I've been working on The Paxil Diaries since 2003, it'll be in book form soon (I need permission to add a 40 year old poem by a dead poet). You have to give the guy who's working on something by himself a little time. An author or musician who doesn't have to do anything to do but write can get a book or album done in a few months, but for those of us with a day job there just isn't enough time.
Plus, most movies take a couple of years to shoot, by the time it hits the theaters your five year limit is halfway gone. IIRC, Star Wreck - In The Pirkinning took over five years to "film" because it was all volunteer part timers making it. With a five year copyright, it would have been in the public domain before shooting was finished.
When you reach your fourth decade you'll start to realize just how short five years really is.
The elephant and donkey were originally used in political cartoons lampooning the parties.
A political cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874, is considered the first important use of the [elephant] symbol.[15] In the early 20th century, the usual symbol of the Republican Party in Midwestern states such as Indiana and Ohio was the eagle, as opposed to the Democratic rooster. This symbol still appears on Indiana, New York,[16][dead link] and West Virginia[17][dead link] ballots.
The most common mascot symbol for the [Democratic] party is the donkey, although the party never officially adopted this symbol.[113] Andrew Jackson's opponents had labeled him a jackass during the intense mudslinging in 1828. A political cartoon titled "A Modern Balaam and his Ass" depicting Jackson riding and directing a donkey (representing the Democratic Party) was published in 1837. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1870 edition of Harper's Weekly revived the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party. Cartoonists followed Nast and used the donkey to represent the Democrats, and the elephant to represent the Republicans.
I can't agree with that, but it certainly needs reform. Twenty years for a copyright would be OK with me, and I don't think sharing or other noncommercial use should be illegal. I think they should go back to making a copyright date on a work mandatory (it isn't because the terms are so rediculously long). I'd like the registration fees to drop back down to twenty bucks or even farther.
Copyright has been a good thing in the past, in its present form it's an abomination that hinders creativity.
I wrote the late President Nixon, was replied to by some general who simply thanked me for my service to my country (I was in the Air Force then). I Wrote the late Senator Simon and got a polite, noncommital reply that he disagreed with my position. The only politicians who have really answered any mail are state legislators and city government officials.
But I guarantee you that if you drop $100k in any politician's re-election coffers, you'll have far more than mere "access".
The original Dungeons & Dragons, now referred to as OD&D,[74] was a small box set of three booklets published in 1974.
I was 22 in 1974, never heard of D&D until some time in the 90s when I got internet access. However, I used a slide rule to cheat in math class in the 5th grade, made a working computer out of two potentiometers, a battery, and a voltmeter in 7th grade, and turned $10 transistor radios into $150 guitar fuzzboxes as a teenager.
The idiots at infoworld can't even make a web page work. Why is anyone taking a geek IQ test that was written by someone who obviously has no clue whatever about technology?
People just don't seem to understand what limited liability is. If you're the CEO of a corporation and you hire an assassin to kill your competitor's engineering team, you go to jail for murder.
If I get drunk and run over someone, I'll go to jail for negligent homicide. But if a corporation breaks safety rules that prevent a buildup of explosive gasses and the mine expolodes, killing two dozen men, nobody goes to jail, even though that's plainly negligent homicide.
It's perfectly legal for corporations to kill human beings.
if corporations 'are people' then they should GO TO JAIL like people when caught breaking the law.
I think the GP was pointing out that they don't. It was a reference to XCP, the trojan that Sony surreptuously installed on PCs that played their BMG CDs. I was a victim, my computer was completely trashed. I think Sony's CEO should have spent more time than Kevin Mitnik, since they hacked far more computers than Mitnik did. But nobody spent a day in the pokey, not even a singlt lowly Sony employee.
How's that different than a speeding ticket? Ever notice that the speeders on the interstate are almost always driving late model luxury cars? That $150 fine is way too high for me to afford, but for someone who spends $500 on a necktie that $150 fine is of less economic consequence than my buying a beer at a tavern.
I agree that it isn't moral, but the laws are written by the rich, so don't expect much morality.
Corporations have so much political strength not because they are rich, but because they really care about the issues they lobby for and against.
Bullshit, do you think an auto mechanic could get an appointment with his US Senator? A CEO can, because his corporation has funded the politician. Your vote is pretty meaningless, the corporate dollars to buy that vote are what matter.
As to regulation, there can be too much, too little, or just bad regulating. Cowtowing to corporate interests and writing regs that help them screw you and their competetion over is bad regulation.
Do you have any idea how much you'd pay for electricity if the power companies weren't regulated? In a monopolistic industry, heavy regulation is necessary.
The recent financial meltdown was a result of deregulation (Glass-Stegall repealed). The problem is when an industry writes its own regs, like Hollywood writing copyright law (or Wall Street getting Glass-Stegal repealed).
A corporation is not like a person, it is like a church, the difference being that in church people exercise their faith, while in a corporation people exercise a complete absence of faith.
A Christian has no more or less faith in his God than the corporates have faith in mammon. Mammon is revealed to be a fickle god often in history -- 1929 and 2008 being good examples of their god's "power". And, of course, when no amount of money will keep you alive you might consider that you've been worshiping the wrong god.
So yes, a corporation is indeed like a church; a bank is a house of worship to greedheads. But if they had no faith in money, money would have no power (Germany's hyperinflation before WWII is a good example). When mammon worshipers lose faith in their little green god, it loses its power.
You're confusing genetic manipulation with breeding. You can breed wolves to become poodles, but you can't breed them so they glow in the dark; you can genitcally menipulate them to, by introducing genes from unrelated life forms. Nothing about breeding food is dangerous, genetically modifying it could be.
Ever since reading Jurassic Park, I've always wanted a Cray supercomputer.
The computer on your desk is more powerful than a 1972 Cray, at the time the fastest supercomputer in the world. So you already have one.
I want to add GO ILLINOIS! U of I has had supercomputers and lots of computer research for decades. Not sure if U of I has a paleontology department...
To absorb calcium into bones we need some enzymes that come from animal products, such as beef and fish. Without those enzymes one needs to eat a surplus of calcium and that could have side effects, such as kidney and gall bladder stones.
Ironically, the percutanous nephrolithotomy is a procedure for removing kidney stones.
I don't know that I'd want the health issues of going back to eating animal products. Ever have a percutanous nephrolithotomy?
Never had a kidney stone, nobody in my family has ever had one. Ever had a vitrectomy? No surgical procedure is fun. I'd far prefer having a needle shoved into my kidney than one shoved into my eyeball. And wikipedia says that meat isn't the only cause of kidney stones.
Dietary factors that increase the risk of stone formation include low fluid intake, and high dietary intake of animal protein, sodium, refined sugars, fructose and high fructose corn syrup[5], oxalate, grapefruit juice, apple juice, and cola drinks.[6]
Looks to me like HFCS is far more dangerous than meat if you're prone to kidney stones, and if you drink enough water you won't get them at all. Substituting Pepsi for water is begging for a percutanous nephrolithotomy.
Well, we don't have a democracy, we have a plutocratic republic. This is no different than any other industry; the AMA writes doctor laws, the drug companies write drug laws (the real reason pot is illegal), etc. It's pervasive.
Agreed. I finally figured out why my grandmother's fried chicken was so good when I was a child -- my grandparents raised the chickens from eggs. My friend Mike used to raise hogs, which he fed a mixture of hog feed and ice cream mix, and that was some DAMNED good pork.
It seems if they get the nutrients right, this petrimeat might actually come close to your range fed beef in its taste. What's more likely is that it will be as nasty as a McBurger but people will just get used to it like they did McBurgers.
Look at how bad store-bought tomatos are; no taste at all. Most food is like that. I thought I didn't like peas, but discovered what I didn't like was canned peas.
Why not? Everything dies sooner or later, and they're killed mercifully. What I don't like is the inhumane conditions food animals are raised in (the greenhouse gas thing bothers me some, too). But like you, I'm not going to stop eating meat.
The only downside I can see to meat grown in vitro is it makes unnecessary Douglas Adams' animal that not only wants to be eaten, but is capable of telling you so. But that's a minor price to pay.
As to the "killing the cattle" thing, a friend of mine used to raise a few hogs. One of the hogs bit him, he said that pig was the best tasting pork he ever ate. Dinner and revenge all in one! Pigs are mean, nasty, vicious animals. Don't cry for the dead pigs.
In the US, constitutionally copyrights are property rights -- and the property is owned by we, the people. The copyright holder has a limited time monopoly, not ownership.
Copyright worked well until the Disney corporation obtained the right to own the US Congress. 14 years was reasonable; 24 was even reasonable. IMO the current copyright lengths are unconstitutional, but the the Supreme Court (seated by the same politicians that Disney owns) disagrees with me.
But as I said to another poster - should one not have the right to one's creations? What gives you the right to claim them as your own or as the public's?
Because they're not 100% your creation. Nothing comes from a vaccuum. Like science and technology, all art comes from what came before it. "If I see farther than other men, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants." Here's a story that would be far weaker had it not incorporated a forty year old song that should have passed into the public domain long ago; a song that is part of our heritage and part of our public awareness. Tell me, do you honestly believe that "Happy Birthday" should be under copyright?
Imagine how technology would stagnate if patents lasted as long as copyrights. That's how art is stagnating now.
You can indeed own your own thoughts and words and art -- but once you let them loose, they no longer belong to you.
And I say this as someone who has painted, written computer programs, artices, stories, poetry, and music, and have a book floating around BitTorrent (I seeded it myself). Once someone hears my words, those words no longer belong to me.
The US Constitution says that I don't own my words; "we, the people" do. I merely have a "limited" time monopoly on their publication.
It seems you're the one who needs to look those words up.
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people.[1][2] In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch.[3][4] The word republic is derived from the Latin phrase res publica, which can be translated as "a public affair", and often used to describe a state using this form of government.
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives.[1] Ideally, this includes equal (and more or less direct) participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law.[1] It can also encompass social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination.[citation needed]
In a democracy, all laws are decided by referendum. You could have a republican democracy, where the people vote for legislators and the legislation doesn't become law unless ratified by popular vote.
AFAIK there are no countries that are democracies; most are republics. Some are monarchies. Some are some other form of dictatorship.
Slashdot Mirror
The key word in that sentence is "noncommercial".
I've been working on The Paxil Diaries since 2003, it'll be in book form soon (I need permission to add a 40 year old poem by a dead poet). You have to give the guy who's working on something by himself a little time. An author or musician who doesn't have to do anything to do but write can get a book or album done in a few months, but for those of us with a day job there just isn't enough time.
Plus, most movies take a couple of years to shoot, by the time it hits the theaters your five year limit is halfway gone. IIRC, Star Wreck - In The Pirkinning took over five years to "film" because it was all volunteer part timers making it. With a five year copyright, it would have been in the public domain before shooting was finished.
When you reach your fourth decade you'll start to realize just how short five years really is.
The elephant and donkey were originally used in political cartoons lampooning the parties.
A political cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874, is considered the first important use of the [elephant] symbol.[15] In the early 20th century, the usual symbol of the Republican Party in Midwestern states such as Indiana and Ohio was the eagle, as opposed to the Democratic rooster. This symbol still appears on Indiana, New York,[16][dead link] and West Virginia[17][dead link] ballots.
The most common mascot symbol for the [Democratic] party is the donkey, although the party never officially adopted this symbol.[113] Andrew Jackson's opponents had labeled him a jackass during the intense mudslinging in 1828. A political cartoon titled "A Modern Balaam and his Ass" depicting Jackson riding and directing a donkey (representing the Democratic Party) was published in 1837. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1870 edition of Harper's Weekly revived the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party. Cartoonists followed Nast and used the donkey to represent the Democrats, and the elephant to represent the Republicans.
Copyright needs to end.
I can't agree with that, but it certainly needs reform. Twenty years for a copyright would be OK with me, and I don't think sharing or other noncommercial use should be illegal. I think they should go back to making a copyright date on a work mandatory (it isn't because the terms are so rediculously long). I'd like the registration fees to drop back down to twenty bucks or even farther.
Copyright has been a good thing in the past, in its present form it's an abomination that hinders creativity.
I wrote the late President Nixon, was replied to by some general who simply thanked me for my service to my country (I was in the Air Force then). I Wrote the late Senator Simon and got a polite, noncommital reply that he disagreed with my position. The only politicians who have really answered any mail are state legislators and city government officials.
But I guarantee you that if you drop $100k in any politician's re-election coffers, you'll have far more than mere "access".
Crony capitalism exposed
The original Dungeons & Dragons, now referred to as OD&D,[74] was a small box set of three booklets published in 1974.
I was 22 in 1974, never heard of D&D until some time in the 90s when I got internet access. However, I used a slide rule to cheat in math class in the 5th grade, made a working computer out of two potentiometers, a battery, and a voltmeter in 7th grade, and turned $10 transistor radios into $150 guitar fuzzboxes as a teenager.
The idiots at infoworld can't even make a web page work. Why is anyone taking a geek IQ test that was written by someone who obviously has no clue whatever about technology?
No one sits through a painfully slow survey that requires a complete page reload (including new ads) every time you answer a question.
Yes they do, but they're not geeks, they're idiots.
Anyone who would slog through all those one question per page pages has a two digit IQ, disqualifying them for either term "nerd" or "geek".
One of my recent journals asked what is a nerd? I don't think anyone at InfoWorld qualifies for the title.
People just don't seem to understand what limited liability is. If you're the CEO of a corporation and you hire an assassin to kill your competitor's engineering team, you go to jail for murder.
If I get drunk and run over someone, I'll go to jail for negligent homicide. But if a corporation breaks safety rules that prevent a buildup of explosive gasses and the mine expolodes, killing two dozen men, nobody goes to jail, even though that's plainly negligent homicide.
It's perfectly legal for corporations to kill human beings.
if corporations 'are people' then they should GO TO JAIL like people when caught breaking the law.
I think the GP was pointing out that they don't. It was a reference to XCP, the trojan that Sony surreptuously installed on PCs that played their BMG CDs. I was a victim, my computer was completely trashed. I think Sony's CEO should have spent more time than Kevin Mitnik, since they hacked far more computers than Mitnik did. But nobody spent a day in the pokey, not even a singlt lowly Sony employee.
How's that different than a speeding ticket? Ever notice that the speeders on the interstate are almost always driving late model luxury cars? That $150 fine is way too high for me to afford, but for someone who spends $500 on a necktie that $150 fine is of less economic consequence than my buying a beer at a tavern.
I agree that it isn't moral, but the laws are written by the rich, so don't expect much morality.
Corporations have so much political strength not because they are rich, but because they really care about the issues they lobby for and against.
Bullshit, do you think an auto mechanic could get an appointment with his US Senator? A CEO can, because his corporation has funded the politician. Your vote is pretty meaningless, the corporate dollars to buy that vote are what matter.
As to regulation, there can be too much, too little, or just bad regulating. Cowtowing to corporate interests and writing regs that help them screw you and their competetion over is bad regulation.
Do you have any idea how much you'd pay for electricity if the power companies weren't regulated? In a monopolistic industry, heavy regulation is necessary.
The recent financial meltdown was a result of deregulation (Glass-Stegall repealed). The problem is when an industry writes its own regs, like Hollywood writing copyright law (or Wall Street getting Glass-Stegal repealed).
A corporation is not like a person, it is like a church, the difference being that in church people exercise their faith, while in a corporation people exercise a complete absence of faith.
A Christian has no more or less faith in his God than the corporates have faith in mammon. Mammon is revealed to be a fickle god often in history -- 1929 and 2008 being good examples of their god's "power". And, of course, when no amount of money will keep you alive you might consider that you've been worshiping the wrong god.
So yes, a corporation is indeed like a church; a bank is a house of worship to greedheads. But if they had no faith in money, money would have no power (Germany's hyperinflation before WWII is a good example). When mammon worshipers lose faith in their little green god, it loses its power.
You're confusing genetic manipulation with breeding. You can breed wolves to become poodles, but you can't breed them so they glow in the dark; you can genitcally menipulate them to, by introducing genes from unrelated life forms. Nothing about breeding food is dangerous, genetically modifying it could be.
Ever since reading Jurassic Park, I've always wanted a Cray supercomputer.
The computer on your desk is more powerful than a 1972 Cray, at the time the fastest supercomputer in the world. So you already have one.
I want to add GO ILLINOIS! U of I has had supercomputers and lots of computer research for decades. Not sure if U of I has a paleontology department...
To absorb calcium into bones we need some enzymes that come from animal products, such as beef and fish. Without those enzymes one needs to eat a surplus of calcium and that could have side effects, such as kidney and gall bladder stones.
Ironically, the percutanous nephrolithotomy is a procedure for removing kidney stones.
I don't know that I'd want the health issues of going back to eating animal products. Ever have a percutanous nephrolithotomy?
Never had a kidney stone, nobody in my family has ever had one. Ever had a vitrectomy? No surgical procedure is fun. I'd far prefer having a needle shoved into my kidney than one shoved into my eyeball. And wikipedia says that meat isn't the only cause of kidney stones.
Dietary factors that increase the risk of stone formation include low fluid intake, and high dietary intake of animal protein, sodium, refined sugars, fructose and high fructose corn syrup[5], oxalate, grapefruit juice, apple juice, and cola drinks.[6]
Looks to me like HFCS is far more dangerous than meat if you're prone to kidney stones, and if you drink enough water you won't get them at all. Substituting Pepsi for water is begging for a percutanous nephrolithotomy.
Well, we don't have a democracy, we have a plutocratic republic. This is no different than any other industry; the AMA writes doctor laws, the drug companies write drug laws (the real reason pot is illegal), etc. It's pervasive.
Agreed. I finally figured out why my grandmother's fried chicken was so good when I was a child -- my grandparents raised the chickens from eggs. My friend Mike used to raise hogs, which he fed a mixture of hog feed and ice cream mix, and that was some DAMNED good pork.
It seems if they get the nutrients right, this petrimeat might actually come close to your range fed beef in its taste. What's more likely is that it will be as nasty as a McBurger but people will just get used to it like they did McBurgers.
Look at how bad store-bought tomatos are; no taste at all. Most food is like that. I thought I didn't like peas, but discovered what I didn't like was canned peas.
I don't like the whole killing cattle thing
Why not? Everything dies sooner or later, and they're killed mercifully. What I don't like is the inhumane conditions food animals are raised in (the greenhouse gas thing bothers me some, too). But like you, I'm not going to stop eating meat.
The only downside I can see to meat grown in vitro is it makes unnecessary Douglas Adams' animal that not only wants to be eaten, but is capable of telling you so. But that's a minor price to pay.
As to the "killing the cattle" thing, a friend of mine used to raise a few hogs. One of the hogs bit him, he said that pig was the best tasting pork he ever ate. Dinner and revenge all in one! Pigs are mean, nasty, vicious animals. Don't cry for the dead pigs.
In the US, constitutionally copyrights are property rights -- and the property is owned by we, the people. The copyright holder has a limited time monopoly, not ownership.
Copyright worked well until the Disney corporation obtained the right to own the US Congress. 14 years was reasonable; 24 was even reasonable. IMO the current copyright lengths are unconstitutional, but the the Supreme Court (seated by the same politicians that Disney owns) disagrees with me.
But as I said to another poster - should one not have the right to one's creations? What gives you the right to claim them as your own or as the public's?
Because they're not 100% your creation. Nothing comes from a vaccuum. Like science and technology, all art comes from what came before it. "If I see farther than other men, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants." Here's a story that would be far weaker had it not incorporated a forty year old song that should have passed into the public domain long ago; a song that is part of our heritage and part of our public awareness. Tell me, do you honestly believe that "Happy Birthday" should be under copyright?
Imagine how technology would stagnate if patents lasted as long as copyrights. That's how art is stagnating now.
You can indeed own your own thoughts and words and art -- but once you let them loose, they no longer belong to you.
And I say this as someone who has painted, written computer programs, artices, stories, poetry, and music, and have a book floating around BitTorrent (I seeded it myself). Once someone hears my words, those words no longer belong to me.
The US Constitution says that I don't own my words; "we, the people" do. I merely have a "limited" time monopoly on their publication.
It seems you don't understand the word "corporatocracy". It would probably help your case if you did.
Plutocracy.
It seems you're the one who needs to look those words up.
In a democracy, all laws are decided by referendum. You could have a republican democracy, where the people vote for legislators and the legislation doesn't become law unless ratified by popular vote.
AFAIK there are no countries that are democracies; most are republics. Some are monarchies. Some are some other form of dictatorship.