Software on the other hand takes a lot of money to make, but I can make unlimited copies of it. The problem is, so can other people. If there were no restrictions, then most software wouldn't exist because there is no way to make a profit on it.
There was art and music before copyright existed. If copyright is abolished, somehow I doubt that those things would cease to exist. Some business models would certainly cease to exist, but that's thoroughly within the realm of "not my problem." That's not intended to say whether I think it should or should not be abolished, but rather, that some perspective is needed. It's simply not the "absolutely essential, how oh how could we carry on without it?" sort of thing that it's often made out to be. It's just one way of doing things out of many possible ways.
As soon as you can look at a car and then make a replica of that car with minimal effort and no cost, you will start seeing restrictions on that as well.
Or a new era would dawn on humankind that would make "scarcity" of all goods something that people have to read history books in order to learn about. If that were technically feasible (like if we had something resembling the replicators on Star Trek) then I would call that a worthy goal, certainly worth the demise of business models that it would render obsolete.
The world isn't as black and white as you want it to be. You fail to be reasonable.
What I think is unreasonable is the way copyright once represented a balance between the interests of content creators and the interests of society. There is no longer such a balance; it is now grossly favoring content creators at the expense of society. For that reason, people no longer respect it. Right or wrong, this was a predictable outcome.
I would like for you to elaborate on how I was being unreasonable. My argument sums up to this: "first sale" is a sound doctrine. If I buy a video game, play it for a while, and then sell that video game to somebody else while retaining no copies of it, I have not violated either the spirit of copyright or the letter of copyright. No one has any reason to complain about that situation because no harm was done and no one's rights were infringed in any way. Because this industry thinks it's special, they want to prevent me from doing this by means of DRM. That means they want privileges that are entirely unavailable to any other manufacturer of any other product. I think the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks that this is a good idea.
Now for some reason you responded to me as though I were rejecting the entire notion of copyright. So you talk about how it would be if automobiles had a model of artificial scarcity instead of their current status of some degree of real scarcity. All I am saying is that if intellectual property is in fact property, complete with some degree of scarcity (artificial though it may be), then there is no reason why private individuals should be prevented from reselling it just like they would any sort of tangible property. If it is not property and the doctrine of first sale should not apply to it, then neither should scarcity. What the media companies seem to want is to have their cake and eat it too and that's wrong. Again I'd love to hear a self-consistent explanation from you that would tell me why this is so unreasonable.
Yes, those people exist. Yes, most people will choose "free" over "not free" any day of the week, especially those who don't consider copyright law to be worth the paper it's printed on.
I think the media companies are their own worst enemies when it comes to this. I mean, think about it. The original duration of copyright was on the order of twelve years, and that was back when paper was the only medium and making copies was difficult and expensive. Now we have computers, the Internet, and instantaneous electronic distribution, yet copyright has been continually expanded to the ridiculous level of "the author's life plus several decades".
It's like that old proverb about having a handful of sand; the harder you squeeze it, the more of it slips through your fingers. The media companies see this and decide that they will respond by squeezing harder still. The people might respect copyright if it actually represented anything like an even balance between the interests of artists/producers versus the interests of society. At present, people do not respect it for the simple reason that it is no longer respectable. All that this copyright issue has demonstrated is that our laws and our politicians no longer represent the people. I'm not saying that disregarding copyright is a perfectly acceptable response, only that it was a predictable one.
Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy,' Carmel explains. 'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.
This struck me as a hypocritical position on the part of those game publishers. Either IP is property or it is not. If it is property, then there should be no restrictions allowed on whether or how frequently it can be resold (i.e. no one tries to stop you from reselling your car or your house). If it is not property, then there should be no artificial scarcity surrounding it which would also make this or any other DRM an inappropriate practice.
It should be obvious that what they seem to want is a level of control that is unavailable to the manufacturers of any other sort of good or service. It's surprising that anyone takes them seriously. Much lively debate occurs on the fine nuances of copyright law while missing the point that what they want is to be singularly special, to wield powers unavailable to other industries. That's known as the inability to see the forest for all the trees. That's why I think it's a phony debate, just like most media discourse surrounding what should be regarded as power grabs. They are aiming at an unreasonable amount of control over the marketplace in the name of copyright.
When I buy an mp3 file, cd, or a theater ticket I am a customer, not a consumer.
When I eat/drink at a restaurant or pub, then I am both a consumer and a customer.
Actually, the implications of "consumer" are worse (i.e. even more passive) than this. Before I explain that, I'd like to point out that perhaps you can remember that it was sometime during the mid-1990s that corporations suddenly decided to start using the word "consumer" as though it were completely interchangeable with the word "customer." Personally, I think this is a good example of Newspeak.
So far as I know, the term "consumer" originated with the broadcast televison industry. By broadcast I refer to those TV channels that are completely free of charge to you because they are entirely supported by advertising in the form of commercial breaks. To the owners and operators of the TV stations, the advertisers who purchase airtime for their commercials are their paying customers. To those same owners and operators of the TV stations, the viewers who pay no money but provide an audience for the advertisements are the consumers. The difference is that a customer can make demands, can have influence, and can take his business elsewhere if the TV stations fail to satisfy him. A consumer, on the other hand, has little influence in large groups and zero influence on an individual level and must take whatever he is given on a completely take-it-or-leave-it basis that is not open to negotiation.
Businesses of all sorts are beginning to use those two terms as though they were the same thing, and always to the effect of making a customer feel like a consumer, never to make a consumer feel like a customer. This should be called what it is: a power grab. Most successful power grabs are also subtle. Not only is it a power grab, it's also a tremendous insult to those people who make the companies successful in the marketplace. The problem is that those people haven't woken up enough to realize that this is the case. It amazes me the way there is always so much denial surrounding even the most obvious of power grabs, let alone the more subtle ones. Unfortunately, people will undergo all sorts of mental gymnastics before they will admit that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a fucking duck.
You have to understand, that just like at the end of the Cold War, Western elites (I won't bother distinguishing between judges, politicians and businessmen in this matter because of the almost total blurring between the leaders of state, judiciary and corporation) consider us at the End of History. Our present form of government is perfect now, and for a thousand years hence.
When you believe have a perfect state, it logically follows that everything should be in the state, for the state, and of the state. Any element that goes against the wishes of the state must be wrong and evil, for the state is perfect and good.
I believe the people in power today, more so than in previous generations, are so convinced of the suitability of present laws and institutions they will resist all substantial changes with any force required. They are the last men, who say they have discovered happiness. Their destruction is a prerequisite for any further advancement of the human species.
You have just given a succinct description of fascism, also known as statism or corporatism.
I would think the *AAs don't really want any precedent set w.r.t. an end-users fair-use rights, unless it is that they don't have any.
When I read your mention of end users, a somewhat cynical thought occurred to me. Supposing the cable companies win this lawsuit, it will probably be after much expenditure on lawyers and time in court etc. So the message will be, you have fair-use rights if you have the resources to go up against the *AAs in court but as a regular end user this probably does not describe you (or most of the population for that matter). I'm not a lawyer but I think I've heard it explained that fair-use is a defense; it won't prevent them from dragging you into court if they really want to. At least there is the hope that a victory for the cable companies may set a good precedent for the rest of us.
Cable companies tend to be large media conglomerates. Surprisingly, it looks like the *AAs finally picked a target that can afford to defend itself. It'll be interesting to see how they fare when the playing field isn't asymmetric.
In the other two cases, the papers show up on your doorstep. My brother didn't want one of them, and he fought bitterly with the provider to stop "littering" his door with them. If you go away for a couple of weeks, the piled up papers become a neon sign saying "No One Is Home"... Try as he might, he could not get the door delivered paper to stop showing up.
If they were taking the papers all the way up to his doorstep, they were probably coming into his property in order to do so. Just curious, was there any reason why he couldn't call the police and file trespassing charges? I'm not a lawyer or anything like that so I don't know how that would work, but seems like it should be an option. The way I see it, laws like that are there in order to deal with people who refuse to accept "you're not wanted here."
The fact they're using a GPS doesn't mean that they've forgot how to do old-fashioned detective work.
Yeah, but if they were willing to do old-fashioned detective work, they wouldn't need increasingly intrusive measures like this one. Y'know, because old-fashioned detective work requires things like probable cause, or a victim to report the crime.
How many "guilt by association" (you drive to an apartment complex known by police to house at least one drug dealer and voila, they now have reason to suspect you of TRAFFICKING NARCOTICS) arrests will they have to make before this seems "unconstitutional" to you?
The sad, pathetic thing is that to many people, the inevitable scenario you describe there would somehow be surprising. Only by some twisted application of moral equivalence does anyone manage to believe that the supporters of this sort of warrentless tracking have an equally valid viewpoint compared to people who have, y'know, actually studied history and obtained an awareness of how easily state power can be abused. Not to mention the slow, incremental nature of the rise of a police state and how it happens by increasingly invasive measures just like this one. In other words, this is not a matter of taste or preference; supporting this kind of surveillance really is a bad idea and there are some solid reasons for it.
SOP in that case would be to evacuate the block, surround your vehicle with sandbags, and then bring in enough high explosives of their own to ensure that the suspect device is completely detonated in the ensuing explosion. Then when you sue, you have to claim you honestly thought a device the size of a quarter could be a bomb. If any moron was inclined you believe you were that stupid, I'm sure their mind will be changed when they read your/. posts and find you planned this out ahead of time to purposefully waste their time. So now not only do you have a blown up car that insurance won't cover, but you're in trouble for filling a false police claim, too. That sure is clever of you.
That reminds me. The only reason why I wouldn't consider having bumper stickers with messages like "Please Tailgate - I Need The Money" and "I Brake For Tailgaters" is because if I ever actually do get rear-ended by some thoughtless clumsy bastard (face it - it's the most easily preventable accident you could ever cause) I wonder if that would work against me. I never could find a clear answer to that question.
Just because technology may now allow them to do such prying without physically kicking in a door doesn't mean we should allow surveillance on anyone at any time. As far as I'm concerned, gathering data on a specific person's movements, habits, etc., through surveillance, is a type of search (one is checking into that person's personal life, using methods that would routinely be thought to be invasive even if they are in public, and ironically here most of those methods would trigger the very anti-stalking laws being enforced here), and should be subject to Fourth Amendment protection, including the requirement for a warrant.
I've always felt that way about how they sometimes use canine units to search for drugs. At least in the USA, it would be illegal for a cop to randomly search your car for no reason even if he did find drugs. But if that same officer has a dog and the dog starts barking at your car, he can now legally charge you with whatever contraband he finds. To me those two situations are exactly alike; the dog in this case is just the device with which the search is performed. Yet one is legal and the other is not.
I guess you might call this legalism or Phariseeism, in that both situations are the same except for a minor technicality. Because of that technicality (whether the cop uses his own eyes to search or the dog's nose to do the same thing) they're somehow considered completely different situations for which different rules are applied. I can't imagine that any judge or other authority who actually respects freedom would ever support this. I have to assume that all of these fine distinctions and splitting of hairs are to provide excuses so that the cops can do whatever it is they want to do while completely ignoring the intent behind the Fourth Amendment.
The purpose of any open source project is writing good software. Not converting people. Not waxing philosophical. Not appealing to the masses. And not arguing about naming.
If you look at my post to which you are replying, you'll find that you are preaching to the choir.
I was in my doctor's office once and I asked his staff a question. I asked her why it is that pharmaceutical companies advertise prescription-only medicines to the general public, since after all you are supposed to ask your doctor what is wrong and have that doctor determine what medicine you need.
This seems to be a US-only phenomenon.
Isn't it amazing how so few people in the USA are willing to question that? Even fewer are willing to say "I don't know" instead of automatically siding with those who stand to profit from this phenomenon. Like most problems, this one is systemic, and I'm not talking about RLS but about the decline of critical thinking.
But I can't be a "sick boy" because Dr. Causality has learnt us that there ain't no such thang as the Restless Legs.
You mean me, the same Causality who went out of his way to explain that he is not a doctor and that what he said is his personal opinion? You mean the same Causality who has said that there are some legitimate cases, that there is such a thing as the exceptions proving the rule? You mean that one?
Do you not see the desperation of your position that you are now resorting to a gross misrepresentation of what I said in order to justify your anger towards me? You really don't see what's wrong with that, do you?
You don't have to be afraid. Just come out and say it: "I do believe in god"
The problem with that is you then have to explain what "God" means to you. My personal concept of that is quite unlike many of the more mainstream interpretations, though (perhaps because I have studied most major religions) it will sound very much like some of them. That makes this a thorny issue that is likely to create much confusion. Really, I was content with showing the limitations of the materialist worldview and I would greatly prefer that each individual works out for themselves whether they believe in God and what "God" means to them. I have always felt that such things, in their pure form, can only be a personal quest and are not something that another man can give to you, though he may be able to show you the way of arriving at your own understanding. Nowhere in this do you find a motivation of fear, my friend.
>Now I have already said that this is my personal opinion and I am not a medical practitoner.
Great. Thanks for letting everyone know that you are not a specialist in sleep disorders. So your opinion regarding medications used to treat sleep disorders holds as much weight as my opinion on how well someone speaks French (a topic I know absolutely nothing about).
Everyone already knew I wasn't a specialist in sleep disorders because I have never claimed that I am a specialist in sleep disorders. That little "disclaimer" is there because I otherwise don't trust that the modern legal environment would honor my right to apply basic reasoning to certain subjects. Just in case there is anyone out there dumb enough to fail to realize that I am most definitely NOT giving medical advice, I explain that I am giving only my opinion and that I am not a medical practitoner. In other words, if you need medical advice, go to your doctor because I can't help you with that. None of this has much to do with what I said, however. I was really commenting on the power of marketing, it just so happens that this marketing is being done by a pharmaceutical company.
I said this in the post to which you responded:
That is, there probably are a small minority of legitimate cases (before you get so upset, note that I never claimed otherwise), but that the number of diagnosed and medicated cases greatly outnumbers the number of legitimate instances of the disease.
Missed that part, did you? There is such a thing as the exceptions proving the rule. If I ever claimed otherwise, then your childish reaction may have a basis, but it hasn't. Now you're bound by your pride and I'll explain that. You have absolutely no reason to hate me or get so upset and angry at me because I hold an opinion that you don't like. There are about 6.5 billion people in the world and at any given time, large numbers of them hold opinions you wouldn't like. Is it reasonable then to be upset all the time?
I don't particularly care if you get so upset. I respect it as your free choice, for if you do that, the suffering is yours and does not affect me in the slightest. No one's rights are infringed by that process so I don't particularly have a problem with it. I just think it's a shame that you would make such a poor decision. What I really think is a shame is that you don't take any responsibility for the fact that you are CHOOSING to react this way. Either I am your master, able to control how you feel at this very moment, or, you are choosing to react this way and have chosen poorly. I am most certainly not your master, nor do I want to be. You're bound by your pride now because you have gone too far down this path to be able to comfortably admit to me that you have overreacted. I imagine you have demonized me in your mind to where you think I would say "haha, I told you so!" if you gave such an admission and that too is a shame.
I'll give you some friendly advice. If you don't like what someone says and are absolutely certain that they're dead wrong, even though they went out of their way to tell you that what they said was an opinion, then the correct thing to do is to calmly explain to that person why you believe they are misinformed. You may even convince them. What you're doing here, however, has no chance of working. It's not done in a spirit of inquiry, it's done in a spirit of vengence. Those two have different purposes and are not interchangeable.
I equate the working of drugs for the brain much like our current understanding of gravity.
That's a very interesting parallel. It also comes from the materialist perspective. What we get for it is a theory of gravitation that is irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. That alone should tell us that we are missing something fundamental and need to question all of our assumptions, all of the things that we "know to be impossible." Quantum mechanics itself tends to disregard cause-and-effect. An unstable atom has X% chance of radiating a particle within a given timeframe. There is no explanation for why it does so, or for why it did so at that particular time and not earlier or later. It's a statistical model that made a departure from the natural philosophy which gave birth to it.
There's something else we get for it, too. Most of our recent technological advances have been engineering breakthroughs. There has been little advancement of actual understanding by comparison. In my personal (unqualified) opinion, the medical industry has its own version of this. We're getting better and better at modifying the system, at obtaining desired results by the introduction of chemicals, without increasing our understanding of what disease actually is, how it originates, and how it can be prevented. Nowhere is this more obvious than in psychiatry. My evidence for this is very simple: if we understood these things, we should have a population that is getting healthier. Instead, we have a population that increasingly depends on medications because it is becoming sicker.
I will tell you something else I truly believe, though I strongly doubt there is any way I could prove it to you. Real enlightened understanding is able to simplify things, to show how all of the observed complexity derives from a few simple principles. By contrast, our models are increasingly complex. Personally, I suspect that the reductionist worldview is at least partially responsible for that. There is absolutely no way to prove beyond a doubt that the reductionist approach is the One Correct Way to seek truth. In spite of that, it's the only approach used by mainstream science. I think that's a mistake when we are dealing with entities, organisms, and a Universe that are greater than the sums of their parts. I am reminded of that old cliche, "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." If you're wondering why the ease with which these things can be pointed out still doesn't really change anything, it's because the power of institutionalization and orthodoxy to stagnate ideas is seldom appreciated.
That's why you have so many "designer diseases" like Restless Leg Syndrome.
I have been diagnosed with that "designer disease", you dickwad. How did the doctor determine that I have Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)? I have had two sleep studies at a local hospital. During the studies, dozens of electrodes connected to my body monitored everything from my brain waves to the movement of my calf muscles. The summary reports from the sleep studies show that I shift between different stages of sleep much more frequently than "normal" people. While reviewing the results of the first sleep study with me, the doctor pointed to a section of the sleep stage vs. time graph and said that I moved my legs 66 times per hour and awoke 22 times per hour. I don't get restful sleep like "normal" people because my legs move while I am asleep. The sleep doc that I was working with did not fabricate those results just to sell me more Requip or Mirapex.
Please stick your "designer disease" comment for RLS up your ass.
Thank you,
-Scott
Your vitriol harms you and your emotional well-being but is wasted on me. I haven't allowed the inability of some Slashdotters to disagree in a civil manner to upset me and I'm not about to start doing that today.
Now I have already said that this is my personal opinion and I am not a medical practitoner.
For your own edification, do a little research on one thing. Try to find incidents of Restless Leg Syndrome (by that name or any other) prior to the advertising campaign. See for yourself how difficult that is. Then you will see that it's not some malady that has plagued mankind over the years for which we finally have a treatment.
Then do a little more research. Look at the medical statistics. See how many incidents of the disease occurred before the advertising campaign. Then see how many incidents of the disease occurred after the advertising campaign (hint: many, many more). Draw your own conclusions. If disease is what we think it is, then it should occur or not occur and cause problems or not cause problems in spite of whether or not there is a company trying to create a new market for its products. Assuming everything is legitimate, then the only difference that company might possibly make is whether those patients now have new treatment options available.
Personally, I think this is a "designer disease" just like ADD. That is, there probably are a small minority of legitimate cases (before you get so upset, note that I never claimed otherwise), but that the number of diagnosed and medicated cases greatly outnumbers the number of legitimate instances of the disease. To believe otherwise is to tragically underestimate the mindlessness of the general public and the incredible power of modern marketing when it's backed by billion-dollar monied interests. Believe me, such a machine can make ANYTHING become a "fact" that "everybody knows". If it's a matter of opinion, they repeat it until it becomes fact. If it's a matter of science, they pay for studies that use questionable methods until the predetermined conclusion (which is, of course, favorable to the sponsor) is obtained so they can say "Studies prove it!" while conveniently failing to mention the studies that concluded otherwise.
Additionally, ADD is so classic because the first remedy is always to put the children on drugs, never to accept that children will be children and may need more discipline. This particularly affects boys. You may find it interesting to research how the public school systems are actually feminizing boys by creating an environment that is much more suitable for girls and then telling the boys that they are "disruptive" and need medication when they don't fit into that plan. Of course, this requires committing the modern sacrilege of admitting (the scientific fact) that there are such things as inherent gender differences. After this process, do those boys now have a disorder? Probably so. Was that dis
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt industries in existence today. I actually find pharmacology quite interesting, especially the idea that physical chemicals can impact the nonphysical/intangible mind.
Nonphysical intangible mind?
Neurochemicals, man. Read about them. Any intro to psych course includes education on what a few of the major neurochemicals do and their role in defining who "you" are.
Why do people insist on giving me the most simplistic of answers, always with the assumption that I never once came across them in any research on the subject? I'm not trying to complain so much as to point out that it's not necessary.
To say that "the entire mystery is completely rendered moot by the concept of neurochemicals!" is the same thing as saying "I am a materialist." If you are so inclined, and if you find that satisfying, then good for you. Not everyone subscribes to the materialist worldview, and not everyone is willing to make the assumptions that are needed in order to honestly believe in it.
In other words, to really give a satisfying answer to that mystery from a materialist perspective, you would have to flawlessly explain what consciousness is, precisely why particular arrangements of protons and electrons and neutrons bring it about, and why other arrangements of matter are not conscious (or for an interesting twist, why consciousness is an inherent property of all matter and highly ordered organisms are just a particularly refined expression of it).
If you study pharmacology you will find none of those things. You mentioned neurochemicals. Go ahead and study them. What you will find is descriptions in terms of "well, when chemical X is ingested and reaches part Y of the brain, the patient reports Z." That does not begin to resolve any of the mysteries I mentioned. The explanations based on neurotransmitters, agonists, antagonists, receptors, etc. are just sophisticated forms of that same description. To begin to act like we have this all figured out is frankly rather silly. To think that you can answer the question I raised with the equivalent of a soundbite is to fail to appreciate the magnitude of this mystery.
That is really a huge blow to the reputation of Elsevier... of course they publish hundreds (thousands?) of journals, so in absolute terms maybe it is not that big a deal, but still...
I think I've heard it said this way: "It doesn't take much arsenic to poison a well."
I have a bad feeling that, as people start poking around, even more stories like this are going to be uncovered. Sure, Elsevier is admitting to six fake journals. What's the over/under for it being 20?
Now, I wonder if Merck makes a drug to get rid of bad feelings like this. I'll have to check an Elsevier journal to find out.
I'm not a doctor or any sort of medical practitioner. So, the following is just my personal opinion.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt industries in existence today. I actually find pharmacology quite interesting, especially the idea that physical chemicals can impact the nonphysical/intangible mind. Seeing the way this industry operates made me decide some time ago that I can't in any good conscience join up with them, fascinating though the subject may be.
There is one simple principle here: pharmaceutical companies cannot make any profit from healthy people. That's why you have so many "designer diseases" like Restless Leg Syndrome. Just think about how many people you know who do not regularly take some sort of prescription medication; they are becoming a minority. No one really questions this. No one with any sort of media presence is asking whether the fact that the general population is getting sicker and not healthier indicates that our medical system is fundamentally broken. Of course, you don't have to be much of a thinking man to realize that the media is not your friend, otherwise they'd ask questions like this and would go wherever the facts lead them, monied interests be damned.
I was in my doctor's office once and I asked his staff a question. I asked her why it is that pharmaceutical companies advertise prescription-only medicines to the general public, since after all you are supposed to ask your doctor what is wrong and have that doctor determine what medicine you need. There's little room in that process for brand recognition on the part of the patient. She flat-out told me "because the pharmaceutical companies RUN this entire industry". I salute the honesty of her answer. I was half expecting some sort of "party line" on that one.
You say this like it's a novel point but it is exactly true.
I claimed no novelty. It was merely an observation.
People just want to be told what to use. Microsoft knows that, and now it's obvious that Google knows that. I wish Linux would come to terms with that but that's another post.
That Linux hasn't accepted that as though it were the only possible way could be one of the main reasons why I use it. That's part of why I never felt like it was Linux's job to appeal to the masses or to replace the monopoly position of Windows. I don't see how it could do that without becoming just like what it would replace. Sort of like that saying "be careful about whom you hate, for you will end up resembling them."
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There was art and music before copyright existed. If copyright is abolished, somehow I doubt that those things would cease to exist. Some business models would certainly cease to exist, but that's thoroughly within the realm of "not my problem." That's not intended to say whether I think it should or should not be abolished, but rather, that some perspective is needed. It's simply not the "absolutely essential, how oh how could we carry on without it?" sort of thing that it's often made out to be. It's just one way of doing things out of many possible ways.
Or a new era would dawn on humankind that would make "scarcity" of all goods something that people have to read history books in order to learn about. If that were technically feasible (like if we had something resembling the replicators on Star Trek) then I would call that a worthy goal, certainly worth the demise of business models that it would render obsolete.
What I think is unreasonable is the way copyright once represented a balance between the interests of content creators and the interests of society. There is no longer such a balance; it is now grossly favoring content creators at the expense of society. For that reason, people no longer respect it. Right or wrong, this was a predictable outcome.
I would like for you to elaborate on how I was being unreasonable. My argument sums up to this: "first sale" is a sound doctrine. If I buy a video game, play it for a while, and then sell that video game to somebody else while retaining no copies of it, I have not violated either the spirit of copyright or the letter of copyright. No one has any reason to complain about that situation because no harm was done and no one's rights were infringed in any way. Because this industry thinks it's special, they want to prevent me from doing this by means of DRM. That means they want privileges that are entirely unavailable to any other manufacturer of any other product. I think the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks that this is a good idea.
Now for some reason you responded to me as though I were rejecting the entire notion of copyright. So you talk about how it would be if automobiles had a model of artificial scarcity instead of their current status of some degree of real scarcity. All I am saying is that if intellectual property is in fact property, complete with some degree of scarcity (artificial though it may be), then there is no reason why private individuals should be prevented from reselling it just like they would any sort of tangible property. If it is not property and the doctrine of first sale should not apply to it, then neither should scarcity. What the media companies seem to want is to have their cake and eat it too and that's wrong. Again I'd love to hear a self-consistent explanation from you that would tell me why this is so unreasonable.
I think the media companies are their own worst enemies when it comes to this. I mean, think about it. The original duration of copyright was on the order of twelve years, and that was back when paper was the only medium and making copies was difficult and expensive. Now we have computers, the Internet, and instantaneous electronic distribution, yet copyright has been continually expanded to the ridiculous level of "the author's life plus several decades".
It's like that old proverb about having a handful of sand; the harder you squeeze it, the more of it slips through your fingers. The media companies see this and decide that they will respond by squeezing harder still. The people might respect copyright if it actually represented anything like an even balance between the interests of artists/producers versus the interests of society. At present, people do not respect it for the simple reason that it is no longer respectable. All that this copyright issue has demonstrated is that our laws and our politicians no longer represent the people. I'm not saying that disregarding copyright is a perfectly acceptable response, only that it was a predictable one.
This struck me as a hypocritical position on the part of those game publishers. Either IP is property or it is not. If it is property, then there should be no restrictions allowed on whether or how frequently it can be resold (i.e. no one tries to stop you from reselling your car or your house). If it is not property, then there should be no artificial scarcity surrounding it which would also make this or any other DRM an inappropriate practice.
It should be obvious that what they seem to want is a level of control that is unavailable to the manufacturers of any other sort of good or service. It's surprising that anyone takes them seriously. Much lively debate occurs on the fine nuances of copyright law while missing the point that what they want is to be singularly special, to wield powers unavailable to other industries. That's known as the inability to see the forest for all the trees. That's why I think it's a phony debate, just like most media discourse surrounding what should be regarded as power grabs. They are aiming at an unreasonable amount of control over the marketplace in the name of copyright.
Actually, the implications of "consumer" are worse (i.e. even more passive) than this. Before I explain that, I'd like to point out that perhaps you can remember that it was sometime during the mid-1990s that corporations suddenly decided to start using the word "consumer" as though it were completely interchangeable with the word "customer." Personally, I think this is a good example of Newspeak.
So far as I know, the term "consumer" originated with the broadcast televison industry. By broadcast I refer to those TV channels that are completely free of charge to you because they are entirely supported by advertising in the form of commercial breaks. To the owners and operators of the TV stations, the advertisers who purchase airtime for their commercials are their paying customers. To those same owners and operators of the TV stations, the viewers who pay no money but provide an audience for the advertisements are the consumers. The difference is that a customer can make demands, can have influence, and can take his business elsewhere if the TV stations fail to satisfy him. A consumer, on the other hand, has little influence in large groups and zero influence on an individual level and must take whatever he is given on a completely take-it-or-leave-it basis that is not open to negotiation.
Businesses of all sorts are beginning to use those two terms as though they were the same thing, and always to the effect of making a customer feel like a consumer, never to make a consumer feel like a customer. This should be called what it is: a power grab. Most successful power grabs are also subtle. Not only is it a power grab, it's also a tremendous insult to those people who make the companies successful in the marketplace. The problem is that those people haven't woken up enough to realize that this is the case. It amazes me the way there is always so much denial surrounding even the most obvious of power grabs, let alone the more subtle ones. Unfortunately, people will undergo all sorts of mental gymnastics before they will admit that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a fucking duck.
That isn't how they think.
You have to understand, that just like at the end of the Cold War, Western elites (I won't bother distinguishing between judges, politicians and businessmen in this matter because of the almost total blurring between the leaders of state, judiciary and corporation) consider us at the End of History. Our present form of government is perfect now, and for a thousand years hence.
When you believe have a perfect state, it logically follows that everything should be in the state, for the state, and of the state. Any element that goes against the wishes of the state must be wrong and evil, for the state is perfect and good.
I believe the people in power today, more so than in previous generations, are so convinced of the suitability of present laws and institutions they will resist all substantial changes with any force required. They are the last men, who say they have discovered happiness. Their destruction is a prerequisite for any further advancement of the human species.
You have just given a succinct description of fascism, also known as statism or corporatism.
I would think the *AAs don't really want any precedent set w.r.t. an end-users fair-use rights, unless it is that they don't have any.
When I read your mention of end users, a somewhat cynical thought occurred to me. Supposing the cable companies win this lawsuit, it will probably be after much expenditure on lawyers and time in court etc. So the message will be, you have fair-use rights if you have the resources to go up against the *AAs in court but as a regular end user this probably does not describe you (or most of the population for that matter). I'm not a lawyer but I think I've heard it explained that fair-use is a defense; it won't prevent them from dragging you into court if they really want to. At least there is the hope that a victory for the cable companies may set a good precedent for the rest of us.
Cable companies tend to be large media conglomerates. Surprisingly, it looks like the *AAs finally picked a target that can afford to defend itself. It'll be interesting to see how they fare when the playing field isn't asymmetric.
If they were taking the papers all the way up to his doorstep, they were probably coming into his property in order to do so. Just curious, was there any reason why he couldn't call the police and file trespassing charges? I'm not a lawyer or anything like that so I don't know how that would work, but seems like it should be an option. The way I see it, laws like that are there in order to deal with people who refuse to accept "you're not wanted here."
Yeah, but if they were willing to do old-fashioned detective work, they wouldn't need increasingly intrusive measures like this one. Y'know, because old-fashioned detective work requires things like probable cause, or a victim to report the crime.
The sad, pathetic thing is that to many people, the inevitable scenario you describe there would somehow be surprising. Only by some twisted application of moral equivalence does anyone manage to believe that the supporters of this sort of warrentless tracking have an equally valid viewpoint compared to people who have, y'know, actually studied history and obtained an awareness of how easily state power can be abused. Not to mention the slow, incremental nature of the rise of a police state and how it happens by increasingly invasive measures just like this one. In other words, this is not a matter of taste or preference; supporting this kind of surveillance really is a bad idea and there are some solid reasons for it.
SOP in that case would be to evacuate the block, surround your vehicle with sandbags, and then bring in enough high explosives of their own to ensure that the suspect device is completely detonated in the ensuing explosion. Then when you sue, you have to claim you honestly thought a device the size of a quarter could be a bomb. If any moron was inclined you believe you were that stupid, I'm sure their mind will be changed when they read your /. posts and find you planned this out ahead of time to purposefully waste their time. So now not only do you have a blown up car that insurance won't cover, but you're in trouble for filling a false police claim, too. That sure is clever of you.
That reminds me. The only reason why I wouldn't consider having bumper stickers with messages like "Please Tailgate - I Need The Money" and "I Brake For Tailgaters" is because if I ever actually do get rear-ended by some thoughtless clumsy bastard (face it - it's the most easily preventable accident you could ever cause) I wonder if that would work against me. I never could find a clear answer to that question.
I've always felt that way about how they sometimes use canine units to search for drugs. At least in the USA, it would be illegal for a cop to randomly search your car for no reason even if he did find drugs. But if that same officer has a dog and the dog starts barking at your car, he can now legally charge you with whatever contraband he finds. To me those two situations are exactly alike; the dog in this case is just the device with which the search is performed. Yet one is legal and the other is not.
I guess you might call this legalism or Phariseeism, in that both situations are the same except for a minor technicality. Because of that technicality (whether the cop uses his own eyes to search or the dog's nose to do the same thing) they're somehow considered completely different situations for which different rules are applied. I can't imagine that any judge or other authority who actually respects freedom would ever support this. I have to assume that all of these fine distinctions and splitting of hairs are to provide excuses so that the cops can do whatever it is they want to do while completely ignoring the intent behind the Fourth Amendment.
The purpose of any open source project is writing good software. Not converting people. Not waxing philosophical. Not appealing to the masses. And not arguing about naming.
If you look at my post to which you are replying, you'll find that you are preaching to the choir.
I was in my doctor's office once and I asked his staff a question. I asked her why it is that pharmaceutical companies advertise prescription-only medicines to the general public, since after all you are supposed to ask your doctor what is wrong and have that doctor determine what medicine you need.
This seems to be a US-only phenomenon.
Isn't it amazing how so few people in the USA are willing to question that? Even fewer are willing to say "I don't know" instead of automatically siding with those who stand to profit from this phenomenon. Like most problems, this one is systemic, and I'm not talking about RLS but about the decline of critical thinking.
You mean me, the same Causality who went out of his way to explain that he is not a doctor and that what he said is his personal opinion? You mean the same Causality who has said that there are some legitimate cases, that there is such a thing as the exceptions proving the rule? You mean that one?
Do you not see the desperation of your position that you are now resorting to a gross misrepresentation of what I said in order to justify your anger towards me? You really don't see what's wrong with that, do you?
You don't have to be afraid. Just come out and say it: "I do believe in god"
The problem with that is you then have to explain what "God" means to you. My personal concept of that is quite unlike many of the more mainstream interpretations, though (perhaps because I have studied most major religions) it will sound very much like some of them. That makes this a thorny issue that is likely to create much confusion. Really, I was content with showing the limitations of the materialist worldview and I would greatly prefer that each individual works out for themselves whether they believe in God and what "God" means to them. I have always felt that such things, in their pure form, can only be a personal quest and are not something that another man can give to you, though he may be able to show you the way of arriving at your own understanding. Nowhere in this do you find a motivation of fear, my friend.
OK, I admit I'm from a backward country in E.Europe.
I have NEVER ever heard of a "restless leg syndrome" up until now. Never. I actually thought that the original poster made the term up...
I use to bite my nails. Is that a syndrome? Maybe it's a compulsive behavior that can affect my health. Quick - gimme some pills!
Brevity is not usually my strong suit, so I'll give it a try: Thank you.
Everyone already knew I wasn't a specialist in sleep disorders because I have never claimed that I am a specialist in sleep disorders. That little "disclaimer" is there because I otherwise don't trust that the modern legal environment would honor my right to apply basic reasoning to certain subjects. Just in case there is anyone out there dumb enough to fail to realize that I am most definitely NOT giving medical advice, I explain that I am giving only my opinion and that I am not a medical practitoner. In other words, if you need medical advice, go to your doctor because I can't help you with that. None of this has much to do with what I said, however. I was really commenting on the power of marketing, it just so happens that this marketing is being done by a pharmaceutical company.
I said this in the post to which you responded:
That is, there probably are a small minority of legitimate cases (before you get so upset, note that I never claimed otherwise), but that the number of diagnosed and medicated cases greatly outnumbers the number of legitimate instances of the disease.
Missed that part, did you? There is such a thing as the exceptions proving the rule. If I ever claimed otherwise, then your childish reaction may have a basis, but it hasn't. Now you're bound by your pride and I'll explain that. You have absolutely no reason to hate me or get so upset and angry at me because I hold an opinion that you don't like. There are about 6.5 billion people in the world and at any given time, large numbers of them hold opinions you wouldn't like. Is it reasonable then to be upset all the time?
I don't particularly care if you get so upset. I respect it as your free choice, for if you do that, the suffering is yours and does not affect me in the slightest. No one's rights are infringed by that process so I don't particularly have a problem with it. I just think it's a shame that you would make such a poor decision. What I really think is a shame is that you don't take any responsibility for the fact that you are CHOOSING to react this way. Either I am your master, able to control how you feel at this very moment, or, you are choosing to react this way and have chosen poorly. I am most certainly not your master, nor do I want to be. You're bound by your pride now because you have gone too far down this path to be able to comfortably admit to me that you have overreacted. I imagine you have demonized me in your mind to where you think I would say "haha, I told you so!" if you gave such an admission and that too is a shame.
I'll give you some friendly advice. If you don't like what someone says and are absolutely certain that they're dead wrong, even though they went out of their way to tell you that what they said was an opinion, then the correct thing to do is to calmly explain to that person why you believe they are misinformed. You may even convince them. What you're doing here, however, has no chance of working. It's not done in a spirit of inquiry, it's done in a spirit of vengence. Those two have different purposes and are not interchangeable.
That's a very interesting parallel. It also comes from the materialist perspective. What we get for it is a theory of gravitation that is irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. That alone should tell us that we are missing something fundamental and need to question all of our assumptions, all of the things that we "know to be impossible." Quantum mechanics itself tends to disregard cause-and-effect. An unstable atom has X% chance of radiating a particle within a given timeframe. There is no explanation for why it does so, or for why it did so at that particular time and not earlier or later. It's a statistical model that made a departure from the natural philosophy which gave birth to it.
There's something else we get for it, too. Most of our recent technological advances have been engineering breakthroughs. There has been little advancement of actual understanding by comparison. In my personal (unqualified) opinion, the medical industry has its own version of this. We're getting better and better at modifying the system, at obtaining desired results by the introduction of chemicals, without increasing our understanding of what disease actually is, how it originates, and how it can be prevented. Nowhere is this more obvious than in psychiatry. My evidence for this is very simple: if we understood these things, we should have a population that is getting healthier. Instead, we have a population that increasingly depends on medications because it is becoming sicker.
I will tell you something else I truly believe, though I strongly doubt there is any way I could prove it to you. Real enlightened understanding is able to simplify things, to show how all of the observed complexity derives from a few simple principles. By contrast, our models are increasingly complex. Personally, I suspect that the reductionist worldview is at least partially responsible for that. There is absolutely no way to prove beyond a doubt that the reductionist approach is the One Correct Way to seek truth. In spite of that, it's the only approach used by mainstream science. I think that's a mistake when we are dealing with entities, organisms, and a Universe that are greater than the sums of their parts. I am reminded of that old cliche, "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." If you're wondering why the ease with which these things can be pointed out still doesn't really change anything, it's because the power of institutionalization and orthodoxy to stagnate ideas is seldom appreciated.
That's why you have so many "designer diseases" like Restless Leg Syndrome. I have been diagnosed with that "designer disease", you dickwad. How did the doctor determine that I have Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)? I have had two sleep studies at a local hospital. During the studies, dozens of electrodes connected to my body monitored everything from my brain waves to the movement of my calf muscles. The summary reports from the sleep studies show that I shift between different stages of sleep much more frequently than "normal" people. While reviewing the results of the first sleep study with me, the doctor pointed to a section of the sleep stage vs. time graph and said that I moved my legs 66 times per hour and awoke 22 times per hour. I don't get restful sleep like "normal" people because my legs move while I am asleep. The sleep doc that I was working with did not fabricate those results just to sell me more Requip or Mirapex. Please stick your "designer disease" comment for RLS up your ass. Thank you, -Scott
Your vitriol harms you and your emotional well-being but is wasted on me. I haven't allowed the inability of some Slashdotters to disagree in a civil manner to upset me and I'm not about to start doing that today.
Now I have already said that this is my personal opinion and I am not a medical practitoner.
For your own edification, do a little research on one thing. Try to find incidents of Restless Leg Syndrome (by that name or any other) prior to the advertising campaign. See for yourself how difficult that is. Then you will see that it's not some malady that has plagued mankind over the years for which we finally have a treatment.
Then do a little more research. Look at the medical statistics. See how many incidents of the disease occurred before the advertising campaign. Then see how many incidents of the disease occurred after the advertising campaign (hint: many, many more). Draw your own conclusions. If disease is what we think it is, then it should occur or not occur and cause problems or not cause problems in spite of whether or not there is a company trying to create a new market for its products. Assuming everything is legitimate, then the only difference that company might possibly make is whether those patients now have new treatment options available.
Personally, I think this is a "designer disease" just like ADD. That is, there probably are a small minority of legitimate cases (before you get so upset, note that I never claimed otherwise), but that the number of diagnosed and medicated cases greatly outnumbers the number of legitimate instances of the disease. To believe otherwise is to tragically underestimate the mindlessness of the general public and the incredible power of modern marketing when it's backed by billion-dollar monied interests. Believe me, such a machine can make ANYTHING become a "fact" that "everybody knows". If it's a matter of opinion, they repeat it until it becomes fact. If it's a matter of science, they pay for studies that use questionable methods until the predetermined conclusion (which is, of course, favorable to the sponsor) is obtained so they can say "Studies prove it!" while conveniently failing to mention the studies that concluded otherwise.
Additionally, ADD is so classic because the first remedy is always to put the children on drugs, never to accept that children will be children and may need more discipline. This particularly affects boys. You may find it interesting to research how the public school systems are actually feminizing boys by creating an environment that is much more suitable for girls and then telling the boys that they are "disruptive" and need medication when they don't fit into that plan. Of course, this requires committing the modern sacrilege of admitting (the scientific fact) that there are such things as inherent gender differences. After this process, do those boys now have a disorder? Probably so. Was that dis
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt industries in existence today. I actually find pharmacology quite interesting, especially the idea that physical chemicals can impact the nonphysical/intangible mind.
Nonphysical intangible mind?
Neurochemicals, man. Read about them. Any intro to psych course includes education on what a few of the major neurochemicals do and their role in defining who "you" are.
Why do people insist on giving me the most simplistic of answers, always with the assumption that I never once came across them in any research on the subject? I'm not trying to complain so much as to point out that it's not necessary.
To say that "the entire mystery is completely rendered moot by the concept of neurochemicals!" is the same thing as saying "I am a materialist." If you are so inclined, and if you find that satisfying, then good for you. Not everyone subscribes to the materialist worldview, and not everyone is willing to make the assumptions that are needed in order to honestly believe in it.
In other words, to really give a satisfying answer to that mystery from a materialist perspective, you would have to flawlessly explain what consciousness is, precisely why particular arrangements of protons and electrons and neutrons bring it about, and why other arrangements of matter are not conscious (or for an interesting twist, why consciousness is an inherent property of all matter and highly ordered organisms are just a particularly refined expression of it).
If you study pharmacology you will find none of those things. You mentioned neurochemicals. Go ahead and study them. What you will find is descriptions in terms of "well, when chemical X is ingested and reaches part Y of the brain, the patient reports Z." That does not begin to resolve any of the mysteries I mentioned. The explanations based on neurotransmitters, agonists, antagonists, receptors, etc. are just sophisticated forms of that same description. To begin to act like we have this all figured out is frankly rather silly. To think that you can answer the question I raised with the equivalent of a soundbite is to fail to appreciate the magnitude of this mystery.
I think I've heard it said this way: "It doesn't take much arsenic to poison a well."
I have a bad feeling that, as people start poking around, even more stories like this are going to be uncovered. Sure, Elsevier is admitting to six fake journals. What's the over/under for it being 20?
Now, I wonder if Merck makes a drug to get rid of bad feelings like this. I'll have to check an Elsevier journal to find out.
I'm not a doctor or any sort of medical practitioner. So, the following is just my personal opinion.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt industries in existence today. I actually find pharmacology quite interesting, especially the idea that physical chemicals can impact the nonphysical/intangible mind. Seeing the way this industry operates made me decide some time ago that I can't in any good conscience join up with them, fascinating though the subject may be.
There is one simple principle here: pharmaceutical companies cannot make any profit from healthy people. That's why you have so many "designer diseases" like Restless Leg Syndrome. Just think about how many people you know who do not regularly take some sort of prescription medication; they are becoming a minority. No one really questions this. No one with any sort of media presence is asking whether the fact that the general population is getting sicker and not healthier indicates that our medical system is fundamentally broken. Of course, you don't have to be much of a thinking man to realize that the media is not your friend, otherwise they'd ask questions like this and would go wherever the facts lead them, monied interests be damned.
I was in my doctor's office once and I asked his staff a question. I asked her why it is that pharmaceutical companies advertise prescription-only medicines to the general public, since after all you are supposed to ask your doctor what is wrong and have that doctor determine what medicine you need. There's little room in that process for brand recognition on the part of the patient. She flat-out told me "because the pharmaceutical companies RUN this entire industry". I salute the honesty of her answer. I was half expecting some sort of "party line" on that one.
I claimed no novelty. It was merely an observation.
That Linux hasn't accepted that as though it were the only possible way could be one of the main reasons why I use it. That's part of why I never felt like it was Linux's job to appeal to the masses or to replace the monopoly position of Windows. I don't see how it could do that without becoming just like what it would replace. Sort of like that saying "be careful about whom you hate, for you will end up resembling them."
Better to have Chrome ads on TV, than to have TV ads in Chrome!
It's like a Russian reversal without the Russian.