Yes, yes. New words are added, old words are invested with new meanings. Certainly, the (English, at least) language appears to be growing rapidly in our time. But this is really the Post-Information age, the Age of Spin, where talking points have replaced reasoned discussion and photo-ops have replaced the interviews of real journalism. Rather than entirely surrender to the language shaped by the primary media manipulators, I think we might more responsibly examine some of the emotionally-charged terminology so easily tossed at us by those who would bend us to their will.
I have no problem with "cool" -- why would you suggest that? I have a problem with "piracy"; I have a problem with "hacker". I have a problem with connotatively-loaded terms substituting for reasonably descriptive terms. Should we have Larry Wall or RMS lumped into the same category as the asshole who unleashed Sasser? Should the 12-year-old girl who simply downloaded a music video (and is now brought to tears after by the accusation that she's supporting the terrorists that want to destroy America) be made to stand in the same dock as the CEO of that Vietnamese company which is now shipping as many copies of Office as Microsoft ever did?
We have new technologies confronting old business models. I think we ought to be evolving a new taxonomy to deal with the situation.
Repeated often enough, lies become truth? I don't care how long that term has been in use: there's little resemblance between the kid downloading a Metallica album and the bloodthirsty murderer, cutlass clamped between his teeth, stealthily climbing over the gunwale of an anchored yacht.
Continuing to call it piracy is still as stupid as it has ever been. Is it theft? Is someone being deprived of property? No? Then are sales being lost? How many studies have shown that in the general case, for software "piracy" at least, the pirate would not likely otherwise have purchased the item in question?
If you really need to categorize the wrongness of unauthorized copying, if you need to name the type of crime to which it belongs, I want you to contemplate the class of sin which includes Adultery but excludes Theft. Consider:
Piracy: something is taken away from the property owner
Adultery: nothing is taken away from the wronged spouse
Copying: nothing is taken away from the copyright holder
Piracy: the property owner is at risk of death or maiming
Adultery: the wronged spouse is not present and is often unaware of the event
Copying: the copyright holder is not present and is often unaware of the event
Where's the similarity between the three?
Piracy: somebody gets fucked
Adultery: somebody gets fucked
Copying: somebody gets fucked
I believe that Adultery used to be punishable by imprisonment. Perhaps, even, some previous era's equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security would break down doors in the middle of the night to arrest wrongdoers. Possibly, adulterers were once regarded by some as undermining all that is sacred to society -- the terrorists or communists of their day.
I dunno, perhaps we should bring back branding for this class of criminal.
Mir Sultan Khan arrived in England in 1929 as manservant to an Indian Maharaja, and immediately took the European chess world by storm (the Wikipedia article compares him to Morphy). He convincingly defeated all the great players of that era -- Alekhine, Capablanca, Euwe, Rubenstein, more, but when the American master Reuben Fine visited the maharaja's digs in London, Khan was the waiter who served the meal. In 1933, the maharaja left England and Khan was taken back to India: no more tournament chess for him.
His story is not the same as the story of Blind Tom, in spite of cetain similarities. There is no indication that Khan's owner/employer exploited those remarkable talents, and the talents were in fact measurably remarkable. In the case of Blind Tom, one is tempted to think of S. Johnson's remark: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
[from Boswell's Life of Johnson]
Einstein was an intelligent man, but there are some doubts about how much stature to accord him. Perhaps you missed the PBS examination of the role his wife played in developing those early ideas, and perhaps you've ignored the more serious accusations leveled against him.
There's no doubt, however, that his importance to anti-Nazi propogandists deserves considerably more comment than it has received.
"The mentally retarded Tom, born a slave in Georgia in 1850, was exhibited by his former owner, a Mr. P.H. Oliver, in the nineteenth century as "the greatest musical prodigy since Mozart." A contemporary description of one of his concerts "shrivels the soul," according to Harold Schonberg. Tom would sit at the piano to be bribed by Mr. Oliver with cakes and candy until he played. At the end of each piece he would applaud himself violently. Tom was lauded by the media of his day as "incredibly gifted." One critic was certain she detected in his playing the mark of genius: "Some beautiful caged spirit, one could not but know, struggled for breath under that brutal form and idiotic brain." According to Schonberg, Tom attracted in his day more attention than all other American pianists put together. He toured England and even played at the White House. Blind Tom died in obscurity in New Jersey in 1908. Where Mr. Oliver retired to is unrecorded."
It's unlikely that Tom's fame was due to any musical talent.
Coke is suffering from a boycott as a result of alleged complicity in the murder of union organizers -- but only outside of the United States, apparently. I don't think that Pixar has whacked anyone, and everyone knows that Macintoshes don't kill people...
Funny, also, that the other piece of Al-Jazeera news from yesterday was about Qatar trying to unload the network under pressure from the US. Did they wait for the top ten list before announcing that?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, yes. New words are added, old words are invested with new meanings. Certainly, the (English, at least) language appears to be growing rapidly in our time. But this is really the Post-Information age, the Age of Spin, where talking points have replaced reasoned discussion and photo-ops have replaced the interviews of real journalism. Rather than entirely surrender to the language shaped by the primary media manipulators, I think we might more responsibly examine some of the emotionally-charged terminology so easily tossed at us by those who would bend us to their will.
I have no problem with "cool" -- why would you suggest that? I have a problem with "piracy"; I have a problem with "hacker". I have a problem with connotatively-loaded terms substituting for reasonably descriptive terms. Should we have Larry Wall or RMS lumped into the same category as the asshole who unleashed Sasser? Should the 12-year-old girl who simply downloaded a music video (and is now brought to tears after by the accusation that she's supporting the terrorists that want to destroy America) be made to stand in the same dock as the CEO of that Vietnamese company which is now shipping as many copies of Office as Microsoft ever did?
We have new technologies confronting old business models. I think we ought to be evolving a new taxonomy to deal with the situation.
Repeated often enough, lies become truth? I don't care how long that term has been in use: there's little resemblance between the kid downloading a Metallica album and the bloodthirsty murderer, cutlass clamped between his teeth, stealthily climbing over the gunwale of an anchored yacht.
Continuing to call it piracy is still as stupid as it has ever been. Is it theft? Is someone being deprived of property? No? Then are sales being lost? How many studies have shown that in the general case, for software "piracy" at least, the pirate would not likely otherwise have purchased the item in question?
If you really need to categorize the wrongness of unauthorized copying, if you need to name the type of crime to which it belongs, I want you to contemplate the class of sin which includes Adultery but excludes Theft. Consider:
Where's the similarity between the three?
I believe that Adultery used to be punishable by imprisonment. Perhaps, even, some previous era's equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security would break down doors in the middle of the night to arrest wrongdoers. Possibly, adulterers were once regarded by some as undermining all that is sacred to society -- the terrorists or communists of their day.
I dunno, perhaps we should bring back branding for this class of criminal.
I wouldn't worry much about that: security through redundancy might be pretty cheap.
Recalls this
QOTD at the bottom of Slashdot's page, as I'm reading your comment:
"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment." -- Gotama Buddha
Language Log refers to these constructs as "Snowclones", and cites several examples.
Mir Sultan Khan arrived in England in 1929 as manservant to an Indian Maharaja, and immediately took the European chess world by storm (the Wikipedia article compares him to Morphy). He convincingly defeated all the great players of that era -- Alekhine, Capablanca, Euwe, Rubenstein, more, but when the American master Reuben Fine visited the maharaja's digs in London, Khan was the waiter who served the meal. In 1933, the maharaja left England and Khan was taken back to India: no more tournament chess for him.
His story is not the same as the story of Blind Tom, in spite of cetain similarities. There is no indication that Khan's owner/employer exploited those remarkable talents, and the talents were in fact measurably remarkable. In the case of Blind Tom, one is tempted to think of S. Johnson's remark: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." [from Boswell's Life of Johnson]
Einstein was an intelligent man, but there are some doubts about how much stature to accord him. Perhaps you missed the PBS examination of the role his wife played in developing those early ideas, and perhaps you've ignored the more serious accusations leveled against him.
There's no doubt, however, that his importance to anti-Nazi propogandists deserves considerably more comment than it has received.
That's not fair. APL is always a conversation killer in any discussion about programming languages.
Coke is suffering from a boycott as a result of alleged complicity in the murder of union organizers -- but only outside of the United States, apparently. I don't think that Pixar has whacked anyone, and everyone knows that Macintoshes don't kill people...
Funny, also, that the other piece of Al-Jazeera news from yesterday was about Qatar trying to unload the network under pressure from the US. Did they wait for the top ten list before announcing that?