The larger point, though, is that media/reference can't keep up with culture.
The next time a celebrity dies, look him or her up on wikipedia as soon as you hear about it -- the wikipedia article will already be updated about the death.
If I want to write a book in the Avatar setting and sell it, that is morally right by my standards, yet is still illegal under yours.
No, I have to agree with you on that. If you write a book in the Avatar setting that's not Avatar itself, it's a new work and you should be able to copyright it. That's one of the bad things about current copyright law.
You also seem to overlook two factors: as electronics get smaller they get more expensive.
That's odd, in 1955 a computer less powerful than your phone cost millions of dollars. That big tube stereo in 1965 was $600, how much is your iPod?
He has a point. The price of electronics has continued to drop for over half a century, with the exception of hearing aids. You mention heat, how hot is that dumb looking bluetooth thing sticking in that guy's ear over there? An earplug takes very little power compared to even a small speaker.
Copyright is incompatible with modern, global civilization and efforts to change this will simply result in corporatism which will eventually collapse.
Not exactly. What copyright is incompatible with is the noncommercial copying of digital data. Without copyright, the movie theater wouldn't have to pay the studio to show the movie. But your making a copy of your friend's DVD of Avatar costs society nothing and costs the studio nothing, and may even cause me to buy another Cameron movie because I saw the one you gave me.
However, copyright is incompatible with noncommercial copying, and before the internet came along, noncommercial copying was never a problem (despite movie and record companies' piggist squealing; e.g. "the VCR is to the movie industry what Jack the Ripper was to women" and the bogus "itis illegal to tape this record" when the law at the time specifically stated that it was indeed legal).
If copyright was shortened to the twenty years patents are, and noncommercial copying was deemed non-infringing, none of the problems that exist because of the stupid ways copyright laws are written would exist.
Copyright used to only apply to works "affixed in a tangible medium" and I posit that bits are NOT tangible and should not be covered by copyright.
And stay away from any and all bacteria and viruses... whoops, you just got an allergy. Oh, and stay inside, too, because that bus causes cancer.
Sorry, but you must be very young and gullible. "The best way to good health is to eat good foods in reasonable portions, exercise, and keep the weight off" is absolute bullshit. Yes, those things are all good for you (having good genes is even better) but they won't stop you from catching cold or the flu or e-coli.
You WILL get sick. You WILL die. Living a healthy lifestyle may stave it off, but it will happen.
Now excuse me, my arthritis is acting up and I need an aspirin or a Naproxin. Yeah, I'm old. Yeah, I'm healthy. Except for arthritis.
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die. You have exactly one life, don't waste it trying to stay healthy, because you're not going to no matter what you do or how hard you try.
Double woiosh to you, sir. It wasn't a parsing problem, he was pointing out an incredible stupidity. Look at the number -- I haven't seen an i386 since the early nineties.
Illinois abolished its death penalty when the Innocence Project proved that half the men on death row were innocent of the murders they were convicted of, and massive police and District Attorney corruption (including torture and planted evidence) were the reason most of the innocents were convicted.
He didn't need to make a citation about the cop shooting at unarmed teenagers; I'm surprised that nothing similar has happened where you live. Just last year there was a similar incident in Chatham (just outside Springfield). Sorry I can't make a citation either, but the SJ-R only archives its stories for a few weeks.
Then there are the murders (OK, negligent homicides) at the Sangamon County Jail. I knew one of the victims personally, his name was Maurice "Moe" Burris. He died in agony when the jail doctor refused to send him to the hospital, even though he was puking blood. His family recently successfully sued the county for Moe's death. The quack doctor that killed my acquaintence is still working for the county instead of sitting in prison for negligent homicide as he should be. Luckily the IT isn't as retarded as the SJ-R when it comes to data retention (among other things), you can find more about the Innocence Project and the police misconduct that led to the end of the death penalty there as well. I'd link to the SJ-R's take on the quack practicing medicine but they'll probably pull the story before you could see it.
This was a big deal a couple years ago; detectives lied to a judge about a "trash rip" to get a search warrant, then planted cocaine during the "search". The suspect was freed by the judge, no criminal action was taken against the detectives (but if you lie to a judge you'll go to jail). The detectives were fired, then later rehired after suing the city!
Those are instances just here in Illinois and mostly local! Multiply that by fifty and you'll begin to see how bad the situation really is. These kinds stories are incredibly easy to find in reputable newspapers.
The situation is bad. It's no wonder that poor people ALL fear and loathe the police. I assume the fellow you responded to has probably been personally victimized by thuggish cops.
Trademarks are property, copyrights and patents are not; at least, not according to the US Constitution that politicians must swear an oath to uphold when being sworn in to office. If you rent your house, it isn't your property; it belongs to the landlord. You merely have a limited time monopoly on that property. You do NOT own it, and "intellectual property" gives the impression that I own the material I hold copyright on, when I do not. The very term "intellectual property" is a lie, and I never heard it used until the Bono Act made copyrights last longer than people.
Steamboat Willie and Dumbo belong to us. Disney has merely been granted a "limited" time monopoly on their publication.
He's probably around my age. Back in the late '60s and '70s, "pig" was the hippie word for "cop". Which fit; the cops protect the 1% (listen to the Beatles Piggies) from the 99%. Read Animal Farm. The term fits.
And when you're criticizing someone who is doing terrible evil, how can you not be antagonistic? Sorry to Godwin the thread, but if you were talking about Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot would you not be antagonistic? Always be antagonistic to evil!
Citing the wsj for an anti-union story is like citing linux.com for an anti-microsoft article, or citing Fox News for an anti-Obama article. As to "Corporations and unions are no different in their self-interest at the expense of everyone else", that's incorrect. Whether you're in a union or not, you can blame or praise them for safer working conditions, wekends, paid vacations, sick leave, and a host of other things you would never have had were it not for unions. When the union wins, the only losers are management and the 1%, those who work for a living always win when the union wins whether or not they're in a union.
I found TFS amusing. $85? I paid $125 for XP almost ten years ago. And this was hilarious:
We can only assume that Microsoft doesn't want to go head-to-head with iOS and Android, instead trying to stake out a position at the top end of the market.
You mention that the OEM will use lower quality tablet parts if they have to pay more for the OS, I wonder what Apple and Google are charging? And I'll be willing to bet that even if it has higher specs, the Windows tablet won't be any more powerful than the lowest end Android and slower than the Apple, because of the OS' bloat and the need for AV on Microsoft products. Nothing sucks your computing power like McAfee or Norton. Except for maybe being part of a botnet, that would really slow your machine down!
No, I'm not trolling, and I do understand that language evolves. But it's "evolving" far faster than it has in the last half century (I know from experience, I was ten a half century ago). "Troll" is from the internet age, it's not nearly old enough to change meaning. And I specifically cited wikipedia because of the fact that it is an evolutionary database. When the meaning of "troll" actually does change, that change will be reflected in wikipedia. But as you see, it hasn't.
Troll still doesn't mean "I disagree with you". I imagine the reason is that would make the term just about meaningless.
I've written a couple of things concerning offline trolling, you may find them amusing.
Well, the study didn't say that sleeping more lessens the chances of stroke. It could be that the factors that cause stroke also cause one to get less sleep. If that were the case, lack of sleep would still be related to stroke, even though there would be no direct causation between them. Still, it's been my experience (sample size of one, I know) that not getting enough sleep does adversely affect health. Mine, anyway. It also affects my cognitive abilities (this has been studied and the studies confirm it).
I still am completely opposed because, first and foremost, it puts the recipients' health (or education, or whatever) completely at risk of the whims of those who choose to donate. If a cause, say, breakfast for all poor children, is really worthy, why isn't it worthy of direct government support?
I think you read something into my comment that wasn't there. The people who worship money are also against taxes, especially against tax money going to the needy. You and I are not among these people, obviously. Like you, I give, and have no objection whatever to my taxes going to help the needy. I agree with you that making the needy rely only on charity is a bad thing.
3) about 2^18 bits of RAM were needed to get any useful work done
That's about 32kb, do you have a citation? Because if he really said that, he was wrong. I wrote word processors, games, drawing programs, even a joke turing test taker that ran on half that much memory. Hell, somebody wrote a pretty good chess program that would run on a 4k Timex!
Aren't the Web thread denizens who engage in demeaning remarks and personal attacks called Mobys?
I've been on the internet for fifteen years and never once heard the term "moby". Apparently, neither has wikipedia.
I agree with you that a genuine troll is someone who doesn't necessarily believe in the position they are taking
Then why are you arguing the opposite? Are you trolling? Yes, sometimes it's hard to tell. Me, when someone disagrees with an opinion of mine, no matter how vehemently, I assume they're sincere. If they're factually incorrect I'll try to correct them, preferably with a link.
Troll does not mean "someone who disagrees with me." Troll means exactly what wikipedia and the slashdot page says it means.
"The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed," wrote the late novelist Doris Lessing. "Your body changes, but you don't change at all."
I'm sorry to say thats BS
I'm 60, and I agree with you. Lessig was wrong. I'm not even the same man I was when I was 40.
Its not just the body that changes , the mind changes too.
Of course it does. The brain changes, just like every other organ, and the mind resides within the brain.
Completely, it's a feeling of helplessness, not apathy. It's "I would vote if it woud do any good, but both candidates have already been paid off by the anti-pot lobby and the corporations, so whichever one I pick I'm screwed anyway."
Then you might want to (attempt to) edit the current wikipedia definition, because they disagree with you, and so does/.'s FAQ (which says pretty much the same thing as wikipedia). Just because you're too ignorant to know shit from shinola doesn't give you the right to smear shit on my shoes. Just because you think a dog is a rat doesn't make it one. Not even if most ignorant people think dogs are rats.
Ignorance should be fought. Period. Especially in one's self. Following the example of someone you know to be ignorant is just stupid. Educate them instead.
No. That's what dummies have come to imply it means. They are using the world wrong. Sadly, many of these dummies are also slashdot moderators.
You would think people would read the FAQ. You would also think that slashdot would go back to the old metamoderation system that actually worked. I see far more bad moderations these days than I used to. But maybe that's because when I first started reading slashdot, few except nerds were on the internet. Now every damned idiot is, and many of them post here.
The one I read didn't exactly say that. It said that if your father was older you would likely live longer because you weren't stillborn. Older fathers tend to have weaker sperm and greater chance that the fetus will not survive, becoming a father at an older age means that your cells are "younger" than other people your age, including your sperm cells. If all your great gransparents lived to be a hundred, chances are you will, too. People age at different rates; I know folks twenty years younger than me who look older than me. And yes, both my parents are in their eighties and healthy. When she was 95 my grandmother told me "I don't know why folks want to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old".
There are. There were five candidates in the last presidential election on enough ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning. The trouble is, even though they are all viable, the media refuses to acknowledge the Greens, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists. Which they do because the media are corporate-owned, and it's cheaper to bribe two candidates than it is to bribe five.
Slashdot Mirror
The larger point, though, is that media/reference can't keep up with culture.
The next time a celebrity dies, look him or her up on wikipedia as soon as you hear about it -- the wikipedia article will already be updated about the death.
If I want to write a book in the Avatar setting and sell it, that is morally right by my standards, yet is still illegal under yours.
No, I have to agree with you on that. If you write a book in the Avatar setting that's not Avatar itself, it's a new work and you should be able to copyright it. That's one of the bad things about current copyright law.
You also seem to overlook two factors: as electronics get smaller they get more expensive.
That's odd, in 1955 a computer less powerful than your phone cost millions of dollars. That big tube stereo in 1965 was $600, how much is your iPod?
He has a point. The price of electronics has continued to drop for over half a century, with the exception of hearing aids. You mention heat, how hot is that dumb looking bluetooth thing sticking in that guy's ear over there? An earplug takes very little power compared to even a small speaker.
Copyright is incompatible with modern, global civilization and efforts to change this will simply result in corporatism which will eventually collapse.
Not exactly. What copyright is incompatible with is the noncommercial copying of digital data. Without copyright, the movie theater wouldn't have to pay the studio to show the movie. But your making a copy of your friend's DVD of Avatar costs society nothing and costs the studio nothing, and may even cause me to buy another Cameron movie because I saw the one you gave me.
However, copyright is incompatible with noncommercial copying, and before the internet came along, noncommercial copying was never a problem (despite movie and record companies' piggist squealing; e.g. "the VCR is to the movie industry what Jack the Ripper was to women" and the bogus "itis illegal to tape this record" when the law at the time specifically stated that it was indeed legal).
If copyright was shortened to the twenty years patents are, and noncommercial copying was deemed non-infringing, none of the problems that exist because of the stupid ways copyright laws are written would exist.
Copyright used to only apply to works "affixed in a tangible medium" and I posit that bits are NOT tangible and should not be covered by copyright.
And stay away from any and all bacteria and viruses... whoops, you just got an allergy. Oh, and stay inside, too, because that bus causes cancer.
Sorry, but you must be very young and gullible. "The best way to good health is to eat good foods in reasonable portions, exercise, and keep the weight off" is absolute bullshit. Yes, those things are all good for you (having good genes is even better) but they won't stop you from catching cold or the flu or e-coli.
You WILL get sick. You WILL die. Living a healthy lifestyle may stave it off, but it will happen.
Now excuse me, my arthritis is acting up and I need an aspirin or a Naproxin. Yeah, I'm old. Yeah, I'm healthy. Except for arthritis.
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die. You have exactly one life, don't waste it trying to stay healthy, because you're not going to no matter what you do or how hard you try.
Double woiosh to you, sir. It wasn't a parsing problem, he was pointing out an incredible stupidity. Look at the number -- I haven't seen an i386 since the early nineties.
Huge accusations, but no cites.
Illinois abolished its death penalty when the Innocence Project proved that half the men on death row were innocent of the murders they were convicted of, and massive police and District Attorney corruption (including torture and planted evidence) were the reason most of the innocents were convicted.
He didn't need to make a citation about the cop shooting at unarmed teenagers; I'm surprised that nothing similar has happened where you live. Just last year there was a similar incident in Chatham (just outside Springfield). Sorry I can't make a citation either, but the SJ-R only archives its stories for a few weeks.
Then there are the murders (OK, negligent homicides) at the Sangamon County Jail. I knew one of the victims personally, his name was Maurice "Moe" Burris. He died in agony when the jail doctor refused to send him to the hospital, even though he was puking blood. His family recently successfully sued the county for Moe's death. The quack doctor that killed my acquaintence is still working for the county instead of sitting in prison for negligent homicide as he should be. Luckily the IT isn't as retarded as the SJ-R when it comes to data retention (among other things), you can find more about the Innocence Project and the police misconduct that led to the end of the death penalty there as well. I'd link to the SJ-R's take on the quack practicing medicine but they'll probably pull the story before you could see it.
This was a big deal a couple years ago; detectives lied to a judge about a "trash rip" to get a search warrant, then planted cocaine during the "search". The suspect was freed by the judge, no criminal action was taken against the detectives (but if you lie to a judge you'll go to jail). The detectives were fired, then later rehired after suing the city!
Those are instances just here in Illinois and mostly local! Multiply that by fifty and you'll begin to see how bad the situation really is. These kinds stories are incredibly easy to find in reputable newspapers.
You MUST remember Ruby Ridge and Waco, don't you?
The situation is bad. It's no wonder that poor people ALL fear and loathe the police. I assume the fellow you responded to has probably been personally victimized by thuggish cops.
So? Copyright and trademark exist.
Trademarks are property, copyrights and patents are not; at least, not according to the US Constitution that politicians must swear an oath to uphold when being sworn in to office. If you rent your house, it isn't your property; it belongs to the landlord. You merely have a limited time monopoly on that property. You do NOT own it, and "intellectual property" gives the impression that I own the material I hold copyright on, when I do not. The very term "intellectual property" is a lie, and I never heard it used until the Bono Act made copyrights last longer than people.
Steamboat Willie and Dumbo belong to us. Disney has merely been granted a "limited" time monopoly on their publication.
He's probably around my age. Back in the late '60s and '70s, "pig" was the hippie word for "cop". Which fit; the cops protect the 1% (listen to the Beatles Piggies) from the 99%. Read Animal Farm. The term fits.
And when you're criticizing someone who is doing terrible evil, how can you not be antagonistic? Sorry to Godwin the thread, but if you were talking about Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot would you not be antagonistic? Always be antagonistic to evil!
Citing the wsj for an anti-union story is like citing linux.com for an anti-microsoft article, or citing Fox News for an anti-Obama article. As to "Corporations and unions are no different in their self-interest at the expense of everyone else", that's incorrect. Whether you're in a union or not, you can blame or praise them for safer working conditions, wekends, paid vacations, sick leave, and a host of other things you would never have had were it not for unions. When the union wins, the only losers are management and the 1%, those who work for a living always win when the union wins whether or not they're in a union.
I found TFS amusing. $85? I paid $125 for XP almost ten years ago. And this was hilarious:
You mention that the OEM will use lower quality tablet parts if they have to pay more for the OS, I wonder what Apple and Google are charging? And I'll be willing to bet that even if it has higher specs, the Windows tablet won't be any more powerful than the lowest end Android and slower than the Apple, because of the OS' bloat and the need for AV on Microsoft products. Nothing sucks your computing power like McAfee or Norton. Except for maybe being part of a botnet, that would really slow your machine down!
No, I'm not trolling, and I do understand that language evolves. But it's "evolving" far faster than it has in the last half century (I know from experience, I was ten a half century ago). "Troll" is from the internet age, it's not nearly old enough to change meaning. And I specifically cited wikipedia because of the fact that it is an evolutionary database. When the meaning of "troll" actually does change, that change will be reflected in wikipedia. But as you see, it hasn't.
Troll still doesn't mean "I disagree with you". I imagine the reason is that would make the term just about meaningless.
I've written a couple of things concerning offline trolling, you may find them amusing.
Fun with offline trolls
(this one actually mentions the evolution of language, specifically the word "gay")
Trolling at the Springfield St. Patrick's Day Parade
Trolling for Dollars (and other Springfield nonsense)
(the offline trolling is at the end)
Here's one about Troll Biting (still the #1 result for a google search for "biters anonymous".)
Well, the study didn't say that sleeping more lessens the chances of stroke. It could be that the factors that cause stroke also cause one to get less sleep. If that were the case, lack of sleep would still be related to stroke, even though there would be no direct causation between them. Still, it's been my experience (sample size of one, I know) that not getting enough sleep does adversely affect health. Mine, anyway. It also affects my cognitive abilities (this has been studied and the studies confirm it).
I still am completely opposed because, first and foremost, it puts the recipients' health (or education, or whatever) completely at risk of the whims of those who choose to donate. If a cause, say, breakfast for all poor children, is really worthy, why isn't it worthy of direct government support?
I think you read something into my comment that wasn't there. The people who worship money are also against taxes, especially against tax money going to the needy. You and I are not among these people, obviously. Like you, I give, and have no objection whatever to my taxes going to help the needy. I agree with you that making the needy rely only on charity is a bad thing.
3) about 2^18 bits of RAM were needed to get any useful work done
That's about 32kb, do you have a citation? Because if he really said that, he was wrong. I wrote word processors, games, drawing programs, even a joke turing test taker that ran on half that much memory. Hell, somebody wrote a pretty good chess program that would run on a 4k Timex!
Just put a steel brush attachment on your electric drill, the teflon will come off eaily. As will burned-on food.
No wonder you have five times as many freaks as friends.
Aren't the Web thread denizens who engage in demeaning remarks and personal attacks called Mobys?
I've been on the internet for fifteen years and never once heard the term "moby". Apparently, neither has wikipedia.
I agree with you that a genuine troll is someone who doesn't necessarily believe in the position they are taking
Then why are you arguing the opposite? Are you trolling? Yes, sometimes it's hard to tell. Me, when someone disagrees with an opinion of mine, no matter how vehemently, I assume they're sincere. If they're factually incorrect I'll try to correct them, preferably with a link.
Troll does not mean "someone who disagrees with me." Troll means exactly what wikipedia and the slashdot page says it means.
"The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed," wrote the late novelist Doris Lessing. "Your body changes, but you don't change at all."
I'm sorry to say thats BS
I'm 60, and I agree with you. Lessig was wrong. I'm not even the same man I was when I was 40.
Its not just the body that changes , the mind changes too.
Of course it does. The brain changes, just like every other organ, and the mind resides within the brain.
How is that different from apathy?
Completely, it's a feeling of helplessness, not apathy. It's "I would vote if it woud do any good, but both candidates have already been paid off by the anti-pot lobby and the corporations, so whichever one I pick I'm screwed anyway."
Then you might want to (attempt to) edit the current wikipedia definition, because they disagree with you, and so does /.'s FAQ (which says pretty much the same thing as wikipedia). Just because you're too ignorant to know shit from shinola doesn't give you the right to smear shit on my shoes. Just because you think a dog is a rat doesn't make it one. Not even if most ignorant people think dogs are rats.
Ignorance should be fought. Period. Especially in one's self. Following the example of someone you know to be ignorant is just stupid. Educate them instead.
No. That's what dummies have come to imply it means. They are using the world wrong. Sadly, many of these dummies are also slashdot moderators.
You would think people would read the FAQ. You would also think that slashdot would go back to the old metamoderation system that actually worked. I see far more bad moderations these days than I used to. But maybe that's because when I first started reading slashdot, few except nerds were on the internet. Now every damned idiot is, and many of them post here.
The one I read didn't exactly say that. It said that if your father was older you would likely live longer because you weren't stillborn. Older fathers tend to have weaker sperm and greater chance that the fetus will not survive, becoming a father at an older age means that your cells are "younger" than other people your age, including your sperm cells. If all your great gransparents lived to be a hundred, chances are you will, too. People age at different rates; I know folks twenty years younger than me who look older than me. And yes, both my parents are in their eighties and healthy. When she was 95 my grandmother told me "I don't know why folks want to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old".
There are. There were five candidates in the last presidential election on enough ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning. The trouble is, even though they are all viable, the media refuses to acknowledge the Greens, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists. Which they do because the media are corporate-owned, and it's cheaper to bribe two candidates than it is to bribe five.
The "shortage" of workers is a lie manufactured by Oracle, Microsoft, etc.
No, just a redefinition of terms. By "shortage" they mean "nobody is willing to work fo rthe shit salaries we're offering."