Are you kidding? Plop down one wind generator in front of Capitol Hill while Congress is in session and the world will have more energy than it can use in a thousand years.
Somewhere, Gordon Gano is spinning in his grave, and there's an electrical generator connected to him, providing pollution-free corpse power. (Okay, so he's not really dead, but I thought I'd congratulate you for working a Violent Femmes lyric into a discussion on bird deaths from wind generators.)
One method of energy storage I haven't seen anyone mention yet is flywheels. Basically it consists of a big cylinder made of a carbon-fiber composite that is suspended inside a vacuum chamber on magnetic bearings, so that it can spin with very, very low friction.
To store more energy, electricity is applied to a motor which causes the flywheel to spin up. To get energy out, the motor is reversed as a generator and the electricity is sent off to do whatever. Flywheels can provide more energy storage per unit volume than batteries, although I don't know about hydrogen fuel cells -- but flywheels are pretty simple technology and tend to be very low in nasty chemicals (compared to, say, lead-acid batteries, or even the catalytic components found in fuel cells).
The carbon-fiber itself, even if spinning at several thousand RPM, will basically explode into sand if it happens to rupture or exceed its design limitations. There would be no chance of a high-velocity flywheel careening out of its containment chamber and killing everything in its path (as cool as that would be).
It's not a highly developed technology yet, but mostly because we have little need for large-scale energy storage (because we have enough power plants that can provide peak production when it's usually needed), but flywheels combine well with intermittent generation technologies like wind and solar.
Of course, any good energy solution should be comprised of a reasonable mix of different generation, distribution, and storage methods, to avoid a monoculture; having enough wind turbines to meet (at most) 50% of our peak generation means that we're using that much less coal, oil, and other nonrenewable resources. I personally am in favor of safe nuclear reactors (like pebble beds), but nuclear is so much harder of a sell in the U.S. these days that we might find wind, despite its costs, more feasible as an alternative to fossil fuels.
Lucas can make all the Special Editions and Director's Cuts he wants, as far as I'm concerned, but the only version I will ever buy is the original. Until he releases that, he doesn't get another dime from me.
As far as DVDs go, I'm in the same position. I will only buy the original trilogy on DVD, and I will only buy it once (if they release a second original trilogy version with new extra bonus features blah blah, I will ignore it -- I want the movies, I don't care about the bonus crap).
I do plan to go see Episode III in the theater, of course, if only to uphold the tradition of waiting all day to see a midnight show at Mann's Village Theater in Westwood.:)
Re:What the DMCA did
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
others will break encryption and put movies into filesharing programs. The DMCA makes that illegal, thus justifying the DMCA.
Bzzt! Wrong. Before the DMCA, it was already illegal to put the movie up on the filesharing network. The DMCA just made the decryption part illegal -- not harder, just illegal. All this changed is that it made those of us who want to do reasonable things with copies of movies we buy -- like rip them to a private fileserver -- into criminals, while doing nothing to those who were already breaking copyright law by distributing copies of a copyrighted work.
Besides, "I can't do what I want to do, so the laws are wrong" is a pretty bad argument.
You're right, it is a bad argument. And if I had actually made that argument, you'd have a point. But I didn't! The argument I made was this: THERE IS NO BENEFIT TO SOCIETY IN PREVENTING ME FROM RIPPING A DVD I PURCHASED LEGALLY ONTO A PRIVATE FILESERVER, THEREFORE THE LAW IS UNJUSTIFIED. There; it's in bold and all caps. Think you can manage to remember it this time?
If you want to do something that a licensed player won't let you, it is obviously something that caused a problem in the past prompting the DMCA to outlaw it.
No. It. Isn't. You appear to be obsessed with the idea that all laws are just: If the DMCA exists, there must be a valid reason for it, and it must be good for society! Why? Because otherwise, it never would have been passed! Yeah, stunning logic there.
The DMCA was passed at the behest of media companies which realized they could make more money by preventing people from doing reasonable things with copies of movies they bought. It has had absolutely zero impact on people who distribute movies illegally.
I asked you to justify the DMCA; you have not done so. You haven't even tried. Apparently, to you, it's a given that the DMCA is justified, simply because it exists. I certainly hope you don't think that all laws are justified merely by existing!
When Larry Niven's Ringworld's Children came out in June, I picked up a copy and it's been sitting on my shelf since. I had been hesitating to read it because I didn't want to be disappointed by it as I had been by some of his other solo novels in the last decade (Destiny's Road, The Ringworld Throne).
Uh... if you were so hesitant to read it, why did you buy it in the first place?
Re:What the DMCA did
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What legitimate reason is there for using a program, such as DivX, that has been deemed illegal.
Okay, for one thing, DivX isn't "a program," it's a video codec. I'd explain the difference, but I doubt you'd understand. The "legitimate reason" is that there is no good reason for it to be illegal to do things like decrypt a DVD and rip it to your local hard drive. It does not benefit the copyright holder at all to do this, and it limits the ability of the end user to watch the DVD the way he wants (streamed from his fileserver, rather than from a standalone DVD player to his TV). One rather useful thing you can do is rip your entire DVD collection to disk, and then you never have to swap in the DVD itself when you want to watch it, which is great if the DVD gets lost or damaged, or if you're just lazy).
There is no good reason to legally prevent end users from doing this, but the DMCA does so.
You can obtain legal DVD viewing programs for free, so why is it necessary to use an unlicensed player?
What if you want to do something with the DVD that the licensed players don't let you do? Like, say, rip it to a fileserver? Nope, too bad, DMCA says you're screwed, even though there's no good reason for it.
No one is keeping people from accessing a copy of something that they purchased the right to. Maybe the way that we are allowed to access something isn't the way that some people prefer, but that doesn't make the legal way wrong, just as it doesn't make the prefered way necessary or right.
When a law exists, its existence needs to be justified. You can't justify it just by saying, "Well it doesn't do any harm." That's ridiculous.
Limiting the way an end-user can use a copyrighted work in the privacy of their own home is pointless, greedy, shortsighted, and bad for the long-term health of society.
Let me put it this way: Justify the existence of the DMCA. Demonstrate that its existence is to the overall benefit of society.
It sounds to me like you can still take your DVD and copy it onto your computer. What you can't do is break any encryption that protects the work itself.
Yes, and that's exactly the problem! If you legally buy a copy of a DVD, you are not allowed to (for example) decrypt it yourself and transcode it to DivX so that you don't need a licensed player to view it. There is no good reason to prevent a person who legally bought the DVD from doing this. (Assuming that if they sell the DVD, they then delete the copy.)
On another note, how is keeping people from accessing copyrighted works detrimental to society? I am not so sure that I did miss the point.
Keeping people who bought legal copies from accessing the work in the way they want is detrimental to society. It gives copyright holders too much power, power that they should not have and do not need in order to profit from their works.
Agreed -- but it doesn't make him solely responsible.
Actually, not entirely agreed -- he could have refused to sign it, but things that pass unanimously are usually pointless to veto, because they'll pass again anyway. It would have been a waste of his time and energy. Still, that only lessens his responsibility slightly, in my view.
The problem with this thinking is that by purchasing a DVD, you have not purchased the work on it. Buying a DVD only gives you license to use the information contained on that disc in a way that is in compliance with the law.
And until the DMCA was passed, I could take that work, rip it off the DVD, and store it on my hard drive, legally. Doing so used to be in compliance with the law.
But since the DMCA was passed, that action is now illegal. It is to the overall detriment of society for that action to be illegal. Ergo the DMCA should be repealed.
So, when you buy a DVD, you haven't bought the right to do anything with the information on it except that which is considered the intended use.
You're missing the point. Yes, this is true now. No, it was not true before the DMCA was passed. And the DMCA never SHOULD have been passed. You're talking about what is; I'm talking about what should be.
The problem is, in politics, there are usually a significant number of groups who deliberately muddy the relatively simple situations in much more complex ones.
I don't know if I really agree with this. There are rarely simple situations in the world; I'm sure this is true some of the time, but I believe that most of the time, situations arise which have complex backgrounds to begin with, that are made more complex by the nefarious (or even simply pigheaded) interference of multiple groups with mutually exclusive goals.
People then try to simplify things into a convenient sound bite, and even if the original situation WAS simple, the simplification is rarely on-target.
I'm not saying that this is the case here. In fact, I don't know much about this case at all but since you want to paint those who favor simplifying situations ( although it may not always be appropriate) as retarded, I am curious to know what your opinion is of those who deliberately muddy the waters to suit their own agenda.
Were the new rules designed to shaft IT workers from getting overtime? Or were they merely designed to streamline outdated rules?
Right.
Because those are the only two possibilities.
For those of you keeping score at home, this is known as a false dichotomy, one of the classic logical fallacies. Basically, you present two options as if they are the only options, when in reality there are one or more other possibilities. A classic example is when a lawyer asks a defendant, "Did you murder John, or do you expect us to believe that he shot himself?" when there's the obvious third possibility that someone else killed John. (Assuming John was found dead of a gunshot wound.)
A third possibility about the overtime rules, and the most likely answer, is that they were the result of a complex miasma of conflicting goals, much like most of politics. Of course, most people seem to feel a need to simplify these complex situations into some kind of simple either-or choice. Which is retarded.
I would imagine that the original movies' copyright is not extended by this action. Otherwise it would be trivial to modify a copyrighted work slightly and re-release it every few years, and extend your copyright into perpetuity (without having to buy new laws from Congress!).
As far as I know, the original theatrical releases of Star Wars and the Special Edition are considered separate works with separate copyright dates. When 75 years (or 90 years or whatever) have passed since 1977, Star Wars will enter the public domain (assuming copyright durations are not once again extended). The Special Edition will not enter the PD for 20 years after that, but (if it's 90 years), then in 2067, Star Wars (the original theatrical version) will enter the public domain and anyone can make infinite copies and distribute them at will, and Lucasfilm wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Derived works are trickier, since there are parts of the OE (Original Edition) and the SE that are identical, so a derived work based solely on one of those parts would probably qualify as copyright infringement; but a derived work based on something in the OE that is not in the SE, or based on the entire OE of one of the movies, would not be infringement.
Of course, I'm not a copyright lawyer, all this is just based on my understanding of copyright law, blah blah.
What the DMCA did
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What the DMCA really did was grant copyright holders a new right that they had never had before. Before the DMCA, a copyright holder could not tell you what you could do with a copyrighted work once you'd bought a copy, so long as you didn't make more copies and distribute them. But you could read the work, set fire to it, wallpaper your bedroom with it, or wipe your ass with it. And you didn't need the copyright holder's permission to do any of these things. In fact, before the DMCA, it was entirely legal to buy a DVD, break the encryption, transcode it into a DivX file, and store it on your private file server so that you could watch it on your computer without needing the disc.
The DMCA made it illegal to break the encryption, even if you legally bought a copy, without explicit permission from the copyright holder. Combined with encryption methods that were themselves protected by IP law (like CSS, on DVDs), and suddenly the copyright holder can legally control how you can use their work in the privacy of your own home. You can decrypt the DVD by using a player that is either licensed by the CCA -- thus limiting what you can do with the DVD, since the CCA only licenses players that have a restricted set of functions -- or by using a player which is not licensed by the CCA (and allows you to do whatever you want with the DVD) -- but doing so violates the DMCA.
So now, even though the right is not explicitly spelled out in law, copyright holders can legally control what you can do with the work in the privacy of your own home. This is a right they do not need and should not have, and thus the DMCA should be repealed.
Re:Not buying it.
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Wasn't Clinton's administration responsible for bringing us the DMCA?
His administration didn't propose the bill, Clinton just signed it. Congresspersons wrote it, the Senate and the House both passed it unanimously (unanimous consent in the Senate, voice vote in the House). Clinton does not bear all the reponsibility for the DMCA becoming law.
Yes, it came into law during Clinton's administration, but that is emphatically NOT the same thing as "Clinton's administration [was] responsible for bringing us the DMCA."
If you really want to show that you want fewer of them, go vote Libertarian (assuming that you support all forms of deregulation among businesses and want to work for the "eventual repeal of all taxes" (if I'm remembering the official party platform plank's wording properly) as well).
Hey, how many Libertarians does it take to stop a tank?
None, market forces will take care of it.
That, in a nutshell, is my objection to Libertarianism.:)
I'm afraid I'll be waiting for the day when George reconsiders and releases the untouched originals.
As others have noted, it's more likely that Duke Nukem Forever will come out first. Personally, this is my position: I will not buy any version of the original Star Wars trilogy unless Lucas releases the original theatrical cut. I've already got four VHS copies of the entire trilogy (the *true* original in pan-n-scan and widescreen, and SE on pan-n-scan and widescreen), from way back before Lucas started really fucking things up with the prequels. (I'm also not going to get around it by getting someone to buy it for my birthday or for Christmas. I will not *own* these DVDs for any reason.)
I don't care if Lucas thinks this is the way the movies were intended; as a customer, I'm not buying it from him unless he gives me what I want. Yeah, I know millions of people will buy the DVDs anyway, but that doesn't change my position.
The cantina shootout between Han Solo and the green-snouted bounty hunter Greedo is virtually identical, but now it seems their guns fire almost simultaneously."
Okay, that's it, I've had it.
*rolls up a newspaper and goes to Skywalker Ranch, finds George Lucas, and smacks him over the head four times*
NO! BAD GEORGE! GREEDO DOESN'T GET TO SHOOT *AT ALL*! BAD DIRECTOR! NO COOKIE!
4183 Strike on Iraq by CmdrTaco
3314 Saddam Hussein Arrested by CmdrTaco
2722 Pledge of Allegiance Ruled Unconstitutional by michael
2574 Major Strike on Iraq Underway by CmdrTaco
Man, these freaked me out for a second before I realized that the last bit of each was the byline. Taco striking Iraq? (Twice, no less!) And arresting Saddam all by himself! Michael's ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance was small potatoes by comparison.
Switf Boat vets don't claim that Bush is fit for command.
No, they just claim that Kerry is unfit for command. Which leaves Bush as the only candidate who has a chance in hell of getting elected. Claiming that they don't necessarily support Bush is disingenuous in the extreme. The political reality is that someone attacking Kerry, without explicitly stating who they support, is de facto supporting Bush.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding? Plop down one wind generator in front of Capitol Hill while Congress is in session and the world will have more energy than it can use in a thousand years.
One method of energy storage I haven't seen anyone mention yet is flywheels. Basically it consists of a big cylinder made of a carbon-fiber composite that is suspended inside a vacuum chamber on magnetic bearings, so that it can spin with very, very low friction.
To store more energy, electricity is applied to a motor which causes the flywheel to spin up. To get energy out, the motor is reversed as a generator and the electricity is sent off to do whatever. Flywheels can provide more energy storage per unit volume than batteries, although I don't know about hydrogen fuel cells -- but flywheels are pretty simple technology and tend to be very low in nasty chemicals (compared to, say, lead-acid batteries, or even the catalytic components found in fuel cells).
The carbon-fiber itself, even if spinning at several thousand RPM, will basically explode into sand if it happens to rupture or exceed its design limitations. There would be no chance of a high-velocity flywheel careening out of its containment chamber and killing everything in its path (as cool as that would be).
It's not a highly developed technology yet, but mostly because we have little need for large-scale energy storage (because we have enough power plants that can provide peak production when it's usually needed), but flywheels combine well with intermittent generation technologies like wind and solar.
Of course, any good energy solution should be comprised of a reasonable mix of different generation, distribution, and storage methods, to avoid a monoculture; having enough wind turbines to meet (at most) 50% of our peak generation means that we're using that much less coal, oil, and other nonrenewable resources. I personally am in favor of safe nuclear reactors (like pebble beds), but nuclear is so much harder of a sell in the U.S. these days that we might find wind, despite its costs, more feasible as an alternative to fossil fuels.
Just some ruminations on the subject, anyway.
I do plan to go see Episode III in the theater, of course, if only to uphold the tradition of waiting all day to see a midnight show at Mann's Village Theater in Westwood. :)
The DMCA was passed at the behest of media companies which realized they could make more money by preventing people from doing reasonable things with copies of movies they bought. It has had absolutely zero impact on people who distribute movies illegally.
I asked you to justify the DMCA; you have not done so. You haven't even tried. Apparently, to you, it's a given that the DMCA is justified, simply because it exists. I certainly hope you don't think that all laws are justified merely by existing!
There is no good reason to legally prevent end users from doing this, but the DMCA does so.
What if you want to do something with the DVD that the licensed players don't let you do? Like, say, rip it to a fileserver? Nope, too bad, DMCA says you're screwed, even though there's no good reason for it. When a law exists, its existence needs to be justified. You can't justify it just by saying, "Well it doesn't do any harm." That's ridiculous.Limiting the way an end-user can use a copyrighted work in the privacy of their own home is pointless, greedy, shortsighted, and bad for the long-term health of society.
Let me put it this way: Justify the existence of the DMCA. Demonstrate that its existence is to the overall benefit of society.
Agreed -- but it doesn't make him solely responsible.
Actually, not entirely agreed -- he could have refused to sign it, but things that pass unanimously are usually pointless to veto, because they'll pass again anyway. It would have been a waste of his time and energy. Still, that only lessens his responsibility slightly, in my view.
Bad Clinton! Bad!
Meniscus. I thought it was funny that you had two separate posts on this story that both wondered whether you were spelling the word correctly. :)
But since the DMCA was passed, that action is now illegal. It is to the overall detriment of society for that action to be illegal. Ergo the DMCA should be repealed.
You're missing the point. Yes, this is true now. No, it was not true before the DMCA was passed. And the DMCA never SHOULD have been passed. You're talking about what is; I'm talking about what should be.People then try to simplify things into a convenient sound bite, and even if the original situation WAS simple, the simplification is rarely on-target.
Assholes.I just noticed that you added me as a friend; can I ask why? :) Just curious.
Because those are the only two possibilities.
For those of you keeping score at home, this is known as a false dichotomy, one of the classic logical fallacies. Basically, you present two options as if they are the only options, when in reality there are one or more other possibilities. A classic example is when a lawyer asks a defendant, "Did you murder John, or do you expect us to believe that he shot himself?" when there's the obvious third possibility that someone else killed John. (Assuming John was found dead of a gunshot wound.)
A third possibility about the overtime rules, and the most likely answer, is that they were the result of a complex miasma of conflicting goals, much like most of politics. Of course, most people seem to feel a need to simplify these complex situations into some kind of simple either-or choice. Which is retarded.
I would imagine that the original movies' copyright is not extended by this action. Otherwise it would be trivial to modify a copyrighted work slightly and re-release it every few years, and extend your copyright into perpetuity (without having to buy new laws from Congress!).
As far as I know, the original theatrical releases of Star Wars and the Special Edition are considered separate works with separate copyright dates. When 75 years (or 90 years or whatever) have passed since 1977, Star Wars will enter the public domain (assuming copyright durations are not once again extended). The Special Edition will not enter the PD for 20 years after that, but (if it's 90 years), then in 2067, Star Wars (the original theatrical version) will enter the public domain and anyone can make infinite copies and distribute them at will, and Lucasfilm wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Derived works are trickier, since there are parts of the OE (Original Edition) and the SE that are identical, so a derived work based solely on one of those parts would probably qualify as copyright infringement; but a derived work based on something in the OE that is not in the SE, or based on the entire OE of one of the movies, would not be infringement.
Of course, I'm not a copyright lawyer, all this is just based on my understanding of copyright law, blah blah.
What the DMCA really did was grant copyright holders a new right that they had never had before. Before the DMCA, a copyright holder could not tell you what you could do with a copyrighted work once you'd bought a copy, so long as you didn't make more copies and distribute them. But you could read the work, set fire to it, wallpaper your bedroom with it, or wipe your ass with it. And you didn't need the copyright holder's permission to do any of these things. In fact, before the DMCA, it was entirely legal to buy a DVD, break the encryption, transcode it into a DivX file, and store it on your private file server so that you could watch it on your computer without needing the disc.
The DMCA made it illegal to break the encryption, even if you legally bought a copy, without explicit permission from the copyright holder. Combined with encryption methods that were themselves protected by IP law (like CSS, on DVDs), and suddenly the copyright holder can legally control how you can use their work in the privacy of your own home. You can decrypt the DVD by using a player that is either licensed by the CCA -- thus limiting what you can do with the DVD, since the CCA only licenses players that have a restricted set of functions -- or by using a player which is not licensed by the CCA (and allows you to do whatever you want with the DVD) -- but doing so violates the DMCA.
So now, even though the right is not explicitly spelled out in law, copyright holders can legally control what you can do with the work in the privacy of your own home. This is a right they do not need and should not have, and thus the DMCA should be repealed.
Yes, it came into law during Clinton's administration, but that is emphatically NOT the same thing as "Clinton's administration [was] responsible for bringing us the DMCA."
None, market forces will take care of it.
That, in a nutshell, is my objection to Libertarianism. :)
I don't care if Lucas thinks this is the way the movies were intended; as a customer, I'm not buying it from him unless he gives me what I want. Yeah, I know millions of people will buy the DVDs anyway, but that doesn't change my position.
*rolls up a newspaper and goes to Skywalker Ranch, finds George Lucas, and smacks him over the head four times*
NO! BAD GEORGE! GREEDO DOESN'T GET TO SHOOT *AT ALL*! BAD DIRECTOR! NO COOKIE!
Looks like the only winning move is not to play.