Then it wouldn't hurt to...release [any and all software they own the copyrights] to the public domain
This would be a bad idea--mostly because GPL relies on the work being copyrighted. Which means people can sell their own modified binaries, but give nothing back, which is against the ideology of the GPL.
And the difference between the GPL and a BSD-style license is essentially the same, only they wouldn't really be able to prove anything to you or anyone else who modded you insightful, as they can still pull the license to the code they own at any time.
In fact, I'm certain a lot people who write GPL'ed code sympathize with the GPL ideology, and to have Novell change the license of their code from GPL to BSD would result in their losing credibility in some people's eyes. After all, what's to prevent them from changing the license again, the next time to a closed-source one?
As an aside, while I wouldn't release anything I write under the BSD-style license, I certainly do understand and respect the people who do. But I can't speak for everyone else...
It is easy to tell the difference between music that's been digitized and a live performance of unsynthesized music. But I still listen to my music from a less-than-stellar radio that tends to hiss and crack more often than it plays actual music due to poor reception and dirty power. I listen to the interpretation and the performance as much as I listen to the sound itself. The sounds that are missing I fill in with minor effort, as I've heard live performances enough times to be able to hear what it should really sound like. The same applies to music on mp3's, CD's, etc. Of course, if I wanted to archive the music I own, I'd do it in a lossless format. But that's more for the purposes of archiving the music than for retaining sound quality.
Now, I'm sure most people live with iPod headphones because they just don't care that much about their music. Heck, most people listening to those things can't hear the full spectrum anymore. But I know there's got to be at least a few audiophiles out there who do the same thing I do.
It's basically decimated the local film industry - China should be a huge market, but basically it's ignored even by local filmmakers, who aim themselves at foreign audiences - hence all those lame Westernish Kung-Fu movies from Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. This is also true in Hong Kong, which has a history of excellence and two of the greatest directors in the world, Wong Kar Wai and Johnny To, who now rely on non-Chinese audiences or even have turned to making American movies.... Local musicians aren't able to sell their CDs. Anything popular from local bands will be sold on the street for maybe fifty cents. There is basically no music scene in China, everything is bootlegged from Hong Kong or Taiwan or the US.
Wrong. Entertainment is a luxury. It's a luxury very few people in mainland China can afford. Most people are too busy trying to make a living to spend money on entertainment like music or movies. Thus, the market for such things is nowhere near as large as you're imagining. The pirate market isn't targetted at Chinese people in China. They're targetting people who can afford these luxuries, namely, Chinese people in the west.
That's why big-budgeted movies are aimed at a primarily western audience. But that isn't true either. There is a thriving entertainment industry in Hong Kong with music and movies for Chinese audiences, despite the rampant piracy from the mainland. The directors and actors you mentioned are the ones trying to break into a larger audience, not because they can't make money off of the Chinese audience (plenty of others do), but because the western market is so much bigger. Comparing the 10-15 million people in HK and overseas with the 200 million people in the US alone and you can see the difference in market size, no mention of the rest of the western world. And because they can make movies western audiences can watch without getting completely lost in the cultural references, they will try for that market.
Chinese manufacturers have to aim at the foreign market from day 1. Any successful product will be immediately copied by Chinese cut-rate manufacturers. It is economically infeasible to design a product for the Chinese market.
Wrong again. There are plenty of chinese manufacturers designing for the Chinese market. You might have even heard of some of them, as some of these brands have made it to the US. Many of these brands began in China selling to a primarily Chinese market. Many of these brands were once available outside of China only through the gray market. More recently, these smaller brands have been selling to an international customer base over the internet.
Imitations also are often of a much lower quality. Bootleg bottled water in Beijing was recently revealed to often be fake, using filtered Beijing tap water (you wouldn't want to drink it).
Dasani in Great Britain was recently found to be just filtered water from the Thames. Most bottled waters are just filtered tap water, if that much. If you've got some romantic notion that bottled water actually comes from a glacier or some natural spring, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Goods in China are marginally cheaper, but it's at the expense of shoddy products that are often of a lower quality, and of a moribund IP development, and a lack of locally produced culture. There is no motivation to doing work or putting expense into research, if there's no economic reward - and there's no economic reward when your ideas are ripped off immediately.
Ok, there are three major points to address here. First, it is true that knockoff goods in China are much cheaper, and the quality of the material may be lower than the real thing, but the manufacturing process is the same, since everything is made in China anyway. For some things, there is no difference in material, so there's no difference in quality between the Chinese knockoff and the real thing.
Public performances. Just try. I guarantee you'll be disappointed.
[rant]
All art--music included--is supposed to be an expression of the individual. Our individual distinctiveness, our uniqueness, is supposed to be reflected in our art. I have certain strengths, and I will play my art towards those strengths. I am in a certain mood, and that mood will be reflected in my creations. Thus, no two performances will be the same. And for those on the receiving end, no two experiences of the same work should be the same.
Recordings are nothing but a snapshot--a single moment in time of an artist's existence. Reproductions of a recording turn something that is unique into something trivial, where you can slap a $24.99 sticker onto it. Reproductions make the art worthless, and artists should be horrified that their art is treated in such a manner--by anyone. Recordings serve a purpose only either for analysis and critique, or in posterity.
Many artists sign with labels to be the next Brittney Spears. They see it as their chance to wealth and fame, the fast track to success. They're there for the money, not the music, and they deserve success at neither.
Artists don't make a living; artists make art. In many ways, the former is but a necessary evil to achieve the latter.
If it were at all possible to go out and colonize other planets, I'd love to have one with my name written all over it. I'm sure it'll be like home ownership is today.
Given that there are not one, but two planets in our system that are capable of supporting life (Earth and Mars), both of which may have actually supported life, it's certainly no stretch to think there are at least this many planets out there that could support life and that at least some of them are actually doing so. Actually, there are, in theory, three: Venus, Earth, Mars. Venus is not so nice for us to live in--not nearly as nice as Mars, but it does have what's necessary for carbon-based life. Down in the depths of our own planet's oceans, there are life forms that live in high-heat, high-pressure environments, whose source of energy is the abundant geothermic activity down there. I wouldn't be surprised if Venus is teaming with interesting forms of life.
Earth, however, seems to be the only planet condusive to intelligent life in this star system, to the best of our knowledge.
Then by your line of reasoning, sellers and buyers of date rape pills should be quite the serious offense. Yet, you say there's nothing immoral about it? "Drugs" covers a variety of things, but in all cases, they refer specifically to what's known as federally controlled substances. Marijuana is still one of them, but it's slowly coming off the list. But it's not the only substance that falls under the monkier of "drug."
There are behaviors that are detrimental to society, and there are behaviors that are detrimental to the self. Certain drugs fall under the former, others fall under the latter. Use of mod chips falls under neither. It may be detrimental to a company, sure, but that's the natural order of a free market: innovate or be rendered obsolete.
Would you seriously spend hours upon hours rethinking and redoing the entire message board style just because of some annoying trolls, or would you just squash the trolls under your mighty bannination powers? The latter is much easier, and makes a lot more sense. Actually, message boards have been doing both. The former comes in the form of registration, verification, etc. E.g. the CAPTCHA for unregistered users in/. There is a whole industry segment devoted to the former. This is in response to robots, spammers, etc. that flood things like message boards or blog posts or guestbooks, which is exactly the state of the patent system.
And then there's the latter solution, which is useful for when the trolls are legitmate human beings who have passed all the test, but who are there on a board to stir up trouble. These would be the patent holders holding perfectly valid patents, but whom are using their patents contrary to the spirit of patents. The idea behind patents is to reward the patent holder for innovation through licensing or a limited monopoly, afterwards which society benefits. This type of patent troll would be the one who uses patents as a means of hindering technological progress instead of fostering it.
Message boards are constantly evolving both forms of regulation. Look at/.'s registration and moderation systems. Look at how it has evolved over time.
In this sense, both Google and Apple are correct. There are gross abuses on both ends of the process. The application process and the litigation process are both broken and needs reform.
I don't mean to sound pretentious, but could you cite a source for that? I find it hard to believe that any court would order a recall. Perhaps Polaroid refused to license to Kodak after the suit and that's what prompted the recall, but I'm pretty sure that isn't a legal precedent.
This has been rehashed over and over again, but some people still don't seem to get it:
IANAL, but from a legal standpoint, copyright covers only the reproduction, modification, distribution (of the reproduction), and public display/performance of a work, and therefore, infringement is only a violation of one of the above.
So from a technical standpoint, it is the uploader (who possesses the original or template), not the downloader (who merely receives the copy) is the infringer. The downloader is infringing on someone's copyrights as much as someone who received a mix tape or bootleg Windows CD, whether that person is an end user, or an intermediate carrier (like FedEx or the USPS). The major labels have largely convinced everyone that copyright infringement applies to both parties, but this simply isn't true from a technical standpoint.
Piracy deals with both upload and download (primarily download). Therefore, piracy, in the strictest of sense, is not a crime. Only the promotion thereof is actually criminal.
It's like the fact that it isn't jay walking to cross outside of the boundary of the crosswalk in some places, because jay walking is defined to be crossing against the light at a crosswalk.
Users of clients like bittorrent can be said to have performed copyright infringement because they upload as well as download. However, uploading various, random pieces of files that have been compressed and split into pieces is up for debate. Certainly, the container may constitute a modification. Modifications are copyright the modifier, except for the part that's already copyrighted. But if the container is incomplete, the work cannot be reproduced, and therefore, the question remains whether the previously copyrighted was distributed, or whether it was just the modification that was distributed.
So legally, it is possible to argue that certain types of distribution of a work that's compressed and split into pieces does not constitute as copyright infringement. Obviously, the spirit of the law is violated, and no one would accept such an argument. There's probably a threshold as well (fair use gives some wiggle room, assuming the "copy" was made for the purposes under fair use).
Now, copyright infringement, especially via file sharing, does not guarantee a loss of revenue. It certainly diminishes potential revenue, but how much of that potential is certain to be actualized is actually 0; potential has no certainty. It's a little harder to argue for the form of copyright infringement that takes place in China, but the fact that any revenue loss is still only potential revenue remains. To say that someone loses money from having their works being uploaded without permission is as valid as saying someone loses from not being able to experience a copyrightable work. I.e., they're both ludicrous statements, logical, but true on a case-by-case basis and therefore overall unsubstantiated.
In this age of ever-deteriorating educational standards, dropping literacy rates, and a overall lack of mental challenges taken up by our youth, a story about jaded teenagers lining up in droves to buy a BOOK would flash right through science fiction and wind up as fantasy - if it wasn't actually TRUE.
Kids are reading, and it is cool to do so. This is a triumph beyond whatever "lack of challenge" you perceive in the writing.
To have kids read nowadays is looked upon as some great achievement. Not too long ago, the ability to read and write was a coveted skill and its possession a mark of distinction. This fact in and of itself is a testament to said declining standards. And until we as a society stop apologizing for the lazy bastards, those standards are going to continue to steadily fall.
At best, Rowling's works acts as a buffer to slow down the deterioration, which is--don't get me wrong--worthy of commendation. But it certainly doesn't stop the decay of education, and it doesn't come close to reversing it. Yes, a few might go on to read more challenging works. But those are the minority, not the majority. That's because people otherwise uninterested in reading find in Harry Potter what they want. Such kids don't go to the bookstore to buy a book which just so happens to be Harry Potter; they go to buy Harry Potter. It is a very subtle but important distinction.
Now, if Rowling uses the series as a means to segue from simple and unchallenging writing and storytelling to something more appropriate for her now-late teens early twenties audience, that would be one thing. But her works remain overall flat in both regards.
As someone who is educated, you might be ok with reading the occasional "ice cream" type of book. I know I certainly am. But don't think for one moment that there is any great benefit in reading Harry Potter for those who won't otherwise read.
These were my thoughts after finishing the first book. If Voldemort's goal was world domination, which is largely implied and I think even stated once later on, what happened to the rest of the world? Ignoring the other countries for a moment, what happened, even, to the various former British colonies? Is there no magic there?
Rowling pays lip service to various places in Europe throughout her books. But she makes it seem like taking over the ministry in Britian is equivalent to taking over the entire world (of "muggles"). It is both a major plothole throughout the whole series (albeit a subtle one), excusable for the first book, but inexcusable as her overarching plot developed. This has been one of the larger failings that makes me think Rowling was, and still is, asininely shallow.
The other evidence supporting this idea being the various inconsistencies in what magic can and can't do (and have and haven't done), the dismissive and often condescending attitude with which she treats the "muggle" world, as well as the fact that Rowling writes herself out of corners by changing the rules, sometimes subtly, sometimes significantly. She is like a poor but charismatic liar, forgetting her previous statement as she begins her next, but able to charm with her speech alone. Not that it's great prose or anything, but it can only add to the thin story.
Don't get me wrong. Reading her stories has been an entertaining experience overall, even if it isn't particularly rewarding in the way that I want. And I understand and appreciate the value of her books to many children who otherwise wouldn't be reading, or would be reading at a much lesser level. But in order to actually enjoy reading her books, it requires me to just read it and not think too hard. And every so often, that idea offends me.
Correct. If you can travel into the past, then those people in the past observing you at the moment of your traveling would indeed be observing the future.
Technically, I think she can install anything she wants on either machine, so she needs only to randomize the software she installs.
But yeah, there should definitely be more than two machines, perhaps one out of five or ten machines. And each machine should have different hardware configurations as well.
Or...she could load both of them up with so much malware that they'll throw their arms up in disgust and quit, which is the same behavior I've seen from some of the malware scanning products out there.
This is a great idea. It makes tech support a lot more personable. Unfortunately, most companies aren't going to implement this because:
1) There doesn't seem to be a method of record keeping. Thus, companies can't do reporting, which means there's no quantifiable method of figuring out efficiency.
2) Decentralized support means everyone has to be an expertise on everything. People can't be split up into specialties, or there's a large amount of redundancy.
Same here. At once point, I dreamed of working for companies like Microsoft and Google. That's because coding is one of my passions, and I thought it would be sweet to do nothing but what I liked to do. But as much as it is an interest, it is only one interest out of many. Sometime after graduating, I realized that if I focused exclusively on one thing, yeah, I'd be the goto guy for it, but then I'll miss everything else in life. I'd miss things like seeing different places, or doing different things, or just hanging out with friends.
And that's a shame. It hurt when I couldn't do these things 'cause of work. Sure, it was great to code for a living instead of say, picking up garbage or putting in numbers. But it sucked that coding for work was all I did. I didn't even have time to work on my own projects at home. I switched jobs, and while I'm far more involved in things other than coding now, I get in no later than 9:30 and leave no later than 6. I'm usually out with friends by 5:30, work completely gone from my mind until 9 in the morning the next weekday. I have remote e-mail, but even so, I use that to check the order status of things I ordered through my company, or any new perks for the next week.
I guess I came to the realization that no matter what I might be doing for a lviing, it sucks living to work. I now follow the mantra of working to live. Work is just one aspect of life--albeit a very rewarding aspect nonetheless; it isn't life itself.
Could also be Google employees too. They are very anal about information leakages after all, even if the leak has to do with the work environment and not the work itself.
People who want to make calls while driving will do so. Period. Nothing's going to stop that, and to think so borders on the naieve and idealistic. It might take ten steps to make a call, but that won't stop anybody (remember the old car phones in the high-end sports cars?). They'll either switch to another phone while on the road, or they'll make calls with their iPhone. The complexity serves as a deterrent for the people who are sensible, but those people aren't the ones I'm worried about anyway.
Quite frankly, if someone's going to make phone calls while driving, I'd rather that person make phone calls using methods that are less intrusive. But educate them on the effects of making phone calls while driving, so that they'll think twice before every call.
It's like drinking. I'd rather let minors drink under my supervision to teach them what they should and shouldn't do along the way, than force them to abstain until they're 21. By then, they're beyond my reach, and since they're liberated from an artificial chain and feel that way, they'll drink as much as they possibly can whenever the opportunity presents itself.
What if you're an independent publisher? Or just someone with a lot of money who wants to distribute professional-quality pressed discs of your own works? Or an inventor who's studying the existing process of pressing discs?
The law is there to protect not just the majority, but even the one guy in the US who might have an unnatural obsession with disc-pressing machines. It doesn't matter if it's 10 dollars or 10 million dollars. When ownership implies intent in any situation, then the law is no longer protecting anyone.
If you want to be pragmatic, you'd have both. Why? In any major emergency, and I've seen two such within 4 years, the cell towers are either down, or flooded with calls. On the other hand, the landline, which has its own power, was perfectly fine, and was built to handle most of the volume an emergency generates.
Circumstances differ between locales, but having a redundant landline is never a bad thing, if only to receive incoming calls from concerned relatives on the other side of the country.
The emergencies I speak of are 9/11 and the northeast blackout in 2003.
First, only about five thousand characters are actually commonly used, with less than two thousand tones to represent those five thousand charcters. That gives rise to my second point, which is that spoken Chinese can be highly contextual (hence the propensity for puns and other wordplay).
My guess is that morse code would have evolved to be the same way that ASL simplifies language considerably. Each sequence would represent a different idea, or character, but every idea could pretty much be conveyed with a few hundred such unique sequences.
For computers, either there would have been a push to a standardized alphabet-like set, like bopomofo or even using roman characters a la pinyin, or 16- or 32-bit characters would be a necessity before computers became ubiquitious. Technology usually develops around human convenience, so I'm imagining that the latter would be more likely.
For input, it would be possible that instead of keyboards, handwriting recognition might be the defacto standard. I'm certain there would be some level of context-sensitivity and simplification though to make input short and easy. More likely, we'd still have the keyboard, but there'd be keys for each of the strokes, and keys for every radical. Which means perhaps 100 keys rather than a 40 keys to represent the whole language. Remember the red keyboard in that James Bond movie with Michelle Yeoh?
This is wrong. While I support the idea that everyone should be versed in self defense, I don't believe guns are the answer. Firearms are too unpredictable, too uncontrolled, and too final. If I hit you in the head, the worse I'll do is give you a concussion. At that point, there's no point in continuing the violence; I've already defended myself sufficiently. I'd have to hit pretty hard and aim for very specific spots to actually kill you. Unlucky for you and me both, but that's just how life is sometimes. But if I shoot you somewhere in the body, you've got a really good chance of dying. And if I shoot you in the head, you've got an even better chance of dying. Worse yet, if I miss, that bullet might hit someone else and kill an innocent person.
Your assumption that concealed carry laws don't work is based on the premise that the bad guys are completely, 100% bad. Concealed carry laws are most useful against those people who might need a gun in certain situations and thus would acquire one without such laws but whom the barriers to entry as a result of such laws would result in that person not having the means to acquire one. These include small-time dealers, druggies, people living in rough neighborhoods, people interested in firearms, potential mass murderers (who by and large would end up using less efficient means of killing when they snap), etc. In cities with ghettos, violence definitely goes down with gun control, simply because there are less guns floating around, which means the police have an easier time not just apprehending, but also identifying the criminals. If every small-time dealer carried a gun around, the cops' effectiveness would be significantly reduced.
I don't care for laws against other weapons, like knives or such, but guns are just too unpredictable. Also, for the record, I'm divided on whether to openly teach firearm handling regardless of gun control laws. I wouldn't think twice about the idea of teaching others how to deal with an opponent holding a gun however. And everyone possesing that knowledge, I think, would be a sufficient deterrent for most petty criminals.
While I disagree with the comment on whether the occurance of school shootings are on the rise or not, I do agree that kids should be drilled to defend themselves. Everyone talks about "think of the kids," but very few people really thinks of the kids. What most others want is for other people to think of the kids for them. There are fewer actions more meaningful for children than to teach them basic self-defense and survival.
I was raised in NYC during the 80's. Some of the first lessons we learned was how to survive, how to avoid confrontation (like muggers, kidnappers, gang fights, etc.), and how to defend ourselves if all else fails. Some lessons we learned in a controlled environment. Some we learned out in the streets. And some we learned from the experiences of someone else.
I think it would be a great thing if we replaced one or two sessions of PE or recess with self defense and survival lessons. These can be tailored to the locality (how to find food and water out in the woods in a more rural setting, how to get help in an urban setting) Yeah, the prevailent mentality is that of fear--fear that we might be providing training for the next school shooters. But the truth is, I'd rather have 30 teachers and kids who can fight back against a trained shooter and survival specialist than 30 teachers and kids who'll huddle under the desk or run about with their arms flailing against a less-well-trained shooter.
We don't have to expect kids to come out from their training as Navy SEALs or some kind of soldier by any means. And we can't reasonably expect all 30 kids in a class of 30 to be able to act in a time of crisis. But that training will at least allow those who are capable of acting to do so, and it will come in handy later on in life, even psychologically if not physically.
Slashdot Mirror
Then it wouldn't hurt to...release [any and all software they own the copyrights] to the public domain
This would be a bad idea--mostly because GPL relies on the work being copyrighted. Which means people can sell their own modified binaries, but give nothing back, which is against the ideology of the GPL.
And the difference between the GPL and a BSD-style license is essentially the same, only they wouldn't really be able to prove anything to you or anyone else who modded you insightful, as they can still pull the license to the code they own at any time.
In fact, I'm certain a lot people who write GPL'ed code sympathize with the GPL ideology, and to have Novell change the license of their code from GPL to BSD would result in their losing credibility in some people's eyes. After all, what's to prevent them from changing the license again, the next time to a closed-source one?
As an aside, while I wouldn't release anything I write under the BSD-style license, I certainly do understand and respect the people who do. But I can't speak for everyone else...
It is easy to tell the difference between music that's been digitized and a live performance of unsynthesized music. But I still listen to my music from a less-than-stellar radio that tends to hiss and crack more often than it plays actual music due to poor reception and dirty power. I listen to the interpretation and the performance as much as I listen to the sound itself. The sounds that are missing I fill in with minor effort, as I've heard live performances enough times to be able to hear what it should really sound like. The same applies to music on mp3's, CD's, etc. Of course, if I wanted to archive the music I own, I'd do it in a lossless format. But that's more for the purposes of archiving the music than for retaining sound quality.
Now, I'm sure most people live with iPod headphones because they just don't care that much about their music. Heck, most people listening to those things can't hear the full spectrum anymore. But I know there's got to be at least a few audiophiles out there who do the same thing I do.
It's basically decimated the local film industry - China should be a huge market, but basically it's ignored even by local filmmakers, who aim themselves at foreign audiences - hence all those lame Westernish Kung-Fu movies from Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. This is also true in Hong Kong, which has a history of excellence and two of the greatest directors in the world, Wong Kar Wai and Johnny To, who now rely on non-Chinese audiences or even have turned to making American movies. ...
Local musicians aren't able to sell their CDs. Anything popular from local bands will be sold on the street for maybe fifty cents. There is basically no music scene in China, everything is bootlegged from Hong Kong or Taiwan or the US.
Wrong. Entertainment is a luxury. It's a luxury very few people in mainland China can afford. Most people are too busy trying to make a living to spend money on entertainment like music or movies. Thus, the market for such things is nowhere near as large as you're imagining. The pirate market isn't targetted at Chinese people in China. They're targetting people who can afford these luxuries, namely, Chinese people in the west.
That's why big-budgeted movies are aimed at a primarily western audience. But that isn't true either. There is a thriving entertainment industry in Hong Kong with music and movies for Chinese audiences, despite the rampant piracy from the mainland. The directors and actors you mentioned are the ones trying to break into a larger audience, not because they can't make money off of the Chinese audience (plenty of others do), but because the western market is so much bigger. Comparing the 10-15 million people in HK and overseas with the 200 million people in the US alone and you can see the difference in market size, no mention of the rest of the western world. And because they can make movies western audiences can watch without getting completely lost in the cultural references, they will try for that market.
Chinese manufacturers have to aim at the foreign market from day 1. Any successful product will be immediately copied by Chinese cut-rate manufacturers. It is economically infeasible to design a product for the Chinese market.
Wrong again. There are plenty of chinese manufacturers designing for the Chinese market. You might have even heard of some of them, as some of these brands have made it to the US. Many of these brands began in China selling to a primarily Chinese market. Many of these brands were once available outside of China only through the gray market. More recently, these smaller brands have been selling to an international customer base over the internet.
Imitations also are often of a much lower quality. Bootleg bottled water in Beijing was recently revealed to often be fake, using filtered Beijing tap water (you wouldn't want to drink it).
Dasani in Great Britain was recently found to be just filtered water from the Thames. Most bottled waters are just filtered tap water, if that much. If you've got some romantic notion that bottled water actually comes from a glacier or some natural spring, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Goods in China are marginally cheaper, but it's at the expense of shoddy products that are often of a lower quality, and of a moribund IP development, and a lack of locally produced culture. There is no motivation to doing work or putting expense into research, if there's no economic reward - and there's no economic reward when your ideas are ripped off immediately.
Ok, there are three major points to address here. First, it is true that knockoff goods in China are much cheaper, and the quality of the material may be lower than the real thing, but the manufacturing process is the same, since everything is made in China anyway. For some things, there is no difference in material, so there's no difference in quality between the Chinese knockoff and the real thing.
Second, there's 5 thousand
What's your method for stopping pirating?
Public performances. Just try. I guarantee you'll be disappointed.
[rant]
All art--music included--is supposed to be an expression of the individual. Our individual distinctiveness, our uniqueness, is supposed to be reflected in our art. I have certain strengths, and I will play my art towards those strengths. I am in a certain mood, and that mood will be reflected in my creations. Thus, no two performances will be the same. And for those on the receiving end, no two experiences of the same work should be the same.
Recordings are nothing but a snapshot--a single moment in time of an artist's existence. Reproductions of a recording turn something that is unique into something trivial, where you can slap a $24.99 sticker onto it. Reproductions make the art worthless, and artists should be horrified that their art is treated in such a manner--by anyone. Recordings serve a purpose only either for analysis and critique, or in posterity.
Many artists sign with labels to be the next Brittney Spears. They see it as their chance to wealth and fame, the fast track to success. They're there for the money, not the music, and they deserve success at neither.
Artists don't make a living; artists make art. In many ways, the former is but a necessary evil to achieve the latter.
[/rant]
If it were at all possible to go out and colonize other planets, I'd love to have one with my name written all over it. I'm sure it'll be like home ownership is today.
Earth, however, seems to be the only planet condusive to intelligent life in this star system, to the best of our knowledge.
Then by your line of reasoning, sellers and buyers of date rape pills should be quite the serious offense. Yet, you say there's nothing immoral about it? "Drugs" covers a variety of things, but in all cases, they refer specifically to what's known as federally controlled substances. Marijuana is still one of them, but it's slowly coming off the list. But it's not the only substance that falls under the monkier of "drug."
There are behaviors that are detrimental to society, and there are behaviors that are detrimental to the self. Certain drugs fall under the former, others fall under the latter. Use of mod chips falls under neither. It may be detrimental to a company, sure, but that's the natural order of a free market: innovate or be rendered obsolete.
That's the issue that's at hand.
And then there's the latter solution, which is useful for when the trolls are legitmate human beings who have passed all the test, but who are there on a board to stir up trouble. These would be the patent holders holding perfectly valid patents, but whom are using their patents contrary to the spirit of patents. The idea behind patents is to reward the patent holder for innovation through licensing or a limited monopoly, afterwards which society benefits. This type of patent troll would be the one who uses patents as a means of hindering technological progress instead of fostering it.
Message boards are constantly evolving both forms of regulation. Look at
In this sense, both Google and Apple are correct. There are gross abuses on both ends of the process. The application process and the litigation process are both broken and needs reform.
I don't mean to sound pretentious, but could you cite a source for that? I find it hard to believe that any court would order a recall. Perhaps Polaroid refused to license to Kodak after the suit and that's what prompted the recall, but I'm pretty sure that isn't a legal precedent.
This has been rehashed over and over again, but some people still don't seem to get it:
IANAL, but from a legal standpoint, copyright covers only the reproduction, modification, distribution (of the reproduction), and public display/performance of a work, and therefore, infringement is only a violation of one of the above.
So from a technical standpoint, it is the uploader (who possesses the original or template), not the downloader (who merely receives the copy) is the infringer. The downloader is infringing on someone's copyrights as much as someone who received a mix tape or bootleg Windows CD, whether that person is an end user, or an intermediate carrier (like FedEx or the USPS). The major labels have largely convinced everyone that copyright infringement applies to both parties, but this simply isn't true from a technical standpoint.
Piracy deals with both upload and download (primarily download). Therefore, piracy, in the strictest of sense, is not a crime. Only the promotion thereof is actually criminal.
It's like the fact that it isn't jay walking to cross outside of the boundary of the crosswalk in some places, because jay walking is defined to be crossing against the light at a crosswalk.
Users of clients like bittorrent can be said to have performed copyright infringement because they upload as well as download. However, uploading various, random pieces of files that have been compressed and split into pieces is up for debate. Certainly, the container may constitute a modification. Modifications are copyright the modifier, except for the part that's already copyrighted. But if the container is incomplete, the work cannot be reproduced, and therefore, the question remains whether the previously copyrighted was distributed, or whether it was just the modification that was distributed.
So legally, it is possible to argue that certain types of distribution of a work that's compressed and split into pieces does not constitute as copyright infringement. Obviously, the spirit of the law is violated, and no one would accept such an argument. There's probably a threshold as well (fair use gives some wiggle room, assuming the "copy" was made for the purposes under fair use).
Now, copyright infringement, especially via file sharing, does not guarantee a loss of revenue. It certainly diminishes potential revenue, but how much of that potential is certain to be actualized is actually 0; potential has no certainty. It's a little harder to argue for the form of copyright infringement that takes place in China, but the fact that any revenue loss is still only potential revenue remains. To say that someone loses money from having their works being uploaded without permission is as valid as saying someone loses from not being able to experience a copyrightable work. I.e., they're both ludicrous statements, logical, but true on a case-by-case basis and therefore overall unsubstantiated.
In this age of ever-deteriorating educational standards, dropping literacy rates, and a overall lack of mental challenges taken up by our youth, a story about jaded teenagers lining up in droves to buy a BOOK would flash right through science fiction and wind up as fantasy - if it wasn't actually TRUE.
Kids are reading, and it is cool to do so. This is a triumph beyond whatever "lack of challenge" you perceive in the writing.
To have kids read nowadays is looked upon as some great achievement. Not too long ago, the ability to read and write was a coveted skill and its possession a mark of distinction. This fact in and of itself is a testament to said declining standards. And until we as a society stop apologizing for the lazy bastards, those standards are going to continue to steadily fall.
At best, Rowling's works acts as a buffer to slow down the deterioration, which is--don't get me wrong--worthy of commendation. But it certainly doesn't stop the decay of education, and it doesn't come close to reversing it. Yes, a few might go on to read more challenging works. But those are the minority, not the majority. That's because people otherwise uninterested in reading find in Harry Potter what they want. Such kids don't go to the bookstore to buy a book which just so happens to be Harry Potter; they go to buy Harry Potter. It is a very subtle but important distinction.
Now, if Rowling uses the series as a means to segue from simple and unchallenging writing and storytelling to something more appropriate for her now-late teens early twenties audience, that would be one thing. But her works remain overall flat in both regards.
As someone who is educated, you might be ok with reading the occasional "ice cream" type of book. I know I certainly am. But don't think for one moment that there is any great benefit in reading Harry Potter for those who won't otherwise read.
These were my thoughts after finishing the first book. If Voldemort's goal was world domination, which is largely implied and I think even stated once later on, what happened to the rest of the world? Ignoring the other countries for a moment, what happened, even, to the various former British colonies? Is there no magic there?
Rowling pays lip service to various places in Europe throughout her books. But she makes it seem like taking over the ministry in Britian is equivalent to taking over the entire world (of "muggles"). It is both a major plothole throughout the whole series (albeit a subtle one), excusable for the first book, but inexcusable as her overarching plot developed. This has been one of the larger failings that makes me think Rowling was, and still is, asininely shallow.
The other evidence supporting this idea being the various inconsistencies in what magic can and can't do (and have and haven't done), the dismissive and often condescending attitude with which she treats the "muggle" world, as well as the fact that Rowling writes herself out of corners by changing the rules, sometimes subtly, sometimes significantly. She is like a poor but charismatic liar, forgetting her previous statement as she begins her next, but able to charm with her speech alone. Not that it's great prose or anything, but it can only add to the thin story.
Don't get me wrong. Reading her stories has been an entertaining experience overall, even if it isn't particularly rewarding in the way that I want. And I understand and appreciate the value of her books to many children who otherwise wouldn't be reading, or would be reading at a much lesser level. But in order to actually enjoy reading her books, it requires me to just read it and not think too hard. And every so often, that idea offends me.
Correct. If you can travel into the past, then those people in the past observing you at the moment of your traveling would indeed be observing the future.
Technically, I think she can install anything she wants on either machine, so she needs only to randomize the software she installs.
But yeah, there should definitely be more than two machines, perhaps one out of five or ten machines. And each machine should have different hardware configurations as well.
Or...she could load both of them up with so much malware that they'll throw their arms up in disgust and quit, which is the same behavior I've seen from some of the malware scanning products out there.
This is a great idea. It makes tech support a lot more personable. Unfortunately, most companies aren't going to implement this because:
1) There doesn't seem to be a method of record keeping. Thus, companies can't do reporting, which means there's no quantifiable method of figuring out efficiency.
2) Decentralized support means everyone has to be an expertise on everything. People can't be split up into specialties, or there's a large amount of redundancy.
Same here. At once point, I dreamed of working for companies like Microsoft and Google. That's because coding is one of my passions, and I thought it would be sweet to do nothing but what I liked to do. But as much as it is an interest, it is only one interest out of many. Sometime after graduating, I realized that if I focused exclusively on one thing, yeah, I'd be the goto guy for it, but then I'll miss everything else in life. I'd miss things like seeing different places, or doing different things, or just hanging out with friends.
And that's a shame. It hurt when I couldn't do these things 'cause of work. Sure, it was great to code for a living instead of say, picking up garbage or putting in numbers. But it sucked that coding for work was all I did. I didn't even have time to work on my own projects at home. I switched jobs, and while I'm far more involved in things other than coding now, I get in no later than 9:30 and leave no later than 6. I'm usually out with friends by 5:30, work completely gone from my mind until 9 in the morning the next weekday. I have remote e-mail, but even so, I use that to check the order status of things I ordered through my company, or any new perks for the next week.
I guess I came to the realization that no matter what I might be doing for a lviing, it sucks living to work. I now follow the mantra of working to live. Work is just one aspect of life--albeit a very rewarding aspect nonetheless; it isn't life itself.
Could also be Google employees too. They are very anal about information leakages after all, even if the leak has to do with the work environment and not the work itself.
Unfortunately, life doesn't quite work that way.
People who want to make calls while driving will do so. Period. Nothing's going to stop that, and to think so borders on the naieve and idealistic. It might take ten steps to make a call, but that won't stop anybody (remember the old car phones in the high-end sports cars?). They'll either switch to another phone while on the road, or they'll make calls with their iPhone. The complexity serves as a deterrent for the people who are sensible, but those people aren't the ones I'm worried about anyway.
Quite frankly, if someone's going to make phone calls while driving, I'd rather that person make phone calls using methods that are less intrusive. But educate them on the effects of making phone calls while driving, so that they'll think twice before every call.
It's like drinking. I'd rather let minors drink under my supervision to teach them what they should and shouldn't do along the way, than force them to abstain until they're 21. By then, they're beyond my reach, and since they're liberated from an artificial chain and feel that way, they'll drink as much as they possibly can whenever the opportunity presents itself.
there are probably few legal uses for them
What if you're an independent publisher? Or just someone with a lot of money who wants to distribute professional-quality pressed discs of your own works? Or an inventor who's studying the existing process of pressing discs?
The law is there to protect not just the majority, but even the one guy in the US who might have an unnatural obsession with disc-pressing machines. It doesn't matter if it's 10 dollars or 10 million dollars. When ownership implies intent in any situation, then the law is no longer protecting anyone.
Now if only I could metamoderate with "Amusing." ;)
If you want to be pragmatic, you'd have both. Why? In any major emergency, and I've seen two such within 4 years, the cell towers are either down, or flooded with calls. On the other hand, the landline, which has its own power, was perfectly fine, and was built to handle most of the volume an emergency generates.
Circumstances differ between locales, but having a redundant landline is never a bad thing, if only to receive incoming calls from concerned relatives on the other side of the country.
The emergencies I speak of are 9/11 and the northeast blackout in 2003.
First, only about five thousand characters are actually commonly used, with less than two thousand tones to represent those five thousand charcters. That gives rise to my second point, which is that spoken Chinese can be highly contextual (hence the propensity for puns and other wordplay).
My guess is that morse code would have evolved to be the same way that ASL simplifies language considerably. Each sequence would represent a different idea, or character, but every idea could pretty much be conveyed with a few hundred such unique sequences.
For computers, either there would have been a push to a standardized alphabet-like set, like bopomofo or even using roman characters a la pinyin, or 16- or 32-bit characters would be a necessity before computers became ubiquitious. Technology usually develops around human convenience, so I'm imagining that the latter would be more likely.
For input, it would be possible that instead of keyboards, handwriting recognition might be the defacto standard. I'm certain there would be some level of context-sensitivity and simplification though to make input short and easy. More likely, we'd still have the keyboard, but there'd be keys for each of the strokes, and keys for every radical. Which means perhaps 100 keys rather than a 40 keys to represent the whole language. Remember the red keyboard in that James Bond movie with Michelle Yeoh?
This is wrong. While I support the idea that everyone should be versed in self defense, I don't believe guns are the answer. Firearms are too unpredictable, too uncontrolled, and too final. If I hit you in the head, the worse I'll do is give you a concussion. At that point, there's no point in continuing the violence; I've already defended myself sufficiently. I'd have to hit pretty hard and aim for very specific spots to actually kill you. Unlucky for you and me both, but that's just how life is sometimes. But if I shoot you somewhere in the body, you've got a really good chance of dying. And if I shoot you in the head, you've got an even better chance of dying. Worse yet, if I miss, that bullet might hit someone else and kill an innocent person.
Your assumption that concealed carry laws don't work is based on the premise that the bad guys are completely, 100% bad. Concealed carry laws are most useful against those people who might need a gun in certain situations and thus would acquire one without such laws but whom the barriers to entry as a result of such laws would result in that person not having the means to acquire one. These include small-time dealers, druggies, people living in rough neighborhoods, people interested in firearms, potential mass murderers (who by and large would end up using less efficient means of killing when they snap), etc. In cities with ghettos, violence definitely goes down with gun control, simply because there are less guns floating around, which means the police have an easier time not just apprehending, but also identifying the criminals. If every small-time dealer carried a gun around, the cops' effectiveness would be significantly reduced.
I don't care for laws against other weapons, like knives or such, but guns are just too unpredictable. Also, for the record, I'm divided on whether to openly teach firearm handling regardless of gun control laws. I wouldn't think twice about the idea of teaching others how to deal with an opponent holding a gun however. And everyone possesing that knowledge, I think, would be a sufficient deterrent for most petty criminals.
For once, a lawsuit where this would be a completely justified claim.
Emotional distress indeed. More like scarred for life. Or the legal term: endangering the welfare of children.
While I disagree with the comment on whether the occurance of school shootings are on the rise or not, I do agree that kids should be drilled to defend themselves. Everyone talks about "think of the kids," but very few people really thinks of the kids. What most others want is for other people to think of the kids for them. There are fewer actions more meaningful for children than to teach them basic self-defense and survival.
I was raised in NYC during the 80's. Some of the first lessons we learned was how to survive, how to avoid confrontation (like muggers, kidnappers, gang fights, etc.), and how to defend ourselves if all else fails. Some lessons we learned in a controlled environment. Some we learned out in the streets. And some we learned from the experiences of someone else.
I think it would be a great thing if we replaced one or two sessions of PE or recess with self defense and survival lessons. These can be tailored to the locality (how to find food and water out in the woods in a more rural setting, how to get help in an urban setting) Yeah, the prevailent mentality is that of fear--fear that we might be providing training for the next school shooters. But the truth is, I'd rather have 30 teachers and kids who can fight back against a trained shooter and survival specialist than 30 teachers and kids who'll huddle under the desk or run about with their arms flailing against a less-well-trained shooter.
We don't have to expect kids to come out from their training as Navy SEALs or some kind of soldier by any means. And we can't reasonably expect all 30 kids in a class of 30 to be able to act in a time of crisis. But that training will at least allow those who are capable of acting to do so, and it will come in handy later on in life, even psychologically if not physically.