Yes, if I see some of your work and like it. I support many open source projects, for example.
For a meritocracy to work you have to pay your dues, put yourself out there, and [cliche_template_3].
That's how Penny Arcade worked for a time-- via mass donations (it may still, I'm not sure), and so do thousands of others using Amazon Donations or PayPal Donations.
Actually, I'd bet that special effects advances owe more to acedemia than Capitalism-- which has become compeletly choked off by advertising (spam), politics, and royalties. (Besides, it seems like Capitalism overvalues pro athletes and entertainers, and undervalues doctors and teachers).
I happen to license all of my work through Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ ; people are free to copy it. Arguably none of it could yet be considered a masterpiece yet, but it does represent a great deal of work on my part.
My opinion is that people should be paid as an incentive for *working*, not royalties for something already completed in the past.
Of course not all societies on Earth are built on capitalism (say China, to whom our society owes a great deal of money), and "intellectual property" only works when *everyone* cooperates to artificially treat songs like toasters.
I work hard every day, and when I find a solution to a problem, or an insight worth sharing (this one may not count), I share it.
What puzzles me is the sense of entitlement people and companies get when they come up with something they want to share, and feel they should get paid over and over for having done something once.
I much prefer a patronage model (where content creation is underwritten) to the "double-billing" model of "intellectual 'property'" (got to get a few quotes in there before they become patented).
Are you absolutely certain that "safe" controls have always required confirmation in default configurations? I seem to recall otherwise.
Is it safe to say the single XPI incident you are citing was prior to a 1.0 release, and was not there long enough for spyware companies to take advantage of, even were Firefox the leading browser?
I'm not sure that's true. Remember that ActiveX controls can be signed and "marked as safe".
As for XPI, are these exploits stable enough to build a business model on, as IE exploits seem to be, or have they typically been patched too quickly to be relied upon?
Please compare to DS9: a bleak war movie in space, with an emphasis on fighting an implacable, deadly enemy (the Dominion); dark and gritty. For my money, this was the most entertaining of the Star Treks, but for what-if sci-fi and Utopian morality plays, TNG is better.
They really lost me with Voyager, though: after reading Greg Egan's Permutation City, I was very excited about the prospect of a digital character, but it was very poorly executed. The Dr. was unable to fork/copy himself, and could only move his program to a "mobile emitter" and back. The computer memory had to be extensively modded to handle binary data! Arbitrary and ridiculous restrictions were placed on the tech because the writers didn't understand their subject matter, and were intent on telling their story, rather than exploring actual ramifications presented by the setting and characters.
Here are some new ST series ideas for Paramount:
Star Trek: Special Victim's Unit
Star Trek: Talk to the Hand
Star Trek: Dinosaurs
Star Trek: The Last Generation
Star Trek: Everyone is pure energy now, but we're kind of bored
When I ran it, I got three "infected files": one was a trusted sites entry, one was the Lernout & Hauspie Text-to-Speech Engine I had downloaded from Microsoft's site, and one was instsrv from Microsoft's Resource Kit.
So, in addition to being able to double-count (or more) infections "per file", the Microsoft tool also tends to find false positives.
The line seems distinct enough for you to distinguish Star Wars as fantasy.;)
Semantics aside, my point is that nearly all SF now being produced is much closer to "The Net" or "Hackers" or "Bride of the Atom" than "Permutation City" or "Cryptonomicon". Nearly everything I see onscreen now inserts absolute gibberish into the script, and as long as the words have more than two syllables, it is accepted as a Scientific Incantation(TM).
I don't want to hear that "most people won't understand"; the *reason* they don't understand is through generations of condescenscion such as this. People need an impetus to check a dictionary/encyclopedia.
Of course, most dialog in general anymore is crap (of the three-line-Perl-script-generated variety), so maybe that's my problem.
Science fiction is a form of fiction which deals principally with the impact of imagined science and/or technology upon society or individuals. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction
The job of SF is to ask "what if", and examine the effects. It's a way of auditioning scientific priorities socially. Remove the science and you just have fiction.
[Rant] This attitude infuriates me for two reasons: First, it anti-intellectual to regard the whole of science; all mathematics, physics, information theory, sociology, cosmology,...; as a minor implementation detail. Second, it lulls the general populous into thinking that science is "indistinguishable from magic", and is utterly unknowable (and cannot be trusted).
Slashdot Mirror
So, your assersion is that "piracy" is under control in China, or will be soon? What about Russia? What about the Principality of Sealand?
Yes, if I see some of your work and like it. I support many open source projects, for example. For a meritocracy to work you have to pay your dues, put yourself out there, and [cliche_template_3]. That's how Penny Arcade worked for a time-- via mass donations (it may still, I'm not sure), and so do thousands of others using Amazon Donations or PayPal Donations.
Actually, I'd bet that special effects advances owe more to acedemia than Capitalism-- which has become compeletly choked off by advertising (spam), politics, and royalties. (Besides, it seems like Capitalism overvalues pro athletes and entertainers, and undervalues doctors and teachers).
(The extra "yet" is for good luck.)
I happen to license all of my work through Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ ; people are free to copy it. Arguably none of it could yet be considered a masterpiece yet, but it does represent a great deal of work on my part.
My opinion is that people should be paid as an incentive for *working*, not royalties for something already completed in the past.
Of course not all societies on Earth are built on capitalism (say China, to whom our society owes a great deal of money), and "intellectual property" only works when *everyone* cooperates to artificially treat songs like toasters.
Why is it *necessary* to make money from ideas?
I work hard every day, and when I find a solution to a problem, or an insight worth sharing (this one may not count), I share it.
What puzzles me is the sense of entitlement people and companies get when they come up with something they want to share, and feel they should get paid over and over for having done something once.
I much prefer a patronage model (where content creation is underwritten) to the "double-billing" model of "intellectual 'property'" (got to get a few quotes in there before they become patented).
Not at all. This has always been possible with NT-based systems. Maybe not with 9X/ME systems...
You're going to want to verify that claim about services.
Are you absolutely certain that "safe" controls have always required confirmation in default configurations? I seem to recall otherwise.
Is it safe to say the single XPI incident you are citing was prior to a 1.0 release, and was not there long enough for spyware companies to take advantage of, even were Firefox the leading browser?
I'm not sure that's true. Remember that ActiveX controls can be signed and "marked as safe". As for XPI, are these exploits stable enough to build a business model on, as IE exploits seem to be, or have they typically been patched too quickly to be relied upon?
This only holds for XP sp2, of course.
Underreported Firefox Features
Please compare to DS9: a bleak war movie in space, with an emphasis on fighting an implacable, deadly enemy (the Dominion); dark and gritty. For my money, this was the most entertaining of the Star Treks, but for what-if sci-fi and Utopian morality plays, TNG is better.
They really lost me with Voyager, though: after reading Greg Egan's Permutation City, I was very excited about the prospect of a digital character, but it was very poorly executed. The Dr. was unable to fork/copy himself, and could only move his program to a "mobile emitter" and back. The computer memory had to be extensively modded to handle binary data! Arbitrary and ridiculous restrictions were placed on the tech because the writers didn't understand their subject matter, and were intent on telling their story, rather than exploring actual ramifications presented by the setting and characters.
Here are some new ST series ideas for Paramount:
When I ran it, I got three "infected files": one was a trusted sites entry, one was the Lernout & Hauspie Text-to-Speech Engine I had downloaded from Microsoft's site, and one was instsrv from Microsoft's Resource Kit. So, in addition to being able to double-count (or more) infections "per file", the Microsoft tool also tends to find false positives.
The line seems distinct enough for you to distinguish Star Wars as fantasy. ;)
Semantics aside, my point is that nearly all SF now being produced is much closer to "The Net" or "Hackers" or "Bride of the Atom" than "Permutation City" or "Cryptonomicon". Nearly everything I see onscreen now inserts absolute gibberish into the script, and as long as the words have more than two syllables, it is accepted as a Scientific Incantation(TM).
I don't want to hear that "most people won't understand"; the *reason* they don't understand is through generations of condescenscion such as this. People need an impetus to check a dictionary/encyclopedia.
Of course, most dialog in general anymore is crap (of the three-line-Perl-script-generated variety), so maybe that's my problem.
Wrong. That's *fantasy* (by definition).
...; as a minor implementation detail. Second, it lulls the general populous into thinking that science is "indistinguishable from magic", and is utterly unknowable (and cannot be trusted).
Science fiction is a form of fiction which deals principally with the impact of imagined science and/or technology upon society or individuals.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction
The job of SF is to ask "what if", and examine the effects. It's a way of auditioning scientific priorities socially. Remove the science and you just have fiction.
[Rant]
This attitude infuriates me for two reasons: First, it anti-intellectual to regard the whole of science; all mathematics, physics, information theory, sociology, cosmology,
noun: a legal right to use and derive profit from property belonging to someone else provided that the property itself is not injured in any way