No, it forces me to pay money to the rights holder who more often than not is a bloodless corporation or estate. Letting me decide who's worthy of getting my money is letting me actively volunteer to give them money or pay them for their live performances.
The arts, as a whole, are a public good. In order for there to be a socially optimal amount of art produced, they need some sort of subsidy. You can either do that by having the government directly fund its creation, or by artificially creating a marketplace for it. With the first option (which is IMO useful as seed money for artists via programs like the NEA, but that's a different discussion), you don't get to decide (directly) where your money goes. By artificially creating a marketplace, you're allowed to decide what you think is worth your money. When you buy a car you're giving money to a "bloodless corporation" as well. Both the car and music required capital for their production. For some reason, you think that only in one case you should be able to decide whether or not to pay that money, regardless of whether or not you make use of the results of that investment. You don't complain about having to pay for the live performance despite the fact that it costs the same to put on regardless of whether or not you show up. Paying for the right to listen to the music works on the same principle. Whether you are required to compensate the investors for too long is a different matter than the actual requirement. I agree with most people here in saying that copyright terms are far too long.
Right, so because someone might try to use DRM with their works, we should get rid of copyright. If anything, in the modern marketplace that would simply result in the distributors of these works trying to enforce copyright technologically via even more restrictive DRM instead of letting the law do its job.
And the other 18 plays? Moreover, most published copies of Shakespeare's works were of terrible quality by modern standards. (I'm referring to the printing and numerous textual errors referred to on the very page you linked too.)
Public good has a specific economic definition. They are goods with positive externalities. IP laws are meant to internalize this externality.
As for the movies, you can actually buy the right to watch the movie. You may not be aware of this, but unlike plays, they are actually intended to be seen on a screen.
I don't agree with DRM; I think that copyright terms are way too long, but I just don't get why so many people on Slashdot disregard all IP laws as being frivolous and/or useless.
Section 1. After a Bill has become Law, if one-fourth* of the States declare the Law to be "unconstitutional" it shall be null and void. It shall be as if the Law never existed.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative, unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths* of the several States by the date January 1, 2050.
*
* [This is called a constitutional majority.]
Your "proposed amendment" would have made the Civil Rights Act and many other slightly unpopular but important constitutional measures impossible to pass. There's a reason super-majorities aren't required for most laws. It's because the government would end up doing nothing. (But I suppose that's your point, isn't it?)
Man, you know that Shakespeare fellow really didn't do ANYTHING because he didn't have copyright over his work. Nor did Van Gogh, or Chopin, or Beethoven, or...
Yeah, and because of that Shakespeare, while alive, refused to actually publish his plays. There's a reason that some of his plays are lost for good. A lack of copyright has a lot to do with that. As for classical composers, they were basically paid by the government to do their work, which amounts to the same thing, copyright just makes your subsidy of a public good more direct and lets you (instead of some government official, for those who like to continually complain about anything the government does) decide who's worthy of getting money.
Yeah, it's never too much of a problem until it affects you.
What if you live in an apartment and have a friend or family member come stay with you for an extended period of time and you suddenly get charged an occupant violation fee because your utilities are being monitored by the complex manager? Seeing at how gung-ho about fines the complex I just moved from is, I don't see that being too far-fetched of a scenario, especially if your utilities are included in your rent.
You violate the terms of your lease and you are fined. What's your point here?
Try using X11 over something slightly slower as LAN. Just try it, over ADSL, whatever
I tried. And X11 is totally and utterly USELESS. A well configured VNC (and you have to really play with the knobs) is usable. RDP is the best (of course, it wasn't developed by Microsoft...)
That's not a problem with the architecture but with the protocol. Have you ever used FreeNX? It's amazingly fast in comparison to VNC and even RDP.
Hulu says that their reason for restricting content is "clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography." Well, why not make the site available to at least all of the places where these rights are already cleared. Eh? Name a show that is in the U.S. that are explicitly banned in, lets say, Canada.
But to be honest, I only care about the fact that I can't access Pandora
Actualy, they probably don't have the rights for a show in Canada. For exmample, CBC might own the rights to broadcast Heroes in Canada, while NBC owns the rights to broadcast it in the US. Therefore, Hulu needs to pay money to CBC to show Heroes in Canada. (It's a terrible outdated model, I know, but its very difficult to undo the hundreds of already existing licensing deals.)
...there are pros and cons to all the interventions. But regardless of the pros and cons, one thing they aren't is laissez-faire.
I don't think that anyone would argue with that, bud adopting laissez-faire principles in all situations is at best silly and at worst destructive. Adam Smith's analysis only works with private goods in an actual market. There is no market for research. The government creates one to ensure that research happens. Within the context of this market, a laissez faire approach would allow actors to do whatever they wish with their property, which in the case of this artificially created research market, consists of patents.
What's rather ironic is that you kind of just made a case for PARC to enforce its patents (or for it to have patented more stuff.) If PARC had been able to show a revenue stream stemming from patents for these innovations, it probably wouldn't have ended up becoming the shell of its former self that it has become today. The folks who did that much to change the world do actually deserve a crapton of money, not just the guys who decided to manufacture millions of mice.
Patents don't have much to do with Adam Smith, though, since they're a government-created artificial monopoly, not something that exists in a free market.
The point of a patent is to account for the fact that ideally, the stuff you are patenting is a positive externality. A free market would likely lead to no invention or investment in R&D as there would be no way to recoup that cost. Either that, or it would lead to the excessive use of trade secrets, which would be even worse than the current occasional patent troll.
Am I the only one who doesn't think that software patents are universally bad? It seems to me like software is an algorithm which solves a specific problem. Take as an example, the relational database. The very concept of applying relational algebra to the organization of physical data was a pretty big step, which IMO, deserves more than a copyright. Simply arguing that software is just math is as absurd as saying that fancy new electronic device is simply the patenting the existence of the appropriate laws of physics that lead to working of stuff.
I'd have to agree that right now prior art and obviousness is ignored far too often, but that doesn't mean the software patents shouldn't exist.
Agreed, Hulu is not only more accurate (in terms of counting eyeballs watching), the viewers there ought to be more valuable. You can't skip the ads like you might with a DVR, and the ad breaks are short enough that leaving the room for the duration of the commercial isn't practical. Plus, some of the ads on Hulu are rather creative in their use of the online interface. Furthermore, a clickthrough on a Hulu ad should be worth an awful lot of money. People are skipping entertainment to look at your product. That implies genuine interest.
Are you one of those people who thinks Schindler's List was a disservice to the Holocaust because it only looks at the people Schindler saved while ignoring the millions who died?
Seriously, it's a movie. It's a story about two people that happens to be set in the middle of a tragedy. Not every movie has to look at the big picture.
I know they only stream to the USA, that was my point. It's the internet, there is no point in doing that.
They don't have the rights to the content they are streaming outside of the US. They can't legally stream content to Australia without ABC (or whichever Australian broadcast network has the rights to your favorite Hulu show) suing them.
I hope this information about most used features isn't going to be used to develop a Mozilla ribbon.
Sure, discounting the fact that the ribbon was probably the best UI design MS has ever created. (The only people who might dislike it are those who have learned the intricacies of the Office menu structure and they still have the option to switch back.) If Mozilla can come up with something as good as the Ribbon from this, I'd say it's a good thing
FDR did not take us out of the Depression. Japan did that when they bombed Pearl Harbor and gave the nation motivation to start building tanks and planes and ships and bombs non-stop for the next three years.
So in other words, the government spending even MORE money got us out of the Depression. Ah, I see.
I'm actually pretty sure that's plausible. Or that at the very least it wasn't entirely due to hydrogen. I'm not saying that it was sabotage or anything, but Wikipedia presents numerous reasonable alternatives.
We even were treated to one in the header of this article:
"CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save."
Moreover, this ignores the fact that the incandescent bulb that would have been used in place of the CFL would likely have been shipped from China as well.
Now, another question that wasn't quite answered below yet: I've long understood that polarization is changing the orientation of the propagating wave, but exactly how does this work for light? As far as I'm aware, light doesn't take a zig-zaggy, wavy motion through space, so how is it analogous to sending waves down a jump rope or similar? (I have a feeling the problem I have in understanding this issue has to do with the preceding sentence.) Thanks in advance, and thanks to all the people below this author who have also responded.
Light is a wave in the electromagnetic field. Along different points in space the electric field and magnetic fields have different directions and magnitude. Plotting these magnitude and direction of the electric and magnetic fields would give you wavy shapes.
Really, so YouTube wouldn't have been sued into oblivion without the DMCA safe harbor? Without the DMCA, any website that could have possibly allowed for copyright infringement would never have existed in the United States. Slashdot comments that were copies of the article would likely have resulted in Slashdot being sued by the original content producer. Now at worst, they can get a takedown notice.
I will admit that it is rather ironic that the DMCA allows companies to be unwittingly used as copyright infringement tools, but that any software which might be used in a similar manner is illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it forces me to pay money to the rights holder who more often than not is a bloodless corporation or estate. Letting me decide who's worthy of getting my money is letting me actively volunteer to give them money or pay them for their live performances.
The arts, as a whole, are a public good. In order for there to be a socially optimal amount of art produced, they need some sort of subsidy. You can either do that by having the government directly fund its creation, or by artificially creating a marketplace for it. With the first option (which is IMO useful as seed money for artists via programs like the NEA, but that's a different discussion), you don't get to decide (directly) where your money goes. By artificially creating a marketplace, you're allowed to decide what you think is worth your money. When you buy a car you're giving money to a "bloodless corporation" as well. Both the car and music required capital for their production. For some reason, you think that only in one case you should be able to decide whether or not to pay that money, regardless of whether or not you make use of the results of that investment. You don't complain about having to pay for the live performance despite the fact that it costs the same to put on regardless of whether or not you show up. Paying for the right to listen to the music works on the same principle. Whether you are required to compensate the investors for too long is a different matter than the actual requirement. I agree with most people here in saying that copyright terms are far too long.
Right, so because someone might try to use DRM with their works, we should get rid of copyright. If anything, in the modern marketplace that would simply result in the distributors of these works trying to enforce copyright technologically via even more restrictive DRM instead of letting the law do its job.
And the other 18 plays? Moreover, most published copies of Shakespeare's works were of terrible quality by modern standards. (I'm referring to the printing and numerous textual errors referred to on the very page you linked too.)
Public good has a specific economic definition. They are goods with positive externalities. IP laws are meant to internalize this externality. As for the movies, you can actually buy the right to watch the movie. You may not be aware of this, but unlike plays, they are actually intended to be seen on a screen. I don't agree with DRM; I think that copyright terms are way too long, but I just don't get why so many people on Slashdot disregard all IP laws as being frivolous and/or useless.
Proposed Amendment XXVIII
Section 1. After a Bill has become Law, if one-fourth* of the States declare the Law to be "unconstitutional" it shall be null and void. It shall be as if the Law never existed.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative, unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths* of the several States by the date January 1, 2050.
* * [This is called a constitutional majority.]
Your "proposed amendment" would have made the Civil Rights Act and many other slightly unpopular but important constitutional measures impossible to pass. There's a reason super-majorities aren't required for most laws. It's because the government would end up doing nothing. (But I suppose that's your point, isn't it?)
Man, you know that Shakespeare fellow really didn't do ANYTHING because he didn't have copyright over his work. Nor did Van Gogh, or Chopin, or Beethoven, or...
Yeah, and because of that Shakespeare, while alive, refused to actually publish his plays. There's a reason that some of his plays are lost for good. A lack of copyright has a lot to do with that. As for classical composers, they were basically paid by the government to do their work, which amounts to the same thing, copyright just makes your subsidy of a public good more direct and lets you (instead of some government official, for those who like to continually complain about anything the government does) decide who's worthy of getting money.
Pakistan has had nukes for quite a while now and we still don't actually know if Iran has them.
I refill my 4-color printer with Blood, Sweat and Tears (4th bodily fluid "redacted" as this is a family site).
If you're getting blacks out of any of those, you should really go see a doctor.
Yeah, it's never too much of a problem until it affects you. What if you live in an apartment and have a friend or family member come stay with you for an extended period of time and you suddenly get charged an occupant violation fee because your utilities are being monitored by the complex manager? Seeing at how gung-ho about fines the complex I just moved from is, I don't see that being too far-fetched of a scenario, especially if your utilities are included in your rent.
You violate the terms of your lease and you are fined. What's your point here?
Oh no you don't!
Try using X11 over something slightly slower as LAN. Just try it, over ADSL, whatever
I tried. And X11 is totally and utterly USELESS. A well configured VNC (and you have to really play with the knobs) is usable. RDP is the best (of course, it wasn't developed by Microsoft...)
That's not a problem with the architecture but with the protocol. Have you ever used FreeNX? It's amazingly fast in comparison to VNC and even RDP.
Hulu says that their reason for restricting content is "clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography." Well, why not make the site available to at least all of the places where these rights are already cleared. Eh? Name a show that is in the U.S. that are explicitly banned in, lets say, Canada. But to be honest, I only care about the fact that I can't access Pandora
Actualy, they probably don't have the rights for a show in Canada. For exmample, CBC might own the rights to broadcast Heroes in Canada, while NBC owns the rights to broadcast it in the US. Therefore, Hulu needs to pay money to CBC to show Heroes in Canada. (It's a terrible outdated model, I know, but its very difficult to undo the hundreds of already existing licensing deals.)
...there are pros and cons to all the interventions. But regardless of the pros and cons, one thing they aren't is laissez-faire.
I don't think that anyone would argue with that, bud adopting laissez-faire principles in all situations is at best silly and at worst destructive. Adam Smith's analysis only works with private goods in an actual market. There is no market for research. The government creates one to ensure that research happens. Within the context of this market, a laissez faire approach would allow actors to do whatever they wish with their property, which in the case of this artificially created research market, consists of patents.
What's rather ironic is that you kind of just made a case for PARC to enforce its patents (or for it to have patented more stuff.) If PARC had been able to show a revenue stream stemming from patents for these innovations, it probably wouldn't have ended up becoming the shell of its former self that it has become today. The folks who did that much to change the world do actually deserve a crapton of money, not just the guys who decided to manufacture millions of mice.
Patents don't have much to do with Adam Smith, though, since they're a government-created artificial monopoly, not something that exists in a free market.
The point of a patent is to account for the fact that ideally, the stuff you are patenting is a positive externality. A free market would likely lead to no invention or investment in R&D as there would be no way to recoup that cost. Either that, or it would lead to the excessive use of trade secrets, which would be even worse than the current occasional patent troll.
Am I the only one who doesn't think that software patents are universally bad? It seems to me like software is an algorithm which solves a specific problem. Take as an example, the relational database. The very concept of applying relational algebra to the organization of physical data was a pretty big step, which IMO, deserves more than a copyright. Simply arguing that software is just math is as absurd as saying that fancy new electronic device is simply the patenting the existence of the appropriate laws of physics that lead to working of stuff. I'd have to agree that right now prior art and obviousness is ignored far too often, but that doesn't mean the software patents shouldn't exist.
Agreed, Hulu is not only more accurate (in terms of counting eyeballs watching), the viewers there ought to be more valuable. You can't skip the ads like you might with a DVR, and the ad breaks are short enough that leaving the room for the duration of the commercial isn't practical. Plus, some of the ads on Hulu are rather creative in their use of the online interface. Furthermore, a clickthrough on a Hulu ad should be worth an awful lot of money. People are skipping entertainment to look at your product. That implies genuine interest.
Are you one of those people who thinks Schindler's List was a disservice to the Holocaust because it only looks at the people Schindler saved while ignoring the millions who died?
Seriously, it's a movie. It's a story about two people that happens to be set in the middle of a tragedy. Not every movie has to look at the big picture.
Am I the only one who thinks that Hulu is such a disorganized mess? If you don't know exactly what you are looking for, forget it!
Yes. Its search feature works quite well, and the categorical organization is quite sane.
I know they only stream to the USA, that was my point. It's the internet, there is no point in doing that.
They don't have the rights to the content they are streaming outside of the US. They can't legally stream content to Australia without ABC (or whichever Australian broadcast network has the rights to your favorite Hulu show) suing them.
I hope this information about most used features isn't going to be used to develop a Mozilla ribbon.
Sure, discounting the fact that the ribbon was probably the best UI design MS has ever created. (The only people who might dislike it are those who have learned the intricacies of the Office menu structure and they still have the option to switch back.) If Mozilla can come up with something as good as the Ribbon from this, I'd say it's a good thing
FDR did not take us out of the Depression. Japan did that when they bombed Pearl Harbor and gave the nation motivation to start building tanks and planes and ships and bombs non-stop for the next three years.
So in other words, the government spending even MORE money got us out of the Depression. Ah, I see.
"the Hindenburg didn't burn from hydrogen"
I'm actually pretty sure that's plausible. Or that at the very least it wasn't entirely due to hydrogen. I'm not saying that it was sabotage or anything, but Wikipedia presents numerous reasonable alternatives.
We even were treated to one in the header of this article:
"CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save."
Moreover, this ignores the fact that the incandescent bulb that would have been used in place of the CFL would likely have been shipped from China as well.
It has nothing to do with O2 - the deaths are caused by Yetis.
Modded informative, really? Let me try. For all of those who didn't RTFA, yetis are often known as abominable snowmen.
Now, another question that wasn't quite answered below yet: I've long understood that polarization is changing the orientation of the propagating wave, but exactly how does this work for light? As far as I'm aware, light doesn't take a zig-zaggy, wavy motion through space, so how is it analogous to sending waves down a jump rope or similar? (I have a feeling the problem I have in understanding this issue has to do with the preceding sentence.) Thanks in advance, and thanks to all the people below this author who have also responded.
Light is a wave in the electromagnetic field. Along different points in space the electric field and magnetic fields have different directions and magnitude. Plotting these magnitude and direction of the electric and magnetic fields would give you wavy shapes.
Really, so YouTube wouldn't have been sued into oblivion without the DMCA safe harbor? Without the DMCA, any website that could have possibly allowed for copyright infringement would never have existed in the United States. Slashdot comments that were copies of the article would likely have resulted in Slashdot being sued by the original content producer. Now at worst, they can get a takedown notice.
I will admit that it is rather ironic that the DMCA allows companies to be unwittingly used as copyright infringement tools, but that any software which might be used in a similar manner is illegal.