If it is a true story, then you can write about it all you wish, but the film as a work still retains copyright.
"Fargo" is not a true story. The Coen Brothers put that disclaimer at the front of the film in order to see what people's reactions would be. I would have to say that is was very effective: the first time I saw the movie, I believed the "it's a true story" bit at the beginning because I had no reason not to (I had not heard about the ploy), and it colored how I perceived the undoubtedly brutal events in the movie.
But the real question is, if the work is NOT a true story, then can I still write about it all I want without violating copyright?
Frankly, I don't want Linux to catch on in the general desktop market.
The general desktop market is absolutely infested with spyware, viruses, crappy shareware/freeware programs, and people who will download and execute anything as long as it contains the words "hot" and "babes." The more marketshare Linux grabs, the more the Linux desktop will be infested with the same crap we on Slashdot complain about cleaning off our grandmothers' machines. Linux may be more resistant to these things than Windows, but it will not be immune.
I say, let the Lusers have their crappy OS with their Bonzai Buddies and their "pay us $20 for this pointless utility in 30 days or we cripple your machine" software. Linux is designed for power users who value functionality over bells 'n whistles, and who value stability and standards over proprietary interoperability. If we let in the masses, we will also be forced to lock down the OS, and that will clamp flexibility, thereby removing all value Linux has over Windows and Mac. They don't need it, and we shouldn't force it on them.
You wouldn't put a 16 year old with a driver's permit in the cockpit of an F-22... why would you want every Joe Schmoe and his grandmother to use such a powerful and possibly dangerous operating system as Linux?
If it were fiction, then they would probably have a viable copyright claim, but while they claim their book is fact, they have the problem that facts are not generally copyrightable.
So? The movie "Fargo" claimed to be fact, too, and the MPAA keeps telling me that I can't copy it freely, even though it's a true story.
Copyright refers specifically to an implimentation. I am free to make a movie about a car salesman in North Dakota who tries to kidnap his own wife for the ransom money from his rich father-in-law and whose plan goes south because of two stupid henchmen and a very persistent (and very pregnant) cop, as long as I don't use any film, music, lines, or titles from "Fargo". That would not be infringement. It has been done many times before.
Even if Dan Brown uses exactly the same conjectures and conclusions as "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail," unless he used that title or plagurized text from the book, he is not infringing. It sounds like the authors of "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail" are simply trying to a) leech a little of Dan Brown's inexplicable success, and b) get the name of their book in the media before the release of the movie, so people will go out and buy it.
If they wanted to capture someone's attention they should just throw up the coupon, and freeze there for the whole 15-30 second spot. Static image. Can you imagine? People would be going nuts trying to figure out if their TV was broken.
That's a fantastic idea. Commercials usually subscribe to the idea that they need to be louder, faster, and more blaring in order to get your attention. Ever notice how the volume during commercials is much louder than during the shows? And the shows themselves are cranked up to peak levels... there's no such thing as dynamic range in a television audio stream.
But the advertisers could use that noisy, blaring environment to their advantage. When all you hear is constant noise, nothing will get your attention like prolonged silence.
Oversimplifications aside, which one is Google? The visionary? Or the profiteer?
Overlooking the fact that forcing the definition to be one or the other IS an oversimplification, I would have to say that Google is the profiteer, but not in the traditional sense of the word.
Google will certainly be making money off of this archive, in the form of AdWords revenue, but, in contrast with Ben Franklin's social library, it will cost the end user nothing. It's as if a library were funded not by taxes, but by local businesses. In return for the local businesses' funding, the library set up a pamphlet board at the front entrance, which allowed the businesses to place stacks of pamphlets or brochures about their company. Access to the information itself is free to everyone, but they walk past the pamphlet board on their way in and out, and by doing learn about these local businesses. In this analogous scenario, would it matter if the library was owned by a government or a private interest? The information is still freely available to all.
One could probably make the argument that having this information displayed by a private party is not optimal, since the private party could at any time censor which information they choose to show. However, I'm not sure it applies in Google's case, because the information being shown is the National Archives, which is maintained by a public, government body. Google would either be showing the ENTIRE National Archives, in which no private-interest bias exists*, or they would choose not to show it all, and it would be very clear to people that they are selectively excluding things.
It is altogether possible to make money off a noble goal, thus becoming both profiteer AND visionary. The best example is that of a doctor, but there are others.
I have no problem with Google offering this service: it will be better run than a National Archives established program, and the information will still be available for free to the general public. I think the difference is that the information contained in the Archives is public information. Therefore, even if Google goes under and can no longer support display of the information, it will still exist in the new digital format for someone else to make available.
-------------
*Note that this does not discount the existence of governmental bias. The National Archives are certainly not immune to revisionist history. However, for the purposes of our argument here, we must assume that the information itself, by the nature of being public, is untouched by bias.
Saying someone "has no culture" is either a vacuous slap at the entire society in which the person lives ("you have no culture[1]"), or it's a statement that the person lacks culture[2]. The GP was asking about culture[1], not culture[2].
Silly Slashdotter. Everyone knows the culture array starts numbering at zero.
IMHO, the MPAA, RIAA, et. al, are going to make the consumer public so mad that they essentially put themselves out of business.
Actually, something like this is exactly what we need to stem the tide.
Up until now, all of the various restrictions and protections the (MP|RI)AA have put on their products have been all but transparent to 90% of end users. CSS on DVDs? Joe Average just uses the DVD software that came with his computer, and the firmware that's built in to the standalone player he bought. FairPlay? iTunes and iPod make that basically invisible. The point is that even though we, on Slashdot, are aware of all the various restrictions and such placed on playable media, Joe Average doesn't peek behind the scenes of his media player, and his rights have been slowly eroded without him even noticing*.
However, the instant that a majority of the $3000 HDTVs out there are declared obsolete simply because of draconian anti-piracy restrictions, Joe Average is going to notice. He's going to bring home his brand new, HD-DVD copy of "American Pie 8: This is Really Gross", put it in his shiny new Sony HD-DVD player which the salesman assured him will output video at such an incredibly high resolution that he can see every thread in the lead jailbait actress's thong, and notice that the picture quality sucks. He will be angry, and will go back to the store demanding an explanation. When the clerk patiently explains to him that the analog component outputs on the back of the HD-DVD player output a lower resolution "in order to stop piracy" and that his $3000 HDTV television can only handle component input because he bought it two years ago, we may even get to see that vein in his forehead, which as up until now been merely throbbing, explode.
My point is that the more ridiculous and draconian the efforts of the (MP|RI)AA get, the better chance there is that they will find the showstopper: the one feature that 90% of the population would truly miss. The moment they lock that down in the interest of boosting profits, the revolution will begin.
------------
*The Sony rootkit had the possibility of being big enough, from a restriction/destruction standpoint, to make Joe Public notice. However, the entire concept of "rootkits" is very foreign to Joe Average, and the newsmedia didn't understand it, either. As a result, it was never blown INTO proportion. The newsmedia basically said, "Well, the geeks are telling us this is bad, so we're going to report it. But we'll get back to ongoing coverage of some car chase shortly." The true showstopper needs to be basic, so that the newsmedia will comprehend immediately, and make a big enough deal out of it. Then we'll see the class action suits start to fly.
My problem with studies like this is that their definition of the "industry" is far too broad. I realize this happens because the "technology industry" is fairly new, but it's getting out of hand.
Let's draw a parallel with the steel industry. When people talk about the steel industry, they usually do not include jobs of people who produce the raw products that go into steel, such as miners or ore refinery workers, nor do they include jobs of people who build things OUT of steel, such as construction workers, welders, riveters, architects, engineers, mechanics, or sculptors. They also certainly do not include the jobs of people in management positions within companies who work with steel, such as executives in automobile manufacturing companies.
Why, then, does the "technology industry," include all those things and more? The "industry" always discusses jobs ranging from the bottom (data entry and Geek Squad tech) to the very tip top (managers and executive of entire companies), including everything in the middle (systems administrators, electrical engineers, software designers, code monkeys, and whoever else may have touched a computer once this week), and even include these positions in companies who merely USE technology instead of creating it.
My point is that when speaking in economic terms, technology is not the product of an industry, it is a means to a product. Yes, a car is technology, but Ford is not a technology company, they're a car company. Similarly, Google is not a technology company, they're a search and advertising firm. Microsoft is not a technology company, they are a tool manufacturer. So is Apple, although they also make toys.
Let's stop all this nonsense about refering to basically the entire modern economy as the Technology Industry (tm). When people talk about outsourcing being bad (it's actually offshoring, but that's a different discussion), they never mention what TYPES of jobs are moving overseas. If they're the menial, data-entry, tech-support types of positions, that affects a completely different set of people than if the jobs moving offshore are the engineering/design or coder positions. If we're going to have a discussion about whether moving jobs to other countries is good or bad, let's define the parameters of the study a little better and not resort to overgeneralizations.
Just a sidenote, but EULAs aren't contracts. EULAs have unclear status - if the EULA is found to be unenforcable (as they have been in multiple cases), the software is limited to the protection offered by copyright law.
You're right that EULA's have an unclear status, but that unclear status means some judges have ruled that they ARE indeed contracts. There are some interesting tidbits about EULAs and contract law here and here. I think the general consensus is that barring various types of contract fraud (changing contract provisions after the agreement, not allowing the purchaser to decline, etc.), EULAs are indeed contracts, and will be treated as such in a court of law. I think the biggest issue with EULA law right now is the "open software" problem, where the EULA is printed on material inside the box, and stores will not let you return open software. Thus, the purchaser does not have an ability to decline the offer based on the terms of the contract and receive a full refund. Companies that did this would likely have the contract invalidated if it were to be challenged in court.
Back to the point about EULAs, though: the most a company can due for breach of contract is to withdraw any services being offered. They could probably try to file a civil suit, but in the case of someone modding OS X to run on your own non-Apple hardware, I'm not sure how much in damages they could claim. Perhaps if you started "how-to-mod-osx-to-run-on-a-dell.com", they could claim lost hardware sales. I'm not sure about that, so any lawyers are welcome to chime in here.
Not the case at all. OS X for Intel has substantial and increasing hardware-lockouts, ensuring that you can only run the software on Apple-approved hardware. How does that not take control away from the user?
I was not aware. I always just thought that Apple designed their software to run on Apple hardware, without aiding or hindering anyone trying to get it to work on other hardware. Since Apple hardware used to be very specific, rewriting OS X to run on other hardware would have been a daunting task indeed. It does not surprise me that they are taking precautions, but it does disappoint me a little.
Not the case either. Apple has clearly stated that they do care what you do with their products, and they have threatened legal action against a number of parties who have attempted to circumvent their hardware locks.
This gets tricky, as far as their basis for filing suit. Can a hardware + software combination be copyrighted, and thus covered under the DMCA? The software can certainly be copyrighted, and locked down with encryption, but bypassing that encryption would be for purposes of interoperability with hardware, not access to copyrighted information. I'm not sure how a court would rule on that. Again, it would be nice to hear from a lawyer on this.
But I think the larger issue here is not the fact that companies who lock consumers into or out of hardware (Apple, or the more on-topic Members of the MPAA) are violating consumer's rights, because they clearly are not. It is very legal to offer a product for sale on your own terms, and the consumer has the option of buying the product, and thereby accepting the terms of the sale, or not buying the product, and effectively declining the terms. There is no option for "the seller is required to change the terms to suit the buyer." It's a yes-or-no proposition on the buyer's part. The larger issue is that offering one-sided terms such as the MPAA member companies are doing, which takes control of the product away from the consumer, is just poor customer service. Telling your customers what they CAN'T do with your product is the best way to boost your competition's sales. In the coming decades, consumers will start to turn away from the larger companie
No wonder the MPAA is suing, you only leased the right to have a DVD copy of the movie, there is no implied playability unless you also purchase their decoders. Next they'll start selling descrambling glasses that you have to visit one of their eye doctors to have focused for you!
If I wrote this about my "right" to run OS X on whatever hardware I liked, I'd be kicked to the ground, and then people would get "+5, insightfuls" for saying that Apple has the right to restrict how its software is run. (After all, you agreed to the EULA...)
If you'll excuse the pun, you're comparing apples and oranges.
Apple is not actively lobbying congress to create laws specifically designed to prevent you from using your copy of OS X in ways that you see to be reasonable. They do not purposefully add code to their operating system which is specifically designed to take control away from you. Their EULA specifies that you should only run OS X on Apple hardware, but if you choose not to, the only thing you lose is the warranty. You are free, by law, to take your copy of OS X and attempt to install it on your toaster if you like (iToaster?). You paid for it, and you can do anything you want with it, short of selling copies to other people, which is Apple's exclusive right under copyright law.
They DO have the right to void your warrantee if you don't abide by the contract you have with them (EULA), but the warrantee is a service they offer; they have the right to withdraw that service at any time based on conditions they set in the contract. They do not have the right to abridge the rights you as a consumer are given under copyright law, and that includes fair use and noncommercial personal use.
The other thing I notice is that Apple doesn't really care WHAT you do with the products you buy from them, as long as you don't violate copyright law. You will notice that Apple is not addressing the issue of Linux on iPod--they are simply letting it exist as a hobbyist project. In this litigious day in age, to not condemn a project like that is to give it your implicit support. After all, they are still selling iPods.
Of course, I also agree that you would be modded into oblivion if you dared to utter such a thing on the Apple-friendly Slashdot. What the Slashbots must remember is that just because a company generally does good things (like Apple and Google) does not mean we have to become apologists to compensate for the things they do that we don't like. We are free to question their decisions without attacking their mission as a whole, *especially* for companies we like: we want to make them even better.
And who decides what "proper" compensation is? You? The RIAA? The Senate? In this case it happens to be the consumer. Is that worse?...I don't trust in market economics...
Except that letting the consumer decide what the proper compensation is IS market economics. I, as the consumer, decide what the price point should be. I simply choose not to purchase the item until the price, as offered by the creator (or a third party the creator has designated, such as a publisher), is where I want it. If the item is priced too high, the item won't sell, and the seller will be forced to lower the price. That's how market economics works. The only reason you don't trust it is that there are other forces, different from market forces, at work. The best example is the political forces: the RIAA are constantly lobbying governments to help them lock out consumers, instead of responding to the true market forces. There are other things at work, too, such as making it illegal to import goods to a country where the goods are illegal, even if they are legal in the originating country. It's not the market you should be distrusting, it's the government that helps businesses push against the tide of the market at the expense of the consumer.
I don't know what you mean by "our", if you mean the US of A then the pronoun was wrong.
I meant whichever society decided to abolish all copyrights. It was a generic, hypothetical case, with the "our" not referring to any nationality in particular.
I actually was unaware that the artists recieved nothing from allofmp3.com. I was under the impression that they got something: some part of what their customers were prepared to pay.
So, can I safely assume that you agree with me that by using All Of MP3, you are circumventing the artist's interests, and that buying mp3s from there has the same effect on the creator of the work as downloading them for free off a P2P service? That it may be legal to use it (in Russia), but is indeed wrong to do so?...and I would like everybody regardless of ability to pay to have unrestricted access to music.
And how do you propose that the creator of music, or other copyrightable works, gets compensated for their time and effort? I hear a lot of "I don't like this" phrases, but I don't hear any suggestions.
Such a shame you had to resort to name calling, but then I should know better than to expect more.
From the tone and content of your posts in this thread, I got the impression that you were someone who believed that all copyright, in all forms, is evil, that copyright laws only stood between you and your music, and that if the system is broken, we should just abolish it altogether. If this is not the case, I apologize, but I also suggest you stop jumping to such drastic conclusions just because copyright has "been turned into the monopolizer's weapon of choice." It has, but only because of political maneuvering and lots of lobbying money, not because the system inevitably ends up there. Limited copyright is a necessary part of any money-based society, and if we simply ignore the law and head straight to the black market (which is where I belive All Of MP3 sits), we will only make the current monopolistic situation worse.
Well, I guess we don't share the same concept of legality.
Legality is not a state of mind, it is the existence of laws on the books. Either something is legal, or it is not. Period. Just because you choose to do something that is illegal does not invalidate the concept of legality.
That being said, there is a disconnect between legality and morality. That which is illegal is not necessarily wrong, and that which is legal is not necessarily right. In a perfect world, the two would always overlap perfectly; as it stands in the Real World (tm) there is quite a bit of overlap, but it's not exact. For example, murdering someone is wrong. Usually, it's also illegal. However, there are times when murdering someone is legal, such as in self-defense, capital punishment, etc. These all vary by circumstances and locale, of course.
My point is not the legality of All Of MP3. Everyone knows that it is legal to download from All Of MP3, as long as you are not in a country that prohibits importation of illegal goods, such as the United States. My point was instead on the MORALITY of All Of MP3. Even though it's legal, I think it is *wrong* to use that service, because the artists are not properly compensated for their work.
Clearly, you do not agree with the concept of copyright in general, as evidenced in your other posts. You believe that all information should be free, that poor people shouldn't be blocked from listening to music just because they can't pay for it, and blah, blah, blah. It's all bullshit, and I've heard it before. Yes, the copyright system in this country is broken. Yes, there are clear class divisions between the "haves" and the "have nots". But I think your whole argument is a smoke screen to justify the fact that you are a greedy bastard with an entitlement attitude, who will steal or subvert anything and anyone in your way in order to get what you want, and to hell with the consequences or the other people you're hurting. You are the worst kind of anarchist: a greedy anarchist.
Copyright has a very real place in our society, as a way to foster *full time* artists. Note that I did not say to foster the creation of art in general. Without copyright, people would still create works of art and literature, but because they will be unable to make a living off their creations (since everyone will simply be downloading copies from offshore servers "because it's cheaper, and legality/morality be damned"), they will be forced to have another job to pay living expenses. By dividing their time between work AND their art, their output will decrease, the quality will likely suffer, and the artists will be miserable, because they will not be able to spend their days doing what they love. The culture of our society will diminish.
With a copyright system in place, we can give these artists some kind of assurance that if their art is popular, they will be compensated for it, and can continue creating art full time. This is not a guarantee of compensation; if no one will buy it, that's not the market's fault. But it does create an environment in society for artists to thrive, and that is always a good thing.
There is a German saying which sums up my point of view: Legal, illegal, scheissegal.
Roughly translated: legal, illegal, don't give a shit.
"...but I'm going to do it anyway, because I'm a greedy bastard."
Here is how my point boils down: the artist is offering their music for sale. If you don't want to pay for it, don't buy it. Period. If you feel that it's worth having, then you will be willing to pay for it, and by that, I mean paying the artist who is offering it for sale. However, by using All Of MP3, you are going behind the artist's back, and buying it from someone who didn't buy it from the artist. And regardless of whether that's legal or not, it's wrong.
Unless humans evolve three more ears, no one realistically needs 5.1 on their iPods.
Um, we'd need to evolve 4 more ears. 5.1 is a six-channel format. Five channels of midrange to high frequencies (left, right, center, left rear, right rear), and one channel of subwoofer.
Unless, of course, you were planning on just hooking the subwoofer directly to the skull for migrane-inducing good times. That could be fun, too.
All Of MP3 offers MP3s ripped using LAME at a variety of bitrates, as well as Ogg, WMA and others.
Every time Slashdot has a discussion involving music downloads or mp3, someone inevitably brings up All Of MP3. And every time, someone needs to point out that All Of MP3 is illegal in the U.S. and elsewhere. Today, I have picked up the torch.
But it's more than just illegal. It's wrong. Yes, All Of MP3 is legal in Russia, where a loophole in the local copyright laws allow them to distribute these files under a "broadcast license." In the U.S., it is illegal to import these files because they violate U.S. copyright law. Yes, I'm sure there are many countries that do not explicitly forbid the importation of these files into their country from Russia, and in those countries this is legal.
Just because it's legal does not make it right.
The artists are not being paid for copies of this music. All Of MP3 has found a nifty legal loophole in order to exploit the artists for their own interests. In this way, they are no better than the record companies who write incredibly one-sided contracts.
If you are purchasing downloaded music because you feel that the artists need to be paid for their work, then buy from somewhere reputable where the artists (via their publishers) do see money. If you are only interested in getting quality downloads and don't care about artist's rights, then you may as well hit the P2P circuit and get them for free.
Just stop holding up All Of MP3 as a beacon of high-quality, legal music downloads. What they are doing is *wrong*, even if it's not illegal, and they are no better than the record companies who exploit the artists to make a quick buck.
She might be thinking of those huge rooms with the fans in the floor that allow simulation of falling at terminal velocity... basically skydiving in place.
It would be difficult to film a movie in there, however, since it gets so windy.
Makes me grumpy. Perhaps I need to take something to improves "wellbeing".
Nope. I think you just need to design a product that "replenishes the user's natural essence by rejuvinating the energy of the conscious mind and realigning the aura of the subconsious mind in concert with the natural harmonies of the universe" and sell them for 3 easy payments of $19.95 each. Maybe a suit coat with magnets in the lapels or something. (Not that one, though; I just patented it.)
I'm sure your big piles of cash will help you feel less grumpy.
To be honest though, I think you misunderstood me slightly. I did not intend to imply that the general population should not communicate, nor did I intend to imply that they should not be able to vote or have their computers connected to the internet, etc.
No, I got your point, and I agree with it. I just added an (allegedly) humorous post pointing out the highly amusing dichotomy on Slashdot: people here are gung-ho for things like Wikipedia and open-source, precisely because those things allow the complete democratization of information. However, as soon as someone mentions something like MySpace, or AOL, or cell phone TXTers, they complain that their precious Internet is being diluted with the stupidity of the general population.
We can't have it both ways. Either communication is the privilege of the skilled or it is open to everyone. If we maintain that (Wikipedia|open-source) is successful only because everyone participates, then we need to open it to everyone and not be upset when someone else's comments or opinions don't quite line up with our own. We have to take the good with the bad, and Netspeak is a part of that. If you don't like it, then ask the person you are chatting with (politely) to use standard English. But the stark truth is that many people enjoy chatting in that form, and if you are going to encourage everyone to use the Internet, then the Internet will be used by EVERYONE: even those without geeky degrees or jobs, who still think that forwarded email messages of "Top Ten Signs You're Living in 2006" are funny.
Personally, I prefer open access, and I will put up with the piles of sh*t that brings with it. Internet for everyone, I say. If that means there are larger sections of the Internet I can safely ignore (like MySpace, for example), then so be it.
And yes, responsibility is a big part of it, but people ignoring their responsibilities to other people has been an ongoing problem (for reference, see all of recorded history). The Internet, being the ultimate global community combined with the power of automation, simply brings that into sharp focus.
My girlfriend claims anti-gravity rooms exist because "They used one to film that movie!"
Anti-gravity rooms DO exist... they're called airplanes in free fall. (Well, not really free fall, they use parabolic flight paths that simulate free fall, but you get the idea.)
And yes, the KC-135 was used to film many of the microgravity scenes in "that movie," Apollo 13... Ron Howard had Command Module and Lunar Module sets built in the planes, and could film 35 seconds of weightlessness at a time. There was a rumor for a while that the Wachowski Brothers wanted to use the KC-135 to film some weightless kung-fu action for The Matrix: Reloaded, but they decided instead to use computer generated effects.
The nickname "Vomit Comet" comes from the fact that participants experience 1.8g while the plane bottoms out at the bottom of each parabola and 0g at the top of each parabola; continual fluctuation between 0g and 1.8g every 65 seconds results in some really funky gastric sensations.
As for the quality, that's the real question. Keeping with the example of my sister, I've asked her sometimes what some of the gobbledegook on the screen means and she admits she doesn't know, but still "lol"s back at the other person, or responds in some generic way.
Having no experience with the highly abbreviated and stylized dialect of Netspeak (and yes, I think "Netspeak" is as good a standardized name as any), I can't really comment on whether the conversations can contain more information in the same amount of text or not. It would be fascinating to me to see someone conduct a rigorous study of this. Sit several representatives of the younger generation down at an instant messaging program and give them a list of topics to talk about. Also have a group of highly educated English speakers discussing the same topics, and perhaps a group of "average Joes," who are not familiar with Netspeak but are not highly educated college literature professors, either. Afterwards, conduct interviews with the participants about the depths of meaning in each of their statements, subtle nuances, shades of meaning, comprehension, and so forth. One could also include statistics such as the number of words per line or conversation, the number of lines per conversation, the timed length of the conversations, tangents followed, incidents of humorous asides or opinionated interjections, etc. It would be a fascinating way to study how Netspeak is used, and if it just amounts to laziness, or if there really is some new form of cultural interaction going on there. From the sound of your post, your sister's friends are much more fluent in Netspeak than she is, and she just "plays along," as it were.
Incidentally, I don't think kids are reading less; on the contrary, due to the popularity of the internet, I think they are reading more. However, most of this reading is text that has been posted, not published, and has not been sent through an editing process. Thus, the things that they do read are less polished than what they would get from books, from a grammatical standpoint. Many scholars hold up Books as the end-all of literature in our world, but I don't think that's the case anymore. There is great literature to be found in films, online, and in other places these scholars don't necessarily think of. There's a lot of crap out there, too, but there is a lot of crap in books. Have these scholars seen the book section of their local Wal-Mart lately? It's almost completely filled with magazines, romance novels, and pulp, predictable dime novels. This is most certainly not great literature, but it does not diminish the greatness of other great literature. The same applies to other media, such as films, music, poetry, television, and the internet. There will be examples of greatness and crap in all these different media.
Welcome to the Information age. The age where every John Doe can send a txt 2 u.
Dear God, next they might start voting!
Seriously, what's wrong with enabling people to communicate with each other more readily and easily? Sure, we might have to put up with more crap, but everyone is contributing, like Wikipedia, and open-source software. It's democratic; everyone participates. This is what we said we wanted, right?
I was hoping we could start a flamewar on British English vs. American English, as long as we're discussing what's proper. To that end, I am sending the first volley: in your post above, you misspelled "realize," "defense," and "turd."
Okay, with that accomplished, I can compliment you on your excellent post.
...kindly do so in a way that demonstrates a fundamental and careful grasp of the language. Otherwise, all you are doing is proving the point of the article...
It's funny how the average quality of grammar in this thread is markedly higher than in other threads, for precisely that reason. Languages change and evolve over time, but there is always a place for proper formal communication. Once the internet slang starts to work its way into official emails, memos, presentations, and other official communication channels, the quality of language will truly start to slide. However, internet slang should not be condemned entirely. Instead, we should see it for what it is: a way for the younger generation to distance themselves from the older generation, and create an identity for themselves. This cycle has been ongoing since the dawn of time, and the older generation has always complained about how $BAD_THING is ruining the younger generation*. In the end, however, society has survived every new instance of $BAD_THING the younger generation has ever come up with, and in fact when the younger generation inevitably grows older, they will start to complain about a new, different, and decidedly dangerous $BAD_THING. Society seems to continue dispite all the bitching and moaning.
Oh, and I really enjoy the word, "fucktard." Good choice.
* $BAD_THING has, in the past, meant things as diverse as "rock 'n roll," "hippity hop," "television," "bobby socks," and "them new-fangled stone tablets that roll up--whaddaya call 'em, SCROLLS."
I don't know how to reverse it, but it is pretty embarassing when I make such basic, I-should-know-better mistakes.
I saw this trend in myself during college. Once I noticed it, I made a determined effort to improve my writing by improving my speaking. I reasoned that since most of my errors were due to the similarity of online communication to speech patterns, then by improving my speaking I would improve my writing.
It worked. I simply took that extra fraction of a second before I spoke to collect my thoughts and construct a sentence with real meaning to it, instead of just blurting out whatever came to mind first and having to backtrack and retread to clarify. Once that became a habit, I saw a marked improvement in my writing.
I also reviewed my rules of usage for such common mistakes as "its vs it's" and "their vs there vs they're." The "its/it's" one was easy: if the word can be replaced with "it is" then write "it's." If not, then write "its." Period. Even possesive is "its." The "the[ir|re|y're]" was a little more complicated, but I just made a concious effort to think about the word every time I wrote it down, whether I was referring to a place (there), a possessive (their), or a contraction (they're/they are). I'm currently focusing on proper use of slightly more obscure mistakes, like "further vs farther," "obtuse vs abstruse," and "laying vs lying." Sometimes just remembering to think about it is all it takes.
And I cringe when I see them creeping into more formal communications (signs, etc) as well.
It made my day the first time I saw a grocery store with a sign that said, "Express Lane: 15 items or fewer."
Batman swoops quickly down from the skylight, landing a right hook squarely in the jaw of one of the robbers...
POT!
Meanwhile, Robin lifts a chair up over his head and brings it smashing down on the second robber's head, dismantling the chair in the process...
KETTLE!
Quietly, off to the side, the Joker inches toward the wall and flips the light switch...
BLACK!
In the ensuing darkness, all that can be heard are the sounds of the battle raging on...
POUND! BANG! BIN! BASH!
When the lights finally flicker back to life, the two robbers and the Joker are tied up on the floor in the center of the room. Batman and Robin are standing over them with their heads held high and their capes flapping dramatically in the breeze.
Slashdot Mirror
If it is a true story, then you can write about it all you wish, but the film as a work still retains copyright.
"Fargo" is not a true story. The Coen Brothers put that disclaimer at the front of the film in order to see what people's reactions would be. I would have to say that is was very effective: the first time I saw the movie, I believed the "it's a true story" bit at the beginning because I had no reason not to (I had not heard about the ploy), and it colored how I perceived the undoubtedly brutal events in the movie.
But the real question is, if the work is NOT a true story, then can I still write about it all I want without violating copyright?
Frankly, I don't want Linux to catch on in the general desktop market.
The general desktop market is absolutely infested with spyware, viruses, crappy shareware/freeware programs, and people who will download and execute anything as long as it contains the words "hot" and "babes." The more marketshare Linux grabs, the more the Linux desktop will be infested with the same crap we on Slashdot complain about cleaning off our grandmothers' machines. Linux may be more resistant to these things than Windows, but it will not be immune.
I say, let the Lusers have their crappy OS with their Bonzai Buddies and their "pay us $20 for this pointless utility in 30 days or we cripple your machine" software. Linux is designed for power users who value functionality over bells 'n whistles, and who value stability and standards over proprietary interoperability. If we let in the masses, we will also be forced to lock down the OS, and that will clamp flexibility, thereby removing all value Linux has over Windows and Mac. They don't need it, and we shouldn't force it on them.
You wouldn't put a 16 year old with a driver's permit in the cockpit of an F-22... why would you want every Joe Schmoe and his grandmother to use such a powerful and possibly dangerous operating system as Linux?
If it were fiction, then they would probably have a viable copyright claim, but while they claim their book is fact, they have the problem that facts are not generally copyrightable.
So? The movie "Fargo" claimed to be fact, too, and the MPAA keeps telling me that I can't copy it freely, even though it's a true story.
Copyright refers specifically to an implimentation. I am free to make a movie about a car salesman in North Dakota who tries to kidnap his own wife for the ransom money from his rich father-in-law and whose plan goes south because of two stupid henchmen and a very persistent (and very pregnant) cop, as long as I don't use any film, music, lines, or titles from "Fargo". That would not be infringement. It has been done many times before.
Even if Dan Brown uses exactly the same conjectures and conclusions as "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail," unless he used that title or plagurized text from the book, he is not infringing. It sounds like the authors of "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail" are simply trying to a) leech a little of Dan Brown's inexplicable success, and b) get the name of their book in the media before the release of the movie, so people will go out and buy it.
If we ignore them, they will go away.
If they wanted to capture someone's attention they should just throw up the coupon, and freeze there for the whole 15-30 second spot. Static image. Can you imagine? People would be going nuts trying to figure out if their TV was broken.
... there's no such thing as dynamic range in a television audio stream.
That's a fantastic idea. Commercials usually subscribe to the idea that they need to be louder, faster, and more blaring in order to get your attention. Ever notice how the volume during commercials is much louder than during the shows? And the shows themselves are cranked up to peak levels
But the advertisers could use that noisy, blaring environment to their advantage. When all you hear is constant noise, nothing will get your attention like prolonged silence.
Oversimplifications aside, which one is Google? The visionary? Or the profiteer?
Overlooking the fact that forcing the definition to be one or the other IS an oversimplification, I would have to say that Google is the profiteer, but not in the traditional sense of the word.
Google will certainly be making money off of this archive, in the form of AdWords revenue, but, in contrast with Ben Franklin's social library, it will cost the end user nothing. It's as if a library were funded not by taxes, but by local businesses. In return for the local businesses' funding, the library set up a pamphlet board at the front entrance, which allowed the businesses to place stacks of pamphlets or brochures about their company. Access to the information itself is free to everyone, but they walk past the pamphlet board on their way in and out, and by doing learn about these local businesses. In this analogous scenario, would it matter if the library was owned by a government or a private interest? The information is still freely available to all.
One could probably make the argument that having this information displayed by a private party is not optimal, since the private party could at any time censor which information they choose to show. However, I'm not sure it applies in Google's case, because the information being shown is the National Archives, which is maintained by a public, government body. Google would either be showing the ENTIRE National Archives, in which no private-interest bias exists*, or they would choose not to show it all, and it would be very clear to people that they are selectively excluding things.
It is altogether possible to make money off a noble goal, thus becoming both profiteer AND visionary. The best example is that of a doctor, but there are others.
I have no problem with Google offering this service: it will be better run than a National Archives established program, and the information will still be available for free to the general public. I think the difference is that the information contained in the Archives is public information. Therefore, even if Google goes under and can no longer support display of the information, it will still exist in the new digital format for someone else to make available.
-------------
*Note that this does not discount the existence of governmental bias. The National Archives are certainly not immune to revisionist history. However, for the purposes of our argument here, we must assume that the information itself, by the nature of being public, is untouched by bias.
Saying someone "has no culture" is either a vacuous slap at the entire society in which the person lives ("you have no culture[1]"), or it's a statement that the person lacks culture[2]. The GP was asking about culture[1], not culture[2].
Silly Slashdotter. Everyone knows the culture array starts numbering at zero.
In Soviet Russia, computer .... um .....
I've got nothing.
IMHO, the MPAA, RIAA, et. al, are going to make the consumer public so mad that they essentially put themselves out of business.
Actually, something like this is exactly what we need to stem the tide.
Up until now, all of the various restrictions and protections the (MP|RI)AA have put on their products have been all but transparent to 90% of end users. CSS on DVDs? Joe Average just uses the DVD software that came with his computer, and the firmware that's built in to the standalone player he bought. FairPlay? iTunes and iPod make that basically invisible. The point is that even though we, on Slashdot, are aware of all the various restrictions and such placed on playable media, Joe Average doesn't peek behind the scenes of his media player, and his rights have been slowly eroded without him even noticing*.
However, the instant that a majority of the $3000 HDTVs out there are declared obsolete simply because of draconian anti-piracy restrictions, Joe Average is going to notice. He's going to bring home his brand new, HD-DVD copy of "American Pie 8: This is Really Gross", put it in his shiny new Sony HD-DVD player which the salesman assured him will output video at such an incredibly high resolution that he can see every thread in the lead jailbait actress's thong, and notice that the picture quality sucks. He will be angry, and will go back to the store demanding an explanation. When the clerk patiently explains to him that the analog component outputs on the back of the HD-DVD player output a lower resolution "in order to stop piracy" and that his $3000 HDTV television can only handle component input because he bought it two years ago, we may even get to see that vein in his forehead, which as up until now been merely throbbing, explode.
My point is that the more ridiculous and draconian the efforts of the (MP|RI)AA get, the better chance there is that they will find the showstopper: the one feature that 90% of the population would truly miss. The moment they lock that down in the interest of boosting profits, the revolution will begin.
------------
*The Sony rootkit had the possibility of being big enough, from a restriction/destruction standpoint, to make Joe Public notice. However, the entire concept of "rootkits" is very foreign to Joe Average, and the newsmedia didn't understand it, either. As a result, it was never blown INTO proportion. The newsmedia basically said, "Well, the geeks are telling us this is bad, so we're going to report it. But we'll get back to ongoing coverage of some car chase shortly." The true showstopper needs to be basic, so that the newsmedia will comprehend immediately, and make a big enough deal out of it. Then we'll see the class action suits start to fly.
How much more important can an industry get?
My problem with studies like this is that their definition of the "industry" is far too broad. I realize this happens because the "technology industry" is fairly new, but it's getting out of hand.
Let's draw a parallel with the steel industry. When people talk about the steel industry, they usually do not include jobs of people who produce the raw products that go into steel, such as miners or ore refinery workers, nor do they include jobs of people who build things OUT of steel, such as construction workers, welders, riveters, architects, engineers, mechanics, or sculptors. They also certainly do not include the jobs of people in management positions within companies who work with steel, such as executives in automobile manufacturing companies.
Why, then, does the "technology industry," include all those things and more? The "industry" always discusses jobs ranging from the bottom (data entry and Geek Squad tech) to the very tip top (managers and executive of entire companies), including everything in the middle (systems administrators, electrical engineers, software designers, code monkeys, and whoever else may have touched a computer once this week), and even include these positions in companies who merely USE technology instead of creating it.
My point is that when speaking in economic terms, technology is not the product of an industry, it is a means to a product. Yes, a car is technology, but Ford is not a technology company, they're a car company. Similarly, Google is not a technology company, they're a search and advertising firm. Microsoft is not a technology company, they are a tool manufacturer. So is Apple, although they also make toys.
Let's stop all this nonsense about refering to basically the entire modern economy as the Technology Industry (tm). When people talk about outsourcing being bad (it's actually offshoring, but that's a different discussion), they never mention what TYPES of jobs are moving overseas. If they're the menial, data-entry, tech-support types of positions, that affects a completely different set of people than if the jobs moving offshore are the engineering/design or coder positions. If we're going to have a discussion about whether moving jobs to other countries is good or bad, let's define the parameters of the study a little better and not resort to overgeneralizations.
Just a sidenote, but EULAs aren't contracts. EULAs have unclear status - if the EULA is found to be unenforcable (as they have been in multiple cases), the software is limited to the protection offered by copyright law.
You're right that EULA's have an unclear status, but that unclear status means some judges have ruled that they ARE indeed contracts. There are some interesting tidbits about EULAs and contract law here and here. I think the general consensus is that barring various types of contract fraud (changing contract provisions after the agreement, not allowing the purchaser to decline, etc.), EULAs are indeed contracts, and will be treated as such in a court of law. I think the biggest issue with EULA law right now is the "open software" problem, where the EULA is printed on material inside the box, and stores will not let you return open software. Thus, the purchaser does not have an ability to decline the offer based on the terms of the contract and receive a full refund. Companies that did this would likely have the contract invalidated if it were to be challenged in court.
Back to the point about EULAs, though: the most a company can due for breach of contract is to withdraw any services being offered. They could probably try to file a civil suit, but in the case of someone modding OS X to run on your own non-Apple hardware, I'm not sure how much in damages they could claim. Perhaps if you started "how-to-mod-osx-to-run-on-a-dell.com", they could claim lost hardware sales. I'm not sure about that, so any lawyers are welcome to chime in here.
Not the case at all. OS X for Intel has substantial and increasing hardware-lockouts, ensuring that you can only run the software on Apple-approved hardware. How does that not take control away from the user?
I was not aware. I always just thought that Apple designed their software to run on Apple hardware, without aiding or hindering anyone trying to get it to work on other hardware. Since Apple hardware used to be very specific, rewriting OS X to run on other hardware would have been a daunting task indeed. It does not surprise me that they are taking precautions, but it does disappoint me a little.
Not the case either. Apple has clearly stated that they do care what you do with their products, and they have threatened legal action against a number of parties who have attempted to circumvent their hardware locks.
This gets tricky, as far as their basis for filing suit. Can a hardware + software combination be copyrighted, and thus covered under the DMCA? The software can certainly be copyrighted, and locked down with encryption, but bypassing that encryption would be for purposes of interoperability with hardware, not access to copyrighted information. I'm not sure how a court would rule on that. Again, it would be nice to hear from a lawyer on this.
But I think the larger issue here is not the fact that companies who lock consumers into or out of hardware (Apple, or the more on-topic Members of the MPAA) are violating consumer's rights, because they clearly are not. It is very legal to offer a product for sale on your own terms, and the consumer has the option of buying the product, and thereby accepting the terms of the sale, or not buying the product, and effectively declining the terms. There is no option for "the seller is required to change the terms to suit the buyer." It's a yes-or-no proposition on the buyer's part. The larger issue is that offering one-sided terms such as the MPAA member companies are doing, which takes control of the product away from the consumer, is just poor customer service. Telling your customers what they CAN'T do with your product is the best way to boost your competition's sales. In the coming decades, consumers will start to turn away from the larger companie
No wonder the MPAA is suing, you only leased the right to have a DVD copy of the movie, there is no implied playability unless you also purchase their decoders. Next they'll start selling descrambling glasses that you have to visit one of their eye doctors to have focused for you!
......... $0.10 ...... $6.99"
Heh. That reminds me of an old joke:
"Seen on a menu in a small-town diner:
Soup
With bowl
If I wrote this about my "right" to run OS X on whatever hardware I liked, I'd be kicked to the ground, and then people would get "+5, insightfuls" for saying that Apple has the right to restrict how its software is run. (After all, you agreed to the EULA...)
If you'll excuse the pun, you're comparing apples and oranges.
Apple is not actively lobbying congress to create laws specifically designed to prevent you from using your copy of OS X in ways that you see to be reasonable. They do not purposefully add code to their operating system which is specifically designed to take control away from you. Their EULA specifies that you should only run OS X on Apple hardware, but if you choose not to, the only thing you lose is the warranty. You are free, by law, to take your copy of OS X and attempt to install it on your toaster if you like (iToaster?). You paid for it, and you can do anything you want with it, short of selling copies to other people, which is Apple's exclusive right under copyright law.
They DO have the right to void your warrantee if you don't abide by the contract you have with them (EULA), but the warrantee is a service they offer; they have the right to withdraw that service at any time based on conditions they set in the contract. They do not have the right to abridge the rights you as a consumer are given under copyright law, and that includes fair use and noncommercial personal use.
The other thing I notice is that Apple doesn't really care WHAT you do with the products you buy from them, as long as you don't violate copyright law. You will notice that Apple is not addressing the issue of Linux on iPod--they are simply letting it exist as a hobbyist project. In this litigious day in age, to not condemn a project like that is to give it your implicit support. After all, they are still selling iPods.
Of course, I also agree that you would be modded into oblivion if you dared to utter such a thing on the Apple-friendly Slashdot. What the Slashbots must remember is that just because a company generally does good things (like Apple and Google) does not mean we have to become apologists to compensate for the things they do that we don't like. We are free to question their decisions without attacking their mission as a whole, *especially* for companies we like: we want to make them even better.
And who decides what "proper" compensation is? You? The RIAA? The Senate? In this case it happens to be the consumer. Is that worse? ...I don't trust in market economics...
...and I would like everybody regardless of ability to pay to have unrestricted access to music.
Except that letting the consumer decide what the proper compensation is IS market economics. I, as the consumer, decide what the price point should be. I simply choose not to purchase the item until the price, as offered by the creator (or a third party the creator has designated, such as a publisher), is where I want it. If the item is priced too high, the item won't sell, and the seller will be forced to lower the price. That's how market economics works. The only reason you don't trust it is that there are other forces, different from market forces, at work. The best example is the political forces: the RIAA are constantly lobbying governments to help them lock out consumers, instead of responding to the true market forces. There are other things at work, too, such as making it illegal to import goods to a country where the goods are illegal, even if they are legal in the originating country. It's not the market you should be distrusting, it's the government that helps businesses push against the tide of the market at the expense of the consumer.
I don't know what you mean by "our", if you mean the US of A then the pronoun was wrong.
I meant whichever society decided to abolish all copyrights. It was a generic, hypothetical case, with the "our" not referring to any nationality in particular.
I actually was unaware that the artists recieved nothing from allofmp3.com. I was under the impression that they got something: some part of what their customers were prepared to pay.
So, can I safely assume that you agree with me that by using All Of MP3, you are circumventing the artist's interests, and that buying mp3s from there has the same effect on the creator of the work as downloading them for free off a P2P service? That it may be legal to use it (in Russia), but is indeed wrong to do so?
And how do you propose that the creator of music, or other copyrightable works, gets compensated for their time and effort? I hear a lot of "I don't like this" phrases, but I don't hear any suggestions.
Such a shame you had to resort to name calling, but then I should know better than to expect more.
From the tone and content of your posts in this thread, I got the impression that you were someone who believed that all copyright, in all forms, is evil, that copyright laws only stood between you and your music, and that if the system is broken, we should just abolish it altogether. If this is not the case, I apologize, but I also suggest you stop jumping to such drastic conclusions just because copyright has "been turned into the monopolizer's weapon of choice." It has, but only because of political maneuvering and lots of lobbying money, not because the system inevitably ends up there. Limited copyright is a necessary part of any money-based society, and if we simply ignore the law and head straight to the black market (which is where I belive All Of MP3 sits), we will only make the current monopolistic situation worse.
Well, I guess we don't share the same concept of legality.
Legality is not a state of mind, it is the existence of laws on the books. Either something is legal, or it is not. Period. Just because you choose to do something that is illegal does not invalidate the concept of legality.
That being said, there is a disconnect between legality and morality. That which is illegal is not necessarily wrong, and that which is legal is not necessarily right. In a perfect world, the two would always overlap perfectly; as it stands in the Real World (tm) there is quite a bit of overlap, but it's not exact. For example, murdering someone is wrong. Usually, it's also illegal. However, there are times when murdering someone is legal, such as in self-defense, capital punishment, etc. These all vary by circumstances and locale, of course.
My point is not the legality of All Of MP3. Everyone knows that it is legal to download from All Of MP3, as long as you are not in a country that prohibits importation of illegal goods, such as the United States. My point was instead on the MORALITY of All Of MP3. Even though it's legal, I think it is *wrong* to use that service, because the artists are not properly compensated for their work.
Clearly, you do not agree with the concept of copyright in general, as evidenced in your other posts. You believe that all information should be free, that poor people shouldn't be blocked from listening to music just because they can't pay for it, and blah, blah, blah. It's all bullshit, and I've heard it before. Yes, the copyright system in this country is broken. Yes, there are clear class divisions between the "haves" and the "have nots". But I think your whole argument is a smoke screen to justify the fact that you are a greedy bastard with an entitlement attitude, who will steal or subvert anything and anyone in your way in order to get what you want, and to hell with the consequences or the other people you're hurting. You are the worst kind of anarchist: a greedy anarchist.
Copyright has a very real place in our society, as a way to foster *full time* artists. Note that I did not say to foster the creation of art in general. Without copyright, people would still create works of art and literature, but because they will be unable to make a living off their creations (since everyone will simply be downloading copies from offshore servers "because it's cheaper, and legality/morality be damned"), they will be forced to have another job to pay living expenses. By dividing their time between work AND their art, their output will decrease, the quality will likely suffer, and the artists will be miserable, because they will not be able to spend their days doing what they love. The culture of our society will diminish.
With a copyright system in place, we can give these artists some kind of assurance that if their art is popular, they will be compensated for it, and can continue creating art full time. This is not a guarantee of compensation; if no one will buy it, that's not the market's fault. But it does create an environment in society for artists to thrive, and that is always a good thing.
There is a German saying which sums up my point of view: Legal, illegal, scheissegal.
Roughly translated: legal, illegal, don't give a shit.
"...but I'm going to do it anyway, because I'm a greedy bastard."
Here is how my point boils down: the artist is offering their music for sale. If you don't want to pay for it, don't buy it. Period. If you feel that it's worth having, then you will be willing to pay for it, and by that, I mean paying the artist who is offering it for sale. However, by using All Of MP3, you are going behind the artist's back, and buying it from someone who didn't buy it from the artist. And regardless of whether that's legal or not, it's wrong.
Unless humans evolve three more ears, no one realistically needs 5.1 on their iPods.
Um, we'd need to evolve 4 more ears. 5.1 is a six-channel format. Five channels of midrange to high frequencies (left, right, center, left rear, right rear), and one channel of subwoofer.
Unless, of course, you were planning on just hooking the subwoofer directly to the skull for migrane-inducing good times. That could be fun, too.
All Of MP3 offers MP3s ripped using LAME at a variety of bitrates, as well as Ogg, WMA and others.
Every time Slashdot has a discussion involving music downloads or mp3, someone inevitably brings up All Of MP3. And every time, someone needs to point out that All Of MP3 is illegal in the U.S. and elsewhere. Today, I have picked up the torch.
But it's more than just illegal. It's wrong. Yes, All Of MP3 is legal in Russia, where a loophole in the local copyright laws allow them to distribute these files under a "broadcast license." In the U.S., it is illegal to import these files because they violate U.S. copyright law. Yes, I'm sure there are many countries that do not explicitly forbid the importation of these files into their country from Russia, and in those countries this is legal.
Just because it's legal does not make it right.
The artists are not being paid for copies of this music. All Of MP3 has found a nifty legal loophole in order to exploit the artists for their own interests. In this way, they are no better than the record companies who write incredibly one-sided contracts.
If you are purchasing downloaded music because you feel that the artists need to be paid for their work, then buy from somewhere reputable where the artists (via their publishers) do see money. If you are only interested in getting quality downloads and don't care about artist's rights, then you may as well hit the P2P circuit and get them for free.
Just stop holding up All Of MP3 as a beacon of high-quality, legal music downloads. What they are doing is *wrong*, even if it's not illegal, and they are no better than the record companies who exploit the artists to make a quick buck.
She still claims ground-based rooms exist.
... basically skydiving in place.
She might be thinking of those huge rooms with the fans in the floor that allow simulation of falling at terminal velocity
It would be difficult to film a movie in there, however, since it gets so windy.
Makes me grumpy. Perhaps I need to take something to improves "wellbeing".
Nope. I think you just need to design a product that "replenishes the user's natural essence by rejuvinating the energy of the conscious mind and realigning the aura of the subconsious mind in concert with the natural harmonies of the universe" and sell them for 3 easy payments of $19.95 each. Maybe a suit coat with magnets in the lapels or something. (Not that one, though; I just patented it.)
I'm sure your big piles of cash will help you feel less grumpy.
To be honest though, I think you misunderstood me slightly. I did not intend to imply that the general population should not communicate, nor did I intend to imply that they should not be able to vote or have their computers connected to the internet, etc.
No, I got your point, and I agree with it. I just added an (allegedly) humorous post pointing out the highly amusing dichotomy on Slashdot: people here are gung-ho for things like Wikipedia and open-source, precisely because those things allow the complete democratization of information. However, as soon as someone mentions something like MySpace, or AOL, or cell phone TXTers, they complain that their precious Internet is being diluted with the stupidity of the general population.
We can't have it both ways. Either communication is the privilege of the skilled or it is open to everyone. If we maintain that (Wikipedia|open-source) is successful only because everyone participates, then we need to open it to everyone and not be upset when someone else's comments or opinions don't quite line up with our own. We have to take the good with the bad, and Netspeak is a part of that. If you don't like it, then ask the person you are chatting with (politely) to use standard English. But the stark truth is that many people enjoy chatting in that form, and if you are going to encourage everyone to use the Internet, then the Internet will be used by EVERYONE: even those without geeky degrees or jobs, who still think that forwarded email messages of "Top Ten Signs You're Living in 2006" are funny.
Personally, I prefer open access, and I will put up with the piles of sh*t that brings with it. Internet for everyone, I say. If that means there are larger sections of the Internet I can safely ignore (like MySpace, for example), then so be it.
And yes, responsibility is a big part of it, but people ignoring their responsibilities to other people has been an ongoing problem (for reference, see all of recorded history). The Internet, being the ultimate global community combined with the power of automation, simply brings that into sharp focus.
My girlfriend claims anti-gravity rooms exist because "They used one to film that movie!"
Anti-gravity rooms DO exist... they're called airplanes in free fall. (Well, not really free fall, they use parabolic flight paths that simulate free fall, but you get the idea.)
And yes, the KC-135 was used to film many of the microgravity scenes in "that movie," Apollo 13... Ron Howard had Command Module and Lunar Module sets built in the planes, and could film 35 seconds of weightlessness at a time. There was a rumor for a while that the Wachowski Brothers wanted to use the KC-135 to film some weightless kung-fu action for The Matrix: Reloaded, but they decided instead to use computer generated effects.
The nickname "Vomit Comet" comes from the fact that participants experience 1.8g while the plane bottoms out at the bottom of each parabola and 0g at the top of each parabola; continual fluctuation between 0g and 1.8g every 65 seconds results in some really funky gastric sensations.
As for the quality, that's the real question. Keeping with the example of my sister, I've asked her sometimes what some of the gobbledegook on the screen means and she admits she doesn't know, but still "lol"s back at the other person, or responds in some generic way.
Having no experience with the highly abbreviated and stylized dialect of Netspeak (and yes, I think "Netspeak" is as good a standardized name as any), I can't really comment on whether the conversations can contain more information in the same amount of text or not. It would be fascinating to me to see someone conduct a rigorous study of this. Sit several representatives of the younger generation down at an instant messaging program and give them a list of topics to talk about. Also have a group of highly educated English speakers discussing the same topics, and perhaps a group of "average Joes," who are not familiar with Netspeak but are not highly educated college literature professors, either. Afterwards, conduct interviews with the participants about the depths of meaning in each of their statements, subtle nuances, shades of meaning, comprehension, and so forth. One could also include statistics such as the number of words per line or conversation, the number of lines per conversation, the timed length of the conversations, tangents followed, incidents of humorous asides or opinionated interjections, etc. It would be a fascinating way to study how Netspeak is used, and if it just amounts to laziness, or if there really is some new form of cultural interaction going on there. From the sound of your post, your sister's friends are much more fluent in Netspeak than she is, and she just "plays along," as it were.
Incidentally, I don't think kids are reading less; on the contrary, due to the popularity of the internet, I think they are reading more. However, most of this reading is text that has been posted, not published, and has not been sent through an editing process. Thus, the things that they do read are less polished than what they would get from books, from a grammatical standpoint. Many scholars hold up Books as the end-all of literature in our world, but I don't think that's the case anymore. There is great literature to be found in films, online, and in other places these scholars don't necessarily think of. There's a lot of crap out there, too, but there is a lot of crap in books. Have these scholars seen the book section of their local Wal-Mart lately? It's almost completely filled with magazines, romance novels, and pulp, predictable dime novels. This is most certainly not great literature, but it does not diminish the greatness of other great literature. The same applies to other media, such as films, music, poetry, television, and the internet. There will be examples of greatness and crap in all these different media.
Welcome to the Information age. The age where every John Doe can send a txt 2 u.
Dear God, next they might start voting!
Seriously, what's wrong with enabling people to communicate with each other more readily and easily? Sure, we might have to put up with more crap, but everyone is contributing, like Wikipedia, and open-source software. It's democratic; everyone participates. This is what we said we wanted, right?
Right?
Hey, where are you going?
I was hoping we could start a flamewar on British English vs. American English, as long as we're discussing what's proper. To that end, I am sending the first volley: in your post above, you misspelled "realize," "defense," and "turd."
...kindly do so in a way that demonstrates a fundamental and careful grasp of the language. Otherwise, all you are doing is proving the point of the article...
Okay, with that accomplished, I can compliment you on your excellent post.
It's funny how the average quality of grammar in this thread is markedly higher than in other threads, for precisely that reason. Languages change and evolve over time, but there is always a place for proper formal communication. Once the internet slang starts to work its way into official emails, memos, presentations, and other official communication channels, the quality of language will truly start to slide. However, internet slang should not be condemned entirely. Instead, we should see it for what it is: a way for the younger generation to distance themselves from the older generation, and create an identity for themselves. This cycle has been ongoing since the dawn of time, and the older generation has always complained about how $BAD_THING is ruining the younger generation*. In the end, however, society has survived every new instance of $BAD_THING the younger generation has ever come up with, and in fact when the younger generation inevitably grows older, they will start to complain about a new, different, and decidedly dangerous $BAD_THING. Society seems to continue dispite all the bitching and moaning.
Oh, and I really enjoy the word, "fucktard." Good choice.
* $BAD_THING has, in the past, meant things as diverse as "rock 'n roll," "hippity hop," "television," "bobby socks," and "them new-fangled stone tablets that roll up--whaddaya call 'em, SCROLLS."
I don't know how to reverse it, but it is pretty embarassing when I make such basic, I-should-know-better mistakes.
I saw this trend in myself during college. Once I noticed it, I made a determined effort to improve my writing by improving my speaking. I reasoned that since most of my errors were due to the similarity of online communication to speech patterns, then by improving my speaking I would improve my writing.
It worked. I simply took that extra fraction of a second before I spoke to collect my thoughts and construct a sentence with real meaning to it, instead of just blurting out whatever came to mind first and having to backtrack and retread to clarify. Once that became a habit, I saw a marked improvement in my writing.
I also reviewed my rules of usage for such common mistakes as "its vs it's" and "their vs there vs they're." The "its/it's" one was easy: if the word can be replaced with "it is" then write "it's." If not, then write "its." Period. Even possesive is "its." The "the[ir|re|y're]" was a little more complicated, but I just made a concious effort to think about the word every time I wrote it down, whether I was referring to a place (there), a possessive (their), or a contraction (they're/they are). I'm currently focusing on proper use of slightly more obscure mistakes, like "further vs farther," "obtuse vs abstruse," and "laying vs lying." Sometimes just remembering to think about it is all it takes.
And I cringe when I see them creeping into more formal communications (signs, etc) as well.
It made my day the first time I saw a grocery store with a sign that said, "Express Lane: 15 items or fewer."
Batman swoops quickly down from the skylight, landing a right hook squarely in the jaw of one of the robbers...
POT!
Meanwhile, Robin lifts a chair up over his head and brings it smashing down on the second robber's head, dismantling the chair in the process...
KETTLE!
Quietly, off to the side, the Joker inches toward the wall and flips the light switch...
BLACK!
In the ensuing darkness, all that can be heard are the sounds of the battle raging on...
POUND! BANG! BIN! BASH!
When the lights finally flicker back to life, the two robbers and the Joker are tied up on the floor in the center of the room. Batman and Robin are standing over them with their heads held high and their capes flapping dramatically in the breeze.