And ultimately it is optional, you have to choose to sign up.
Is it though? The social networking business model (pre-OpenSocial) was a parasitic, viral one. Every network wanted to make themselves indispensible. If Facebook is the only way to access your friends' photos, you sign up.
Was this argument ever explored legally with regards to software click-wrap licenses? EG. I needed AutoCAD because my colleagues work with it, but I didn't get to negotiate terms.
Is that these devices don't have an on-board power supply. External transformers consume electricity even when the device they are supposed to be powering is switched off. This electrical load is normally included in the figures for energy use while in standby. For these new devices to be truly zero-power in standby, they need to get rid of the power supply. Can they drop the power requirements of an LCD screen to USB level? That's the only universal power supply we have for peripherals right now, and a new one would really end up being only for this, so non-zero.
Corporations can't hold copyright, only the individuals that actually created the work. Work-for-hire would not transfer ownership to the hiring entity.
I think you're missing the reality of the situation. No "work-for-hire" means no "work-for-hire" -- ie working for royalties only. What job do you do? Would you be happy doing it without knowing how much money you'd get at the end of the month?
Work-for-hire transfers risk to the employer as well as ownership, and considering that the risks are normally outwith your control (project cancellation, poor contribution by colleagues, accidental injury or death) it'd be much better to be a plumber or a bricklayer than a programmer, writer or recording artist -- the "information society"was built on work-for-hire.
The only sensible reform for work-for-hire is to take the author's lifespan out of the equation. If it's not his copyright, why should it be tied to his life?
No, you're missing both the essential difference and the essential similarity.
Similarity: there is no tool that can find aesthetically pleasing content -- this is a job for humans.
Difference: the humans on photo sites appreciate quality aesthetics, the humans on video sites appreciate titties and mischief.
Unless you have a closed club, this will always be the way. Viddler et al are happy just now, but there's a flood of MPEG diahorrea headed there way....
Now this is what gets me... everyone keeps going on about mic jacks, like we've got to record our audio and visuals on the same tape.
What I want is a simple time-sync link so that I can use a field recorder to get my sound without the usual in-editor syncing rigmarole. (Yes, there may be some time offsetting required to account for equipment lags and difference in the speeds of sound and light, but it would still be easier.) And I'd also be able to sync multiple cameras.
As an example of why this would help, consider the classic interview set-up: one camera looking over the interviewer's shoulder at the interviewee and one over the interviewee's shoulder pointing at the interviewer. Now, if the cameras are not synced and one interrupts the other, it is a nuisance to edit the switch of cameras. However, pro rigs don't have this problem. For the indie/hobbyist, the pro gear with these features is too expensive, or perhaps they can buy one unit. But if there were "prosumer" units with sync features, I'm sure many indies and hobbyists would buy more cameras. Then I could use a single two-channel recorder (or the audio in of one of the cameras) to capture the dialogue. On my PC, I could then edit like a live TV director does; run both videos (or thumbnails thereof) and just cut between shots. Quick and simple.
So, camcorder makers: build in sync sockets and you encourage people to buy more cameras... more cameras... more cameras....
I don't think we need look to digital stills to see what will happen with cheaper video equipment -- we need only look at YouTube. There has been no cream floating there. A lot of the popular stuff is purile pap generated by bored teens.
Ah but Flickr and Photos.com... Flickr and photos nothing. Still photography is much more accessible to the producer, yes, but much less accessible to the consumer. So while photos.com ratings are gathered by a comtemplative specialist audience, YouTube ratings are gathered by pimply kids who pee themselves at mento-rockets, swearing and happy-slapping.
Face it -- editorial control cannot be replaced with wisdom of the mindless mob.
Stylish, yes; well shot, yes; good vehicle for story, I think not.
I don't know. Too many people, too many bad guys, no way to build tension. I reckon it'd end up on the "aren't soldiers great people" track, which is hard to swallow when we hear every other week about one or two "bad apples" who've been caught raping, pillaging, torturing and murdering.
If he manages to make "Platoon in Space", more power to him, but I don't think that's what the market wants right now....
Is there anything in there that helps the laptop user?
I mean, you can squeeze your entire music collection into a match-box sized media player, but if you want to play games on the road you're expected to carry your collection with you....
Coal, a relatively cheap and readily available source of energy, has an emissions profile at least as harmful as petroleum.
...snip...
An "especially attractive feature" of processing coal and biomass together to make synfuels is that it requires only half the amount of biomaterial as pure biofuel production, while still making fuels with near-zero greenhouse gas emissions, Williams said.
Right, so coal is "at least as harmful" as oil. But it's OK, because using it in a 50:50 mix with biofuels will magically reduce it's carbon footprint to zero.
Yes, I do understand the net zero of the biomass, but I've yet to see a biomass crop that absorbs twice the amount of CO2 it emits.
Near the end of the article, the author states the following:
The concept of gradualism -- the "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time" process described in Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable -- is central to evolution.
OK, so he's a Continuous Evolution (CE) man is he? Well... no.
Let's have a look at the model he created for the Netflix prize.
The program iterates over and over, until the positions stabilize: that is, an equilibrium is reached. This takes quite a few hours, but once it has done it, small changes (such as modifying the data, or modifying a parameter within the program) take very few iterations to re-stabilize the model.
Ah, so a change in the environment results in several iterations of rapid adaptation, followed by a period of stability, followed by further rapid adaptation when another change is introduced. So he's not a CE man, he's a PE man: Punctuated Equilibrium.
Inconsistency 2: Wikipedia vs meme theory
If memes exist, then fundamentalism is a family of memes, ocurring in a number of religions. If we take the standpoint that Darwinian evolution exists, then in fundamentalists we have a crowd that holds a falsity to be true. If the crowd can hold a falsity to be true then a truly open-edit policy should result in the democratic "truth" being an actual falsehood.
Furthermore, all other evolution is divergent -- how does the author feel that he can turn this on his head and create a convergent evolution? No, evolution adapts to an environment, and Wikipedia's environment is people, not truth.
Not one to miss a dig at Dawkins, me, so I'll finish by saying I find it quite funny the number of people who've been convinced by Dawkins' words, but internally reject his science as the tripe it is.
Look, people pay good money for cheat books to unlock all the bonuses and that money doesn't go back into game development -- instead, it pays a few guys to sit in a room and play games exhaustively. In capitalist terms, this is inefficient: the coders can do the job more quickly, hence cheaply. If they sell unlocks, the extra revenue they generate goes to the companies that are writing the games. In the long term, this means that the average player (he who has a bit of patience) pays marginally less.
Do we really need to build a dozen because US, Russia, China, India, Europe, Japan can not agree to invest a billion dollar-equivalents each instead of spending 10 times more money for separate bases?
Co-operation would be good, but would it be the best method? Maybe not. If we have 10 people independently working on 1 problem, we could get as many as 10 solutions. If everyone works together, we get no more than 1 solution. (Of course they'll come up with many ideas, but they'll only fully develop and test one.)
This is not about invention -- it's about engineering. Imagine if the world's civil engineers had all worked together to build bridges and between them, they'd built millions of bridges like the Mississippi bridge that recently collapsed, or the Tahoma narrows bridge. We could now be living in a world without bridges.
And consider the houses in earthquake zones. It's the Big One and 50% of the town is levelled. Had there been one engineering team in charge of all houses, maybe 100% would have been safe -- or maybe 100% would have collapsed.
I can build a shelter with sticks, my fingers and my teeth.
What I cannot do with sticks, my fingers and my teeth is build a millimetre-perfect copy of my neighbour's shelter -- that would require measuring and cutting tools of a precision not possible by hand.
There is a big difference between mimicry and replication.
If it can't be done without technology, it can't be a right. I can't make a perfect copy of an obscure dance CD without tech, so it can't be my right.
If we repealed all copyright tomorrow, we couldn't make it retroactive as people in the past were given a contract by the law for x years. Holywood production would cease -- why spend x million on a film which will be available for free on the net after the first public showing? Why spend x thousand recording an album when it might only sell one copy (to MrUpload69 on Mp3Swap.com)?
OK, so people will still do things "for the love of it", but they are already doing so. Have you any idea how much dross is on YouTube and MySpace Music?
Ah, but that's OK, because we can have the TV, radio and press tell us which ones are worth watching. Except without copyright, there's no way to generate income in the press.
Well, peer review then. Sorry, reviewing is a full time job. If you review one evening a week, you only get through one album -- if that. How can you compare what's available if you're only hearing a tiny fraction of what's there?
And can you trust the reviewers? If there a competition on MySpace conducted by public poll, you can normally predict the winner based on the competitors' friends lists: the one with the most friends wins. Web 2.0 is anything but objective.
[bought tape and CD] And now they want me to buy it again, just so I can play it on my computer.
No, I don't think they ever said "please don't rip the CD to MP3 using readily available tools". Downloading is not really and more convenient than home ripping, and home ripping can only be done by people who own the music. (Well, anyone who has borrowed a copy can too, but that's a side issue.)
Downloading's a bit different in that you don't need to have the original to download an MP3. The vast majority of downloaders don't have the originals. Ergo, lost profits.
Like it or not, they were only speaking up for their rights.
Have you any idea how complicated independence would be?
NHS,
We already have an independent NHS Scotland.
driving licenses, We could devolve those to the...
passport authorities, as there are individual passport issuing offices over the UK, so no major problem in decentralising.
the BBC, As a strictly apolitical entity, it would not be a problem if the BBC took a few years to demerge into individual national public service companies (or for one constituent country to buy other countries out)
not to mention the Army, defence, etc.
The regiments all have a geographical drawn. Breaking the army would not require any major change in hierarchy.
and government efficiency both sides of the border (London Underground versus Edinburgh's parliamentary building)
Actually, the Parliament debacle was managed by Whitehall (as was this year's Scottish election debacle). The only efficiency debate in Scotland is the one over the trams and the airport link.
Romans used to dig going to the arena and watching the bloodsports, often involving the killing of animals. Now we can sit here and pass judgement on them [...], but the fact is that Rome flourished as a society even with this [...].
Rome flourished as an imperial power because of this. By dehumanising their enemies, making the the torture of their prisoners into a form of communal entertainment, they made the population complicit in the brutal regime that they imposed on conquered lands. In the amphitheatres, they prepared their boys for the life of rape and slaughter that awaited them as men in Rome's legions. The soil of Rome was fertilised with the blood of millions.
So all hail the violent media; the wonder of violent video games and blood-soaked DVDs. Without them, we wouldn't be as good at bringing peace and democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Slashdot Mirror
And ultimately it is optional, you have to choose to sign up.
Is it though? The social networking business model (pre-OpenSocial) was a parasitic, viral one. Every network wanted to make themselves indispensible. If Facebook is the only way to access your friends' photos, you sign up.
Was this argument ever explored legally with regards to software click-wrap licenses? EG. I needed AutoCAD because my colleagues work with it, but I didn't get to negotiate terms.
HAL.
Is that these devices don't have an on-board power supply. External transformers consume electricity even when the device they are supposed to be powering is switched off. This electrical load is normally included in the figures for energy use while in standby. For these new devices to be truly zero-power in standby, they need to get rid of the power supply. Can they drop the power requirements of an LCD screen to USB level? That's the only universal power supply we have for peripherals right now, and a new one would really end up being only for this, so non-zero.
HAL.
Corporations can't hold copyright, only the individuals that actually created the work. Work-for-hire would not transfer ownership to the hiring entity.
I think you're missing the reality of the situation. No "work-for-hire" means no "work-for-hire" -- ie working for royalties only. What job do you do? Would you be happy doing it without knowing how much money you'd get at the end of the month?
Work-for-hire transfers risk to the employer as well as ownership, and considering that the risks are normally outwith your control (project cancellation, poor contribution by colleagues, accidental injury or death) it'd be much better to be a plumber or a bricklayer than a programmer, writer or recording artist -- the "information society"was built on work-for-hire.
The only sensible reform for work-for-hire is to take the author's lifespan out of the equation. If it's not his copyright, why should it be tied to his life?
HAL.
Every single one of them was offered treatment.
But not penicillin.
HAL.No, you're missing both the essential difference and the essential similarity.
Similarity: there is no tool that can find aesthetically pleasing content -- this is a job for humans.
Difference: the humans on photo sites appreciate quality aesthetics, the humans on video sites appreciate titties and mischief.
Unless you have a closed club, this will always be the way. Viddler et al are happy just now, but there's a flood of MPEG diahorrea headed there way....
Now this is what gets me... everyone keeps going on about mic jacks, like we've got to record our audio and visuals on the same tape.
What I want is a simple time-sync link so that I can use a field recorder to get my sound without the usual in-editor syncing rigmarole. (Yes, there may be some time offsetting required to account for equipment lags and difference in the speeds of sound and light, but it would still be easier.) And I'd also be able to sync multiple cameras.
As an example of why this would help, consider the classic interview set-up: one camera looking over the interviewer's shoulder at the interviewee and one over the interviewee's shoulder pointing at the interviewer. Now, if the cameras are not synced and one interrupts the other, it is a nuisance to edit the switch of cameras. However, pro rigs don't have this problem. For the indie/hobbyist, the pro gear with these features is too expensive, or perhaps they can buy one unit. But if there were "prosumer" units with sync features, I'm sure many indies and hobbyists would buy more cameras. Then I could use a single two-channel recorder (or the audio in of one of the cameras) to capture the dialogue. On my PC, I could then edit like a live TV director does; run both videos (or thumbnails thereof) and just cut between shots. Quick and simple.
So, camcorder makers: build in sync sockets and you encourage people to buy more cameras... more cameras... more cameras....
HAL.
I don't think we need look to digital stills to see what will happen with cheaper video equipment -- we need only look at YouTube. There has been no cream floating there. A lot of the popular stuff is purile pap generated by bored teens.
Ah but Flickr and Photos.com... Flickr and photos nothing. Still photography is much more accessible to the producer, yes, but much less accessible to the consumer. So while photos.com ratings are gathered by a comtemplative specialist audience, YouTube ratings are gathered by pimply kids who pee themselves at mento-rockets, swearing and happy-slapping.
Face it -- editorial control cannot be replaced with wisdom of the mindless mob.
HAL.
Stylish, yes; well shot, yes; good vehicle for story, I think not.
I don't know. Too many people, too many bad guys, no way to build tension. I reckon it'd end up on the "aren't soldiers great people" track, which is hard to swallow when we hear every other week about one or two "bad apples" who've been caught raping, pillaging, torturing and murdering.
If he manages to make "Platoon in Space", more power to him, but I don't think that's what the market wants right now....
HAL.
Yeah, but my point was that this is technically illegal in the US (it's working around copy protection).
Is there anything in there that helps the laptop user? I mean, you can squeeze your entire music collection into a match-box sized media player, but if you want to play games on the road you're expected to carry your collection with you....
From the article:
Yes, I do understand the net zero of the biomass, but I've yet to see a biomass crop that absorbs twice the amount of CO2 it emits.
What sort of science is this?
HAL.
Near the end of the article, the author states the following:
OK, so he's a Continuous Evolution (CE) man is he? Well... no.
Let's have a look at the model he created for the Netflix prize.
Ah, so a change in the environment results in several iterations of rapid adaptation, followed by a period of stability, followed by further rapid adaptation when another change is introduced. So he's not a CE man, he's a PE man: Punctuated Equilibrium.
Inconsistency 2: Wikipedia vs meme theoryIf memes exist, then fundamentalism is a family of memes, ocurring in a number of religions. If we take the standpoint that Darwinian evolution exists, then in fundamentalists we have a crowd that holds a falsity to be true. If the crowd can hold a falsity to be true then a truly open-edit policy should result in the democratic "truth" being an actual falsehood.
Furthermore, all other evolution is divergent -- how does the author feel that he can turn this on his head and create a convergent evolution? No, evolution adapts to an environment, and Wikipedia's environment is people, not truth.
Not one to miss a dig at Dawkins, me, so I'll finish by saying I find it quite funny the number of people who've been convinced by Dawkins' words, but internally reject his science as the tripe it is.
HAL.
Look, people pay good money for cheat books to unlock all the bonuses and that money doesn't go back into game development -- instead, it pays a few guys to sit in a room and play games exhaustively. In capitalist terms, this is inefficient: the coders can do the job more quickly, hence cheaply. If they sell unlocks, the extra revenue they generate goes to the companies that are writing the games. In the long term, this means that the average player (he who has a bit of patience) pays marginally less.
HAL.
Do we really need to build a dozen because US, Russia, China, India, Europe, Japan can not agree to invest a billion dollar-equivalents each instead of spending 10 times more money for separate bases?
Co-operation would be good, but would it be the best method? Maybe not. If we have 10 people independently working on 1 problem, we could get as many as 10 solutions. If everyone works together, we get no more than 1 solution. (Of course they'll come up with many ideas, but they'll only fully develop and test one.)
This is not about invention -- it's about engineering. Imagine if the world's civil engineers had all worked together to build bridges and between them, they'd built millions of bridges like the Mississippi bridge that recently collapsed, or the Tahoma narrows bridge. We could now be living in a world without bridges.
And consider the houses in earthquake zones. It's the Big One and 50% of the town is levelled. Had there been one engineering team in charge of all houses, maybe 100% would have been safe -- or maybe 100% would have collapsed.
HAL.
The Register were talking about this earlier.
The tone of the article? Scathing and very very sceptical.
HAL.
...how long until we have fruitfly genome in human DNA?
Answer that, André Delambre/Seth Brundle!
I can build a shelter with sticks, my fingers and my teeth.
What I cannot do with sticks, my fingers and my teeth is build a millimetre-perfect copy of my neighbour's shelter -- that would require measuring and cutting tools of a precision not possible by hand.
There is a big difference between mimicry and replication.
HAL.
If it can't be done without technology, it can't be a right. I can't make a perfect copy of an obscure dance CD without tech, so it can't be my right.
If we repealed all copyright tomorrow, we couldn't make it retroactive as people in the past were given a contract by the law for x years. Holywood production would cease -- why spend x million on a film which will be available for free on the net after the first public showing? Why spend x thousand recording an album when it might only sell one copy (to MrUpload69 on Mp3Swap.com)?
OK, so people will still do things "for the love of it", but they are already doing so. Have you any idea how much dross is on YouTube and MySpace Music?
Ah, but that's OK, because we can have the TV, radio and press tell us which ones are worth watching. Except without copyright, there's no way to generate income in the press.
Well, peer review then. Sorry, reviewing is a full time job. If you review one evening a week, you only get through one album -- if that. How can you compare what's available if you're only hearing a tiny fraction of what's there?
And can you trust the reviewers? If there a competition on MySpace conducted by public poll, you can normally predict the winner based on the competitors' friends lists: the one with the most friends wins. Web 2.0 is anything but objective.
HAL.
[bought tape and CD] And now they want me to buy it again, just so I can play it on my computer.
No, I don't think they ever said "please don't rip the CD to MP3 using readily available tools". Downloading is not really and more convenient than home ripping, and home ripping can only be done by people who own the music. (Well, anyone who has borrowed a copy can too, but that's a side issue.)
Downloading's a bit different in that you don't need to have the original to download an MP3. The vast majority of downloaders don't have the originals. Ergo, lost profits.
Like it or not, they were only speaking up for their rights.
HAL.
Have you any idea how complicated independence would be?
NHS, We already have an independent NHS Scotland.
driving licenses, We could devolve those to the...
passport authorities, as there are individual passport issuing offices over the UK, so no major problem in decentralising.
the BBC, As a strictly apolitical entity, it would not be a problem if the BBC took a few years to demerge into individual national public service companies (or for one constituent country to buy other countries out)
not to mention the Army, defence, etc.
The regiments all have a geographical drawn. Breaking the army would not require any major change in hierarchy.and government efficiency both sides of the border (London Underground versus Edinburgh's parliamentary building)
Actually, the Parliament debacle was managed by Whitehall (as was this year's Scottish election debacle). The only efficiency debate in Scotland is the one over the trams and the airport link.HAL.
An Anonymous Coward wrote this by the original article....
How much you will to bet this won't instantly appear on Slashdot
;-)
Romans used to dig going to the arena and watching the bloodsports, often involving the killing of animals. Now we can sit here and pass judgement on them [...], but the fact is that Rome flourished as a society even with this [...].
Rome flourished as an imperial power because of this. By dehumanising their enemies, making the the torture of their prisoners into a form of communal entertainment, they made the population complicit in the brutal regime that they imposed on conquered lands. In the amphitheatres, they prepared their boys for the life of rape and slaughter that awaited them as men in Rome's legions. The soil of Rome was fertilised with the blood of millions.
So all hail the violent media; the wonder of violent video games and blood-soaked DVDs. Without them, we wouldn't be as good at bringing peace and democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq.
HAL.
I don't trust that graph one jot -- and no-one else on /. should either: Mortal Kombat is older than Doom, and every geek knows it.
HAL.
Ah, the good old misplaced decimal point. We've lost some of our best space probes that way....
:-P
HAL.
And it's certainly not the only way - as Windows is proving by still running basically every game from 10 years ago.
Is it fair to assume that you haven't tried Vista yet? Even before that things weren't all that rosy, but now....
Let's just say there's more than one game in my library of classics that it won't talk to....