...Nigeria is destroying the Niger delta for oil, and so on.
I believe you will find that western oil companies are destroying, not only the Delta, but half of Nigeria for oil. Specifically, for oil for you am me. There's very little oil or money going to the Nigerians.
You know, observational studies are still scientific. There are plenty of hypotheses that can be tested without randomized controlled trials.
Not really. Observational studies are generally shodily researched, poorly implemented, have less than 50 data points and no controls, and are sloshed around in a statistical package until the numbers come out. They're generally done by people who have come to a conclusion and now need to dress it up with a "scientific study".
Which isn't to say that a good observational trial cannot take place. They just don't usually take place nowadays.
Sometimes science is hard. It's still science, though, even if your "ideal" test methodology is impractical.
And sometimes it is so hard some people just give up and fudge everything until they get what they want. The ideal test methodology is an honest to goodness experiment. You're either doing experiments, or you're gassing.
Mythbusters can and do make a better effort at the scientific method than most modern, think tank funded studies. They put ideas to the test. Most studies simply data mine.
Sadly it also appears to be 2nd generation types too. The old man was nice and polite, his children on the otherhand... what the hell happened?
Perhaps you've hit on the root of the problem. Dynastic succession. Untested, unproven people being placed in positions they never earned. Indeed, they feel entitled to them by default.
To rationalise this, they need a philosophy for why they deserve so much more for so little. They must be in some way inherently more deserving, superior, better than ordinary people. After that, it's rather difficult to treat others with respect.
I worked for Disney for 5 years and they're not likely to change a winning formula.
The beauty of Disney's model is that they sell to six years olds; six year olds with literally no memory and no experience of having seen their product before despite its being over 50 years old. It's as if Disney, as a company, is selling into a market with mass collective amnesia. They never need to innovate.
Goose was a character in a movie, played by the TV and movie actor Anthony Edwards. You may remember him from such productions as "ER", "Revenge of the Nerds", "Northern Exposure" and the UASF informational short, "Why I'm Not Goose".
What does the size of data, ease of transfer, or convenience of copying have to do with paying someone for the work they have done?
Everything. Absolutely everything. This is what the digital revolution is telling us.
Why are people, across the social spectrum, so wilfully engaged in what you call "stealing"? Because these people all recognise one basic fact; This data is not worth anything. It's basic economics. The supply of an mp3 is de facto limitless. What then should the price be? Zero. This is the first time this has ever actually happened in the history of copyright. Data has been cheap since the 1850's, but had a non-zero price. Now, it has an effectively zero price.
People do work to produce this data. That is true. But this does not mean they must be compensated for the resulting data. If someone took a boat out to sea, gathered seawater, and then tried to sell it on the beach to hot sunbathers, must we ensure their labour is compensated? Their can be labour which has no ultimate value. As technology progresses, some labours become obsolete. Wool weavers, blacksmiths, night soil men, middle managers, portrait makers, icehouse owners. And now the digital age has rendered writing a book, singing a song, and soon making a movie one of those obsolete labours.
Now, we can disagree on this point. Some people may find it an abhorrent notion. Some may laud books, songs and movies as laudable labours worth rewarding. But here's the catch.
It doesn't matter what we think. The reality of the situation is that people no longer recognise these works as being worth anything. Napster was not the cause of the file-sharing movement. Bram Cohen is not the root of movie piracy. The Pirate Bay and sites like it are not an accident of history. The individual people and technologies are only incidental. The fundamental driver of these things is our increasing capacity to transfer and store data. The situation copyrighted works find themselves in was inevitably going to occur, as absurdly cheap distribution and storage technologies made the notion of "valuable data" as absurd as the copyright on Happy Birthday.
If we bomb ourselves back into the stone age and a new civilisation makes its own information revolution in 10000 years time, I guarantee you they will hit upon, not only the same problem as we have with copyright, but on the same solution as well. People will reject the idea of data being worth anything in and of itself. It has begun with the younger generations, people currently under 30 in particular. As time progresses this concept will only gain a firmer foothold, not because people are pushing viewpoints for or against it, but because our technology and way of life make it inevitable.
What reform would you envision that made it acceptable? Personally, I'd like to see a 10 or 15 year limit on copyright lifespan. That would make it a lot more palettable than it is now, for me.
While a serious reduction in copyright span should be on the table, I think there also needs to be a recognition on the part of copyright holders that it is just too easy to copy their productions nowadays. I honestly think that a very reasonable compromise would be to extend fair use to all non commercial uses. This would accept the reality of ubiquitous distribution, open up the world of ideas, but still allow most copyright holders to have both protection and to make a profit if they choose.
It's bullshit to say that a child should just "toughen up" against the orchestrated attacks and manipulations of full grown fucking adults.
There are people, many younger than 12 years old, who had to put up with a lot more than nasty IMs from adults in their lives. Most of those people are still here, trying to get on with their lives.
Yes Megan Meier's suicide was tragic. Yes Lori Drew's behaviour was reprehensible, even illegal, and was a direct cause of Meier's decision to commit suicide. But it's clear to any reasonable person that Lori Drew, vicious as she was, was in no way the sole reason for Meier's death.
People who commit suicide kill themselves. Driving someone to commit suicide, even intentionally, is no more murder than a woman dressing up for an evening is an incitement to rape. Ultimately people are responsible for their own actions. Megan Meier was one month away from her 14th birthday. That's not young. That's old; and hang those that would treat young people like infants. I was 14 once, so were most people. What do you think people would have said if you stood up back then and said: "I'm too young to be responsible for my own actions". I don't think it would have gone down well.
Justice for all had to trump over justice for one dead kid. And even though it was probably right... it still fucking sucks.
What justice? Was the prosecution of Lori Drew all that just or noble? I'll admit the woman could have been brought up on fairly strong charges for fraternising in the way she did with a minor. But that wasn't the charge she was brought up on. She was brought up on a made up law spurred on by a fit of rage and media publicity. That's not justice. Not for Lori Drew, or Megan Meier, or anyone else.
The law is not a bludgeon that the public can beat people with to make itself feel better. It's a social contract made to keep the world sane. When it degenerates into illogical rulings and outright lunacy, as it did in this case, you can be sure that the peaceful world we live in won't be far behind.
1. technically superior, 2. media hungry and 3. POOR teenagers
It's not the wants and needs of teenagers that is bringing the end of copyright. It's the simple forces of reality.
You know the song "Happy Birthday". It's copyrighted. The song itself is a mere 95 bytes in size. The data overheads involved in transmitting the file probably outweigh the file itself. Yet copyright law essentially tells us that Time Warner "owns" this song. That the act of copying it is a sacred right, reserved only for those whom the privilage is conferred upon by the rightful owner. The rightful owner of 95 bytes of data. An amount so small that no currency exists that can measure its worth.
But Happy Birthday represents only the purest and most absurd form of copyrighted work. As Moore's law has progressed, and continues progressing, and as our networks get faster and faster and disc space cheaper and cheaper, even music files 5MB in size have become trivial amounts of data. Soon even 50GB Blu Ray movies will be considered too paltry to be worth protecting. For some, they already are. This isn't a simply a consequence of people being too cheap. It's a consequence of the data being too cheap to buy.
People realise this. They're not stupid. They see how easy, accessible and trivial data is in our digital age. The internet is a deluge and trying to tell them that certain datas cannot be copied because they are under some sacred divination is like telling people in a thunderstorm that they cannot collect rain water(This is in fact done in certain places). You can pass such laws, but ultimately resonable people will not obey them. They will not obey the law, not because it is unjust, but because it is entirely irrational. In ten years time, claiming the latest 5MB pop song should be protected will be as ludicrous as claiming the same for "Happy Birthday".
As the realities of the digital of make the concept of copyright more and more irrational, I find it increasingly difficult to even find arguments justifying its continued existence. With the de facto perpetual copyright that has evolved, its irrational claims and the draconian measures used to enforce it, more and more I find myself viewing copyright as a system that will be inherently gamed by its proponents and which will, inevitably evolved to the absurd position we now find ourselves in. Frankly, I think copyright is akin to the system of direct democracy and propositions run in California. A noble goal, and even a worthwhile one in the beginning, but which in the end became a destructive farce and totally unworkable.
I'd like to hear some justifications for copyright that aren't 300 years old. While I see some benefit to the system, ultimately, I am like someone seeing the benefits of Prohibition while also seeing the great harm it has done to society, politics and the legal system. My current position is that copyright needs drastic reform and moreover, if that reform is impossible or unworkable then we need to scrap the system entirely.
Because our computers, almost since their earliest inception, work in base-2 arithmetic.
I'm all for standardisation, and when I work in units, I choose SI units or derived units almost exclusively. No Gaussian units or other such nonsense for me. I'm all about making sure my work can be understood by a wide range of people without having to know esoteric sub-field jargon or secrets.
But I don't know if forcing standard SI prefixes onto computers is such a good idea. Computers work in base-2 on a fundamental and practical level. The SI prefixes have always worked in a base-10 number system since their inception; since their prehistory! Requiring computers to structure themselves around a base 10 framework is unnatural and will lead to inefficiencies. This isn't like choose a new, arbitrary, unit of measurement. This is about a fundamental difference in how computers and people handle numbers.
A kilobyte/kibibyte is not 1024 bytes. It's 10000000000 bytes, in base-2. 2^10. That's a round number on any computer anyone runs today. It's a natural marker.
The proposed kilobyte will not be 1000 bytes. It will be 1111101000 bytes, in base-2. Are you honestly asking the computer industry to structure itself around such a standard? That would be like asking people using the SI system to go back to pounds and gallons and all the nonsense that comes with manipulating them. It doesn't make sense.
I remind you that the kilobyte is in fact 2^10 bytes. A byte is 8-bits. Where's the logic in that? Should we standardise that unit to? Should a byte be 10 bits? log(10) bits? What definition make the most sense?
Some things should be decimalised and standardised. Length, time, weight, magnetic field strength. But some things have never, and will never fit into this scheme. Days, months and years are the best example of a system that defies our attempt to decimalise it. Computers, working as they do in base-2, not only defy our attempts; they outright refute them. You cannot wear a left show on your right foot, and you cannot make computers work in base-10 without making them walk lopsided.
If you want to play the property game, ante up and pay your taxes.
I am not against property taxes in an of themselves. But what I am against is taxes based on ethereal worth. Why should you pay money on what someone thinks your house is worth?
Taxes per square foot? Absolutely. I would even support those on a county or city or perhaps even borough basis.
But paying more of less real estate tax because you, or your neighbour, put nice flowers outside their window or has a fresh coat of paint on the walls, or left the whole property go to rot? It's arbitrary, it's inaccurate and it's unfair. I think ethereal "value taxes" are the primary people most people are against a tax on their homes. That and the propect of being taxed out of them, but you can have credits and exemptions for that.
If the government wants to have a square foot tax, window tax, driveway tax; fine. As long as it's a solid, fixed number and not something picked out of a hat by a real estate "expert", I have no objection to it. But penalising people for events outside their control, like property booms or creeping gentrification, is a practice without financial or moral foundation. Houses aren't worth anything until they are sold, and that's what stamp duty is for.
Otherwise, what would keep someone from gaining access to information completely irrelevant to the records being subpoenaed in the first place?
Isn't that the whole point of warrants to begin with. They get it on some technicality, then go on a fishing trip. This applies to private companies as well as governments by the way.
Now go on bashing a culture because we fear they are overtaking our economic hegemony.
You're forgetting one thing. This isn't the Chinese culture at work here. It's a capitalist culture, moreover, an old capitalist culture, and industrialist culture. Modern China now embodies in many aspects the worst kind of 19th and early 20th century capitalist excess. Their access to modern technologies has simply allowed them to accellerate and now, in the case of human organs, surpass the most flagrant abuses of the industrialists and robber barons. These prisoners, convicted and killed for pure profit, are only the gruesome tip of the iceberg of human suffering, exploitation and injustice that the industrial culture requires for its operation .
This beast has been faced before; the beast that devours its own young. It's not a creature that can be tamed.
We have a government admittedly selling human organs for profit, the one thing that every medical ethicist in the world has always agreed would be the prima facie standard of "morally and ethically repugnant"
The picture for a Pole just screams "foreign", since the picture is nonrepresentative for a Polish office setting
I've seen a million of these ads, particularly in IT magazines, and I can tell you this thought crosses my mind almost every time. Not in a parochial way, just in a "this ad is completely fake" way.
I live in Ireland. This place is reasonably cosmopolitan, especially in Dublin, but this ad does not say "Typical Irish Office" to me. For a start, there's a skyline. Yeah, we don't have too many of those. Secondly, there are three sharply dressed people smiling with immaculate teeth in a pristine meeting room. You don't get too much of any of that here.
Yes, there's a black guy, and Asian guy and an attractive woman. This only further removes the ad from the typical office experience over here, which consists of grumbling, stubble ridden, bleary eyed, overweight Irish IT staff, one generation removed from salt of the earth boggers. If you've ever seen Chris O'Dowd in "the IT crowd", you know what I'm talking about here.
Basically, this ad screams "Fake". It says, "I am a Big Fake American Ad. Buy My Product." None of these people have ever worked in IT. It's tacky and cheap and in no way whatsoever specific to what is being sold. The whole package is not inspiring me to shop till I drop.
I'm guessing the Microsoft marketing crowd in Poland must have sensed the ad would get the same reception over there. They decided to try and move it from being a "Big Fake American Ad" to just being a standard "Big Fake Ad". Moreover, they did it in a godsawfully ham-fisted way, literally stapling some white guys face over the oldest and the most "American" of the faces, namely the misfortunate black actor in the shot. They even missed out the hand, which reveals a level of photoshop incompetence you wouldn't see in a 4chan meme creator.
Their actions have failed to create even a "Big Fake Ad". Instead, they've made a "Big Fake International Media Incident". Stirring stuff. This is what happens when you rely on stock photographs and inept 'shoppers because you were too cheap to hire a local photographer to snap a shot or two in a local IT office.
Is it even realistic for the US? Are you serious? I'm a black guy born on the African continent sitting in an office with a white woman and a jewish guy. In the office right next to mine there's an asian woman and a guy from the UK.
Why should ISPs foot the bill to protect rights holders IP?
Because ISPs have a sparkly magic wand that will simply make this dreadful internet business and its calamitous effects on the entertainment industry disappear in a puff in punitive smoke.
I mean, really. There was a time in this country when a 5 minute pop song meant something. It was a sacred institution, protected by copyright and ensuring the livelihoods of distributors across the land. Now any old miscreant feels he can whisk his songs backwards and forwards over those ghastly green tubes just like one sends emails or spreadsheets or power-point slides. Well you can't! Music is not supposed to be treated like that. There are proper channels for its distribution and the ISPs know they they aren't it!
It's clear that they're being malicious. I remember meeting their representative. Frightful man. He accosted me with technical clap-trap; data, broadband, packet inspection, encryption, legitimate uses, feasibility studies. I told him what I'm telling you now. If the Chinese government can block off their entire internet from the BBC, then surely you can stop young scruffs from downloading things they're not supposed to. And if you can't stop them then you should cut them off! He threw his hands up in the air and left, but I sensed defeat.
It's only a matter of time. We have petitioned the Her Majesty's Government, and they have responded favorably. Soon we will make these ISPs bring their customers to heel, and we will do it with the full force of the Law. Honestly, the attitudes and doomsdaying of some people on this never cease to amaze me. Just last week I was in conversation with a chap who felt too much restriction on the Internet was dangerous or some such rot.
As I said to him at the time: "My dear Norfolk, this isn't Iran. This is England."
I can just see the scene- The door bell going, the bored housewife answering the door, and some badly dubbed sys admin appears, announces he's here to fix her internet as a dodgy 70's funk soundtrack starts up...
Admin: Excuse me miss, I'm here to fix your PPP WAN connection. Housewife: Oh! My.. (blushes). Well, please come in (The Admin lurches in, slightly sweaty and breathing through his mouth) Housewife: Can I get you anything? Cake or cookies? Admin: No, thanks, I'm lactose intolerant. Cookies give me gas. Where's your ethernet router? Housewife: (deeper blushes) Oh, my. How about a drink then? Scotch? Admin: I'd take a mountain dew. Diet though. I'm watching my weight. (He pats an ample belly. The housewife's eyes grow wide.) Housewife: I'll.... I'll get you something right away. (She hurries off to the kitchen) Admin: (Calling after) Where's the computer? Housewife: The computer?! It's, ahhh, in the living room. (The Admin waddles to the computer, which is neatly set on a small, immaculately dusted table with pullout keyboard shelf. He rips the table out from the wall, kneels down and begins rummaging amidst the jungle of wires at the back. After some time he pauses, and turns around to see the Housewife standing over him with a glass of soda and a plate of potato chips. She has been there for some time.) Admin: Oh thank's! (He's wolfs down the meager glass and munches on a few chips). Housewife: You're welcome. Have you found the problem yet? Admin: Oh yeah. (He's wipes his greasy fingers on his front of his shirt). I need to adjust your broadband for IPv6. Housewife: I...see. And, what might that involve? Will I have to call my husband? He's at work right now. Admin: Naww. It shouldn't take a minute. I've got your upgrade right here! (He reaches into the fanny pack on the front of his tool belt and rummages around. The Housewife begins to feel faint) Admin: Here it is! (He draws a small sleek black router from the pouch) Housewife: And what's that for? Admin: It's for your line. I just have to rejig everything. (He back about and resumes his rummaging. The Housewife slumps back on the sofa and stares silently.) Admin: All done. Can you check to see if it's working? Housewife: What? Admin: On the computer. Check to see if your internet is working. Open your browser and go to ipv6.google.com Housewife: Oh! (See hikes up her dress and sits and the computer desk. As she clicks, she hikes the dress up intermittantly.) Admin: Is it working? Housewife: Oh! (Her voice is noticeably more sultry) Something went wrong. I seem to have come across some kind of... pornographic website. Could you take a look? Admin: It's probably a virus. You should use Ubuntu. I could partition your drives for you if you like. (He lumbers up from the floor and leans over towards the desk. As he presses against her and brusquely takes the mouse from her grasp, the Housewife finally succumbs and passes out.)
(When she awakes, she is lying on the floor with the Admin sitting at the desk.) Housewife: What.. what happened? Admin: (The admin glances at here, then turns back to the computer screen.) I fixed the problem on the Windows partition and installed Ubuntu Jaunty on a second partition. It should be working fine now. I've set up the dual boot to load up Ubuntu by default, but you can change it by editing the Lilo files. Housewife: What about my computer files? Admin: Everything's accessible from Nautilus. I've mounted your old drives as WINDOZE_OLD in/media. It should work seamlessly. Anyway, I have to get back to the office. (He gathers his tools and makes for the door) Housewife: Wait! What about my husband's files from work? What about his emails.
Strangely enough, I am still convinced that the evidence behind the causes and effects of global warming is much less than watertight. For one thing,....
You would be rather surprised and intrigued by what you'll read.
Hmmmm, yes. Things like how HIV doesn't cause AIDS and how Intelligent Design "explains more" than random evolution. Actually, now that I look, I'm not really very surprised by the authors writings at all.
The debate has been politicized and therefore forever tainted. The science has been lost and those involved pushed to their respective sides so much so that the truth is getting lost.
I will admit that the debate has been tainted, but the science has not been lost. It's all there in black and white for those that are willing to look for it and asses it honestly. There are still a lot of those people, even in the climate change debate.
Exactly. There is still very little _EVIDENCE_ of mankind-created global warming.
Indeed. Just likes there is very little evidence for President Obama being born in America!! Whatever fancy $10 dollar arguments these academicals come up with aren't enough to fool honest folk.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe you will find that western oil companies are destroying, not only the Delta, but half of Nigeria for oil. Specifically, for oil for you am me. There's very little oil or money going to the Nigerians.
Not really. Observational studies are generally shodily researched, poorly implemented, have less than 50 data points and no controls, and are sloshed around in a statistical package until the numbers come out. They're generally done by people who have come to a conclusion and now need to dress it up with a "scientific study".
Which isn't to say that a good observational trial cannot take place. They just don't usually take place nowadays.
And sometimes it is so hard some people just give up and fudge everything until they get what they want. The ideal test methodology is an honest to goodness experiment. You're either doing experiments, or you're gassing.
Mythbusters can and do make a better effort at the scientific method than most modern, think tank funded studies. They put ideas to the test. Most studies simply data mine.
I feel both you, and Bob, could do with a little perspective.
Wow! 15 films in 20 years. And some of them aren't just cult classics! Perhaps it's time for me to reassess the creative potential of the corporation.
Perhaps you've hit on the root of the problem. Dynastic succession. Untested, unproven people being placed in positions they never earned. Indeed, they feel entitled to them by default.
To rationalise this, they need a philosophy for why they deserve so much more for so little. They must be in some way inherently more deserving, superior, better than ordinary people. After that, it's rather difficult to treat others with respect.
The beauty of Disney's model is that they sell to six years olds; six year olds with literally no memory and no experience of having seen their product before despite its being over 50 years old. It's as if Disney, as a company, is selling into a market with mass collective amnesia. They never need to innovate.
Sit down my son...
Goose was a character in a movie, played by the TV and movie actor Anthony Edwards. You may remember him from such productions as "ER", "Revenge of the Nerds", "Northern Exposure" and the UASF informational short, "Why I'm Not Goose".
Everything. Absolutely everything. This is what the digital revolution is telling us.
Why are people, across the social spectrum, so wilfully engaged in what you call "stealing"? Because these people all recognise one basic fact; This data is not worth anything. It's basic economics. The supply of an mp3 is de facto limitless. What then should the price be? Zero. This is the first time this has ever actually happened in the history of copyright. Data has been cheap since the 1850's, but had a non-zero price. Now, it has an effectively zero price.
People do work to produce this data. That is true. But this does not mean they must be compensated for the resulting data. If someone took a boat out to sea, gathered seawater, and then tried to sell it on the beach to hot sunbathers, must we ensure their labour is compensated? Their can be labour which has no ultimate value. As technology progresses, some labours become obsolete. Wool weavers, blacksmiths, night soil men, middle managers, portrait makers, icehouse owners. And now the digital age has rendered writing a book, singing a song, and soon making a movie one of those obsolete labours.
Now, we can disagree on this point. Some people may find it an abhorrent notion. Some may laud books, songs and movies as laudable labours worth rewarding. But here's the catch.
It doesn't matter what we think. The reality of the situation is that people no longer recognise these works as being worth anything. Napster was not the cause of the file-sharing movement. Bram Cohen is not the root of movie piracy. The Pirate Bay and sites like it are not an accident of history. The individual people and technologies are only incidental. The fundamental driver of these things is our increasing capacity to transfer and store data. The situation copyrighted works find themselves in was inevitably going to occur, as absurdly cheap distribution and storage technologies made the notion of "valuable data" as absurd as the copyright on Happy Birthday.
If we bomb ourselves back into the stone age and a new civilisation makes its own information revolution in 10000 years time, I guarantee you they will hit upon, not only the same problem as we have with copyright, but on the same solution as well. People will reject the idea of data being worth anything in and of itself. It has begun with the younger generations, people currently under 30 in particular. As time progresses this concept will only gain a firmer foothold, not because people are pushing viewpoints for or against it, but because our technology and way of life make it inevitable.
While a serious reduction in copyright span should be on the table, I think there also needs to be a recognition on the part of copyright holders that it is just too easy to copy their productions nowadays. I honestly think that a very reasonable compromise would be to extend fair use to all non commercial uses. This would accept the reality of ubiquitous distribution, open up the world of ideas, but still allow most copyright holders to have both protection and to make a profit if they choose.
There are people, many younger than 12 years old, who had to put up with a lot more than nasty IMs from adults in their lives. Most of those people are still here, trying to get on with their lives.
Yes Megan Meier's suicide was tragic. Yes Lori Drew's behaviour was reprehensible, even illegal, and was a direct cause of Meier's decision to commit suicide. But it's clear to any reasonable person that Lori Drew, vicious as she was, was in no way the sole reason for Meier's death.
People who commit suicide kill themselves. Driving someone to commit suicide, even intentionally, is no more murder than a woman dressing up for an evening is an incitement to rape. Ultimately people are responsible for their own actions. Megan Meier was one month away from her 14th birthday. That's not young. That's old; and hang those that would treat young people like infants. I was 14 once, so were most people. What do you think people would have said if you stood up back then and said: "I'm too young to be responsible for my own actions". I don't think it would have gone down well.
What justice? Was the prosecution of Lori Drew all that just or noble? I'll admit the woman could have been brought up on fairly strong charges for fraternising in the way she did with a minor. But that wasn't the charge she was brought up on. She was brought up on a made up law spurred on by a fit of rage and media publicity. That's not justice. Not for Lori Drew, or Megan Meier, or anyone else.
The law is not a bludgeon that the public can beat people with to make itself feel better. It's a social contract made to keep the world sane. When it degenerates into illogical rulings and outright lunacy, as it did in this case, you can be sure that the peaceful world we live in won't be far behind.
It's not the wants and needs of teenagers that is bringing the end of copyright. It's the simple forces of reality.
You know the song "Happy Birthday". It's copyrighted. The song itself is a mere 95 bytes in size. The data overheads involved in transmitting the file probably outweigh the file itself. Yet copyright law essentially tells us that Time Warner "owns" this song. That the act of copying it is a sacred right, reserved only for those whom the privilage is conferred upon by the rightful owner. The rightful owner of 95 bytes of data. An amount so small that no currency exists that can measure its worth.
But Happy Birthday represents only the purest and most absurd form of copyrighted work. As Moore's law has progressed, and continues progressing, and as our networks get faster and faster and disc space cheaper and cheaper, even music files 5MB in size have become trivial amounts of data. Soon even 50GB Blu Ray movies will be considered too paltry to be worth protecting. For some, they already are. This isn't a simply a consequence of people being too cheap. It's a consequence of the data being too cheap to buy.
People realise this. They're not stupid. They see how easy, accessible and trivial data is in our digital age. The internet is a deluge and trying to tell them that certain datas cannot be copied because they are under some sacred divination is like telling people in a thunderstorm that they cannot collect rain water(This is in fact done in certain places). You can pass such laws, but ultimately resonable people will not obey them. They will not obey the law, not because it is unjust, but because it is entirely irrational. In ten years time, claiming the latest 5MB pop song should be protected will be as ludicrous as claiming the same for "Happy Birthday".
As the realities of the digital of make the concept of copyright more and more irrational, I find it increasingly difficult to even find arguments justifying its continued existence. With the de facto perpetual copyright that has evolved, its irrational claims and the draconian measures used to enforce it, more and more I find myself viewing copyright as a system that will be inherently gamed by its proponents and which will, inevitably evolved to the absurd position we now find ourselves in. Frankly, I think copyright is akin to the system of direct democracy and propositions run in California. A noble goal, and even a worthwhile one in the beginning, but which in the end became a destructive farce and totally unworkable.
I'd like to hear some justifications for copyright that aren't 300 years old. While I see some benefit to the system, ultimately, I am like someone seeing the benefits of Prohibition while also seeing the great harm it has done to society, politics and the legal system. My current position is that copyright needs drastic reform and moreover, if that reform is impossible or unworkable then we need to scrap the system entirely.
Because our computers, almost since their earliest inception, work in base-2 arithmetic.
I'm all for standardisation, and when I work in units, I choose SI units or derived units almost exclusively. No Gaussian units or other such nonsense for me. I'm all about making sure my work can be understood by a wide range of people without having to know esoteric sub-field jargon or secrets.
But I don't know if forcing standard SI prefixes onto computers is such a good idea. Computers work in base-2 on a fundamental and practical level. The SI prefixes have always worked in a base-10 number system since their inception; since their prehistory! Requiring computers to structure themselves around a base 10 framework is unnatural and will lead to inefficiencies. This isn't like choose a new, arbitrary, unit of measurement. This is about a fundamental difference in how computers and people handle numbers.
A kilobyte/kibibyte is not 1024 bytes. It's 10000000000 bytes, in base-2. 2^10. That's a round number on any computer anyone runs today. It's a natural marker.
The proposed kilobyte will not be 1000 bytes. It will be 1111101000 bytes, in base-2. Are you honestly asking the computer industry to structure itself around such a standard? That would be like asking people using the SI system to go back to pounds and gallons and all the nonsense that comes with manipulating them. It doesn't make sense.
I remind you that the kilobyte is in fact 2^10 bytes. A byte is 8-bits. Where's the logic in that? Should we standardise that unit to? Should a byte be 10 bits? log(10) bits? What definition make the most sense?
Some things should be decimalised and standardised. Length, time, weight, magnetic field strength. But some things have never, and will never fit into this scheme. Days, months and years are the best example of a system that defies our attempt to decimalise it. Computers, working as they do in base-2, not only defy our attempts; they outright refute them. You cannot wear a left show on your right foot, and you cannot make computers work in base-10 without making them walk lopsided.
I am not against property taxes in an of themselves. But what I am against is taxes based on ethereal worth. Why should you pay money on what someone thinks your house is worth?
Taxes per square foot? Absolutely. I would even support those on a county or city or perhaps even borough basis.
But paying more of less real estate tax because you, or your neighbour, put nice flowers outside their window or has a fresh coat of paint on the walls, or left the whole property go to rot? It's arbitrary, it's inaccurate and it's unfair. I think ethereal "value taxes" are the primary people most people are against a tax on their homes. That and the propect of being taxed out of them, but you can have credits and exemptions for that.
If the government wants to have a square foot tax, window tax, driveway tax; fine. As long as it's a solid, fixed number and not something picked out of a hat by a real estate "expert", I have no objection to it. But penalising people for events outside their control, like property booms or creeping gentrification, is a practice without financial or moral foundation. Houses aren't worth anything until they are sold, and that's what stamp duty is for.
Isn't that the whole point of warrants to begin with. They get it on some technicality, then go on a fishing trip. This applies to private companies as well as governments by the way.
You're forgetting one thing. This isn't the Chinese culture at work here. It's a capitalist culture, moreover, an old capitalist culture, and industrialist culture. Modern China now embodies in many aspects the worst kind of 19th and early 20th century capitalist excess. Their access to modern technologies has simply allowed them to accellerate and now, in the case of human organs, surpass the most flagrant abuses of the industrialists and robber barons. These prisoners, convicted and killed for pure profit, are only the gruesome tip of the iceberg of human suffering, exploitation and injustice that the industrial culture requires for its operation .
This beast has been faced before; the beast that devours its own young. It's not a creature that can be tamed.
Wikipedia is destroying our society.
I've seen a million of these ads, particularly in IT magazines, and I can tell you this thought crosses my mind almost every time. Not in a parochial way, just in a "this ad is completely fake" way.
I live in Ireland. This place is reasonably cosmopolitan, especially in Dublin, but this ad does not say "Typical Irish Office" to me. For a start, there's a skyline. Yeah, we don't have too many of those. Secondly, there are three sharply dressed people smiling with immaculate teeth in a pristine meeting room. You don't get too much of any of that here.
Yes, there's a black guy, and Asian guy and an attractive woman. This only further removes the ad from the typical office experience over here, which consists of grumbling, stubble ridden, bleary eyed, overweight Irish IT staff, one generation removed from salt of the earth boggers. If you've ever seen Chris O'Dowd in "the IT crowd", you know what I'm talking about here.
Basically, this ad screams "Fake". It says, "I am a Big Fake American Ad. Buy My Product." None of these people have ever worked in IT. It's tacky and cheap and in no way whatsoever specific to what is being sold. The whole package is not inspiring me to shop till I drop.
I'm guessing the Microsoft marketing crowd in Poland must have sensed the ad would get the same reception over there. They decided to try and move it from being a "Big Fake American Ad" to just being a standard "Big Fake Ad". Moreover, they did it in a godsawfully ham-fisted way, literally stapling some white guys face over the oldest and the most "American" of the faces, namely the misfortunate black actor in the shot. They even missed out the hand, which reveals a level of photoshop incompetence you wouldn't see in a 4chan meme creator.
Their actions have failed to create even a "Big Fake Ad". Instead, they've made a "Big Fake International Media Incident". Stirring stuff. This is what happens when you rely on stock photographs and inept 'shoppers because you were too cheap to hire a local photographer to snap a shot or two in a local IT office.
Dey tuk er jeobs!!
Because ISPs have a sparkly magic wand that will simply make this dreadful internet business and its calamitous effects on the entertainment industry disappear in a puff in punitive smoke.
I mean, really. There was a time in this country when a 5 minute pop song meant something. It was a sacred institution, protected by copyright and ensuring the livelihoods of distributors across the land. Now any old miscreant feels he can whisk his songs backwards and forwards over those ghastly green tubes just like one sends emails or spreadsheets or power-point slides. Well you can't! Music is not supposed to be treated like that. There are proper channels for its distribution and the ISPs know they they aren't it!
It's clear that they're being malicious. I remember meeting their representative. Frightful man. He accosted me with technical clap-trap; data, broadband, packet inspection, encryption, legitimate uses, feasibility studies. I told him what I'm telling you now. If the Chinese government can block off their entire internet from the BBC, then surely you can stop young scruffs from downloading things they're not supposed to. And if you can't stop them then you should cut them off! He threw his hands up in the air and left, but I sensed defeat.
It's only a matter of time. We have petitioned the Her Majesty's Government, and they have responded favorably. Soon we will make these ISPs bring their customers to heel, and we will do it with the full force of the Law. Honestly, the attitudes and doomsdaying of some people on this never cease to amaze me. Just last week I was in conversation with a chap who felt too much restriction on the Internet was dangerous or some such rot.
As I said to him at the time: "My dear Norfolk, this isn't Iran. This is England."
Admin: Excuse me miss, I'm here to fix your PPP WAN connection.
Housewife: Oh! My.. (blushes). Well, please come in
(The Admin lurches in, slightly sweaty and breathing through his mouth)
Housewife: Can I get you anything? Cake or cookies?
Admin: No, thanks, I'm lactose intolerant. Cookies give me gas. Where's your ethernet router?
Housewife: (deeper blushes) Oh, my. How about a drink then? Scotch?
Admin: I'd take a mountain dew. Diet though. I'm watching my weight.
(He pats an ample belly. The housewife's eyes grow wide.)
Housewife: I'll.... I'll get you something right away. (She hurries off to the kitchen)
Admin: (Calling after) Where's the computer?
Housewife: The computer?! It's, ahhh, in the living room.
(The Admin waddles to the computer, which is neatly set on a small, immaculately dusted table with pullout keyboard shelf. He rips the table out from the wall, kneels down and begins rummaging amidst the jungle of wires at the back. After some time he pauses, and turns around to see the Housewife standing over him with a glass of soda and a plate of potato chips. She has been there for some time.)
Admin: Oh thank's! (He's wolfs down the meager glass and munches on a few chips).
Housewife: You're welcome. Have you found the problem yet?
Admin: Oh yeah. (He's wipes his greasy fingers on his front of his shirt). I need to adjust your broadband for IPv6.
Housewife: I...see. And, what might that involve? Will I have to call my husband? He's at work right now.
Admin: Naww. It shouldn't take a minute. I've got your upgrade right here!
(He reaches into the fanny pack on the front of his tool belt and rummages around. The Housewife begins to feel faint)
Admin: Here it is! (He draws a small sleek black router from the pouch)
Housewife: And what's that for?
Admin: It's for your line. I just have to rejig everything.
(He back about and resumes his rummaging. The Housewife slumps back on the sofa and stares silently.)
Admin: All done. Can you check to see if it's working?
Housewife: What?
Admin: On the computer. Check to see if your internet is working. Open your browser and go to ipv6.google.com
Housewife: Oh! (See hikes up her dress and sits and the computer desk. As she clicks, she hikes the dress up intermittantly.)
Admin: Is it working?
Housewife: Oh! (Her voice is noticeably more sultry) Something went wrong. I seem to have come across some kind of... pornographic website. Could you take a look?
Admin: It's probably a virus. You should use Ubuntu. I could partition your drives for you if you like.
(He lumbers up from the floor and leans over towards the desk. As he presses against her and brusquely takes the mouse from her grasp, the Housewife finally succumbs and passes out.)
(When she awakes, she is lying on the floor with the Admin sitting at the desk.) /media. It should work seamlessly. Anyway, I have to get back to the office.
Housewife: What.. what happened?
Admin: (The admin glances at here, then turns back to the computer screen.) I fixed the problem on the Windows partition and installed Ubuntu Jaunty on a second partition. It should be working fine now. I've set up the dual boot to load up Ubuntu by default, but you can change it by editing the Lilo files.
Housewife: What about my computer files?
Admin: Everything's accessible from Nautilus. I've mounted your old drives as WINDOZE_OLD in
(He gathers his tools and makes for the door)
Housewife: Wait! What about my husband's files from work? What about his emails.
Plus, like many others in this thread, if it all turns out to be wrong you get saved the embarrassment of having spoken up.
Hmmmm, yes. Things like how HIV doesn't cause AIDS and how Intelligent Design "explains more" than random evolution. Actually, now that I look, I'm not really very surprised by the authors writings at all.
Don't be absurd. Even the lowliest coder would know enough to write #DEFINE PSEUDO_RND_BSOD = 1
I will admit that the debate has been tainted, but the science has not been lost. It's all there in black and white for those that are willing to look for it and asses it honestly. There are still a lot of those people, even in the climate change debate.
Indeed. Just likes there is very little evidence for President Obama being born in America!! Whatever fancy $10 dollar arguments these academicals come up with aren't enough to fool honest folk.