I have no intentions of respecting copyright on something over 50 years old
Forgive my suspicious nature, but I have this feeling that you have no intentions of respecting any copyright whatsoever. This smacks of post hoc rationalisation.
The big publishers were in a nasty spot, though. Their business was being poached by smaller, regional presses. For years, they used support of state censorship to give themselves a monopoly and keep competition down. Abusive monopoly. This I will not deny.
Copyright as we know it only arrived when censorship ended. This I will also not deny.
But this does not mean that copyright is censorship, or that it is somehow evil or anti-competitive. Copyright protected them not merely from competition, but specifically from unfair competition -- someone taking something that the publisher had paid money for and reproducing it for free. It allowed investment in literature.
It's a start, isn't it? The situation is better now than it was before, and a lot of people here complain about how copyright law only ever gets more restrictive, never more free. Well here's one minor victory. Can't we accept it as such?
And more to the point, the material would not have fallen into the public domain anyway -- the summary is wrong, following as it does the lead paragraph of the CNN article, which is wrong. If you look halfway down the article it says:
The British government, following the change in European copyright law, implemented a law last month providing "that if a record label is not commercially releasing a track that is over 50 years old, then the performers can request that the rights in the performance revert to them -- a 'use it or lose it' clause," the government's website said.
(my emphasis)
The public domain is not affected by this law in the slightest: it's between the Beatles and Apple Corp. Apple doesn't want the McCartney and the other 3's families getting hold of the material and then selling it themselves for a higher percentage, so they've rushed this out to hold onto their cut.
Except that the summary is wrong. It is not about the public domain, because according to TFA, the copyright in the unreleased recordings reverts to the artists, it does not expire. The point is to protect the artist from abusive labels. If the label doesn't make the material available, it starves the artist of their earnings. If the label isn't making money for the artist, the artist should have the right to make money elsewhere. There have been cases where artists have recorded something and then the label has refused to release it because they don't want competition for another act.
50 years is too long, though, as the artist will have well and truly lost out. And "alternative takes" present a troubling conundrum... the record label releases the best, but has often incidentally made several versions. Do they have to release all of them now, just to prevent reversion of copyright?
Oh noes... they're protecting their material. They're stealing from the public...
...actually, no. They're working in compliance with a law that has been enacted to act against abuse of copyright terms. It's a law that says "release the material or release the copyright". This is one of the arguments that comes up from people on your side of the fence all the time: "they're not selling it, so it's of no value, so it should be free." Well, they've said "it is of value, so we are selling it, so it shouldn't be free."
It looks to me like the law is functioning as intended and achieving the intended goal.
That'll hopefully get struck down as being overbroad. What now isn't an interactive computer service. TV is now a computer service, and phone networks are switching over to all-digital. Even if the overall system isn't classed as an interactive computer service, and is therefore not a "provider of an interactive computer service", the employees will be "users of an interactive computer service" that the TV station/telephone company uses under license from some "provider of an interactive computer service".
It's not about "learning the language", it's about understanding the very close link between language and identity. If you suggest that someone's mode of expression is wrong, you're undermining their identity.
(Note my use of "they" as a singular, non-specific pronoun. This is not a concession to political correctness... this is a very old feature of English and part of the local variety that I've been using since before I could read. When school teachers tried to tell me it was "grammatically incorrect", I took that personally. When conservatives tell me it's "politically correct nonsense", that to me is a denial of my identity.)
Exactly. Way back in my student days, I got an email from one of the university sysadmins, asking me to phone. When I phoned, they told me they'd had a complaint about my usenet postings. The guy said there really was no case, and that the complainer was being an arsehole (he was spamming an 8-bit forum to sell his PC software), but he could cause a racket, so could I just ignore him? OK, then. Who remembers "*plonk*"...?
yeah because Terrorists have proven to be so incredibly afraid of dying
There's a world of difference between pressing a button that brings instant death and carrying material that will lead to a protracted, unimaginably painful death.
And it would have to be a very protracted death, because if you're planting the stuff, you have to be able to escape the vicinity before starting to suffer symptoms -- the discovery of someone dying of radiation poisoning in a built-up area is going to get transport stopped and public areas roped-off.
Cut open the hand holds on a NYC subway and put it in there, then seal it back up. 1 a day would be hundreds. They'd track it down to a specific car within a day or two, and you could probably get it out that night. So kill hundreds in a subway, shutting down the system for a while, then take it back and do your dirty bomb the next day.
Impractical. Suicide bombers die safe in the knowledge that death will be instant. Anyone setting this stuff into bus/train/underground seats is going to get a lethal dose and die slowly and painfully... that's not something many people are capable of putting themselves through, except when they get that "emergency" reaction (eg the technicians at Chernobyl and Fukushima).
However, if you try to go onto a train in full radiation gear, you'll get caught.
Not quite. She's actually the chair of the local council.
The whole "City of London Corporation" thing is the last remnant of the state corporatism of the colonial era, where companies such as the Hudson Bay Company, the Dutch East India Company etc were either founded by royal/civil charter with a monopoly over trade and civil control in the colonies, or were started as private enterprise and sought a charter of monopoly.
I'm not aware of any other similar city "corporations" in the UK. I'm guessing this existed purely because the bankers at home wanted the ability to control their own taxes and police their own properties the same as their colonial counterparts did. (I don't think police reported officially to the monopolies, but there's plenty of evidence of them seeking approval for actions in advance.)
Yes, but the Crown Jewels would still exist as a relic if the monarchy was disbanded.
In fact, the Crown Jewels are one of the monarchies biggest costs historically. They are owned by the realm, not the Crown Estates, and every monarch or two the realm (ie taxpayer) has had to pay to have them replaced, cos the previous king or queen has decided to flog them off to pay a gambling, drink or drug habit. This is technically theft, but no-one's ever prosecuted the royal household for their incredibly huge criminal acts. (To be fair, it would be difficult as it's never been found out until it's time to crown the successor, so the guy who did it was usually dead by then.)
Actually, the homoeopathic nutter also generates wealth through the sale of chutney and biscuits. Granted, that's through the Duchy of Cornwall, which is land essentially stolen from the public through the outdated and unfair law that says if you die in Cornwall without a will, ol' big ears gets everything....
Why shouldn't anyone be ashamed that the best-paid public sector worker in the UK is employed on grounds of accident of birth to do nothing more than rubber stamp government decisions and shake people's hands?
Seriously, what ever happened to earning your place in society? I would happily do the Queen's job for 20 grand a year, as long as there was a sufficient training allowance for me to actually learn the languages spoken by the foreign dignitaries I was meeting, rather than expecting them to use English.
To implement sigma without FOR-loop side effects requires a fundamental change to the software architecture, and is only truly possible with an infinitely parallel computer.
Not...really. Everything you've said there is basically a constraint on the for loop. The free order of evaluation is a consequence of performing only associative operations -- so you get that in a for loop that limits itself to associative operations.
This is still an implementation of a sigma summation, and not a true sigma summation. The problem is that the FOR loop only has one logical operating block, whereas sigma summation, product-for-all-i etc have two discrete operations: the expression ruled by the sigma, and then the summation operation (or multiplication, or whatever). As you say, they thinking's completely different.
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I have no intentions of respecting copyright on something over 50 years old
Forgive my suspicious nature, but I have this feeling that you have no intentions of respecting any copyright whatsoever. This smacks of post hoc rationalisation.
The big publishers were in a nasty spot, though. Their business was being poached by smaller, regional presses. For years, they used support of state censorship to give themselves a monopoly and keep competition down. Abusive monopoly. This I will not deny.
Copyright as we know it only arrived when censorship ended. This I will also not deny.
But this does not mean that copyright is censorship, or that it is somehow evil or anti-competitive. Copyright protected them not merely from competition, but specifically from unfair competition -- someone taking something that the publisher had paid money for and reproducing it for free. It allowed investment in literature.
It's a start, isn't it? The situation is better now than it was before, and a lot of people here complain about how copyright law only ever gets more restrictive, never more free. Well here's one minor victory. Can't we accept it as such?
But this law does nothing to extend copyright. What it does do is stop labels sitting on works without making them available to the public.
And more to the point, the material would not have fallen into the public domain anyway -- the summary is wrong, following as it does the lead paragraph of the CNN article, which is wrong. If you look halfway down the article it says:
The British government, following the change in European copyright law, implemented a law last month providing "that if a record label is not commercially releasing a track that is over 50 years old, then the performers can request that the rights in the performance revert to them -- a 'use it or lose it' clause," the government's website said.
(my emphasis)
The public domain is not affected by this law in the slightest: it's between the Beatles and Apple Corp. Apple doesn't want the McCartney and the other 3's families getting hold of the material and then selling it themselves for a higher percentage, so they've rushed this out to hold onto their cut.
Except that the summary is wrong. It is not about the public domain, because according to TFA, the copyright in the unreleased recordings reverts to the artists, it does not expire. The point is to protect the artist from abusive labels. If the label doesn't make the material available, it starves the artist of their earnings. If the label isn't making money for the artist, the artist should have the right to make money elsewhere. There have been cases where artists have recorded something and then the label has refused to release it because they don't want competition for another act.
50 years is too long, though, as the artist will have well and truly lost out. And "alternative takes" present a troubling conundrum... the record label releases the best, but has often incidentally made several versions. Do they have to release all of them now, just to prevent reversion of copyright?
Oh noes... they're protecting their material. They're stealing from the public...
...actually, no. They're working in compliance with a law that has been enacted to act against abuse of copyright terms. It's a law that says "release the material or release the copyright". This is one of the arguments that comes up from people on your side of the fence all the time: "they're not selling it, so it's of no value, so it should be free." Well, they've said "it is of value, so we are selling it, so it shouldn't be free."
It looks to me like the law is functioning as intended and achieving the intended goal.
but still, there's no good reason why the song shouldn't be public domain.
Then why not renounce copyright and release it to the public domain? You have that right.
Fewer. Don't make fun of Microsoft until your grammar improves.
Knowst thou not that verily doth language change?
"When conservatives tell me it's "politically correct nonsense", that to me is a denial of my identity."
If you choose to tie up your identity in politically correct nonsense, sorry, you're bringing it on yourself.
If you choose not to read what I've written, that's your problem... don't try to make it mine.
That'll hopefully get struck down as being overbroad. What now isn't an interactive computer service. TV is now a computer service, and phone networks are switching over to all-digital. Even if the overall system isn't classed as an interactive computer service, and is therefore not a "provider of an interactive computer service", the employees will be "users of an interactive computer service" that the TV station/telephone company uses under license from some "provider of an interactive computer service".
It's not about "learning the language", it's about understanding the very close link between language and identity. If you suggest that someone's mode of expression is wrong, you're undermining their identity.
(Note my use of "they" as a singular, non-specific pronoun. This is not a concession to political correctness... this is a very old feature of English and part of the local variety that I've been using since before I could read. When school teachers tried to tell me it was "grammatically incorrect", I took that personally. When conservatives tell me it's "politically correct nonsense", that to me is a denial of my identity.)
Exactly. Way back in my student days, I got an email from one of the university sysadmins, asking me to phone. When I phoned, they told me they'd had a complaint about my usenet postings. The guy said there really was no case, and that the complainer was being an arsehole (he was spamming an 8-bit forum to sell his PC software), but he could cause a racket, so could I just ignore him? OK, then. Who remembers "*plonk*"...?
You'd conceal it next to a queue.
I'd just put it at the bottom of the stack.
I'd go with a doubly-linked list to ensure that it can be accessed from both directions.
I think even your average GP would pick up on the skin lesions and hair loss.
yeah because Terrorists have proven to be so incredibly afraid of dying
There's a world of difference between pressing a button that brings instant death and carrying material that will lead to a protracted, unimaginably painful death.
And it would have to be a very protracted death, because if you're planting the stuff, you have to be able to escape the vicinity before starting to suffer symptoms -- the discovery of someone dying of radiation poisoning in a built-up area is going to get transport stopped and public areas roped-off.
Cut open the hand holds on a NYC subway and put it in there, then seal it back up. 1 a day would be hundreds. They'd track it down to a specific car within a day or two, and you could probably get it out that night. So kill hundreds in a subway, shutting down the system for a while, then take it back and do your dirty bomb the next day.
Impractical. Suicide bombers die safe in the knowledge that death will be instant. Anyone setting this stuff into bus/train/underground seats is going to get a lethal dose and die slowly and painfully... that's not something many people are capable of putting themselves through, except when they get that "emergency" reaction (eg the technicians at Chernobyl and Fukushima).
However, if you try to go onto a train in full radiation gear, you'll get caught.
The beta is awful, but it's the gamma that's the worst. Just ask the thieves. :(
Not quite. She's actually the chair of the local council.
The whole "City of London Corporation" thing is the last remnant of the state corporatism of the colonial era, where companies such as the Hudson Bay Company, the Dutch East India Company etc were either founded by royal/civil charter with a monopoly over trade and civil control in the colonies, or were started as private enterprise and sought a charter of monopoly.
I'm not aware of any other similar city "corporations" in the UK. I'm guessing this existed purely because the bankers at home wanted the ability to control their own taxes and police their own properties the same as their colonial counterparts did. (I don't think police reported officially to the monopolies, but there's plenty of evidence of them seeking approval for actions in advance.)
My hats are way cooler.
Yes, but the Crown Jewels would still exist as a relic if the monarchy was disbanded.
In fact, the Crown Jewels are one of the monarchies biggest costs historically. They are owned by the realm, not the Crown Estates, and every monarch or two the realm (ie taxpayer) has had to pay to have them replaced, cos the previous king or queen has decided to flog them off to pay a gambling, drink or drug habit. This is technically theft, but no-one's ever prosecuted the royal household for their incredibly huge criminal acts. (To be fair, it would be difficult as it's never been found out until it's time to crown the successor, so the guy who did it was usually dead by then.)
Actually, the homoeopathic nutter also generates wealth through the sale of chutney and biscuits. Granted, that's through the Duchy of Cornwall, which is land essentially stolen from the public through the outdated and unfair law that says if you die in Cornwall without a will, ol' big ears gets everything....
Why shouldn't anyone be ashamed that the best-paid public sector worker in the UK is employed on grounds of accident of birth to do nothing more than rubber stamp government decisions and shake people's hands?
Seriously, what ever happened to earning your place in society? I would happily do the Queen's job for 20 grand a year, as long as there was a sufficient training allowance for me to actually learn the languages spoken by the foreign dignitaries I was meeting, rather than expecting them to use English.
I'd be cheaper, and I'd be better at the job.
To implement sigma without FOR-loop side effects requires a fundamental change to the software architecture, and is only truly possible with an infinitely parallel computer.
Not...really. Everything you've said there is basically a constraint on the for loop. The free order of evaluation is a consequence of performing only associative operations -- so you get that in a for loop that limits itself to associative operations.
This is still an implementation of a sigma summation, and not a true sigma summation. The problem is that the FOR loop only has one logical operating block, whereas sigma summation, product-for-all-i etc have two discrete operations: the expression ruled by the sigma, and then the summation operation (or multiplication, or whatever). As you say, they thinking's completely different.
Yes, but you could have a language that has simple I/O and isn't utterly bereft of good coding principles.
And Processing is an absolute car-crash. The basic principle is sound, but the execution was woeful. Brett Victor's detailed slating of Processing.js covers a lot of the inconsistencies and woolly thinking in the model.