There will not be a mass-produced flying car though. That simply requires too much energy and we have a large enough energy problem as it is. Unless you want to use a derigible there is drag induced just by the act of flying which causes an additional amount of energy to be consumed as opposed to staying on the ground.
You don't read enough. There already exists a perfectly good sky car. 20mpg on pure, clean-burning ethanol, and completely safe computerized navigation and flight control. And it's quiet. And it goes well over 200mph, and can take off and land vertically, right in your yard. I can't believe you don't know about this vehicle. It's even red!
So the real message here is "don't undersell yourself."
Actually, no. His message is "don't be surprised if a lack of foresight and preparation on your part leaves you with no meaningful recourse when someone misappropriates your work."
But, if one party has bought or sold similar pictures in the open market, those earlier transactions are excellent evidence of that reasonable market price.
Much of Heller's audience are the legions of never-sold-an-image-ever amateurs with $10,000 worth of expensive DSLR, professional quality lenses and other tools who are just having fun making images. They share them on places like flickr, and don't think through this stuff at all, let alone have any economic base line established for the value of their time or their finished works. Large (especially corporate) users of photographs license similar-looking images across an entire spectrum... could be $20 for royalty-free image from a microstock agency (read: the web site run by one guy who puts up Ice Skating pictures for fun, and decided maybe he could buy dinner out twice a year by selling one or two images along the way), or could be an expensive rights-managed image license through Getty or Corbis that could cost anywhere from $50 to $50,000 depending on how it's used.
Heller is trying to point out to the millions of people who fancy themselves one mis-appropriated/mis-attributed image away from a set-for-life lawsuit against Really Big Industries, Inc. and the ad agency that clumsily deployed the image, that: (1) they're probably just dreaming, anyway, and (2) yup, they're just dreaming, especially if they don't understand the ins and outs of actually registering their work at the copyright office.
Turn Heller's argument around: let's say that you're a commercial photographer who has licensed hundreds of pictures at $1,000 each. Now, I come along as a novice, grab your picture and put it on my website. Do I owe you $1,000? Under Heller's argument, I should be able to say "But, I've never licensed a picture before. I never would have paid $1,000. This is my first-ever suit for damages and happens to be in regard to the first time I ever would have paid for such a work in my life. I never would have paid anything for that, so your damages are $0."
I understand the temptation of looking at it that way, but think about how it will play in a civil court. The injured party is the artist. If the offending art-infringer is saying that he's not in the habit of licensing expensive professional photography, and thus shouldn't be on the hook for that value just because he ripped it off this one time... the jury would actually laugh out loud. That's like sitting down at an obviously fancy fixed-price restaurant, ordering the lobster and the best champaign available, and then (when in court over stiffing the restaurant on the bill) explaining that it would have been the first time you'd ever sat down to enjoy the creative work of such an expensive chef, so it really doesn't have any established value in that particular context. Pah! A jury would smell that line of weasleiness the moment the defense started down that road.
The fact that you're allowing some uses for free does not imply that you'd allow all uses.
But the vast, giant majority of people who post on sites like flickr and robotically check the CC box do NOT have an established, articulated mechanism for charging for their work in a commercial setting. Lawyers can really make hay out of the fact that your first-ever suit for damages happens to be in regards to the first time you ever would have charged for such work in your life. And that's most amateurs, and that's his point.
The bottom line is that I would not want ANYONE to get legal advice from a photographer/"artist" instead of a lawyer with expertise in the area of interest.
Sure, just like you wouldn't usually ask a lawyer to help spec out a studio lighting system. But if you follow Heller, you'll see that he usually (to boil it down) says things like this: "So, there's a list of 100 factual things you ought to know about copyright, your business plan, and liability insurance. Now, go talk to your lawyer, your accountant, and your insurance agent to make sure that you know how or if they all apply to you." And he's not really any different on this topic - he's just pointing out a gigantic, gaping hole into which many passionate amateur or small-time photographers seem to be continually stepping. Good for him.
There will be no monetary costs for using the work under the terms of the license. But, if you fall outside the license, things become murkier. After all, if you say "no commercial use," for example, it's because you want them to come back to you and pay for that commercial use. Same thing for the attribution clause.
But one of Heller's points is that someone can, essentially, use the image (even for profit!) outside of the bounds of that CC license (to which they didn't even agree, obviously) with essentially no consequence. Sure you can sue them, since you can practically sue a turnip. But if you haven't registered your works with the CO, then you cannot pursue statuatory damages. And that's the part that the vast majority of artists aren't thinking about.
Owner A has photo
B releases A under CC to X,Y,Z
A sues X,Y,Z, but really B is to blame.
No, the real problem is that when A releases an image under CC, and neglects to register the work with the copright office (as the overwhelming, vast majority of people do), he has no recourse at all, in any meaningful form, against the mis-users of the image, no matter who he pursues (B, X, Y, or Z). In practical terms, A's use of the CC is a statement that there will be no monetary licensing costs. That establishes the fact that exactly $0 is what you can sue for, since works that aren't registered with the CO aren't eligible for any sort of statutory penalty when mis-used.
If A does NOT use the CC, but likewise doesn't register the image, he's still only going to be able to pursue in court what he normally would have charged to license the image. And generally, the 30% of that that a lawyer would want in order to take such a case would just about buy that lawyer and his assistant a half-caffe-no-whip-skinny-latte on the way to civil court.
As far as I can tell, DHINAL (Dan Heller is not a lawyer). Why would I worry about his opinions, rather than the well informed opinion of Lawrence Lessig, the law professor who actually founded the Creative Commons, and uses the licenses extensively?
Are you a lawyer? Then why should we care about your opinion about whether or not someone else has presented legally useful information?
Regardless... Heller's perspective is that of an artist and technician that produces work for a living. You have no obligation to pay him for what he does unless the two of you strike up deal, but some people (say, businesses that need an image for use in promoting a product or documenting a service, etc) DO want to be able to turn to professional photographers who understand the nuances of contracts and who have a personal stake in the successful use of their creative work. How does it help anyone if the prevailing culture shifts towards the sense that things that it costs money, time, and a career's worth of education and training to create has no value?
He has a vested interest in being able to license his work in a way that serves both him and his customers. It's to his advantage - as it is to most creative professionals - that people who want to put their creativity to work (say, as the cover shot for some non-profit organization's annual fundraising brochure) understand that there is no free lunch. Someone may elect to license an image under the CC, but all Heller is doing is pointing out that unless you actually register the image with the actual, for-real copyright office, you have no ability to pursue statuatory damages when someone rips off your work. If it ain't registered, then all you can do is pursue the price you would have asked if the user of the image had bothered to license it from you legitimately. And the magically startling part of his message (for many people who are seduced by the warm-and-fuzzy CC feeling) is this: when you choose to provide your photograph to people under the CC license, you are explicitly saying that you consider it to have no monetary value. You have NO recourse when some company or church or web site decides to rip you off.
Heller (correctly, I think) points out that most people who post their images on flickr under the CC are thinking that if they catch some Super Evil Corporate Entity using their image without permission, that they're sitting on some litigation goldmine. And that's simply not true for the vast majority of such posters, because they're not doing the work of registering their work with the actual copyright office, the way that a pro does.
Why should you worry about Dan Heller's opinions? Because he's a working professional who lives in the real world and he has to have an actual, working understanding about this stuff because otherwise he won't be able to make a living. Mostly, here, he's just making sure that people witlessly checking the CC box on their flickr postings because it feels good to do so and may impress some organic Goth chick they met on Facebook realize that they are, in practical terms, signing away any reasonable expectation of recourse when they are ripped off - even when ripped off by someone who knowingly and deliberately does so in order to make money in the act of doing so. There are essentially no consequences for doing so, and he's trying to throw a bucket of water on people so that they'll realize that.
I think real change will start with something very simple, no more campaign financing by corporations. Not a cent. Government for the PEOPLE.
So, the people that come together to form a business, or that dig into their wallets to help fund a business, or the people that decide to try to get a job from and end up working with that business, aren't the "PEOPLE"? Who are they, then? If you don't like the idealogical posture of a large business, just don't work there, and don't buy stuff from them.
If you don't like Marth Stewart's politics, ignore her broadcasts and products, and stay away from the political parties she backs. If you think K-Mart isn't lefty enough because they dropped Rosie O'Donnell as a spokesperson when she started to go completely fringe, then just don't buy stuff there, invest in their stock, or work for them. Likewise Google. Or Wal-Mart. Maybe Starbucks is a better fit for your green sensibilities. Or maybe you like a company that's working on better Li-Ion-powered hybrid cars, and work there, and are GLAD that they donate some of the company's earnings to the party that preaches policies encouraging more of the same. Are you not "PEOPLE" when you choose to work at such a place, or buy its stock?
Would you tell people giving you millions of dollars to stop it?... as long as I'm rich and my kids are rich, the country doesn't matter.
You realize, right, that the bookeeping of large, publicly traded corporations is (thanks to measures like SarbOx) under incredible public scrutiny? And that a public official doesn't just take a check from a company and deposit it in his personal account. Donations go to their campaigns - and those are in very small amounts (Exxon can't write a million-dollar check directly to "Ted Kennedy" no matter how much they'd like him to get his brother Joe to stop shilling for Hugo Chavez's Citgo in his ongoing monument to irony as he cites the evils of large oil operations). Rather, politicians' parties can accept larger donations, but can't assign such funds to specific campaigns. Any politician that is actually personally pocketing the millions you seem to suggest would be outed in a second by his campaign opponents. You're confusing expensive campaigns with expensive personal lifestyles. Most legislators don't make much, net-net, and aren't worth much. The rich ones were generally rich before going into politics. Of course you know all of this, and you just like the drama of painting a different picture.
for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available after the big flash occurs
You know - and I'm just going with my gut on this one - it's possible, however remotely, that you are a complete loon. It is, though, a really terrific mashup of paranoia, off-kilter religious wackoism, and damaged linguistic goods. As performance art, this is fine. As a bit of cognition on your part, it's really... sad, I'm afraid. Oh well.
we're intending for the nazis to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather'.
But, it's worth it! I mean, that's gold, right there.
The main differences in visual perception would be dealing with stuff like ranging, depth perception, night-vision, day-vision, etc
I think that sense-of-scale issue is definitely a weak spot for a lot of dogs. It's one of the reasons that very large dogs can sometimes react to very small dogs at an intermediate distance as they would to a very large dog at a greater distance. And anyone who's ever dealt with a terrier knows that they not only have no idea how small they are themselves, they have no appreciatation that they're about to lauch themselves at an English Mastiff that could squash it like a bug with one swat.
My own dogs definitely make their people and other-critter judgements based on body language. They react completely differently to distant figures - canine or primate - that appear to be skulking or looking furtive. They have excellent radar, that way.
Does one really "infringe on the GPL" in a case like this? It seems that the issue is an alleged infringment on someone else's code, as released under the GPL. I don't think we're talking about ripping off the license and producing their own cloned license without permission. Though that would be funny.
It's not whether or not they know HOW to conduct research better than a given scientist, it's about whether they, as representatives of their tax-paying constituents, and people who also have to pay for everything from replacement freeway bridges to a colossal prescription drug entitlement program, get to have a say on what projects to fund. It's reasonable for congress to say "sorry, no Mars money this year." It's NOT reasonable for congress to say, "You know that Mars money? Well, when you spend it on IT infrastructure to support research in that area, we think SATA drives are good enough for off-line storage, instead of those newer serial-scuzzy things. And, you have to do all your math in hex expressions of metric measurements, except for mass, in which case pounds are fine." But, all we're talking about here is one year's budget priorities, not micromanagement of research methods. But, if the Democrats don't think money should go to human Mars missions, because they think that's somehow scoring them more points with their voters, then it's their call, right? Don't vote for them if you think this is silly.
So I guess that whole freedom thing is too scary for you, and expecting adults to have some personal responsibility is a concept that exceeds your imagination?
So, when some 18-year-old ODs on heroin, legal or otherwise, you're going to make sure that doesn't show up, indirectly, as an expense that I get to pay for? We're already in a position where people's bad choices cost the rest of us untold hundreds of billions of dollars. And all people can talk about is making health care in the US an even more gloriously socialist enterprise. Personal responsibility? Will you sign a waiver saying that you have any and all medical expenses that you might incur covered, yourself? Can you say the same for all of the people you think should get to pick up highly addictive narcotics at the grocery store?
You don't seem to realize it, but the belief behind your argument contradicts everything that the USA used to be about, which was personal responsibility, self-determination, individual soverignty, and personal freedom (which includes having no one to bail you out when you make poor choices).
No, I'm noticing that that horse left the barn years ago when we became a nation of entitlement-needing victims with a huge, wasteful infrastructure to match. You'll never get it to go away, now. So my point is that adding another nice big does of toxic crap to the mix as the new normal... is insane. Since I get to pay for it, even though I don't find it constructive to snort it, shoot it, or smoke it.
What? If a doctor knew exactly what kind of drugs they were taking, in controlled strengths and dosages (due to the fact they are now legal and regulated), how would that make it any more difficult?
Because people who trash their nervous systems (and have all sorts of indirect problems, like useless immune systems) are a train wreck. It's harder to treat people like that, and harder to understand when something else is causing complications.
if drugs were legal tomorrow would you go out and binge on heroin and cocaine?
No.
Maybe that is due to the fact the legality of a drug has no bearing on whether or not a person chooses to take it
Nice try. Do you really think that a sudden, giant wash of cheap, legal narcotics wouldn't bring a lot more young people into a (shorter) lifetime of addiction? People steadily use drugs like heroin because they're addicted to it. They get addicted to it by trying/using it. They try/use it for the first time, typically, in a social setting. Make heroin legal, and you'll manufacture untold more social settings in which that can and will happen for the first time. And then you'll have more people "choosing" that lifetime of addiction, because they'll have no choice. Nice drug, heroin.
... harder drugs at 21... Tax the lot of it and let transparent companies take control of the market and you eliminate virtually all of the violence associated with the drug trade.
Will you also be subsidizing other people's consumption of those drugs, and for that matter the rest of their not-as- or non-productive lives as they consume them? With other people's tax dollars? Because if you expect that people are still going to have to pay for what they consume, many of those over-21-year-olds that you'd be happy to see on heroin are still going to resort to crime in order to pay for their existence. Or, maybe you think that entitlements (that other big drug) should take care of their food, rent, transporation, etc? How do you see that working, exactly? Does that person also get health care, including the use of million-dollar diagnostic equipment, when they present with conditions that are far harder to figure out once you know they're full of nice, legal, hard drugs all the time?
... or will they fsck it up like they did with the relevant data they had about the 9/11 plan to use planes... Remember, in the beginning the Patriot act seemed like a good idea to a lot of people...
We didn't have any specific indication that planes would be flown into buildings in the way they were. But that's OK, YOU think we did, and that we didn't handle that information usefully, right? And, you're also complaining about the piece of legislation that actually removes the very barriers between intel agencies that were preventing exactly that sort of coordination? You think the law enforcement and counter-terrorism and foreign intel agencies should be better able to figure out a complex picture involving people in and outside of the country communicating and operating in fracturuous, difficult-to-track ways... but you also prefer the way that the intel agencies were boxed into silos prior to that disasterous posture being reversed by the act about which you're complaining?
when the Unabomber was active.. did we need this? When the DC snipers were active, did we need to fight home grown terrorism?
The weren't operating at the behest of, and as local franchise offices of a larger international movement that has killed thousands and thousands of people, and which pushes around the cash, training, and materials needed to do more of the same. The "home grown" young idiots in the UK that killed people on trains there were totally stoked on information and support provided online as well as in person through networks rooted in northen Pakistan, home to the Taliban and A.Q. That's not Unibomber stuff, nor OK City stuff. It's the new trend, and it ain't stopping all on its own. The fact that congress is actually paying attention to the role that internetworked communications plays in gluing these clowns together is a GOOD thing. Only more and better information will counter that nonsense. And, of course, a willingness to actually say out loud what's happening within the groups/communities in which this stuff thrives.
There's no deep message embedded in it, but the idiot who posted it thinks he's brilliant. Probably an english major.
On reflection, I think you're right. That degree of wack-a-doo sophistry takes work. Hard, hard work. Because even for someone with a low IQ, it's a major project to lie that baldly about how you see the world, or (much harder!) actually suspend reason long enough to actually convince yourself that's how it really is.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude. I get all of that. I was being... you know, a trifle sardonic? Yeesh!
It's hard to tell whether you're joking...
Damn, I AM subtle, aren't I? I'm not joking, I'm just passing along info from their web site. They're doing the joking FOR me!
There will not be a mass-produced flying car though. That simply requires too much energy and we have a large enough energy problem as it is. Unless you want to use a derigible there is drag induced just by the act of flying which causes an additional amount of energy to be consumed as opposed to staying on the ground.
You don't read enough. There already exists a perfectly good sky car . 20mpg on pure, clean-burning ethanol, and completely safe computerized navigation and flight control. And it's quiet. And it goes well over 200mph, and can take off and land vertically, right in your yard. I can't believe you don't know about this vehicle. It's even red!
So the real message here is "don't undersell yourself."
Actually, no. His message is "don't be surprised if a lack of foresight and preparation on your part leaves you with no meaningful recourse when someone misappropriates your work."
But, if one party has bought or sold similar pictures in the open market, those earlier transactions are excellent evidence of that reasonable market price.
Much of Heller's audience are the legions of never-sold-an-image-ever amateurs with $10,000 worth of expensive DSLR, professional quality lenses and other tools who are just having fun making images. They share them on places like flickr, and don't think through this stuff at all, let alone have any economic base line established for the value of their time or their finished works. Large (especially corporate) users of photographs license similar-looking images across an entire spectrum... could be $20 for royalty-free image from a microstock agency (read: the web site run by one guy who puts up Ice Skating pictures for fun, and decided maybe he could buy dinner out twice a year by selling one or two images along the way), or could be an expensive rights-managed image license through Getty or Corbis that could cost anywhere from $50 to $50,000 depending on how it's used.
Heller is trying to point out to the millions of people who fancy themselves one mis-appropriated/mis-attributed image away from a set-for-life lawsuit against Really Big Industries, Inc. and the ad agency that clumsily deployed the image, that: (1) they're probably just dreaming, anyway, and (2) yup, they're just dreaming, especially if they don't understand the ins and outs of actually registering their work at the copyright office.
but can someone please edit this summary. Did you even read it? Terrible grammar
We're always glad to see a new slashdot member here. Your welcome packet is in the mail!
Turn Heller's argument around: let's say that you're a commercial photographer who has licensed hundreds of pictures at $1,000 each. Now, I come along as a novice, grab your picture and put it on my website. Do I owe you $1,000? Under Heller's argument, I should be able to say "But, I've never licensed a picture before. I never would have paid $1,000. This is my first-ever suit for damages and happens to be in regard to the first time I ever would have paid for such a work in my life. I never would have paid anything for that, so your damages are $0."
I understand the temptation of looking at it that way, but think about how it will play in a civil court. The injured party is the artist. If the offending art-infringer is saying that he's not in the habit of licensing expensive professional photography, and thus shouldn't be on the hook for that value just because he ripped it off this one time... the jury would actually laugh out loud. That's like sitting down at an obviously fancy fixed-price restaurant, ordering the lobster and the best champaign available, and then (when in court over stiffing the restaurant on the bill) explaining that it would have been the first time you'd ever sat down to enjoy the creative work of such an expensive chef, so it really doesn't have any established value in that particular context. Pah! A jury would smell that line of weasleiness the moment the defense started down that road.
The fact that you're allowing some uses for free does not imply that you'd allow all uses.
But the vast, giant majority of people who post on sites like flickr and robotically check the CC box do NOT have an established, articulated mechanism for charging for their work in a commercial setting. Lawyers can really make hay out of the fact that your first-ever suit for damages happens to be in regards to the first time you ever would have charged for such work in your life. And that's most amateurs, and that's his point.
The bottom line is that I would not want ANYONE to get legal advice from a photographer/"artist" instead of a lawyer with expertise in the area of interest.
Sure, just like you wouldn't usually ask a lawyer to help spec out a studio lighting system. But if you follow Heller, you'll see that he usually (to boil it down) says things like this: "So, there's a list of 100 factual things you ought to know about copyright, your business plan, and liability insurance. Now, go talk to your lawyer, your accountant, and your insurance agent to make sure that you know how or if they all apply to you." And he's not really any different on this topic - he's just pointing out a gigantic, gaping hole into which many passionate amateur or small-time photographers seem to be continually stepping. Good for him.
There will be no monetary costs for using the work under the terms of the license. But, if you fall outside the license, things become murkier. After all, if you say "no commercial use," for example, it's because you want them to come back to you and pay for that commercial use. Same thing for the attribution clause.
But one of Heller's points is that someone can, essentially, use the image (even for profit!) outside of the bounds of that CC license (to which they didn't even agree, obviously) with essentially no consequence. Sure you can sue them, since you can practically sue a turnip. But if you haven't registered your works with the CO, then you cannot pursue statuatory damages. And that's the part that the vast majority of artists aren't thinking about.
Owner A has photo
B releases A under CC to X,Y,Z
A sues X,Y,Z, but really B is to blame.
No, the real problem is that when A releases an image under CC, and neglects to register the work with the copright office (as the overwhelming, vast majority of people do), he has no recourse at all, in any meaningful form, against the mis-users of the image, no matter who he pursues (B, X, Y, or Z). In practical terms, A's use of the CC is a statement that there will be no monetary licensing costs. That establishes the fact that exactly $0 is what you can sue for, since works that aren't registered with the CO aren't eligible for any sort of statutory penalty when mis-used.
If A does NOT use the CC, but likewise doesn't register the image, he's still only going to be able to pursue in court what he normally would have charged to license the image. And generally, the 30% of that that a lawyer would want in order to take such a case would just about buy that lawyer and his assistant a half-caffe-no-whip-skinny-latte on the way to civil court.
As far as I can tell, DHINAL (Dan Heller is not a lawyer). Why would I worry about his opinions, rather than the well informed opinion of Lawrence Lessig, the law professor who actually founded the Creative Commons, and uses the licenses extensively?
Are you a lawyer? Then why should we care about your opinion about whether or not someone else has presented legally useful information?
Regardless... Heller's perspective is that of an artist and technician that produces work for a living. You have no obligation to pay him for what he does unless the two of you strike up deal, but some people (say, businesses that need an image for use in promoting a product or documenting a service, etc) DO want to be able to turn to professional photographers who understand the nuances of contracts and who have a personal stake in the successful use of their creative work. How does it help anyone if the prevailing culture shifts towards the sense that things that it costs money, time, and a career's worth of education and training to create has no value?
He has a vested interest in being able to license his work in a way that serves both him and his customers. It's to his advantage - as it is to most creative professionals - that people who want to put their creativity to work (say, as the cover shot for some non-profit organization's annual fundraising brochure) understand that there is no free lunch. Someone may elect to license an image under the CC, but all Heller is doing is pointing out that unless you actually register the image with the actual, for-real copyright office, you have no ability to pursue statuatory damages when someone rips off your work. If it ain't registered, then all you can do is pursue the price you would have asked if the user of the image had bothered to license it from you legitimately. And the magically startling part of his message (for many people who are seduced by the warm-and-fuzzy CC feeling) is this: when you choose to provide your photograph to people under the CC license, you are explicitly saying that you consider it to have no monetary value. You have NO recourse when some company or church or web site decides to rip you off.
Heller (correctly, I think) points out that most people who post their images on flickr under the CC are thinking that if they catch some Super Evil Corporate Entity using their image without permission, that they're sitting on some litigation goldmine. And that's simply not true for the vast majority of such posters, because they're not doing the work of registering their work with the actual copyright office, the way that a pro does.
Why should you worry about Dan Heller's opinions? Because he's a working professional who lives in the real world and he has to have an actual, working understanding about this stuff because otherwise he won't be able to make a living. Mostly, here, he's just making sure that people witlessly checking the CC box on their flickr postings because it feels good to do so and may impress some organic Goth chick they met on Facebook realize that they are, in practical terms, signing away any reasonable expectation of recourse when they are ripped off - even when ripped off by someone who knowingly and deliberately does so in order to make money in the act of doing so. There are essentially no consequences for doing so, and he's trying to throw a bucket of water on people so that they'll realize that.
Do they give out Nobel prizes in the "Dude, I Am So Fucking High Right Now" category?
No, but this very subtle viral marketing campaign for VMWare is definitely going to get someone their annual bonus this year.
my Bluetooth earpiece
I'm sorry, I lost track of your credibility when I was distracted by your Borg Bling.
I think real change will start with something very simple, no more campaign financing by corporations. Not a cent. Government for the PEOPLE.
So, the people that come together to form a business, or that dig into their wallets to help fund a business, or the people that decide to try to get a job from and end up working with that business, aren't the "PEOPLE"? Who are they, then? If you don't like the idealogical posture of a large business, just don't work there, and don't buy stuff from them.
If you don't like Marth Stewart's politics, ignore her broadcasts and products, and stay away from the political parties she backs. If you think K-Mart isn't lefty enough because they dropped Rosie O'Donnell as a spokesperson when she started to go completely fringe, then just don't buy stuff there, invest in their stock, or work for them. Likewise Google. Or Wal-Mart. Maybe Starbucks is a better fit for your green sensibilities. Or maybe you like a company that's working on better Li-Ion-powered hybrid cars, and work there, and are GLAD that they donate some of the company's earnings to the party that preaches policies encouraging more of the same. Are you not "PEOPLE" when you choose to work at such a place, or buy its stock?
Would you tell people giving you millions of dollars to stop it? ... as long as I'm rich and my kids are rich, the country doesn't matter.
You realize, right, that the bookeeping of large, publicly traded corporations is (thanks to measures like SarbOx) under incredible public scrutiny? And that a public official doesn't just take a check from a company and deposit it in his personal account. Donations go to their campaigns - and those are in very small amounts (Exxon can't write a million-dollar check directly to "Ted Kennedy" no matter how much they'd like him to get his brother Joe to stop shilling for Hugo Chavez's Citgo in his ongoing monument to irony as he cites the evils of large oil operations). Rather, politicians' parties can accept larger donations, but can't assign such funds to specific campaigns. Any politician that is actually personally pocketing the millions you seem to suggest would be outed in a second by his campaign opponents. You're confusing expensive campaigns with expensive personal lifestyles. Most legislators don't make much, net-net, and aren't worth much. The rich ones were generally rich before going into politics. Of course you know all of this, and you just like the drama of painting a different picture.
for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available after the big flash occurs
You know - and I'm just going with my gut on this one - it's possible, however remotely, that you are a complete loon. It is, though, a really terrific mashup of paranoia, off-kilter religious wackoism, and damaged linguistic goods. As performance art, this is fine. As a bit of cognition on your part, it's really... sad, I'm afraid. Oh well.
we're intending for the nazis to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather'.
But, it's worth it! I mean, that's gold, right there.
The main differences in visual perception would be dealing with stuff like ranging, depth perception, night-vision, day-vision, etc
I think that sense-of-scale issue is definitely a weak spot for a lot of dogs. It's one of the reasons that very large dogs can sometimes react to very small dogs at an intermediate distance as they would to a very large dog at a greater distance. And anyone who's ever dealt with a terrier knows that they not only have no idea how small they are themselves, they have no appreciatation that they're about to lauch themselves at an English Mastiff that could squash it like a bug with one swat.
My own dogs definitely make their people and other-critter judgements based on body language. They react completely differently to distant figures - canine or primate - that appear to be skulking or looking furtive. They have excellent radar, that way.
Does one really "infringe on the GPL" in a case like this? It seems that the issue is an alleged infringment on someone else's code, as released under the GPL. I don't think we're talking about ripping off the license and producing their own cloned license without permission. Though that would be funny.
It's not whether or not they know HOW to conduct research better than a given scientist, it's about whether they, as representatives of their tax-paying constituents, and people who also have to pay for everything from replacement freeway bridges to a colossal prescription drug entitlement program, get to have a say on what projects to fund. It's reasonable for congress to say "sorry, no Mars money this year." It's NOT reasonable for congress to say, "You know that Mars money? Well, when you spend it on IT infrastructure to support research in that area, we think SATA drives are good enough for off-line storage, instead of those newer serial-scuzzy things. And, you have to do all your math in hex expressions of metric measurements, except for mass, in which case pounds are fine." But, all we're talking about here is one year's budget priorities, not micromanagement of research methods. But, if the Democrats don't think money should go to human Mars missions, because they think that's somehow scoring them more points with their voters, then it's their call, right? Don't vote for them if you think this is silly.
So I guess that whole freedom thing is too scary for you, and expecting adults to have some personal responsibility is a concept that exceeds your imagination?
So, when some 18-year-old ODs on heroin, legal or otherwise, you're going to make sure that doesn't show up, indirectly, as an expense that I get to pay for? We're already in a position where people's bad choices cost the rest of us untold hundreds of billions of dollars. And all people can talk about is making health care in the US an even more gloriously socialist enterprise. Personal responsibility? Will you sign a waiver saying that you have any and all medical expenses that you might incur covered, yourself? Can you say the same for all of the people you think should get to pick up highly addictive narcotics at the grocery store?
You don't seem to realize it, but the belief behind your argument contradicts everything that the USA used to be about, which was personal responsibility, self-determination, individual soverignty, and personal freedom (which includes having no one to bail you out when you make poor choices).
No, I'm noticing that that horse left the barn years ago when we became a nation of entitlement-needing victims with a huge, wasteful infrastructure to match. You'll never get it to go away, now. So my point is that adding another nice big does of toxic crap to the mix as the new normal... is insane. Since I get to pay for it, even though I don't find it constructive to snort it, shoot it, or smoke it.
What? If a doctor knew exactly what kind of drugs they were taking, in controlled strengths and dosages (due to the fact they are now legal and regulated), how would that make it any more difficult?
Because people who trash their nervous systems (and have all sorts of indirect problems, like useless immune systems) are a train wreck. It's harder to treat people like that, and harder to understand when something else is causing complications.
if drugs were legal tomorrow would you go out and binge on heroin and cocaine?
No.
Maybe that is due to the fact the legality of a drug has no bearing on whether or not a person chooses to take it
Nice try. Do you really think that a sudden, giant wash of cheap, legal narcotics wouldn't bring a lot more young people into a (shorter) lifetime of addiction? People steadily use drugs like heroin because they're addicted to it. They get addicted to it by trying/using it. They try/use it for the first time, typically, in a social setting. Make heroin legal, and you'll manufacture untold more social settings in which that can and will happen for the first time. And then you'll have more people "choosing" that lifetime of addiction, because they'll have no choice. Nice drug, heroin.
Will you also be subsidizing other people's consumption of those drugs, and for that matter the rest of their not-as- or non-productive lives as they consume them? With other people's tax dollars? Because if you expect that people are still going to have to pay for what they consume, many of those over-21-year-olds that you'd be happy to see on heroin are still going to resort to crime in order to pay for their existence. Or, maybe you think that entitlements (that other big drug) should take care of their food, rent, transporation, etc? How do you see that working, exactly? Does that person also get health care, including the use of million-dollar diagnostic equipment, when they present with conditions that are far harder to figure out once you know they're full of nice, legal, hard drugs all the time?
We didn't have any specific indication that planes would be flown into buildings in the way they were. But that's OK, YOU think we did, and that we didn't handle that information usefully, right? And, you're also complaining about the piece of legislation that actually removes the very barriers between intel agencies that were preventing exactly that sort of coordination? You think the law enforcement and counter-terrorism and foreign intel agencies should be better able to figure out a complex picture involving people in and outside of the country communicating and operating in fracturuous, difficult-to-track ways... but you also prefer the way that the intel agencies were boxed into silos prior to that disasterous posture being reversed by the act about which you're complaining?
when the Unabomber was active.. did we need this? When the DC snipers were active, did we need to fight home grown terrorism?
The weren't operating at the behest of, and as local franchise offices of a larger international movement that has killed thousands and thousands of people, and which pushes around the cash, training, and materials needed to do more of the same. The "home grown" young idiots in the UK that killed people on trains there were totally stoked on information and support provided online as well as in person through networks rooted in northen Pakistan, home to the Taliban and A.Q. That's not Unibomber stuff, nor OK City stuff. It's the new trend, and it ain't stopping all on its own. The fact that congress is actually paying attention to the role that internetworked communications plays in gluing these clowns together is a GOOD thing. Only more and better information will counter that nonsense. And, of course, a willingness to actually say out loud what's happening within the groups/communities in which this stuff thrives.
There's no deep message embedded in it, but the idiot who posted it thinks he's brilliant. Probably an english major.
On reflection, I think you're right. That degree of wack-a-doo sophistry takes work. Hard, hard work. Because even for someone with a low IQ, it's a major project to lie that baldly about how you see the world, or (much harder!) actually suspend reason long enough to actually convince yourself that's how it really is.