His solution was to replace a defective cable with a more expensive cable, and the implication is that "more expensive cable works better than less expensive one".
The reality is that he could simply have replaced with defective cable with a non defective cable, including the same price and brand as the first one.
While I suppose there are probably "brands" that build shit so poorly that more of its defective than not, for an HDMI cable, 4 bucks is more than you need to spend for a cable that sits behind your TV for 5 years.
If you are carrying it around in your laptop bag and coiling it, uncoiling it, leaving it outside in the sun, attaching it and detaching it 10 times a day... then sure... maybe you'll benefit from a $20 brand name cable... maybe.
So if I were to rewrite a section of a textbook, but "merely" rephrase the text so that it's easier to understand, I would be guilty of copyright infringement.
Why pick one particular textbook to paraphrase? If you are going to write a clear easy to understand explanation of a subject... write one. There is nothing stopping you.
You don't have to paraphrase one particular textbook in lockstep from start to finish.
It hasn't escaped my notice that the discussion here seems to have casually avoided the question of whether a rephrasing is an improvement or not.
a) If you want to write a better textbook, write one without taking an existing one and paraphrasing it cover to cover. Surely paraphrasing it cover to cover isn't the ONLY possible way you can improve on it.
b) That said, based on the largely automated and mechanical description of the process, I can't see it being anything but lower quality than the original.
If you fleshed out the rest of the original Dr. Seuss book in your new form and published it as a children's story, yes you would probably be liable for copyright infringement.
That was where I was going. Because the context is taking an existing book, and paraphrasing it from cover to cover.
As to the arguments the lawyers might make:
I've publicly told everyone I took Green Eggs and make a line by line transcription of it to create a book that was essentially the same.
I've publicly told everyone that the sole reason I made it was to compete directly with Green Eggs and Ham to give parents a cheaper alternative.
Your right, there's no way to KNOW for sure what the courts will do... but it probably should be copyright infringement.
That has absolutely fuck all to do with copyright or honesty. It has everything to do with properly testing your knowledge of the material.
The point stands however, that we have no trouble distinguishing between the two.
And the original textbook is simply a derivative of the work of other scientists or authors, whose work is also a derivative of someone else, etc. etc.
And anyone doing research will tell you its fine to cite and paraphrase from another work, but to go through another work, and paraphrase it paragraph by paragraph, image by image, diagram by diagram from cover to cover isn't even remotely approaching anything that might be considered fine.
Take any given page in the textbook and go find the source, and you'll find that the textbook is just a paraphrase of the source.
No, the definition of equation or variable or alebra might be paraphrased; but the examples they use to illustrate things, the images they use to add humor or insight, the sidebars... its not copied whole cloth from anything else.
It's all based on knowledge built up over centuries, by the efforts of millions.
And to create a new work, you need to accumulate knowledge from several sources, while adding your own insights.
You don't just take an existing book, and paraphrase it cover to cover. To say that's the same thing is idiotic.
This case has the potential of locking out all but the very largest publishers from making sellable products, since if you write a textbook to fit the California or Texas specs, you'll automatically be "copying" what the largest publishers have already done.
There's a huge difference between writing a text book to a curriculum, no matter how restrictive it is...
and mechanically taking a textbook and replacing it paragraph for paragraph, diagram for diagram, image for image with something equivalent but slightly different.
When you were assigned tests and homework in school, and the format of what you turned in was pretty rigid, and you were all answering the same questions... but we had no trouble then understanding that writing our own answers and handing them in was acceptable while taking someone elses answers and then just rearranging them a bit, and pushing it through a thesaurus was dishonest, or that automating the process was even more dishonest.
We all had no trouble understanding then, that 2 independant people writing answers that were equivalent was nothing the same as 1 person copying answers from the other.
How you got your answers was just as important as the result.
CLEARLY, taking a work, and mechanically transforming it into a new equivalent work is by definition a derivative work.
While two independant authors coming up with similiar results when posed similiar constraints is not.
It's called a "straw-man" argument: build an effigy of the real target (a scarecrow), shoot it down, and claim that you have made a real difference. Just as such straw-men have historically (sometimes) fooled people in war, they still do in arguments.
Really, the fact that his argument involved the standard deduction instead of an optional one isn't all that relevant. It still pointed out the absurdity in attributing in the discretionary funds an individual donates to charity-X as "government funding".
Meanwhile, the guy giving 10% of his income to a mosque gets a write off too. So because that's an optional deduction, the rational conclusion is that the state is now establishing Islam as state funded religion...
No the point about NPR is that they get a significant amount of funding from people and organisations who would otherwise have to give that money to the government in the form of taxes
Sure, and the guy who gives 10% of his income to a church/mosque/temple is also getting a tax write off for it.
So I guess the government is now funding the establishment of a religion, because the church is busy sending missionaries door to door.../sarcasm
Your standard deduction is not at all optional in the way a gift to NPR is.
But a donation to a church is. And it makes the same point.
It was a well directed, acted, scripted, and paced movie telling a time old tale that was fun and enjoyable.
It was well directed, well acted movie with a script so predictable that it was almost painful to watch. It was too long, and is all but unwatchable a second time. It wasn't a "time old tale" it was a "bag of worn out cliches and cardboard characters stitched together in the least imaginable way possible".
This Pam-is-me This Pam-is-me I don't much like this Pam-is-me!
Would you take Grey rice and tea?
I don't much want them Pam-is-me I will not take grey rice and tea....
You really going to try and tell me that this is not a derivative work?
Taking a text book, and mechanically recreating its content substituting other content intended to convey the same essential information is about as textbook a defnition of creating derivative work as youcan get.
Does the process work without an original textbook to align to? No.
I am ALL for open textbooks and open courseware, but sorry, mechanically creating an "open version" of a textbook by this method is not the way to do it.
(I don't know about you but I simply can't imagine "wandering around" while browsing. Even when I'm not home I always find me a table to sit down to, or a bench if I'm outside).
Sure... and if you start downloading something at a table, while logged into another PC doing some remote admin and then decide to relocate to a bench outside.
Me... I just pickup the laptop and walk from the table to the bench.
You apparently have to wait for the download to complete or pause it, terminate your active connections, unplug and neatly put away a cable (or just leave a mess of cables all over the place), move to the new locations, plug in, re-establish connections...
But as every phone today has a microUSB port it should be possible to connect them to a networked computer for someone without wifi
Even if it was possible.. if I wanted to check my email from my phone, why on earth would I want to attach it to a computer first?
And that still wouldn't get the Nintendo 3DS's online...
It requires some work to set up but you only have to do it once.
Of course you look like an idiot wandering around the house with your tablet and a 50' cable... assuming you can find a tablet that has a jack to plug it into.
I agree wired is best, but for a lot of stuff wired makes no sense, or isn't even an option. I don't want to use a cable when using my laptop on the kitchen table, or out in the balcony on a sunny day, or the living room couch... and we have several devices that are wifi only:
iPhone (sure I could use 3G when at home but that's slower) Blackberry (doesn't actually have a data plan at the moment) 2x Nintendo 3DS
a) The context was intellectual property rights. For most of history they did not exist and society was productive.
b) Even in "modern western society" there are many situations where we have collective ownership of things, and it works just fine. Parks, Streets, Mass transit systems, libraries, mathematical proofs...
Respecting the "rights of ownership" are important, but equally important is realizing that everything needs to be owned by someone.
You do not have the right to force morals onto anybody with law as that infringes on their rights, freedom and liberty
Every law that has ever been passed infringes on someones freedoms to do something. Whether it limits where I dump my garbage to whether I'm allowed use sawdust as filler when I sell you pancakes to whether I'm allowed to cut your head off and wear it around like a hat.
That's why the Constitution was written, to limit the power the Government could wield over the people, and in essence, limit the amount of power the "Majority" could wield over everyone else.
And if significant majority of people want to change the constitution, they can do it.
If you want moral law, move somewhere else.
Practically all law is an attempt to formally codify morality in some way.
You need a house with an extra bedroom. Someone at home around the clock.
So...you need a single income family in a house with extra rooms... In an age of dual income families who both have to work just to afford living in a small condo.
Had a neighbor once pissed off someone was building on the land behind him. He came over yelling and screaming that he paid extra to have the lot he had because of the trees.
Lots of people pay extra for the "view", and the aesthetics of the surrounding property. This is not at all irrational the way you make it out to be.
I paid extra and selected my current property because there is a green belt adjacent to the lot. I checked that it was zoned as protected green space around the creek that runs through it.
Its heck of a lot better than merely being adjacent to "undeveloped" property, which can be zoned and developed at any time.
But other than being vigilant about any city rezoning plans, and raising a stink if some developer decides to apply to have it rezoned so they can drop a condo on the lot there's not much one can really do.
Do you think an original unproduced script writer for star trek tries to direct his script on his own every day? Do you think star trek fans would find that interesting if one did?
Isn't that the definition of news? Something somewhat out of the ordinary happens involving something that people are interested in... sounds like the definition of new.
What I can't figure out is why so many people on slashdot can't figure out why things are considered news.
CBS is the entity that has the rights and trademarks for Star Trek, and if we are to have a productive society, the rights of ownership must be respected.
Writing a macro language for your anything that has the ability to silently add/edit the macros in other unrelated documents is just nine kinds of stupid.
What makes you sure something equivalent couldn't be done with iWork and Applescript? I mean other than iWork's marketshare, of course.
could all be "secret".. not necessarily illegal but maybe the fact that you happen to be good friends with a guy who you know smokes up regularly, and another guy who pissed on a dumpster in an alley at 2am walking home from the bar and is now a registered sex offender...
maybe you don't want border patrol hassling you about them, or extra because of them... again... simply because they're friends of yours... during a routine stop crossing the border to visit family... or whatever hypothetical situation law enforcement has for grabbing at your stuff this time.
If they can stick your phone on a box... and analyze it for "criminality" links... they will.
We need to a) make it technically not possible through security.
b) make it clearly unreasonable search and an invasion of privacy short of a warrant relating to suspicion of an actual crime instead of going on a fishing expedition on everyone who wants to do anything beyond hide in their own house their whole life.
Slashdot Mirror
A broken cable is broken.
His solution was to replace a defective cable with a more expensive cable, and the implication is that "more expensive cable works better than less expensive one".
The reality is that he could simply have replaced with defective cable with a non defective cable, including the same price and brand as the first one.
While I suppose there are probably "brands" that build shit so poorly that more of its defective than not, for an HDMI cable, 4 bucks is more than you need to spend for a cable that sits behind your TV for 5 years.
If you are carrying it around in your laptop bag and coiling it, uncoiling it, leaving it outside in the sun, attaching it and detaching it 10 times a day... then sure... maybe you'll benefit from a $20 brand name cable... maybe.
So if I were to rewrite a section of a textbook, but "merely" rephrase the text so that it's easier to understand, I would be guilty of copyright infringement.
Why pick one particular textbook to paraphrase? If you are going to write a clear easy to understand explanation of a subject... write one. There is nothing stopping you.
You don't have to paraphrase one particular textbook in lockstep from start to finish.
It hasn't escaped my notice that the discussion here seems to have casually avoided the question of whether a rephrasing is an improvement or not.
a) If you want to write a better textbook, write one without taking an existing one and paraphrasing it cover to cover. Surely paraphrasing it cover to cover isn't the ONLY possible way you can improve on it.
b) That said, based on the largely automated and mechanical description of the process, I can't see it being anything but lower quality than the original.
If you fleshed out the rest of the original Dr. Seuss book in your new form and published it as a children's story, yes you would probably be liable for copyright infringement.
That was where I was going. Because the context is taking an existing book, and paraphrasing it from cover to cover.
As to the arguments the lawyers might make:
I've publicly told everyone I took Green Eggs and make a line by line transcription of it to create a book that was essentially the same.
I've publicly told everyone that the sole reason I made it was to compete directly with Green Eggs and Ham to give parents a cheaper alternative.
Your right, there's no way to KNOW for sure what the courts will do... but it probably should be copyright infringement.
That has absolutely fuck all to do with copyright or honesty. It has everything to do with properly testing your knowledge of the material.
The point stands however, that we have no trouble distinguishing between the two.
And the original textbook is simply a derivative of the work of other scientists or authors, whose work is also a derivative of someone else, etc. etc.
And anyone doing research will tell you its fine to cite and paraphrase from another work, but to go through another work, and paraphrase it paragraph by paragraph, image by image, diagram by diagram from cover to cover isn't even remotely approaching anything that might be considered fine.
Take any given page in the textbook and go find the source, and you'll find that the textbook is just a paraphrase of the source.
No, the definition of equation or variable or alebra might be paraphrased; but the examples they use to illustrate things, the images they use to add humor or insight, the sidebars ... its not copied whole cloth from anything else.
It's all based on knowledge built up over centuries, by the efforts of millions.
And to create a new work, you need to accumulate knowledge from several sources, while adding your own insights.
You don't just take an existing book, and paraphrase it cover to cover. To say that's the same thing is idiotic.
I thought you were calling the post above the post that attacked the standard deduction vs optional deduction the straw man... my bad.
This case has the potential of locking out all but the very largest publishers from making sellable products, since if you write a textbook to fit the California or Texas specs, you'll automatically be "copying" what the largest publishers have already done.
There's a huge difference between writing a text book to a curriculum, no matter how restrictive it is...
and mechanically taking a textbook and replacing it paragraph for paragraph, diagram for diagram, image for image with something equivalent but slightly different.
When you were assigned tests and homework in school, and the format of what you turned in was pretty rigid, and you were all answering the same questions... but we had no trouble then understanding that writing our own answers and handing them in was acceptable while taking someone elses answers and then just rearranging them a bit, and pushing it through a thesaurus was dishonest, or that automating the process was even more dishonest.
We all had no trouble understanding then, that 2 independant people writing answers that were equivalent was nothing the same as 1 person copying answers from the other.
How you got your answers was just as important as the result.
CLEARLY, taking a work, and mechanically transforming it into a new equivalent work is by definition a derivative work.
While two independant authors coming up with similiar results when posed similiar constraints is not.
It's called a "straw-man" argument: build an effigy of the real target (a scarecrow), shoot it down, and claim that you have made a real difference. Just as such straw-men have historically (sometimes) fooled people in war, they still do in arguments.
Really, the fact that his argument involved the standard deduction instead of an optional one isn't all that relevant. It still pointed out the absurdity in attributing in the discretionary funds an individual donates to charity-X as "government funding".
Meanwhile, the guy giving 10% of his income to a mosque gets a write off too. So because that's an optional deduction, the rational conclusion is that the state is now establishing Islam as state funded religion...
Yeah. Whatever.
No the point about NPR is that they get a significant amount of funding from people and organisations who would otherwise have to give that money to the government in the form of taxes
Sure, and the guy who gives 10% of his income to a church/mosque/temple is also getting a tax write off for it.
So I guess the government is now funding the establishment of a religion, because the church is busy sending missionaries door to door... /sarcasm
Your standard deduction is not at all optional in the way a gift to NPR is.
But a donation to a church is. And it makes the same point.
It was a well directed, acted, scripted, and paced movie telling a time old tale that was fun and enjoyable.
It was well directed, well acted movie with a script so predictable that it was almost painful to watch. It was too long, and is all but unwatchable a second time. It wasn't a "time old tale" it was a "bag of worn out cliches and cardboard characters stitched together in the least imaginable way possible".
At what point do you people just admit it's a story book written by a bunch of old, establishment men about 1800 years ago and nothing more?
Lots of people have reached that point, and still believe in God.
Lots of people believe in God that never even had the Bible as a starting point.
Except now you're trying to copyright an idea.
I'm Pam
Pam's Me
This Pam-is-me
This Pam-is-me
I don't much like
this Pam-is-me!
Would you take
Grey rice and tea?
I don't much want them ...
Pam-is-me
I will not take
grey rice and tea.
You really going to try and tell me that this is not a derivative work?
Taking a text book, and mechanically recreating its content substituting other content intended to convey the same essential information is about as textbook a defnition of creating derivative work as youcan get.
Does the process work without an original textbook to align to? No.
I am ALL for open textbooks and open courseware, but sorry, mechanically creating an "open version" of a textbook by this method is not the way to do it.
(I don't know about you but I simply can't imagine "wandering around" while browsing. Even when I'm not home I always find me a table to sit down to, or a bench if I'm outside).
Sure... and if you start downloading something at a table, while logged into another PC doing some remote admin and then decide to relocate to a bench outside.
Me... I just pickup the laptop and walk from the table to the bench.
You apparently have to wait for the download to complete or pause it, terminate your active connections, unplug and neatly put away a cable (or just leave a mess of cables all over the place), move to the new locations, plug in, re-establish connections...
But as every phone today has a microUSB port it should be possible to connect them to a networked computer for someone without wifi
Even if it was possible.. if I wanted to check my email from my phone, why on earth would I want to attach it to a computer first?
And that still wouldn't get the Nintendo 3DS's online...
It requires some work to set up but you only have to do it once.
Of course you look like an idiot wandering around the house with your tablet and a 50' cable... assuming you can find a tablet that has a jack to plug it into.
I agree wired is best, but for a lot of stuff wired makes no sense, or isn't even an option. I don't want to use a cable when using my laptop on the kitchen table, or out in the balcony on a sunny day, or the living room couch... and we have several devices that are wifi only:
iPhone (sure I could use 3G when at home but that's slower)
Blackberry (doesn't actually have a data plan at the moment)
2x Nintendo 3DS
-sigh- ... is realizing that NOT everything needs to be owned by someone.
a) The context was intellectual property rights. For most of history they did not exist and society was productive.
b) Even in "modern western society" there are many situations where we have collective ownership of things, and it works just fine. Parks, Streets, Mass transit systems, libraries, mathematical proofs...
Respecting the "rights of ownership" are important, but equally important is realizing that everything needs to be owned by someone.
I was referring to the promoted artists.
Yes, but were you referring to the torrents provided by the promoted artists... or any torrent provided by anyone else of the artists work?
And if an artist doesn't want to be on TPB? Will they remove the torrents of said artist's work?
I see what you did there; but TPB is acting as a search engine.
If an artist wants prominence they can pay to adertise on google.
But if an artist doesn't want to be on google? So what...?
Does google or any other search engine remove links to sites containing the artists marterials if the artist objects?
Nope.
The said artist has to provide his work as a torrent
No they don't. I'm pretty sure the Metallica torrents weren't provided by Metallica...
If your going to try and split hairs between morals and ethics, you are going to have to define exactly what you mean the difference to be.
The online dictionary I glanced at defines as its -first- definition of ethics:
"a system of moral principles"
the next source (wiktionary) i turned to suggested this distinction...
"ethical is used to describe standards of behavior between individuals, while moral or immoral can describe any behavior"
Which if anything makes ethics a strict subset of morality.
And if you accept that definition then arguing that law codifies ethics not morality is a bit of a non sequitor...
No - This is a Free Country.
That really doesn't mean anything.
You do not have the right to force morals onto anybody with law as that infringes on their rights, freedom and liberty
Every law that has ever been passed infringes on someones freedoms to do something. Whether it limits where I dump my garbage to whether I'm allowed use sawdust as filler when I sell you pancakes to whether I'm allowed to cut your head off and wear it around like a hat.
That's why the Constitution was written, to limit the power the Government could wield over the people, and in essence, limit the amount of power the "Majority" could wield over everyone else.
And if significant majority of people want to change the constitution, they can do it.
If you want moral law, move somewhere else.
Practically all law is an attempt to formally codify morality in some way.
What happened to family taking care of their own?
You need a house with an extra bedroom.
Someone at home around the clock.
So...you need a single income family in a house with extra rooms... In an age of dual income families who both have to work just to afford living in a small condo.
Had a neighbor once pissed off someone was building on the land behind him. He came over yelling and screaming that he paid extra to have the lot he had because of the trees.
Lots of people pay extra for the "view", and the aesthetics of the surrounding property. This is not at all irrational the way you make it out to be.
I paid extra and selected my current property because there is a green belt adjacent to the lot. I checked that it was zoned as protected green space around the creek that runs through it.
Its heck of a lot better than merely being adjacent to "undeveloped" property, which can be zoned and developed at any time.
But other than being vigilant about any city rezoning plans, and raising a stink if some developer decides to apply to have it rezoned so they can drop a condo on the lot there's not much one can really do.
Why is this news?
Do you think an original unproduced script writer for star trek tries to direct his script on his own every day? Do you think star trek fans would find that interesting if one did?
Isn't that the definition of news? Something somewhat out of the ordinary happens involving something that people are interested in... sounds like the definition of new.
What I can't figure out is why so many people on slashdot can't figure out why things are considered news.
CBS is the entity that has the rights and trademarks for Star Trek, and if we are to have a productive society, the rights of ownership must be respected.
That's a completely unproven assertion.
Writing a macro language for your anything that has the ability to silently add/edit the macros in other unrelated documents is just nine kinds of stupid.
What makes you sure something equivalent couldn't be done with iWork and Applescript? I mean other than iWork's marketshare, of course.
Don't keep secret stuff on your phone.
Depending on circumstances...
your call history
text message history
could all be "secret".. not necessarily illegal but maybe the fact that you happen to be good friends with a guy who you know smokes up regularly, and another guy who pissed on a dumpster in an alley at 2am walking home from the bar and is now a registered sex offender...
maybe you don't want border patrol hassling you about them, or extra because of them... again... simply because they're friends of yours... during a routine stop crossing the border to visit family... or whatever hypothetical situation law enforcement has for grabbing at your stuff this time.
If they can stick your phone on a box... and analyze it for "criminality" links... they will.
We need to
a) make it technically not possible through security.
b) make it clearly unreasonable search and an invasion of privacy short of a warrant relating to suspicion of an actual crime instead of going on a fishing expedition on everyone who wants to do anything beyond hide in their own house their whole life.