I mean, if you can get just the kid you want...why not? What are the objections? Hell, when they can start letting you pick if you kid is going to be smart and/or athletic...are they gonna can that choice too?
One problem with allowing any sort of conscious selection on the part of humans is the possibility that we'll select against something we think is pernicious, but turns out to be beneficial - or something that has both pernicious and beneficial effects that we don't fully understand. For example, carrying a single sickle-cell anemia allele makes you more resistant to malaria.
Granted, selecting among several embryos to pick one that has X hair color or eye color probably won't approach this sort of danger, but as the technology advances, and people begin to select against all sorts of perceived pernicious traits, we may end up inadvertently eliminating a good deal of genetic diversity, which could prove to be very problematic.
What I'll pay for is the service of organising music. My music collection is a total shambles. It's inconsistently tagged. It's encoded at a variety of bitrates and in a variety of formats, such that no MP3 player made since the glory days of iRiver will play them all without a Rockbox hack. And it occupies disk space that could be used for anime or porn. Frankly it's a mess.
So that's what might attract me to Virgin's offering. If it's as complete as The Pirate Bay or more so, and the music is consistently tagged and encoded at a high quality, then a monthly fee is eminently fair to have access to that resource.
Exactly. I have about 50 gigs of music, but it may as well be 5, because only that much is properly tagged and organized. I've tried tackling the organization problem in the past, but it's just too overwhelming. I'd pay for properly tagged music.
That said, I wonder if it really will be tagged well - i.e., beyond simply Artist/Album/Title/Year. For classical music, I'd like to have the composer, and date of composition would be nice, too.
Also, you'd want to be able to download to take it with you on your portable devices - and so that it doesn't disappear when you decide you want to end your subscription.
Interesting. First off, when they say suspend, does that only go for Virgin Media customers (if there are any, not sure what the UK ISP world is like)?
Second, the all-you-can-download idea sounds reasonable. If the catalog is extensive enough (including classical), and it truly is DRM-free and platform-agnostic, I could actually see myself using this. They had better make sure the file metadata is good (a large collection with good metadata is worth paying for), and it'd be nice if they had something like iTune's "Genius" to find things you might like based on your current collection.
IIRC, in regular college level calculus I wasn't allowed to use a graphing calculator. This was at a large public research university. I also don't think it would have helped...
A la carte cable would be the death of 75% of cable channels out there.
Says who? The cable companies say that, and certain channels. But I don't think anyone knows for sure.
The fact is that cable companies already pay more for certain channels anyway. Sports programming is ridiculously expensive. "A la carte" doesn't mean you'll get each channel for $0.75 either... it's all going to depend on how many people are interested in watching stuff. If there's enough interest in something, people will be willing to shell out even $5 a month for a channel now that they're not paying $15 for loads of sports they never watch. And if there's not enough interest in a channel to keep it afloat, then let it die! It's just wasting money.
(Whatever happened to all those proposals for 'ala carte' cable?)
There are a number of objections the cablecos raise against a la carte. In the old days, they'd cry that it wasn't technologically feasible to offer individual channels to each household. That was sort of true; analog filters could block out groups of channels, but if they had rearranged channels logically and used the filters to filter out these groups, they probably could have gotten close to a la carte.
Nowadays, the technology issue is moot. Many, many people have digital boxes, making a la carte extremely simple. All modern cablecos are also in the process of switching their analog customers to digital boxes anyway. Many won't even sell you new analog service. However, the cablecos will say that large channels subsidize the smaller ones (of course that's true), and that if they did a la carte, smaller channels couldn't survive. E.g., fewer people would be paying for BET or whatever, so BET would die out. I don't think anyone actually knows how the numbers would turn out, but there is a lot of crap on cable that people would probably be interested in NOT paying for... however, what I think is crap might be interesting to some people (e.g., sports).
Bingo! You've figured out the blatant contradiction that supporters of strong IP are facing. On the one hand, they want it to be just like traditional property, and to act like it's a natural right, and can be stolen, etc. On the other hand, they want to turn around and license up the wazoo.
They are (or at least my IP law books says so). IIRC, neither software nor music CDs can be rented. But books and video recordings can. BTW, the relevant distinction in that language is probably between "limited purpose computer" and "general purpose computer."
I actually looked into getting a credit card with a chip in the U.S., and couldn't find a single provider that offered one. I think American Express offered one a while ago, but discontinued it when I was looking.
Ther reason I wanted one was because one time, I was in a French rail station trying to buy a ticket from an automated machine. The machine was broken, and refused to take bills; I didn't have enough change; and all the teller windows were closed. I was going to use my credit card, but the machine seemed to only take cards with chips, and my American card only had a magstripe. Eventually after pounding at the teller windows for a while, I got someone to sell me a ticket.
Yeah, I noticed this on my CT state tax return this year. You're supposed to tally up all your purchases from Amazon and Newegg and pay sales tax on that. Needless to say, I purchased nothing from Amazon or Newegg last year.
Yeah, the WP article is much more informative than the video. The guy in the video spends the first minute kind of standing there saying "now what I'm going to do..." without actually doing anything. The next two and half minutes aren't much better.
I don't even think he meant that, b/c you don't "run" the iPod on an OS. I don't care for iTunes, so I use Winamp to manage mine; iPods can be used with Linux, etc. (except for the very newest ones); and you can load Rockbox on many of them.
The same is true with IP. That's all we have left as a country, and we can delay our collapse by a few years, but we can't stop it... After all, GM can't fail, right? And so goes our IP. We will grasp at that, rather than let it go and compete evenly. But the more we cling to it, the further it drags us under.
The problem with that analogy is that IP is not a national industry like the car companies. Because of international agreements like TRIPS, IP is extremely transnational (which in turn is a reflection of the fact that many transnational companies pushed for TRIPS' provisions). Sure, the US benefits greatly from strong IP, because many of our companies sell IP and IP-dependent items around the world. But that's also true of Japan and Western Europe.
Furthermore, up and coming countries like China are going to play the IP game the same way we did - ignore IP when it suits them, and respect it when it no longer suits them to ignore it.
Wouldn't the Kindle be more analogous to the iPod? Both can use a proprietary, DRMed format. But both also work with well-known, non-DRMed formats. Also, if Google's formats are really open, then won't people be able to read them on Kindles?
It's woodworking in the same sense that tossing a TV dinner into a microwave is cooking - I.E. not at all.
That's true if you use a toy CNC machine. But try your TV dinner skills on a 12 foot long CNC router and see how far you get.
It's not "wookworking" in the sense of fine woodworking, using chisels, planes, and dovetail jigs, but I worked with a large CNC machine for a few years, and it is not easy-peasy point-and-click on a CAD program. You learn from experience how to arrange parts so that they don't move during the cutting process, you learn what spindle speeds to use so that your material doesn't burn, and you don't want to break the $300 a pop diamond-tipped bits.
I hate to go all Les Miserables on people but he did steal the loaf of bread and he readily admits it.
If you've read Les Mis, you'll remember that Jean Valjean is thrown in prison for five years after stealing a loaf of bread. I.e., an unreasonable penalty for a crime that he did commit. So yeah, your analogy is more apt than you seem to realize:-)
It's true that we only have his half of the story. On the other hand, I have a really hard time concocting any other side of the story that would warrant throwing someone out of housing for violating network policies. If he came crying to/. about how his network access got cut off, I'd have no sympathy. But being thrown out of housing just doesn't make sense at all.
If he did break the law, he needs to accept the consequences. If he didn't break the law, he should rebut the accusation.
Let me help you understand: the problem is that the consequences are inappropriate to the conduct. Your line of reasoning would have everyone accept whatever consequences are in place, no matter how draconian.
you DID read the acceptable use policy before you signed it right?
He must have missed the part in the AUP where it said dorm management would evict you for violating network policies based on the accusation of a private third party.
Seriously, WTF/. Half the comments are along the lines of "you deserve this." Sure, he was downloading infringing material and violating the AUP - cut off his internet access. But throwing someone out of a dorm?
Hint: what's to stop a creative student who is pissed at someone from spoofing an e-mail from MediaSentry to the management, and having someone else thrown out?
The real ire should be directed at the management for throwing someone out of housing for violating network policies. What next - run an open access point, and you get expelled? Download a song, and your landlord throws you out of your apartment?
My, what extensive experience you having using MySQL!
Seriously though, the MySQL databases in MythTV do seem to get corrupted a lot. I use KnoppMyth, so the fix is usually just a simple "optimize_db", but it happens often enough that I've thought of automating the process.
I hardly see how this is a tutorial for "power users." The article makes out the terminal to be a big bad scary thing, but you'd think that most power users would at least be familiar with Start | Run | "cmd" | "ipconfig".
It's basically a walkthrough of the installation process that goes into more detail about partitions than is necessary. There's only a couple thousand of those floating around the Internet already...
I think I have four Voodoo2 cards. One is my original, and the other three I bought for about $30 when I was in high school. I installed them on the yearbook computers I managed so that the staff could play Half-Life when we had nothing else to do.
You'll notice pretty much none of the *AA cases are focusing on "they stole" but "they're breaking copyright, thus infringing on our property." (or at least that's how they're presented in the media, which is as good as presenting the case that way, in the public's mind)
They're going to court arguing for "copyright infringement" because that's how the law works. There is legally no such thing as "theft" of intellectual property. Colloquially there may be, as in "He stole my trade secret," but legally that translates to "He misappropriated my trade secret."
On the other hand, in the media, they are very much trying to create a connection between infringement and theft. My take is that this is part of a larger push to equate intellectual property and property in the public's mind, and to marginalize the utilitarian reasoning that used to justify intellectual property in this country. When that is gone, time limits no longer make sense, and the push will be for stronger and stronger intellectual property rights - because property is good!
Copyright was supposed to be about preventing others from using your work to their financial gain, thus reducing your profit.
In the U.S., copyright exists first and foremost to provide an incentive to create. That justification is explicitly specified in many of the major copyright cases. That is the reason exclusive rights are granted, and what you fail to specify. It is a reason that used to, and should continue to, circumscribe copyright policy.
Your approach confuses the issue. Intellectual property should provide only what incentive is necessary. Providing excessive protection is economically inefficient. But by claiming that copyright is about "preventing others from using your work" and preventing someone from "reducing your profit", you walk down a road toward justifying absolute, infinite protection of intellectual property. Fair use reduces your profit. Term limits reduce your profit. So no, that's not what copyright is about (or at least, not what it used to be about).
That's why derivative and fair use are in there as acceptable.
This reveals that you don't know what you're talking about. "Derivative" use? I've never heard that term. "Derivative works", yes. And actually, the copyright in derivative works belongs to the original copyright holder, so no, derivative works are not "acceptable" in the same way that fair use is.
Most pirates are just simply missing the personal gain factor that would make it a true copyright infringement case.
Again, this is factually incorrect. "Personal gain" is not necessary to make something copyright infringement. In fact, after the NET Act, even criminal copyright infringement doesn't require monetary gain.
A separate window from what, the content of the site in question?
Yes.
This very tiny piece of text is carefully constructed so as not to violate any legal guidelines
The thing is, this is not settled, black-letter law. The best "guidelines" are probably case law, and if you looked at the 1-800 Contacts v. WhenU case, you'll notice that other courts have ruled in different directions.
by people much smarter than either one of us (probably) and is in any case a de facto allowable amount of content to display for the purpose of helping a search engine user decide whether that is the result they're looking for.
More informed about the relevant law? Sure. Smarter? Maybe, but not necessarily. You don't necessarily have to be "smart" to be a lawyer (though I'm sure Google's lawyers are better than the average one).
Furthermore, just because they're very smart doesn't mean other very smart people won't disagree with them, and convince a court that this behavior is infringing. Lots of large companies have good lawyers, and still have to deal with lawsuits. If it were just a matter of looking at the law and tailoring your action accordingly, things would be a lot less complex.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, if you can get just the kid you want...why not? What are the objections? Hell, when they can start letting you pick if you kid is going to be smart and/or athletic...are they gonna can that choice too?
One problem with allowing any sort of conscious selection on the part of humans is the possibility that we'll select against something we think is pernicious, but turns out to be beneficial - or something that has both pernicious and beneficial effects that we don't fully understand. For example, carrying a single sickle-cell anemia allele makes you more resistant to malaria.
Granted, selecting among several embryos to pick one that has X hair color or eye color probably won't approach this sort of danger, but as the technology advances, and people begin to select against all sorts of perceived pernicious traits, we may end up inadvertently eliminating a good deal of genetic diversity, which could prove to be very problematic.
What I'll pay for is the service of organising music. My music collection is a total shambles. It's inconsistently tagged. It's encoded at a variety of bitrates and in a variety of formats, such that no MP3 player made since the glory days of iRiver will play them all without a Rockbox hack. And it occupies disk space that could be used for anime or porn. Frankly it's a mess. So that's what might attract me to Virgin's offering. If it's as complete as The Pirate Bay or more so, and the music is consistently tagged and encoded at a high quality, then a monthly fee is eminently fair to have access to that resource.
Exactly. I have about 50 gigs of music, but it may as well be 5, because only that much is properly tagged and organized. I've tried tackling the organization problem in the past, but it's just too overwhelming. I'd pay for properly tagged music.
That said, I wonder if it really will be tagged well - i.e., beyond simply Artist/Album/Title/Year. For classical music, I'd like to have the composer, and date of composition would be nice, too.
Also, you'd want to be able to download to take it with you on your portable devices - and so that it doesn't disappear when you decide you want to end your subscription.
Interesting. First off, when they say suspend, does that only go for Virgin Media customers (if there are any, not sure what the UK ISP world is like)?
Second, the all-you-can-download idea sounds reasonable. If the catalog is extensive enough (including classical), and it truly is DRM-free and platform-agnostic, I could actually see myself using this. They had better make sure the file metadata is good (a large collection with good metadata is worth paying for), and it'd be nice if they had something like iTune's "Genius" to find things you might like based on your current collection.
IIRC, in regular college level calculus I wasn't allowed to use a graphing calculator. This was at a large public research university. I also don't think it would have helped...
A la carte cable would be the death of 75% of cable channels out there.
Says who? The cable companies say that, and certain channels. But I don't think anyone knows for sure.
The fact is that cable companies already pay more for certain channels anyway. Sports programming is ridiculously expensive. "A la carte" doesn't mean you'll get each channel for $0.75 either... it's all going to depend on how many people are interested in watching stuff. If there's enough interest in something, people will be willing to shell out even $5 a month for a channel now that they're not paying $15 for loads of sports they never watch. And if there's not enough interest in a channel to keep it afloat, then let it die! It's just wasting money.
(Whatever happened to all those proposals for 'ala carte' cable?)
There are a number of objections the cablecos raise against a la carte. In the old days, they'd cry that it wasn't technologically feasible to offer individual channels to each household. That was sort of true; analog filters could block out groups of channels, but if they had rearranged channels logically and used the filters to filter out these groups, they probably could have gotten close to a la carte.
Nowadays, the technology issue is moot. Many, many people have digital boxes, making a la carte extremely simple. All modern cablecos are also in the process of switching their analog customers to digital boxes anyway. Many won't even sell you new analog service. However, the cablecos will say that large channels subsidize the smaller ones (of course that's true), and that if they did a la carte, smaller channels couldn't survive. E.g., fewer people would be paying for BET or whatever, so BET would die out. I don't think anyone actually knows how the numbers would turn out, but there is a lot of crap on cable that people would probably be interested in NOT paying for... however, what I think is crap might be interesting to some people (e.g., sports).
Bingo! You've figured out the blatant contradiction that supporters of strong IP are facing. On the one hand, they want it to be just like traditional property, and to act like it's a natural right, and can be stolen, etc. On the other hand, they want to turn around and license up the wazoo.
I don't think PCs are ruled out.
They are (or at least my IP law books says so). IIRC, neither software nor music CDs can be rented. But books and video recordings can. BTW, the relevant distinction in that language is probably between "limited purpose computer" and "general purpose computer."
I actually looked into getting a credit card with a chip in the U.S., and couldn't find a single provider that offered one. I think American Express offered one a while ago, but discontinued it when I was looking.
Ther reason I wanted one was because one time, I was in a French rail station trying to buy a ticket from an automated machine. The machine was broken, and refused to take bills; I didn't have enough change; and all the teller windows were closed. I was going to use my credit card, but the machine seemed to only take cards with chips, and my American card only had a magstripe. Eventually after pounding at the teller windows for a while, I got someone to sell me a ticket.
Yeah, I noticed this on my CT state tax return this year. You're supposed to tally up all your purchases from Amazon and Newegg and pay sales tax on that. Needless to say, I purchased nothing from Amazon or Newegg last year.
Yeah, the WP article is much more informative than the video. The guy in the video spends the first minute kind of standing there saying "now what I'm going to do..." without actually doing anything. The next two and half minutes aren't much better.
That IS what he said:
iPod != iTunes.
I don't even think he meant that, b/c you don't "run" the iPod on an OS. I don't care for iTunes, so I use Winamp to manage mine; iPods can be used with Linux, etc. (except for the very newest ones); and you can load Rockbox on many of them.
The same is true with IP. That's all we have left as a country, and we can delay our collapse by a few years, but we can't stop it... After all, GM can't fail, right? And so goes our IP. We will grasp at that, rather than let it go and compete evenly. But the more we cling to it, the further it drags us under.
The problem with that analogy is that IP is not a national industry like the car companies. Because of international agreements like TRIPS, IP is extremely transnational (which in turn is a reflection of the fact that many transnational companies pushed for TRIPS' provisions). Sure, the US benefits greatly from strong IP, because many of our companies sell IP and IP-dependent items around the world. But that's also true of Japan and Western Europe.
Furthermore, up and coming countries like China are going to play the IP game the same way we did - ignore IP when it suits them, and respect it when it no longer suits them to ignore it.
Wouldn't the Kindle be more analogous to the iPod? Both can use a proprietary, DRMed format. But both also work with well-known, non-DRMed formats. Also, if Google's formats are really open, then won't people be able to read them on Kindles?
It's even spelled correctly elsewhere in the summary. But what else to expect from /. "editor" kdawson?
It's woodworking in the same sense that tossing a TV dinner into a microwave is cooking - I.E. not at all.
That's true if you use a toy CNC machine. But try your TV dinner skills on a 12 foot long CNC router and see how far you get.
It's not "wookworking" in the sense of fine woodworking, using chisels, planes, and dovetail jigs, but I worked with a large CNC machine for a few years, and it is not easy-peasy point-and-click on a CAD program. You learn from experience how to arrange parts so that they don't move during the cutting process, you learn what spindle speeds to use so that your material doesn't burn, and you don't want to break the $300 a pop diamond-tipped bits.
I hate to go all Les Miserables on people but he did steal the loaf of bread and he readily admits it.
If you've read Les Mis, you'll remember that Jean Valjean is thrown in prison for five years after stealing a loaf of bread. I.e., an unreasonable penalty for a crime that he did commit. So yeah, your analogy is more apt than you seem to realize :-)
It's true that we only have his half of the story. On the other hand, I have a really hard time concocting any other side of the story that would warrant throwing someone out of housing for violating network policies. If he came crying to /. about how his network access got cut off, I'd have no sympathy. But being thrown out of housing just doesn't make sense at all.
If he did break the law, he needs to accept the consequences. If he didn't break the law, he should rebut the accusation.
Let me help you understand: the problem is that the consequences are inappropriate to the conduct. Your line of reasoning would have everyone accept whatever consequences are in place, no matter how draconian.
There, now, that wasn't so hard, was it?
It seems to me that if you were really concerned about studying, you'd have done it before downloading Angels & Demons.
Maybe he was downloading it to watch after exams :-)
you DID read the acceptable use policy before you signed it right?
He must have missed the part in the AUP where it said dorm management would evict you for violating network policies based on the accusation of a private third party.
Seriously, WTF /. Half the comments are along the lines of "you deserve this." Sure, he was downloading infringing material and violating the AUP - cut off his internet access. But throwing someone out of a dorm?
Hint: what's to stop a creative student who is pissed at someone from spoofing an e-mail from MediaSentry to the management, and having someone else thrown out?
The real ire should be directed at the management for throwing someone out of housing for violating network policies. What next - run an open access point, and you get expelled? Download a song, and your landlord throws you out of your apartment?
My, what extensive experience you having using MySQL!
Seriously though, the MySQL databases in MythTV do seem to get corrupted a lot. I use KnoppMyth, so the fix is usually just a simple "optimize_db", but it happens often enough that I've thought of automating the process.
I hardly see how this is a tutorial for "power users." The article makes out the terminal to be a big bad scary thing, but you'd think that most power users would at least be familiar with Start | Run | "cmd" | "ipconfig".
It's basically a walkthrough of the installation process that goes into more detail about partitions than is necessary. There's only a couple thousand of those floating around the Internet already...
I think I have four Voodoo2 cards. One is my original, and the other three I bought for about $30 when I was in high school. I installed them on the yearbook computers I managed so that the staff could play Half-Life when we had nothing else to do.
You'll notice pretty much none of the *AA cases are focusing on "they stole" but "they're breaking copyright, thus infringing on our property." (or at least that's how they're presented in the media, which is as good as presenting the case that way, in the public's mind)
They're going to court arguing for "copyright infringement" because that's how the law works. There is legally no such thing as "theft" of intellectual property. Colloquially there may be, as in "He stole my trade secret," but legally that translates to "He misappropriated my trade secret."
On the other hand, in the media, they are very much trying to create a connection between infringement and theft. My take is that this is part of a larger push to equate intellectual property and property in the public's mind, and to marginalize the utilitarian reasoning that used to justify intellectual property in this country. When that is gone, time limits no longer make sense, and the push will be for stronger and stronger intellectual property rights - because property is good!
Copyright was supposed to be about preventing others from using your work to their financial gain, thus reducing your profit.
In the U.S., copyright exists first and foremost to provide an incentive to create. That justification is explicitly specified in many of the major copyright cases. That is the reason exclusive rights are granted, and what you fail to specify. It is a reason that used to, and should continue to, circumscribe copyright policy.
Your approach confuses the issue. Intellectual property should provide only what incentive is necessary. Providing excessive protection is economically inefficient. But by claiming that copyright is about "preventing others from using your work" and preventing someone from "reducing your profit", you walk down a road toward justifying absolute, infinite protection of intellectual property. Fair use reduces your profit. Term limits reduce your profit. So no, that's not what copyright is about (or at least, not what it used to be about).
That's why derivative and fair use are in there as acceptable.
This reveals that you don't know what you're talking about. "Derivative" use? I've never heard that term. "Derivative works", yes. And actually, the copyright in derivative works belongs to the original copyright holder, so no, derivative works are not "acceptable" in the same way that fair use is.
Most pirates are just simply missing the personal gain factor that would make it a true copyright infringement case.
Again, this is factually incorrect. "Personal gain" is not necessary to make something copyright infringement. In fact, after the NET Act, even criminal copyright infringement doesn't require monetary gain.
A separate window from what, the content of the site in question?
Yes.
This very tiny piece of text is carefully constructed so as not to violate any legal guidelines
The thing is, this is not settled, black-letter law. The best "guidelines" are probably case law, and if you looked at the 1-800 Contacts v. WhenU case, you'll notice that other courts have ruled in different directions.
by people much smarter than either one of us (probably) and is in any case a de facto allowable amount of content to display for the purpose of helping a search engine user decide whether that is the result they're looking for.
More informed about the relevant law? Sure. Smarter? Maybe, but not necessarily. You don't necessarily have to be "smart" to be a lawyer (though I'm sure Google's lawyers are better than the average one).
Furthermore, just because they're very smart doesn't mean other very smart people won't disagree with them, and convince a court that this behavior is infringing. Lots of large companies have good lawyers, and still have to deal with lawsuits. If it were just a matter of looking at the law and tailoring your action accordingly, things would be a lot less complex.