I am not an expert, however the copyright nomenclature is slightly misleading. It was never intended to protect the right to copy something, it was intended to protect the right to profit from those copies. While major media institutions are trying to change it(with some succcess), it was once very well established that individuals could make backup copies of software and I have yet to hear of anyone contesting your privilege of making photocopies of a book you own so that you can make notes and highlights without damaging the original.
Generally the right to copy and distribute (or copy something you borrowed, which has the effect of copying and distributing) is reserved for the right holder, but there are exceptions even for that. For instance, it is widely practiced and generally accepted that teachers and instructors may make a reasonable number of copies of an article or excerpt in order to instruct their class. Relatively large swaths of a work may be copied for the purpose of critique, and concepts may be borrowed quite liberally without permission for the case of parody.
Naturally, major media company's are trying to strengthen copyright to obscene levels, but to capture its original intent it may be more accurate to refer to it as profit-right.
I respectfully disagree. It is good to have an idea of what you want to do, but it is hardly essential. I do not yet have an advanced degree, but I know that when I was going for my bachelors I changed my major three times. I would not have known that my original field was not the one I would be happy with had I not started taking some of the classes. I plan to move shortly onto my MA in the same field, mathematics, in whichI got my bachelors. But I am very open to the possibility that in the process of getting that degree I will change my mind and major. Admittedly, this is harder when pursuing an advanced degree than a bachelors, but it is far from impossible. Sometimes the only way to know that a path is wrong is to begin to walk down it.
It does not sound like it is what you want, but I have been participating in and running games based on e-mail for over a decade. Combat tends to get bogged down, but our answer is normally to abbreviate combat to each player sending their general strategy and then the GM handling the fine details. For games that are driven more by storytelling then dice rolls, it works beautifully and does not require everyone to be on at the same time, though we have often supplemented with IRC.
Perhaps someone can educate me here. I question the fact that when I buy music, movies, or a console game I am buying a license.
I understand with software, there is a license. There is a nice(sarcasm) little EULA window that explains the license. When I buy a movie, music, or console game there is no license anywhere that I can find. I certainly do not sign anything or even click an "I agree button." I do understand that I am not at liberty to distribute copies of those, but that is in no way because I agreed to a license for that. I am aware of copyright laws that say I have to have a license authorizing me to distribute copies.
Furthermore, while I am bound by law(not any license I know of) not to distribute copies, there is nothing wrong with me selling or loaning my original disk to anyone. I am not transfering a license, so far as I know, I am transferring a physical item to which certain laws passed by Congress apply.
Once again, this does not apply to actual software, but I have never willingly agreed to any license for any music, movie, or console game I have ever bought. If they think I am, and that license is in any way more restrictive then "You will not distribute copies of this item or parts thereof and, in general, accept the copyright laws", then I will never again buy cds or DVD movies (console games may still call to me....).
Can anyone clarify if there is actually a license and where I might find the exact terms?
Decision like copy protection are left to the studios not the artists to make in most cases. I do not know her particular story, but I imagine that they put the rootkit on without her consenting and likely without knowing(and possibly without understanding if she did know).
Its very nice to see some of the better known artists actually joining with consumers(and following their own financial best interests) in protesting the idiocy of DRM.
The article was a major stretch. The difference between the Matrix envisioned by William Gibson in his fiction and the MMORPGs, is that Gibson's matrix was a way of interacting with the internet itself and these are games. Gibson's Matrix had to have unified avatars and systems for everyone, it was all a metaphor for the what was going on in the underlying hardware and a way to interact with data. The games are just that, games. They have no underlying reality for which they are a metaphor.
The comparison the article makes between e-mail and the avatars in MMORPGs is a huge stretch for a similar reason. For e-mail to be valuable you needed to be able to send it to and receive it from virtually everyone, but the games are not like that. Some people genuinely play them as almost single player events or play them with a select group and ignore virtually everyone else. Others do come on for the social interaction, but they are hardly missing out on it because people from another game world are not there. E-mail is valuable because it is a way to communicate with specific people. The MMORPGs have value because they are entertaining.
The problem is that so few new movies are good. I am not interested in seeing King Kong yet again. The Fantastic 4 made a good plot, but its one I've already seen in comics and cartoons since I was a young child. When they start coming up with something original and good, I will be willing to spend the money to see it in theaters, but the last truly good movie I've seen was Saw II, and even as good as it is, it was still a sequel. It also, if I am correct, had a comparatively low budge...
There is a very real sense in which time is interchangeable with money, if someone wants to spend their money instead of their time getting gold in a game, I have no problem with it. Of course, my opinion is likely to mean little when I don't play any MMORPGs. The closest I come is Magic Online.
There should be no impact. This would prevent them from giving packets preferential treatment due to their source or content, in other words protects network neutrality. It would not prevent there being various levels of bandwidth.
I rarely support government involvement in anything, but this time, I think it is exactly what is needed.
As I am not a huge video game player I canot speak to video games in particular, but I have learned a lot from games. Chess and Go taught me a great deal about tactics, which is amazingly applicable to my current job. Magic: the Gathering taught me the value of planning, and playing in magic tournaments taught me the value paying attention to small details and rehearsing repeatedly. Many of the broader skills carry over easily.
It is not a scientific theory, and those who would claim at as such are wrong, but at least amoungst the laymen, this is a mistake, not a lie. Scientists and philosophers generally should know better.
You are correct in pointing out it is Goedel's Theorem and not theory, and you are also correct in your description of what it applies to. I will however point out that most children are exposed to arithmetic long before Euclidean geometry and both arithmetic and standard algebra are formal systems.
However, that does not change my argument. My point is that there are statements which are true which cannot be proven in either the mathematical or scientific sense. There are further statements which may be true which are completely nonfalsifiable in an objective way. For instance, "I like blue more than red" is an objective statement. It is an objective statement about my personal opinion, but it is still an objective statement which can be either true or false. But, at least so far as I am aware, there is no way of proving it or disproving with any degree of objective certainty. This is likely to be true of statements such as "God exists" and "God arranged either directly or indirectly for the creation of humans." They are objective statements with an objective truth behind them. However, barring God appearing and having a candid discussion and handing us a ton of evidence while he's at it, they are nonfalsifiable in a scientific sense. This does not make the statements either true or false, but effectively unverifiable and therfefore completely unscientific.
I completely agree that many proponents of ID are intellectually dishonest either in flat out lies or through a willfull ignorance. However, that is not true of all. Many laymen I know accept ID with as thorough and logical an examination and solid background as one could expect from laymen. They are intelligent and practice no willfull intellectual dishonesty. I can speak less fully on experts as the only one I know personally was a professor in college, but both in my professor's case and in the case of Michael Behe, they have the background and knowledge to be rightfully called experts. Both have put in considerable thought on the subject and accept the theory, with Behe arguing for it eloquently. And as you point out, intellectual dishonesty plagues every venue with any stakes, from philosophy to science to politics to religion. Science and math have the best mechanisms for catching it, but that is because they have the easiest recourse to evidence, not because of any fundamental honesty in scientists that is lacking in all other intellectual pursuits.
I do not claim to know if ID is true or not, but realize that there are many forms of ID. Realize that not all advocates of ID knowingly practice any form of intellectual dishonesty. There is sufficient reasoning behind it that it deserves proper consideration and thorough argument, not a mere dismissal. Also realize that if you wish to convince people it is not true, you will do so better with well reasoned arguments than with handwaving trying to dismiss all proponents as liars.
Tiered internet in the sense of how much bandwidth you get is already here. There is a distinct difference between broadband and nonbroadband and a smaller difference between different levels of broadband.
However, tiered internet in any broader sense that limits network neutrality, such as limiting e-mails or any other specific use of the bandwidth can and should be opposed. It is inevitable only if lawmakers, consumers, and businesses accept that it is inevitable. I think(and hope) market forces will strongly discourage this idea, but even if they fail, gaurunteeing network neutrality is one area in which Congress has every right to intervene as it will have a major impact on interstate commerce.
No, they are not science, and I never claimed they were. But there are many things which are not science which are well reasoned and many things that are completely true which absolutely cannot be proven(see Godel's Incompleteness theory).
You are right, there are proponents of all forms of ID which lie and obfuciate, but this is true of all of politics and much of science now(note the recent scandals regarding clonings that didn't really happen). You cannot judge an idea by its adherents.
I am still not claiming any form of ID is true at this point, and some versions are laughable, but do realize that there are several forms of ID and that some of them have very intelligent backers with well thought out ideas that do not involve lies.
You are right that most people on the street do not know what ID is, but keep in mind there are different versions of ID, some of which are complete nonsense but some of which are well reasoned(note I am not say they are true or not true, just that they have logical thought behind them).
For instance, Behey in the book Darwin's Black Box makes a very well reasoned argument for a version of ID which is almost completely compatible with Darwinian evolution at the same time.
I am a player of Magic, and I cannot imagine how leaking the spoilers would hurt sales. What they may affect is a level playing field on the day of the prerelease. WOTC normally releases the spoiler list the day of or day after the prerelease. If some, but not all people, have access to a spoiler list before the prerelease they will have an advantage in being more familiar with the cards than those who only got WOTC's very limited teasers.
>>
The problem with this is that most of the problems that completely deny you access to certain sites or services are not within the telecoms control. Most of them are problems with the site itself, and some of them will be with the customer's computer.
The other issue is that for a gauruntee to mean anything it basically has to have a compensation clause. What will they give me if they fail to deliver on their gauruntee? Under what conditions(act of God? Hurricane? Backbone breakdown elsewhere?) would the gauruntee not apply at all?
At least where I work, the problem is not technological, it is with the administrators. For instance, the nature of my job makes access to satellite imagery vital. I have an official source of excellent imagery, but Google earth is good enough for 75% of my work and much faster, but I cannot use it at work because it is banned by policy. Similarly, I am forced to use Internet Explorer instead of FireFox.
The company has every right to make these restrictions, but with that said, it is at the point where it does interfere with my productivity. I can get my job done, but I could get it done faster and better if I had access to the tools I want to use instead of the tools I am given to use.
The content providers may not be paying for the lines, but I and their other customers are paying to use their lines. If they give preference to any one of them, they are in relative terms at least slowing down all those which are not given preference, and this affects its actual customers who are paying to use their lines.
This is utter madness. This is not a creative work, this are facts that are recorded, viewed, and broadcast. The idea of intellectual property is going entirely too far here.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not an expert, however the copyright nomenclature is slightly misleading. It was never intended to protect the right to copy something, it was intended to protect the right to profit from those copies. While major media institutions are trying to change it(with some succcess), it was once very well established that individuals could make backup copies of software and I have yet to hear of anyone contesting your privilege of making photocopies of a book you own so that you can make notes and highlights without damaging the original.
Generally the right to copy and distribute (or copy something you borrowed, which has the effect of copying and distributing) is reserved for the right holder, but there are exceptions even for that. For instance, it is widely practiced and generally accepted that teachers and instructors may make a reasonable number of copies of an article or excerpt in order to instruct their class. Relatively large swaths of a work may be copied for the purpose of critique, and concepts may be borrowed quite liberally without permission for the case of parody.
Naturally, major media company's are trying to strengthen copyright to obscene levels, but to capture its original intent it may be more accurate to refer to it as profit-right.
I respectfully disagree. It is good to have an idea of what you want to do, but it is hardly essential. I do not yet have an advanced degree, but I know that when I was going for my bachelors I changed my major three times. I would not have known that my original field was not the one I would be happy with had I not started taking some of the classes. I plan to move shortly onto my MA in the same field, mathematics, in whichI got my bachelors. But I am very open to the possibility that in the process of getting that degree I will change my mind and major. Admittedly, this is harder when pursuing an advanced degree than a bachelors, but it is far from impossible. Sometimes the only way to know that a path is wrong is to begin to walk down it.
It does not sound like it is what you want, but I have been participating in and running games based on e-mail for over a decade. Combat tends to get bogged down, but our answer is normally to abbreviate combat to each player sending their general strategy and then the GM handling the fine details. For games that are driven more by storytelling then dice rolls, it works beautifully and does not require everyone to be on at the same time, though we have often supplemented with IRC.
True, but it remains funny. I love Colbert, and Wikipedia is awesome.
Perhaps someone can educate me here. I question the fact that when I buy music, movies, or a console game I am buying a license.
I understand with software, there is a license. There is a nice(sarcasm) little EULA window that explains the license. When I buy a movie, music, or console game there is no license anywhere that I can find. I certainly do not sign anything or even click an "I agree button." I do understand that I am not at liberty to distribute copies of those, but that is in no way because I agreed to a license for that. I am aware of copyright laws that say I have to have a license authorizing me to distribute copies.
Furthermore, while I am bound by law(not any license I know of) not to distribute copies, there is nothing wrong with me selling or loaning my original disk to anyone. I am not transfering a license, so far as I know, I am transferring a physical item to which certain laws passed by Congress apply.
Once again, this does not apply to actual software, but I have never willingly agreed to any license for any music, movie, or console game I have ever bought. If they think I am, and that license is in any way more restrictive then "You will not distribute copies of this item or parts thereof and, in general, accept the copyright laws", then I will never again buy cds or DVD movies (console games may still call to me....).
Can anyone clarify if there is actually a license and where I might find the exact terms?
I don't know about you, but personally I don't want a gun that can electronically jammed.....or run out of batteries for that matter....
This is insane. I expect FedEx to have a much better reason before they invade my privacy by opening a package I sent.
Our society is trading its privacy a little bit at a time, and this time we can't even pretend we are getting security out from it.
Decision like copy protection are left to the studios not the artists to make in most cases. I do not know her particular story, but I imagine that they put the rootkit on without her consenting and likely without knowing(and possibly without understanding if she did know).
Its very nice to see some of the better known artists actually joining with consumers(and following their own financial best interests) in protesting the idiocy of DRM.
The article was a major stretch. The difference between the Matrix envisioned by William Gibson in his fiction and the MMORPGs, is that Gibson's matrix was a way of interacting with the internet itself and these are games. Gibson's Matrix had to have unified avatars and systems for everyone, it was all a metaphor for the what was going on in the underlying hardware and a way to interact with data. The games are just that, games. They have no underlying reality for which they are a metaphor.
The comparison the article makes between e-mail and the avatars in MMORPGs is a huge stretch for a similar reason. For e-mail to be valuable you needed to be able to send it to and receive it from virtually everyone, but the games are not like that. Some people genuinely play them as almost single player events or play them with a select group and ignore virtually everyone else. Others do come on for the social interaction, but they are hardly missing out on it because people from another game world are not there. E-mail is valuable because it is a way to communicate with specific people. The MMORPGs have value because they are entertaining.
Socrates said that his greatest wisedom was in realizing how little he knew. Mr. Donofrio should take a lead from Socrates.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet, 1. 5
The problem is that so few new movies are good. I am not interested in seeing King Kong yet again. The Fantastic 4 made a good plot, but its one I've already seen in comics and cartoons since I was a young child. When they start coming up with something original and good, I will be willing to spend the money to see it in theaters, but the last truly good movie I've seen was Saw II, and even as good as it is, it was still a sequel. It also, if I am correct, had a comparatively low budge...
There is a very real sense in which time is interchangeable with money, if someone wants to spend their money instead of their time getting gold in a game, I have no problem with it. Of course, my opinion is likely to mean little when I don't play any MMORPGs. The closest I come is Magic Online.
There should be no impact. This would prevent them from giving packets preferential treatment due to their source or content, in other words protects network neutrality. It would not prevent there being various levels of bandwidth.
I rarely support government involvement in anything, but this time, I think it is exactly what is needed.
As I am not a huge video game player I canot speak to video games in particular, but I have learned a lot from games. Chess and Go taught me a great deal about tactics, which is amazingly applicable to my current job. Magic: the Gathering taught me the value of planning, and playing in magic tournaments taught me the value paying attention to small details and rehearsing repeatedly. Many of the broader skills carry over easily.
It is not a scientific theory, and those who would claim at as such are wrong, but at least amoungst the laymen, this is a mistake, not a lie. Scientists and philosophers generally should know better.
You are correct in pointing out it is Goedel's Theorem and not theory, and you are also correct in your description of what it applies to. I will however point out that most children are exposed to arithmetic long before Euclidean geometry and both arithmetic and standard algebra are formal systems.
However, that does not change my argument. My point is that there are statements which are true which cannot be proven in either the mathematical or scientific sense. There are further statements which may be true which are completely nonfalsifiable in an objective way. For instance, "I like blue more than red" is an objective statement. It is an objective statement about my personal opinion, but it is still an objective statement which can be either true or false. But, at least so far as I am aware, there is no way of proving it or disproving with any degree of objective certainty. This is likely to be true of statements such as "God exists" and "God arranged either directly or indirectly for the creation of humans." They are objective statements with an objective truth behind them. However, barring God appearing and having a candid discussion and handing us a ton of evidence while he's at it, they are nonfalsifiable in a scientific sense. This does not make the statements either true or false, but effectively unverifiable and therfefore completely unscientific.
I completely agree that many proponents of ID are intellectually dishonest either in flat out lies or through a willfull ignorance. However, that is not true of all. Many laymen I know accept ID with as thorough and logical an examination and solid background as one could expect from laymen. They are intelligent and practice no willfull intellectual dishonesty. I can speak less fully on experts as the only one I know personally was a professor in college, but both in my professor's case and in the case of Michael Behe, they have the background and knowledge to be rightfully called experts. Both have put in considerable thought on the subject and accept the theory, with Behe arguing for it eloquently. And as you point out, intellectual dishonesty plagues every venue with any stakes, from philosophy to science to politics to religion. Science and math have the best mechanisms for catching it, but that is because they have the easiest recourse to evidence, not because of any fundamental honesty in scientists that is lacking in all other intellectual pursuits.
I do not claim to know if ID is true or not, but realize that there are many forms of ID. Realize that not all advocates of ID knowingly practice any form of intellectual dishonesty. There is sufficient reasoning behind it that it deserves proper consideration and thorough argument, not a mere dismissal. Also realize that if you wish to convince people it is not true, you will do so better with well reasoned arguments than with handwaving trying to dismiss all proponents as liars.
Tiered internet in the sense of how much bandwidth you get is already here. There is a distinct difference between broadband and nonbroadband and a smaller difference between different levels of broadband.
However, tiered internet in any broader sense that limits network neutrality, such as limiting e-mails or any other specific use of the bandwidth can and should be opposed. It is inevitable only if lawmakers, consumers, and businesses accept that it is inevitable. I think(and hope) market forces will strongly discourage this idea, but even if they fail, gaurunteeing network neutrality is one area in which Congress has every right to intervene as it will have a major impact on interstate commerce.
No, they are not science, and I never claimed they were. But there are many things which are not science which are well reasoned and many things that are completely true which absolutely cannot be proven(see Godel's Incompleteness theory).
You are right, there are proponents of all forms of ID which lie and obfuciate, but this is true of all of politics and much of science now(note the recent scandals regarding clonings that didn't really happen). You cannot judge an idea by its adherents.
I am still not claiming any form of ID is true at this point, and some versions are laughable, but do realize that there are several forms of ID and that some of them have very intelligent backers with well thought out ideas that do not involve lies.
You are right that most people on the street do not know what ID is, but keep in mind there are different versions of ID, some of which are complete nonsense but some of which are well reasoned(note I am not say they are true or not true, just that they have logical thought behind them).
For instance, Behey in the book Darwin's Black Box makes a very well reasoned argument for a version of ID which is almost completely compatible with Darwinian evolution at the same time.
If we only get to point to it until the MPAA does something else stupid, we should all point now, we have about a day....
I am a player of Magic, and I cannot imagine how leaking the spoilers would hurt sales. What they may affect is a level playing field on the day of the prerelease. WOTC normally releases the spoiler list the day of or day after the prerelease. If some, but not all people, have access to a spoiler list before the prerelease they will have an advantage in being more familiar with the cards than those who only got WOTC's very limited teasers.
>> The problem with this is that most of the problems that completely deny you access to certain sites or services are not within the telecoms control. Most of them are problems with the site itself, and some of them will be with the customer's computer.
The other issue is that for a gauruntee to mean anything it basically has to have a compensation clause. What will they give me if they fail to deliver on their gauruntee? Under what conditions(act of God? Hurricane? Backbone breakdown elsewhere?) would the gauruntee not apply at all?
At least where I work, the problem is not technological, it is with the administrators. For instance, the nature of my job makes access to satellite imagery vital. I have an official source of excellent imagery, but Google earth is good enough for 75% of my work and much faster, but I cannot use it at work because it is banned by policy. Similarly, I am forced to use Internet Explorer instead of FireFox.
The company has every right to make these restrictions, but with that said, it is at the point where it does interfere with my productivity. I can get my job done, but I could get it done faster and better if I had access to the tools I want to use instead of the tools I am given to use.
The content providers may not be paying for the lines, but I and their other customers are paying to use their lines. If they give preference to any one of them, they are in relative terms at least slowing down all those which are not given preference, and this affects its actual customers who are paying to use their lines.
This is utter madness. This is not a creative work, this are facts that are recorded, viewed, and broadcast. The idea of intellectual property is going entirely too far here.