the common argument is "file-trading is legal in Canada because we pay levies" with the response, "no, only downloading is legal, not uploading."
So the one poster says "downloading is legal in Canada" and the brain dead must reduce it to the common argument. So instead of seeing "downloading" he can only see "file-trading." And so gives the canned response.
So that is "WTF." It does make sense in a sad, sad way. Just the argument doesn't.
Looks like it could be San Marino, a small city-state in Italy. But a quick browse of San Marino pictures doesn't come up with anything conclusive. Could be somewhere else in Italy as well.
How can anyone be pretentious about just another run of the mill store? It's a freaking public store. The bathrooms are dirty, high school kids serve you, and any trash can be in there with you. Maybe I'm just overly nilhilistic(people do tell me this, but for this issue I really don't see how it could apply), but what's there to be pretentious about? It's like being proud of your Honda Civic or your clothes: silly.
I guess what I'm asking is, do Starbucks snobs exist? And, if so, may we laugh at them?
The whole internet has turned into LiveJournal. Blog was voted "word of the year" by some group, and that's what the internet shall become: a big, steaming(as in mad, because everyone always seems to be extremely angry and hateful, and as given off some putrid fumes) blog.
See the little line under the image in that BBC article, "Blogs proved useful to many during the US election." And the stakes were so high too! It was either a millionaire, white, old, male, blue-blood, east-coast, lying, corrupt, big-government, big business Republicrat, or a millionaire, white, old, male, blue-blood, east-coast, lying, corrupt big government, big business Republicrat. Truly an historic event!
To add.
There could be like two sites. Wikipedia as it is now, is like a Beta, and then you have the assured Release version. When articles are deemed to be correct and of acceptable quality they can be thrown into the Release version, which is not editable.
Look at it like this.
It's released under the GPL, and all revision are stored. There is correct information on Wikipeida, and lots of it.
In the future, someone could easily compile all of it, do quality assurance and fact checking, choose the best revisions, etc. and then release that with their name behind it with the tag "as correct as any other encyclopedia, but with a whole lot more."
I have all audio things I make and images and various other stuff in folders on my desktop. In various dialogs, it's always easiest in Windows to access the desktop, so that's where I put files.
...what if, instead of trading movie data in which algorithms are used to play, you trade complicated(large!) algorithms which then "play" data that already exists on your computer.
Would this be copyright infringement? You're not trading the work, you're trading a tool to create a simulation of the work. Just like a tool like Windows or BitTorrent can be used to commit copyright infringement, so can this.
Perhaps a better example...
Say in the future when the internet has grown much larger: it has just taken on such a massive proportion. Say there's a billion fansites for the movie Pulp Fiction, each one with a still from the movie, certainly fairuse: a single still from a movie on a fansite. (For the sake of this argument, let's just assume they're fair use). That if you traded an algorithm(MUCH less complicated than the first one!) that could collect all the stills from these sites? Again, would distributing this algorithm be copyright infringement?
Say you had a very large computer with much storage space. You then develop some algorithm which can generate a long string of random data forever. Constantly, and at some amazing speed, creating new data. The algorithm can also allow a user to select a beginning and ending position in the string to extract whatever string of bits as a seperate "work" and then apply whichever DivX and mpeg and jpeg codecs they have. This algorithm can effectively create movies, images, songs that seem intelligble. And, at such a rate that when people create works, they have already been creating in a way not significantly distinguishable to be a different work, by this machine. I could already create this algorithm/program, wouldn't be too hard, although I couldn't use it to create such an amount of data considering resources. But I could create the algorithm. Considering such a situation, it doesn't look like an algorithm for creating a work is sufficient to achieve a copyright on the work it can create. If it was I'm sure someone would do this and gather a monopoly on all possible future works.
From this I link to my original question: are algorithms like the ones described in the first two questions copyright infringing? If they are, then, considering the inverse, how is the algorithm in the third example not copyright creating?
But, let's say the largest copyrighted work is some movie that's 10 hours long for argument. It can be stored with significant semblance in some avi file that is 10GB big, say. I think the current suits have shown that avi files of movies with significant semblance are copyright infringing. Say, though, that you had a file of just 10GB of totally random data. This theoretical, largest copyrighted work can be played from this file with some algorithm and all other copyrighted works can too, with various algorithms. Is trading this file copyright infringment? It's just random data.
If the conclusion of the first three examples and questions is that trading an algorithm that can play from "random" data works with significant semblance to copyrighted works is not copyright infringement, and the conclusion of the last example is that trading random data is not copyright infringment, then...what the hell is copyright infringement?
I wouldn't say I'm pretending to be dense. I'm definitely "pretending" in a sense though. Pretending a position in order to argue, not that I really care. Like accepting a postulate for reasons of logical discourse.
Anyway, moving on.
"A matter of record." This is the sticking point for me. What is the matter of record? Where is the line between accusation and idea? This is my obvious question.
Okay this is what I can extract. Tell me if I got it.
An accusation is recorded in a "record." It can be disproven or proven because it is recorded. It can definitely be seen as either untrue or true.
Unlike ideas, which are not recorded in a "record." Because ideas aren't recorded in this way, there's no way of telling if they're true or not except in completely deductive systems like mathematics(although I think Lakatos would have something to say about that).
But...where or what is this record? How does the event-"accusation" "you raped a child" become eligible to entry to, or exclusion from, this record, while the event-"idea" "you lied about the earth being round", does not? These statements don't seem different in essence to me: they claim something about the world.
So, I guess, I'm sorry(I can't tell you what you plead me to)....no, I don't know the essential difference between an abstract concept and an accusation. I know differences, yes, but none that seem essential to me. Both just claim something about the world and, as you said, can, at most be said to be "either popular or unpopular."
Although a court may say someone did something or not, I wouldn't say that means as much actually happened. So yes(I can tell you what you plead me to!), I know the difference between an abstract concept and an accusation: an accusation can be dealt with in court in cases of libel and slander, while an abstract concept cannot. Unfortunately, this is useless tautology. As I said before, no, I don't see any essential differences.