Not to critisize, but the correct spelling is remuneration. Normally this would not be a big deal, but of late I have seen a lot of posts with this mistake.:-)
De gustibus non disputandum est, of course, but in my opinion the best of Card's work is Enchantment. I found "Enders Game" to be an absorbing and wonderful story, but the above to be more philosophical and thought-provoking.
I do understand that a band loses an opportunity to sell to a person who intended to buy a CD but instead grabbed an MP3. However, the person about whom we are speaking explicitly stated that he would 'NEVER' buy the CD, so the band does not lose anything.
I believe that the analogy is illogical. In the case of concern, the person categorically stated that he would 'NEVER' buy a particular compact disk. This means that it is reasonable to say that the band that produced said compact disk has no expectation of remuneration from this person.
In the second case, the store has something tangible for which it will barter. Bread is not a service, but rather an item. If someone steals two slices from a loaf thereof, the store has less with which to barter, and is then measurably and physically poorer -- wrong has been done. The store had the expectation that it would receive something of worth in exchange for its bread.
The two cases are thus not directly comparable. I believe that your analogy is specious, but would be interested in a clarification if I have misunderstood your logic.
Thank you for the explanation; I had not considered some of the points that you raised. Leaving monetary concerns aside, I can certainly agree that Mr. Katz is an incompetent spokesperson, and probably would not want my comments, unattributed or not, published under his domain.
I believe that we are arguing from different axioms. I may undertake to summarize your opinion with: "From a higher power, I have been endowed with the fundamental and unalienable to own comments that I post to online forums."
My question is, then: Why do you believe this? I understand a certain selfishness that causes one to believe that "if anyone is going to make money from my comments, it should be me." However, if I may assume that you are an American, you must remember that we are citizens of a republic, and 'Mine is mine' is true only insofar as we have established it in our Constitution. It is plain, then, that the founding fathers did not consider the copyright in the same class as 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happyness', because it is accorded a different section in Article I: "The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries . .." You may see that the copyright was not considered an inalienable Right, but rather a federally-enforced artifice justified in that it would encourage advancement in the Sciences and Humanities -- in short, an evil, but a necessary one to be limited to short times.
The argument that I was attempting to make is that the republic should have no constitutional interest in punishing Hemos et al. because the comments that they are using were created with no expectation of remuneration.
I do view your argument that the page footers provide you with an expectation of exclusive use of your comments in a different light. I can understand a certain amount of frustration with Hemos' inexactitude, but fail to see how you were materially harmed enough to justify the howls of protest that I have seen in the discussions. Perhaps you could elucidate the matter?
I am unable to comprehend the analogys being drawn by many of the discussants herein between unattributed quoting and theft. It seems to me that the two are not logically comparable, because in the former, unlike the latter, no tangible or fungible 'thing' was taken from the poster.
I can understand a commercial author complaining about rip-offs of his work -- because he is 'losing' profits that might otherwise have been his had customers not purchased the illicit copies, and he created said work with the expectation of being able to derive profits therefrom. In this case, however, it seems to me that the posters to the "Voices from the Hellmouth" discussions had no expectation of monetary compensation, so their comments were pro bono. For them to notice, after the fact, that someone was able to discover a method to make money from their work, and then complain about it, seems to me to be dishonest.
I suppose the fundamental question is, then: if you create something and give it away for free because you can't think of a way to make money from it, or have no desire to do so, and then someone else comes along and does figure out how to make money from it, do you then have the right to a portion of the profits?
Perhaps this is naive, but it seems to me that the answer should be no -- our copyright laws exist not to provide automatic and ex cathedra ownership of all creative work, but to benefit the citizenry by providing inducement for authors to create. If the authors are going to create anyway, the copyright is of no use to the citizenry, and should be ignored. I fear that we have become so used to the idea of copyright that we feel that it derives from some sort of moral imperative, when as previously mentioned, its original intent was only to serve the best interests of the republic -- not necessarily those of the authors.
Please forgive my lack of understanding, but I am unable to comprehend your analogy between unattributed quoting and theft. It seems to me that the two are not comparable, because in the former, unlike the latter, no tangible or fungible 'thing' was taken from the poster.
I can understand a commercial author complaining about rip-offs of his work -- because he is 'losing' profits that might otherwise have been his had customers not purchased the illicit copies, and he created said work with the expectation of being able to derive profits therefrom. In this case, however, it seems to me that the posters to the Voices from the Hellmouth discussions had no expectation of monetary compensation, so their comments were pro bono. For them to notice, after the fact, that someone was able to discover a method to make money from their work, and then complain about it, seems to me to be dishonest.
I suppose the fundamental question is, then: if you create something and give it away for free because you can't think of a way to make money from it, or have no desire to do so, and then someone else comes along and does figure out how to make money from it, do you then have the right to a portion of the profits?
Perhaps this is naive, but it seems to me that the answer should be no -- our copyright laws exist not to provide automatic and ex cathedra ownership of all creative work, but to benefit the citizenry by providing inducement for authors to create. If the authors are going to create anyway, the copyright is of no use to the citizenry, and should be ignored. I fear that we have become so used to the idea of copyright that we feel that it derives from some sort of moral imperative, when as previously mentioned, its original intent was only to serve the best interests of the republic -- not necessarily those of the authors.
Disregarding my suspicions that you are introducing ridicule into a grave discussion in the efforts of a practice that has come to be known as 'trolling', I must inquire regarding evidence for your claim that William Shakespeare was unable to spell. I have read several biographies of the worthy in question and cannot seem to find any references to a lack of spelling ability.
If you would be so kind, would you please post a URL for a document that will perhaps elucidate the matter?
> eg, assault rifles, which have *no* legitimate purpose)
The question exists of whether an object itself can have any purpose -- as one may believe that purposes exist only in the mind. If humans suddenly disappeared, leaving their tools behind, it is possible to believe that the tools are entirely unchanged -- they had no inherent purpose while humans existed, rather, the humans had constructed their uses and dreamed their purposes. Perhaps you intended to say that you do not believe legitimate any purposes that humans can conceive for assault weapons, in which case you may be interested in Mr. Swiss's post. It is this point that I wish to take up with you.
I am not sure from what country you hail, but as a US citizen, I can assure you that in this country a legitimate purpose exists for assault rifles -- that of defense against a tyranical government. If you study the modern conflicts, from Afghanistan to Chechnya, you will see that rifles such as the AK-47 can be considered the modern analog to our revolutionaries' long-rifles, making at least one of the purposes for which humans intend them emminently legitimate.
The strength of these arguments is that they cannot be disproven. Their weakness is that they can be no more proven than disproven. I think it is simply wishful thinking on your part that a substantial portion of "great thinkers" secretly use drugs.
I do not understand your position. How exactly is it that a simple proposition such as "the number of great thinkers who use drugs is greater than that reported" is by definition unable to be proven or disproven?
Then there is the "modern truth" of c-space. It is impossible to ever pass the speed of light.
Just like it is impossible to pass the sound barrier? Or just like humans won't be able to breath when the pass 30 miles per hour? I don't know, I think it is ridiculous to assume that just because we haven't found a way to do something, that automatically means it is impossible.
There is a fundamental difference between the modern result that seems to imply that it is impossible to travel faster than light and the early 20th century belief that humans could not travel faster than sound. The latter was not scientifically grounded, but rather supported by "common sense." The former is not an aesthetic judgement or common sense, but the result of equations derived from a very few assumptions Einstein made about the Universe; i.e., the result follows from axioms, and is thus in a completely different class than the latter. Additionally, there are no claims by modern physicists that because "we haven't found a way to" travel faster than light, it is therefore impossible to do it. There are many instances in which Math. has predicted the ability to do something, such as create a new element, etc., that at the time was impossible to do. Later advances in technology were able show that the predictions were correct; in the case of faster than light travel, the math seems to say that it would require an infinite amount of energy. One interpretation of this is that this travel is then impossible, others say that there are ways around this, but very few are saying anything like "just because we haven't found a way to do something, that automatically means it is impossible."
You are correct. Strictly speaking, the phrase in question refers to the practice of constructing specious proofs by assuming that which is to be proved. However, many of the folks that post to Slashdot seem to be using the phrase of concern when trying to express their belief that a situation or statement not only merits, but cries out for, a response or reply. This is certainly not consistent with the mathematical meaning of the phrase, so perhaps the more erudite among the members of Slashot can suggest a more correct expression?
In light of your comment regarding the accuracy of exponents, perhaps your post was intended to be ironic, but a petabyte is in fact 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
Forgive me for a minor degree of pedantry, but I believe that it may be incorrect to assert that high school science books err when they teach that "hot water freezes faster than does cold". The following URL may prove to be of interest: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ physics/hot_water.html.
Forgive me for a minor degree of pedantry, but I think that you would contribute much more to the discussion were you able to transfer the "rational reasons" of concern from your notes to your head, and then to your post. Simply stating that the reasons in question exist, and referring us to professors of genetics, benefits the discussion much less than would have their elucidation.
Forgive me for a minor degree of pedantry, but I am not a little confused by your usage of the term '[to] beg the question'. The conventional meaning of the phrase of concern is as follows: to assume the correctness of a proposition while attempting to prove it so. Perhaps our rapidly evolving language can support another sense of the phrase, such as the one intended by yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to critisize, but the correct spelling is remuneration. Normally this would not be a big deal, but of late I have seen a lot of posts with this mistake. :-)
De gustibus non disputandum est, of course, but in my opinion the best of Card's work is Enchantment. I found "Enders Game" to be an absorbing and wonderful story, but the above to be more philosophical and thought-provoking.
I do understand that a band loses an opportunity to sell to a person who intended to buy a CD but instead grabbed an MP3. However, the person about whom we are speaking explicitly stated that he would 'NEVER' buy the CD, so the band does not lose anything.
I believe that the analogy is illogical. In the case of concern, the person categorically stated that he would 'NEVER' buy a particular compact disk. This means that it is reasonable to say that the band that produced said compact disk has no expectation of remuneration from this person.
In the second case, the store has something tangible for which it will barter. Bread is not a service, but rather an item. If someone steals two slices from a loaf thereof, the store has less with which to barter, and is then measurably and physically poorer -- wrong has been done. The store had the expectation that it would receive something of worth in exchange for its bread.
The two cases are thus not directly comparable. I believe that your analogy is specious, but would be interested in a clarification if I have misunderstood your logic.
Thanks for the tip. For any that are curious, one possible implementation of this is as follows.
.viminfo
:e null^M:!ispell -x #^M^M:e #^M .exrc
% cat
# Registers:
"s CHAR
% cat
rviminfo
Spell check can then be done from vim with '@s'.
Thank you for the explanation; I had not considered some of the points that you raised. Leaving monetary concerns aside, I can certainly agree that Mr. Katz is an incompetent spokesperson, and probably would not want my comments, unattributed or not, published under his domain.
I believe that we are arguing from different axioms. I may undertake to summarize your opinion with: "From a higher power, I have been endowed with the fundamental and unalienable to own comments that I post to online forums."
My question is, then: Why do you believe this? I understand a certain selfishness that causes one to believe that "if anyone is going to make money from my comments, it should be me." However, if I may assume that you are an American, you must remember that we are citizens of a republic, and 'Mine is mine' is true only insofar as we have established it in our Constitution. It is plain, then, that the founding fathers did not consider the copyright in the same class as 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happyness', because it is accorded a different section in Article I: "The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries . . ." You may see that the copyright was not considered an inalienable Right, but rather a federally-enforced artifice justified in that it would encourage advancement in the Sciences and Humanities -- in short, an evil, but a necessary one to be limited to short times.
The argument that I was attempting to make is that the republic should have no constitutional interest in punishing Hemos et al. because the comments that they are using were created with no expectation of remuneration.
I do view your argument that the page footers provide you with an expectation of exclusive use of your comments in a different light. I can understand a certain amount of frustration with Hemos' inexactitude, but fail to see how you were materially harmed enough to justify the howls of protest that I have seen in the discussions. Perhaps you could elucidate the matter?
Wow, now that was an intelligent response.
Out of curiousity, from whence do you derive a "right" to own your comments?
I am unable to comprehend the analogys being drawn by many of the discussants herein between unattributed quoting and theft. It seems to me that the two are not logically comparable, because in the former, unlike the latter, no tangible or fungible 'thing' was taken from the poster.
I can understand a commercial author complaining about rip-offs of his work -- because he is 'losing' profits that might otherwise have been his had customers not purchased the illicit copies, and he created said work with the expectation of being able to derive profits therefrom. In this case, however, it seems to me that the posters to the "Voices from the Hellmouth" discussions had no expectation of monetary compensation, so their comments were pro bono. For them to notice, after the fact, that someone was able to discover a method to make money from their work, and then complain about it, seems to me to be dishonest.
I suppose the fundamental question is, then: if you create something and give it away for free because you can't think of a way to make money from it, or have no desire to do so, and then someone else comes along and does figure out how to make money from it, do you then have the right to a portion of the profits?
Perhaps this is naive, but it seems to me that the answer should be no -- our copyright laws exist not to provide automatic and ex cathedra ownership of all creative work, but to benefit the citizenry by providing inducement for authors to create. If the authors are going to create anyway, the copyright is of no use to the citizenry, and should be ignored. I fear that we have become so used to the idea of copyright that we feel that it derives from some sort of moral imperative, when as previously mentioned, its original intent was only to serve the best interests of the republic -- not necessarily those of the authors.
Please forgive my lack of understanding, but I am unable to comprehend your analogy between unattributed quoting and theft. It seems to me that the two are not comparable, because in the former, unlike the latter, no tangible or fungible 'thing' was taken from the poster.
I can understand a commercial author complaining about rip-offs of his work -- because he is 'losing' profits that might otherwise have been his had customers not purchased the illicit copies, and he created said work with the expectation of being able to derive profits therefrom. In this case, however, it seems to me that the posters to the Voices from the Hellmouth discussions had no expectation of monetary compensation, so their comments were pro bono. For them to notice, after the fact, that someone was able to discover a method to make money from their work, and then complain about it, seems to me to be dishonest.
I suppose the fundamental question is, then: if you create something and give it away for free because you can't think of a way to make money from it, or have no desire to do so, and then someone else comes along and does figure out how to make money from it, do you then have the right to a portion of the profits?
Perhaps this is naive, but it seems to me that the answer should be no -- our copyright laws exist not to provide automatic and ex cathedra ownership of all creative work, but to benefit the citizenry by providing inducement for authors to create. If the authors are going to create anyway, the copyright is of no use to the citizenry, and should be ignored. I fear that we have become so used to the idea of copyright that we feel that it derives from some sort of moral imperative, when as previously mentioned, its original intent was only to serve the best interests of the republic -- not necessarily those of the authors.
Disregarding my suspicions that you are introducing ridicule into a grave discussion in the efforts of a practice that has come to be known as 'trolling', I must inquire regarding evidence for your claim that William Shakespeare was unable to spell. I have read several biographies of the worthy in question and cannot seem to find any references to a lack of spelling ability.
If you would be so kind, would you please post a URL for a document that will perhaps elucidate the matter?
> eg, assault rifles, which have *no* legitimate purpose)
The question exists of whether an object itself can have any purpose -- as one may believe that purposes exist only in the mind. If humans suddenly disappeared, leaving their tools behind, it is possible to believe that the tools are entirely unchanged -- they had no inherent purpose while humans existed, rather, the humans had constructed their uses and dreamed their purposes. Perhaps you intended to say that you do not believe legitimate any purposes that humans can conceive for assault weapons, in which case you may be interested in Mr. Swiss's post. It is this point that I wish to take up with you.
I am not sure from what country you hail, but as a US citizen, I can assure you that in this country a legitimate purpose exists for assault rifles -- that of defense against a tyranical government. If you study the modern conflicts, from Afghanistan to Chechnya, you will see that rifles such as the AK-47 can be considered the modern analog to our revolutionaries' long-rifles, making at least one of the purposes for which humans intend them emminently legitimate.
The strength of these arguments is that they cannot be disproven. Their weakness is that they can be no more proven than disproven. I think it is simply wishful thinking on your part that a substantial portion of "great thinkers" secretly use drugs.
I do not understand your position. How exactly is it that a simple proposition such as "the number of great thinkers who use drugs is greater than that reported" is by definition unable to be proven or disproven?
Then there is the "modern truth" of c-space. It is impossible to ever pass the speed of light. Just like it is impossible to pass the sound barrier? Or just like humans won't be able to breath when the pass 30 miles per hour? I don't know, I think it is ridiculous to assume that just because we haven't found a way to do something, that automatically means it is impossible.
There is a fundamental difference between the modern result that seems to imply that it is impossible to travel faster than light and the early 20th century belief that humans could not travel faster than sound. The latter was not scientifically grounded, but rather supported by "common sense." The former is not an aesthetic judgement or common sense, but the result of equations derived from a very few assumptions Einstein made about the Universe; i.e., the result follows from axioms, and is thus in a completely different class than the latter. Additionally, there are no claims by modern physicists that because "we haven't found a way to" travel faster than light, it is therefore impossible to do it. There are many instances in which Math. has predicted the ability to do something, such as create a new element, etc., that at the time was impossible to do. Later advances in technology were able show that the predictions were correct; in the case of faster than light travel, the math seems to say that it would require an infinite amount of energy. One interpretation of this is that this travel is then impossible, others say that there are ways around this, but very few are saying anything like "just because we haven't found a way to do something, that automatically means it is impossible."
You are correct. Strictly speaking, the phrase in question refers to the practice of constructing specious proofs by assuming that which is to be proved. However, many of the folks that post to Slashdot seem to be using the phrase of concern when trying to express their belief that a situation or statement not only merits, but cries out for, a response or reply. This is certainly not consistent with the mathematical meaning of the phrase, so perhaps the more erudite among the members of Slashot can suggest a more correct expression?
In light of your comment regarding the accuracy of exponents, perhaps your post was intended to be ironic, but a petabyte is in fact 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
hot water freezes faster [than does cold]
Forgive me for a minor degree of pedantry, but I believe that it may be incorrect to assert that high school science books err when they teach that "hot water freezes faster than does cold". The following URL may prove to be of interest: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ physics/hot_water.html.
Forgive me for a minor degree of pedantry, but I think that you would contribute much more to the discussion were you able to transfer the "rational reasons" of concern from your notes to your head, and then to your post. Simply stating that the reasons in question exist, and referring us to professors of genetics, benefits the discussion much less than would have their elucidation.
Forgive me for a minor degree of pedantry, but I am not a little confused by your usage of the term '[to] beg the question'. The conventional meaning of the phrase of concern is as follows: to assume the correctness of a proposition while attempting to prove it so. Perhaps our rapidly evolving language can support another sense of the phrase, such as the one intended by yourself.