One might also ask what the definition of "newly discovered" is nowadays. Given the ever increasing rate of change, somehow 1999 doesn't cut it for me...
One way to deal with the analogous problem which arises when treating microbial infection with antibiotics is to treat with several antibiotics simultaneously. One would think that the more anti-cancer drugs we discover, the more likely that using them in combination might greatly increase cure rates (assuming their modes of operation are actually "orthogonal" and not just several different ways to attack the same weaknesses). Or am I missing something?
> Besides, in "building a philosophy," you have to use preexisting ideas, many of which > come, directly or indirectly, from established religions.
After reviewing the available data on Scientology, it seems to me that Scientology's ideas seem to be intentionally remote from those of established religions. This optimizes its ability to socially isolate its members from the rest of society. Additionally, it gives it a more distinctive "brand identity" versus its competition.
Your comment ignores the plethora of free content for ebook readers. Never heard of Project Gutenberg? And it's not the only game in town, lots of publishers are trying to raise interest by free giveaways, at least in the science fiction / fantasy genre (Tor, Baen).
> if you are a heavy reader. -----> if you are a heavy reader of expensive enough ebooks.
Until I saw the xkcd link I was kind of freaked out that you had already got to +4 Interesting.
Thanks for the link, that one is terrific. The "title" text on the image is quite philosophical and interesting in its own right. For those unfamiliar with xkcd, if you hover the mouse cursor over the comic, the tooltips popup (or whatever it's called) is an integral part of the comic (when I browse with Firefox, it often isn't displayed in its entirety, so to see it all, I have to select the image and use the "View Selection Source" option in the context menu which pops up on the right mouse button).
> Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined six securities firms a total of $10 million for failing to > produce e-mails requested in the course of an investigation.
> The retention period must be reasonable and clearly set in the policy. A good retention policy cannot be selective -- all documents > should be saved. The policy must be well known and understood by the employees and applied evenly across the company. Also, the > storage type may vary as long as one can produce the evidence. [emphasis mine]
This indicates to me that "reasonable" is whatever the judge thinks should have been reasonable, so most companies will probably err on the side of longer retention, I'd guess.
Actually, I'd find that a rather fascinating, creative delusion.
I can think of lots of different types of "stupid" and my guess is that you probably wouldn't find all of them stupid. Compare:
1. A mentally retarded person who is optimistic and happy. Seeing a pretty flower makes him happy even though he has no idea what it is called, or how it grew where he found it.
2. A genius level intellect who is always unhappy and irritated. There is nothing he can see which could make him as happy as person #1.
I find them both stupid in kind of orthogonal ways, and I am convinced there are many more dimensions of possible stupidity (your example being kind of stupid in the "reality" dimension, I suppose)....
They're only considered dangerous for immunosuppressed or otherwise weakened people. Though I do know of a fellow Slashdotter who was under the weather for 3 months with Cat scratch fever.
Your comment seems somewhat self-contradictory to me. You support the information on G-Man as being useful and that it would be beneficial to preserve it for posterity, yet you greatly "raise the bar" on the ability to preserve this information by making it possible to preserve it only if some sponsor can be found to produce and manage that "separate wiki".
Or did I misunderstand, and you were suggesting that the Wikimedia Foundation should start to fragment its server space for every notable fictional universe? That seems particularly impractical. Not to mention what would happen if someone suggests that "since the Bible is fiction the characters therein should be relegated to a separate wiki".
Your suggestion would be much more interesting in a future where it would be easy (and preferably, trivial) to run a robust distributed wiki (or wiki-like environment) hosted by the members of the community interested by the Half Life universe, themselves, on their own personal computers. Some kind of hybrid between P2P and wiki. I'm not familiar with any software like that (but I wouldn't be surprised if it exists, if only in a nascent state).
> linus torvalds has never made a dime for all the hours he's put into the linux kernel
It is likely that the recognition he receives for his work allows him to earn more money than otherwise would have been possible for him. Of course, this is a "what if" question which cannot be answered with any kind of certainty. And it does not take into consideration the fact that if he didn't invest time in Linux, he might have more time to work at other (more profitable) things.
And your local electric company should do that to you, also. Teach you a lesson, eh?
You do know what the meaning of the word "monopoly" is right (no, I don't mean that game you played as a kid)?
The EU would be perfectly justified to authorize the use of hacked MS products, and the reverse engineering and publishing of all of the MS proprietary protocols and formats (perhaps also seizing related documents from European MS branches). Hey, if they do it quickly enough, maybe they can change OOXML into a fully specified standard before its vote!
You might consider adopting a suggestion from higher-up threads, that there would still be be automatic, free copyright but it would be for a very limited time, say 5 years, and only for private individuals. Extensions on a paid renewal basis only, and any licensing to a third-party reseller would automatically cause that third party to have to pay taxes.
Your proposal, should it apply to software, would probably end the effective use of the GPL, however. But it's no different in that regard from most of the other proposals flying around here.
From the Australian case documentation you referenced:
> Many other examples may be found in the books of cases in which a declaration has been refused because it was > claimed in relation to circumstances that had not occurred and might never happen.
It strikes me as similar to the judge's decision in the Connecticut case, since in that case the plaintiffs demanded relief on the basis of copying that had not been proven to occur and might never have occurred.
BTW, what was decided on the appeal and cross-appeal in the case you cited?
You're sure they didn't mean Ficus Pandorata? That's the way I read it, but I'd be surprised if most of the younger Slashdot crowd would have recognized the reference...
You didn't really answer me directly, but I understand that this is your answer.
I guess that's why Microsoft doesn't push my envy button, I'm much more oriented towards knowledge, egoboo, and feeling that I've made the world a better place.
Thanks for the help. Don't let the Troll mod bother you.
If something of mine is never duplicated, and no one ever sees it, it has little value. The more it is duplicated and publicized, the more value it gains. Of course, your original point is also valid. "By copying at will, value (potential revenue) is stolen from me. I did have it, now I don't." This tradeoff is probably the reason that hairyfeet's post reflects how many artists actually feel.
> To speak for the other 99% of the world, replace 'disdain' with 'envy'.
Interesting. What exactly are they envious of, the money? The power? This is a serious question. A lot of us here at Slashdot have the problem that we don't see things exactly as those other 99% do, and you can help us by being a bit more specific.
OK. That checks out. I suppose it's logical also, if ODF didn't include this, the nay-sayers would chime up with "ODF doesn't even allow OLE", "ODF is useless in the real world where people will want to exchange documents including OLE-style proprietary objects", etc. Thanks for pointing this out to me.
> it totally resembles OOXML in that way except that OOXML has the propriety settings fully documented and ODF has not.
If the settings are fully documented, in what way are they proprietary? In the sense that Microsoft has some kind of patent on it and may or may not be able to sue you depending upon whether the "covenant not to sue" protects you or not?
BTW, you meant to say "OOXML totally resembles ODF", right? ODF was there first, which is one of the reasons people are opposed to OOXML. Microsoft had its opportunity to contribute to the standardization process of ODF (it is/was a member of OASIS), but proposes a not-very-new additional standard instead. The whole point of having standards is to use the existing ones (and extend them when necessary), not to invent new standards right-and-left. My understanding of your point is that the ODF spec includes a lot of opportunity for extension, so it would seem that whatever Microsoft needed (which is fit to be in a standard, we're not talking about the deprecated legacy cruft included in OOXML), it could have tacked onto the ODF spec in the form of standardized extensions.
Now to get back to a point I made earlier, that there is no software which can read/write OOXML which makes it easy for you to save OOXML files without inadvertently including proprietary objects which are bad for interoperability and long-term archival. Now that you've shown us that ODF can include proprietary objects and extensions also, I think it's important to reiterate that it is easy to generate ODF without proprietary stuff. You can do it easily from any standard Linux installation providing OpenOffice.org applications. Of course, you can also do it on Windows if you run Linux in a VM or you run co-Linux.
I eagerly await your reply, as it is clear you always want to have the last word.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
One might also ask what the definition of "newly discovered" is nowadays.
Given the ever increasing rate of change, somehow 1999 doesn't cut it for me...
One way to deal with the analogous problem which arises when treating microbial infection with antibiotics is to treat with several antibiotics simultaneously. One would think that the more anti-cancer drugs we discover, the more likely that using them in combination might greatly increase cure rates (assuming their modes of operation are actually "orthogonal" and not just several different ways to attack the same weaknesses). Or am I missing something?
> Besides, in "building a philosophy," you have to use preexisting ideas, many of which
> come, directly or indirectly, from established religions.
After reviewing the available data on Scientology, it seems to me that Scientology's ideas seem to be intentionally remote from those of established religions. This optimizes its ability to socially isolate its members from the rest of society. Additionally, it gives it a more distinctive "brand identity" versus its competition.
Thanks to you and everyone else, I kind of was fishing for better suggestions to view the title texts.
Yes, "Happy Birthday" is under copyright (well at least the melody). Thanks to our ridiculously industry-driven copyright law.
But it's probably ASCAP which will come knocking...
Your comment ignores the plethora of free content for ebook readers. Never heard of Project Gutenberg? And it's not the only game in town, lots of publishers are trying to raise interest by free giveaways, at least in the science fiction / fantasy genre (Tor, Baen).
> if you are a heavy reader. -----> if you are a heavy reader of expensive enough ebooks.
There, fixed that for you.
Until I saw the xkcd link I was kind of freaked out that you had already got to +4 Interesting.
Thanks for the link, that one is terrific. The "title" text on the image is quite philosophical and interesting in its own right. For those unfamiliar with xkcd, if you hover the mouse cursor over the comic, the tooltips popup (or whatever it's called) is an integral part of the comic (when I browse with Firefox, it often isn't displayed in its entirety, so to see it all, I have to select the image and use the "View Selection Source" option in the context menu which pops up on the right mouse button).
It also stated:
> Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined six securities firms a total of $10 million for failing to
> produce e-mails requested in the course of an investigation.
> The retention period must be reasonable and clearly set in the policy. A good retention policy cannot be selective -- all documents
> should be saved. The policy must be well known and understood by the employees and applied evenly across the company. Also, the
> storage type may vary as long as one can produce the evidence. [emphasis mine]
This indicates to me that "reasonable" is whatever the judge thinks should have been reasonable, so most companies will probably err on the side of longer retention, I'd guess.
Actually, I'd find that a rather fascinating, creative delusion.
I can think of lots of different types of "stupid" and my guess is that you probably wouldn't find all of them stupid. Compare:
1. A mentally retarded person who is optimistic and happy. Seeing a pretty flower makes him happy even though he has no idea what it is called, or how it grew where he found it.
2. A genius level intellect who is always unhappy and irritated. There is nothing he can see which could make him as happy as person #1.
I find them both stupid in kind of orthogonal ways, and I am convinced there are many more dimensions of possible stupidity (your example being kind of stupid in the "reality" dimension, I suppose)....
> And unlike drugs or surgery, pet ownership "doesn't appear to have any risks to it," he added.
Cats actually are common vectors of at least two intracellular zoonotic pathogens: Toxoplasma gondii and Bartonella clarridgeiae.
They're only considered dangerous for immunosuppressed or otherwise weakened people. Though I do know of a fellow Slashdotter who was under the weather for 3 months with Cat scratch fever.
Your comment seems somewhat self-contradictory to me. You support the information on G-Man as being useful and that it would be beneficial to preserve it for posterity, yet you greatly "raise the bar" on the ability to preserve this information by making it possible to preserve it only if some sponsor can be found to produce and manage that "separate wiki".
Or did I misunderstand, and you were suggesting that the Wikimedia Foundation should start to fragment its server space for every notable fictional universe? That seems particularly impractical. Not to mention what would happen if someone suggests that "since the Bible is fiction the characters therein should be relegated to a separate wiki".
Your suggestion would be much more interesting in a future where it would be easy (and preferably, trivial) to run a robust distributed wiki (or wiki-like environment) hosted by the members of the community interested by the Half Life universe, themselves, on their own personal computers. Some kind of hybrid between P2P and wiki. I'm not familiar with any software like that (but I wouldn't be surprised if it exists, if only in a nascent state).
Maybe it has something to do with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?
If you look at the section E-mail communication retention policy and storage in an article on it at TechRepublic, it seems that SOx dictates that email needs to be retained indefinitely.
Wow, that link is so distended, I cringe imagining what image it links to....
Is this some sophisticated form of meta-goatse?
I love the fact that there is exactly one Godwin in this article thread.
Check the facts - use Wikipedia!
LOL
> linus torvalds has never made a dime for all the hours he's put into the linux kernel
It is likely that the recognition he receives for his work allows him to earn more money than otherwise would have been possible for him. Of course, this is a "what if" question which cannot be answered with any kind of certainty. And it does not take into consideration the fact that if he didn't invest time in Linux, he might have more time to work at other (more profitable) things.
And your local electric company should do that to you, also. Teach you a lesson, eh?
You do know what the meaning of the word "monopoly" is right (no, I don't mean that game you played as a kid)?
The EU would be perfectly justified to authorize the use of hacked MS products, and the reverse engineering and publishing of all of the MS proprietary protocols and formats (perhaps also seizing related documents from European MS branches). Hey, if they do it quickly enough, maybe they can change OOXML into a fully specified standard before its vote!
You might consider adopting a suggestion from higher-up threads, that there would still be be automatic, free copyright but it would be for a very limited time, say 5 years, and only for private individuals. Extensions on a paid renewal basis only, and any licensing to a third-party reseller would automatically cause that third party to have to pay taxes.
Your proposal, should it apply to software, would probably end the effective use of the GPL, however. But it's no different in that regard from most of the other proposals flying around here.
#*&^@*&!, I keep forgetting --- it would be infringement if the 7-zip stuff is statically linked into their product.
7-zip is LGPL, so it's only infringement if they improved Pavlov's algorithm before distributing --- not likely.
From the Australian case documentation you referenced:
> Many other examples may be found in the books of cases in which a declaration has been refused because it was
> claimed in relation to circumstances that had not occurred and might never happen.
It strikes me as similar to the judge's decision in the Connecticut case, since in that case the plaintiffs demanded relief on the basis of copying that had not been proven to occur and might never have occurred.
BTW, what was decided on the appeal and cross-appeal in the case you cited?
You're sure they didn't mean Ficus Pandorata?
That's the way I read it, but I'd be surprised if most of the younger Slashdot crowd would have recognized the reference...
> Man, I wish I had that much money and power.
You didn't really answer me directly, but I understand that this is your answer.
I guess that's why Microsoft doesn't push my envy button, I'm much more oriented towards knowledge, egoboo, and feeling that I've made the world a better place.
Thanks for the help. Don't let the Troll mod bother you.
If something of mine is never duplicated, and no one ever sees it, it has little value. The more it is duplicated and publicized, the more value it gains. Of course, your original point is also valid. "By copying at will, value (potential revenue) is stolen from me. I did have it, now I don't." This tradeoff is probably the reason that hairyfeet's post reflects how many artists actually feel.
> To speak for the other 99% of the world, replace 'disdain' with 'envy'.
Interesting. What exactly are they envious of, the money? The power? This is a serious question. A lot of us here at Slashdot have the problem that we don't see things exactly as those other 99% do, and you can help us by being a bit more specific.
OK. That checks out. I suppose it's logical also, if ODF didn't include this, the nay-sayers would chime up with "ODF doesn't even allow OLE", "ODF is useless in the real world where people will want to exchange documents including OLE-style proprietary objects", etc. Thanks for pointing this out to me.
:-)
> it totally resembles OOXML in that way except that OOXML has the propriety settings fully documented and ODF has not.
If the settings are fully documented, in what way are they proprietary? In the sense that Microsoft has some kind of patent on it and may or may not be able to sue you depending upon whether the "covenant not to sue" protects you or not?
BTW, you meant to say "OOXML totally resembles ODF", right? ODF was there first, which is one of the reasons people are opposed to OOXML. Microsoft had its opportunity to contribute to the standardization process of ODF (it is/was a member of OASIS), but proposes a not-very-new additional standard instead. The whole point of having standards is to use the existing ones (and extend them when necessary), not to invent new standards right-and-left. My understanding of your point is that the ODF spec includes a lot of opportunity for extension, so it would seem that whatever Microsoft needed (which is fit to be in a standard, we're not talking about the deprecated legacy cruft included in OOXML), it could have tacked onto the ODF spec in the form of standardized extensions.
Now to get back to a point I made earlier, that there is no software which can read/write OOXML which makes it easy for you to save OOXML files without inadvertently including proprietary objects which are bad for interoperability and long-term archival. Now that you've shown us that ODF can include proprietary objects and extensions also, I think it's important to reiterate that it is easy to generate ODF without proprietary stuff. You can do it easily from any standard Linux installation providing OpenOffice.org applications. Of course, you can also do it on Windows if you run Linux in a VM or you run co-Linux.
I eagerly await your reply, as it is clear you always want to have the last word.