Your argument is sound, your details are off. Pick around a hundred and thirty years ago, in England and you'll be accurate. In fact, it strengthens your point because it is so close.
The way you said it sounded like nipples and breasts were less sensitive 200 years ago, which I believe isn't true.
Oh I'm sure that isn't true.:) But sexual applicabililty doesn't have to align with what is eroticised. Nails scraping down your back or up your thigh feel great, but when was the last time you saw the back eroticised? It is, but usually only in the more artful nudes, not porn or magazine covers. And yet seeing a girl with a nice v-back or massaging same as a prelude to sex, can be a big turn on to me. That which becomes hyper-sexualised need not be the same as that which stimulates in the act.
What I want with it is a stylus, but it doesn't appear to have that. In which case, I'm hanging on to see what the Courier is like. I want hand-writing recognition and a convenient book format. I think the iPad might be a handy gizmo for lying in bed browsing / reading, but I can do that with a laptop. I'm not so sure it will be useful for doing work / taking notes when out and about. Which is what would justify paying hundreds of pounds for.
I guess the real question shouldn't be endless arguing over whether the tablet is good or bad, but what is it for?
Distribution of (real) child pornography is still a very bad thing. Aside from the trauma to the child (which is big thing in and of itself), you can make a supportable argument that distribution encourages production.
Now as to artificial work, there are a number of problems. For one, no child has been harmed by it. For two, it can be very subjective what is porn and what is not. Just because someone gets turned on by a picture, it doesn't mean it is offensive or pornography. Unfortunately, this latter seems to be the way UK law now handles something. A film like Let the Right One In from Sweden shows a girl of around 13(?) naked from the waist down at one point. It's in no way porn - it's scary. But someone might like that and then it becomes pornography? Terrible principle for determining things. Or look at the kerfuffle about the cover to the Scorpions' Virgin Killer we had a year ago in the UK. Determining whether an artificial work is porn or not is of itself a very difficult thing. A recent UK law however, was explicitly stated during its implementation process as 'allowing the police to lock up people they wanted to lock up if they couldn't find a way to prove something'. I kid you not - the comment was made in the House of Lords as one of the purposes of the law.
But the final question about artificial child pornography is whether it increases the likelihood of real offenses against children. I think if someone is attracted to pre-pubescent girls (and that's another thing - a girl of seventeen is "child pornography". Are they serious? It might be best not to allow pornographic images / films of her all over the place because she probably is too young to make informed decisions about these things, but to imply that it's wrong to find her physically attractive? At that age, a girl is biologically screaming sexual attractiveness! You might not find her attractive after half an hour of seventeen year old conversation mind you, but that's a different matter.;) But anyway, back to the point... if someone is attracted to pre-pubescent girls, I doubt access to cartoon pornography is going to make a whit of difference. There's something wrong there a priori. But what it might do is diminish the chance of that person actually going out and harming a child. To be brutally honest, a porn-induced wankathon makes most guys lazier about actually trying to get with a real girl. A number of my female friends have complained that men are getting less interested in sex, probably due to having streaming porn on tap. I'm not an expert on peadophiles, but I would imagine the release of cartoon pornography would affect them similarly.
What will get really creepy is when technology progresses further and the artificial porn gets much more realistic. But the principle will remain the same. I imagine it will ignite just as much bad legislation though, because I agree with one of the GPs that the motivation is probably less about actual harm (with the cartoons), than it is with social ostracism. Anyway, what about the UK 2012 Olympics logo? It clearly resembles Lisa Simpson giving a blow-job. Why hasn't this sick filthy been banned?
Tastes and preferences vary from culture to culture and era to era. Go back even a century and whilst breasts were considered erotic then, they were much less eroticised and size less emphasized. Go back a couple of centuries more and they were hardly eroticised at all (in a general sense). A couple of centuries before that, and breasts were eroticised again. We can roughly infer these sorts of things from changes in costume style, art from the period, etc. At other points in time, shoulders and necks have been eroticised, legs and, rather a lot, bottoms.:)
Anyway, you can be straight, male and attracted to girls primarily by things other than breasts. And if you are, the media fixation on them may well seem a little perverse. There are loads of girls you find attractive all the time who don't particularly have large or pronounced breasts. They're just, you know, pretty.:)
Funny thing is, there are two "Art Worlds" that live side by side, rarely interact. One is the high-profile Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin set that create art that is esoteric to the point of mundanity, and the other is the world of paintings, photos, etc. that people actually buy. DeviantArt does a roaring trade. High street art dealers selling local paintings of standard prints do jolly business (outside our current recession, anyway). This latter world of art dwarfs the "Art World" as the media portrays it, is far more familiar to us all, is more popular, and yet is seldom considered by the media. Strange, isn't it, when you think about it.
Yes, but I can see this appealing to a certain mindset. It's like a hot potato - got to pass it on! Last one with it gets the bill!. I can completely see people with certain traits (one of which is money) loving having this in their living room to show off or just look at. Even black cubes can gain value through ephemerity it seems.:)
So it's like a pyramid scheme in the aspect of Devil takes the Hindmost, unlike a pyramid scheme, it's cool! +1 Original for the artist.
We'll find out whether people care or not when there's an alternative.
I formerly subscribed to Slashdot but I don't anymore because they now only accept Paypal. When they go back to accepting credit cards, I'll subscribe again. There have been other instances where I've avoided doing business with someone because it meant using Paypal. Don't trust them. Likely never will. It seems statistically unlikely that I'm the only one with this attitude toward them.
I don't mind everyone assuming that Apple will introduce some form of tablet computer. I mind Slashdot owners assuming we care enough about it to want to read a story about it every other day. It's not even out! Now we're seen prototype videos of the Microsoft's Courier, so at least we have something to talk about there (and it's a genuinely original design). Why we have to be subjected to this hype campaign for the Apple Tablet before anyone even knows what it's like, I don't know.
He could achieve better parity between movies watched and those paid for by ordering every movie that he's downloaded after having watched it. Then he's actually achieving what he says he wants to.
In that case, they should either work for a salary for a book investment company or run their own company (which again needs investment of some kind).
If copyrights expire for the author, then they expire for the publisher. Unless of course you're arguing for businesses to be able to hold copyrights that individuals can't? Disney would love you for that.
As regards your saying that authors should require investment by book company, be required to start and run their own company or be sufficiently wealthy that they can disregard making money from their time - why? Why do you want to put more power in the hands of big companies when selling things online finally grants small independent authors (and musicians) the chance to finally sell directly to the public without suffering for it. At a stroke, your "should" excludes not only a large majority of established authors, but denies entry to the field to a lot of potential authors, who usually start off this way. You'd turn everyone into beggars at the doors of big business. And why? There is no purpose to your answer.
What if your partner dies after having spent all their money into their startup company? Shit happens.
Some of us prefer to try and stop shit happening rather than just noticing it.
That is why we have social safety nets.
Brilliant. It's okay if someone gets ripped off because they can subsist on welfare. Yay - the welfare state.
We're in agreement - I misread what your parent wrote (he talked about "the only reason for extending beyond death" meaning the only reason to base the copyright expiration a fixed period after death. Clear in retrospect, but I took it to mean what he literally said, as viewpoints like that are floating around this thread. I seem to have been modded rather high for my post - there should probably be a +5 Sounds Confident mod.:)
There are arguments for and against it basing the extension after death. I personally don't make a judgement until someone comes along and actually starts talking details (this type of copyright, this number of years, etc.). There's too much absolutism on these boards.
Huh? What's so special about an author, that they get life insurance for free? Everyone else has to pay for that sort of guarantee for our dependants.
You get paid in real time. Do a month's work, get a month's pay, set some aside for life insurance or pension. An author is more like a long-term investor. They put in a lot of work up front and their rewards come in over years, sometimes decades. If you write a novel, die, and then a year later it gets its second larger print run after good reviews / word of mouth, or it gets bought for turning into a film, or whatever, your widow would get nothing to represent the value of the work. That's why copyright projects forwards in time, because the earnings project forward in time. What, if your partner invests all their hours and money into long-term stocks, you don't get the earnings back from that because they died?
Also, it reduces the incentive for movie producers to kill you so they can use your work for free.;)
But with everyone covered and everyone in the risk pool, everyone's costs go down.
So everyone is covered, and everybody pays a little assuming they have the money to do so... Remind me again what the difference between that and socialised healthcare is again? No wait, I've got it - you have to account for the businesses' profit layer as well.;)
Don't know why you got modded Offtopic when your point is a fine response to the GP. Java does have fine performance (for most purposes), but it suffers from start-up times getting the virtual machine up and running. People have a simple reaction to such programs. They start it, they find themselves waiting for it to get going, and they say: "This is sooooo slow." Doesn't much matter what happens after that. The impression is made.
That's fine, but certificates cost an obnoxious amount considering the time and resource it takes to generate and serve one. The government could provide a central certificate authority for less than it costs for a couple of MPs to have lunch, but they don't.
And as I'm posting, I might as well list my #1 reason why emails aren't routinely encrypted with GPG / PGP: it doesn't encrypt HTML emails properly (or it tells me that it doesn't). Maybe the people who write these tools are still insisting that they like plain text and HTML emails are a plague upon the land. But the rest of us want it and use it.
Still, I'd be willing to give it a try. If I knew how to get proportional fonts in vi. Anyone tell me how to add proportional fonts to a terminal in KDE 4?
... so somebody tell me if we actually have any that can really take advantage of the latest greatest graphics cards, yet? Seems like the hardware is outpacing the software, isn't it?
So it wouldn't bother you if McCartney's copyright NEVER expired? As long as people still wanted to play his music?
Or am I reading more into this comment than I should?
Yes, that's not what I said.:) If people want to discuss changing copyright terms, then fine by me. That's a lot different from abandoning paying for content.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't see the slightest bit of relevance to what I said, but it is funny.
Your argument is sound, your details are off. Pick around a hundred and thirty years ago, in England and you'll be accurate. In fact, it strengthens your point because it is so close.
Oh I'm sure that isn't true. :) But sexual applicabililty doesn't have to align with what is eroticised. Nails scraping down your back or up your thigh feel great, but when was the last time you saw the back eroticised? It is, but usually only in the more artful nudes, not porn or magazine covers. And yet seeing a girl with a nice v-back or massaging same as a prelude to sex, can be a big turn on to me. That which becomes hyper-sexualised need not be the same as that which stimulates in the act.
What I want with it is a stylus, but it doesn't appear to have that. In which case, I'm hanging on to see what the Courier is like. I want hand-writing recognition and a convenient book format. I think the iPad might be a handy gizmo for lying in bed browsing / reading, but I can do that with a laptop. I'm not so sure it will be useful for doing work / taking notes when out and about. Which is what would justify paying hundreds of pounds for.
I guess the real question shouldn't be endless arguing over whether the tablet is good or bad, but what is it for?
Distribution of (real) child pornography is still a very bad thing. Aside from the trauma to the child (which is big thing in and of itself), you can make a supportable argument that distribution encourages production.
Now as to artificial work, there are a number of problems. For one, no child has been harmed by it. For two, it can be very subjective what is porn and what is not. Just because someone gets turned on by a picture, it doesn't mean it is offensive or pornography. Unfortunately, this latter seems to be the way UK law now handles something. A film like Let the Right One In from Sweden shows a girl of around 13(?) naked from the waist down at one point. It's in no way porn - it's scary. But someone might like that and then it becomes pornography? Terrible principle for determining things. Or look at the kerfuffle about the cover to the Scorpions' Virgin Killer we had a year ago in the UK. Determining whether an artificial work is porn or not is of itself a very difficult thing. A recent UK law however, was explicitly stated during its implementation process as 'allowing the police to lock up people they wanted to lock up if they couldn't find a way to prove something'. I kid you not - the comment was made in the House of Lords as one of the purposes of the law.
But the final question about artificial child pornography is whether it increases the likelihood of real offenses against children. I think if someone is attracted to pre-pubescent girls (and that's another thing - a girl of seventeen is "child pornography". Are they serious? It might be best not to allow pornographic images / films of her all over the place because she probably is too young to make informed decisions about these things, but to imply that it's wrong to find her physically attractive? At that age, a girl is biologically screaming sexual attractiveness! You might not find her attractive after half an hour of seventeen year old conversation mind you, but that's a different matter.
What will get really creepy is when technology progresses further and the artificial porn gets much more realistic. But the principle will remain the same. I imagine it will ignite just as much bad legislation though, because I agree with one of the GPs that the motivation is probably less about actual harm (with the cartoons), than it is with social ostracism. Anyway, what about the UK 2012 Olympics logo? It clearly resembles Lisa Simpson giving a blow-job. Why hasn't this sick filthy been banned?
Tastes and preferences vary from culture to culture and era to era. Go back even a century and whilst breasts were considered erotic then, they were much less eroticised and size less emphasized. Go back a couple of centuries more and they were hardly eroticised at all (in a general sense). A couple of centuries before that, and breasts were eroticised again. We can roughly infer these sorts of things from changes in costume style, art from the period, etc. At other points in time, shoulders and necks have been eroticised, legs and, rather a lot, bottoms.
Anyway, you can be straight, male and attracted to girls primarily by things other than breasts. And if you are, the media fixation on them may well seem a little perverse. There are loads of girls you find attractive all the time who don't particularly have large or pronounced breasts. They're just, you know, pretty.
Pet peeve = Anarchist != Mindless destructive types. If anything, I've found the reverse to be almost always the case.
Heh! We often see things in terms and analogies that we are familiar with.
"So mundane that white people do it" ???
Funny thing is, there are two "Art Worlds" that live side by side, rarely interact. One is the high-profile Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin set that create art that is esoteric to the point of mundanity, and the other is the world of paintings, photos, etc. that people actually buy. DeviantArt does a roaring trade. High street art dealers selling local paintings of standard prints do jolly business (outside our current recession, anyway). This latter world of art dwarfs the "Art World" as the media portrays it, is far more familiar to us all, is more popular, and yet is seldom considered by the media. Strange, isn't it, when you think about it.
Yes, but I can see this appealing to a certain mindset. It's like a hot potato - got to pass it on! Last one with it gets the bill!. I can completely see people with certain traits (one of which is money) loving having this in their living room to show off or just look at. Even black cubes can gain value through ephemerity it seems.
So it's like a pyramid scheme in the aspect of Devil takes the Hindmost, unlike a pyramid scheme, it's cool! +1 Original for the artist.
We'll find out whether people care or not when there's an alternative.
I formerly subscribed to Slashdot but I don't anymore because they now only accept Paypal. When they go back to accepting credit cards, I'll subscribe again. There have been other instances where I've avoided doing business with someone because it meant using Paypal. Don't trust them. Likely never will. It seems statistically unlikely that I'm the only one with this attitude toward them.
I don't mind everyone assuming that Apple will introduce some form of tablet computer. I mind Slashdot owners assuming we care enough about it to want to read a story about it every other day. It's not even out! Now we're seen prototype videos of the Microsoft's Courier, so at least we have something to talk about there (and it's a genuinely original design). Why we have to be subjected to this hype campaign for the Apple Tablet before anyone even knows what it's like, I don't know.
He could achieve better parity between movies watched and those paid for by ordering every movie that he's downloaded after having watched it. Then he's actually achieving what he says he wants to.
If copyrights expire for the author, then they expire for the publisher. Unless of course you're arguing for businesses to be able to hold copyrights that individuals can't? Disney would love you for that.
As regards your saying that authors should require investment by book company, be required to start and run their own company or be sufficiently wealthy that they can disregard making money from their time - why? Why do you want to put more power in the hands of big companies when selling things online finally grants small independent authors (and musicians) the chance to finally sell directly to the public without suffering for it. At a stroke, your "should" excludes not only a large majority of established authors, but denies entry to the field to a lot of potential authors, who usually start off this way. You'd turn everyone into beggars at the doors of big business. And why? There is no purpose to your answer.
Some of us prefer to try and stop shit happening rather than just noticing it.
Brilliant. It's okay if someone gets ripped off because they can subsist on welfare. Yay - the welfare state.
We're in agreement - I misread what your parent wrote (he talked about "the only reason for extending beyond death" meaning the only reason to base the copyright expiration a fixed period after death. Clear in retrospect, but I took it to mean what he literally said, as viewpoints like that are floating around this thread. I seem to have been modded rather high for my post - there should probably be a +5 Sounds Confident mod.
There are arguments for and against it basing the extension after death. I personally don't make a judgement until someone comes along and actually starts talking details (this type of copyright, this number of years, etc.). There's too much absolutism on these boards.
You get paid in real time. Do a month's work, get a month's pay, set some aside for life insurance or pension. An author is more like a long-term investor. They put in a lot of work up front and their rewards come in over years, sometimes decades. If you write a novel, die, and then a year later it gets its second larger print run after good reviews / word of mouth, or it gets bought for turning into a film, or whatever, your widow would get nothing to represent the value of the work. That's why copyright projects forwards in time, because the earnings project forward in time. What, if your partner invests all their hours and money into long-term stocks, you don't get the earnings back from that because they died?
;)
Also, it reduces the incentive for movie producers to kill you so they can use your work for free.
So everyone is covered, and everybody pays a little assuming they have the money to do so... Remind me again what the difference between that and socialised healthcare is again? No wait, I've got it - you have to account for the businesses' profit layer as well. ;)
Don't know why you got modded Offtopic when your point is a fine response to the GP. Java does have fine performance (for most purposes), but it suffers from start-up times getting the virtual machine up and running. People have a simple reaction to such programs. They start it, they find themselves waiting for it to get going, and they say: "This is sooooo slow." Doesn't much matter what happens after that. The impression is made.
That's fine, but certificates cost an obnoxious amount considering the time and resource it takes to generate and serve one. The government could provide a central certificate authority for less than it costs for a couple of MPs to have lunch, but they don't.
And as I'm posting, I might as well list my #1 reason why emails aren't routinely encrypted with GPG / PGP: it doesn't encrypt HTML emails properly (or it tells me that it doesn't). Maybe the people who write these tools are still insisting that they like plain text and HTML emails are a plague upon the land. But the rest of us want it and use it.
I assumed the joke was someone starting a post criticizing word usage with 'irregardless'.
Still, I'd be willing to give it a try. If I knew how to get proportional fonts in vi. Anyone tell me how to add proportional fonts to a terminal in KDE 4?
A couple of kids in my year made explosives and tried to make napalm (without success in the latter case). Uh, so I heard.
... so somebody tell me if we actually have any that can really take advantage of the latest greatest graphics cards, yet? Seems like the hardware is outpacing the software, isn't it?
Yes, that's not what I said. :) If people want to discuss changing copyright terms, then fine by me. That's a lot different from abandoning paying for content.