That's a pretty rough criticism of a man who wrote a story that would humble Tolkien himself.
I doubt it. Tolkien knew how to tell a story. In particular he knew that not everything that he ever envisioned happening on the face on the face of middle earth should be puked out into the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Tolkien could let characters like Gandalf go off on side quests without covering every detail. We only knew Gandalf was rescued by the eagles - that's about all that's in the book. Jordon would have taken us on that flight. We know he found his way back to Rivendell; Jordon would have taken us on that walk. At one point Sam is cooking some rabbits he caught - Jordon would have made damned sure we knew exactly how and where they were caught. And gollum? Jordon would have been sure to cover everything he did too... from leaving the mountains, to being captured and tortured, to his release, and tracked him all the way back to Moria. When the sword that was broken was remade, we didn't have half a book dedicated to the tale, nor the tale of its delivery.
Tolkien's world is famous because of its immense depth and detail. Lord of the Rings is good writing because while you get a sense of all the depth and detail, its history, and its complexity. Very little of it is actually in the book; you know its there because you can see its 'edges'; but Tolkien didn't try to tell EVERYBODY'S story. He knew better.
Consider that Tolkien had the fellowship break up. He elected to chase essentially 3 paths, not ALL of them. We could have had books dedicated to what Gandalf was doing, we could have followed Boromir's boat over the falls and into the hand's Faramir, and followed Faramir from there. We could have followed Wormtongue after he was cast out of Theoden's throne room back to Isendgard, or followed the Ents after they were roused... but we didn't.
And had we done so, it would not have improved the book.
At the other end of good 'epic' writing is the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov. Its the complete opposite of Tolkien - Asimov tells the story of the galactic empire seen through shifting perspectives at critical turning points. The effect works. You see Seldon's vision unfold, and though the vignettes are character driven and you connect with the characters, at the end of each vignette you see the big picture take another step forward.
While it may be difficult to follow the individual plots of dozens of major and semi-major characters, that is a shortcoming of the readers mind and not the author.
What is the Wheel of Time about exactly? Its not really about anything because its about everything. And its not about everything because its spends to much time focused on the minutia of individuals. It tries to paint a forest by telling you the story of every tree. And in the end you have neither a good sense of the forest, nor any decent connection to any particular trees.
That's not the failure of the reader, that's a failure of the author. Because its a poor way to tell a story.
Are copies of Windows2000 or Windows98 worth much more than cruddy beer coasters today?
More valuable today to me than extra copies of XP.
I actually prefer to use 2K in Windows VMs than XP; its smaller, faster, needs less resources, and isn't burdened with Activation, etc.
Granted, with Win2k you can re-use the same key in all your VMs, but I'm the honest sort, and prefer to have everything properly licensed. To me, it serves two purposes - first, I think its 'the right thing to do' and 2nd if the licensing/drm/copyproection becomes a burden, I'm motivated not to use the product at all.
The copyright for a photo belongs to the person that owns the copyright for the photo. It sounds redundant
Because it is.
but just because someone operates a camera (or operates a device that triggers a photographic process) doesn't make them the owner of the copyright. This does not automatically imply that the photographer is the one that owns the copyright.
Actually it does automatically do just that. It takes 'special exceptional circumstances' for it not to be the case. Circumstances like a contract/agreement assigning the copyright elsewhere.
But in the absence of exceptional circumstances, the photographer is the implied copyright holder. So if you take a picture of yourself taking a picture of yourself, its true that you might not be the copyright holder, but at least its highly probable. If all you have is a self portrait, no conclusion about the likelihood that you took it yourself and/or own the copyright can reaonably be drawn.
As a counter-example: I set my camera down, and an acorn falls from the tree onto the shutter release. Since I wasn't the photographer, do I not own the copyright to the photo taken?
Ok... lets play with that.
If I set my camera down, and you pick it up and take a picture. Who owns the copyright? Me or you? You of course. No different than if you'd written a poem on a piece of my paper. I could claim ownership of the piece of paper if I was dick, but it would still be your poem.
If I set my camera down, and you're picture taking trained pet monkey picks it up and takes a picture? Me or you? You again. What the monkey creates, as your propery, belongs to you. (There was actually case somewhere about this for elephant art iirc.)
If I set my camera down, and you're untrained pet monkey picks it up and takes a picture? Me or you? Interesting question - I could argue that the creative act was me enticing your monkey to take a picture, while you could argue its still your monkey that took the picture. I figure it would still be you. If your 3 year old makes a doodle its her copyright, even if I put a pen and paper in her hand. If I put it in your monkey's hands, then its yours.
On the other hand if I deliberately set the camera down, and coax the monkey into pushing the button - using it as a glorified remote button presser, then its my copyright. But if I try to get the monkey to 'express itself' as your property the expression belongs to you.
If I set my camera down, and an acorns falls out of your tree... same thing... I basically used the tree as an remote button pusher. Its absurd to make the claim the tree did anything creative, so even if its your tree, you have no claim. And my setting the camera down, setup, and pointed at something is (at least marginally) the creative act.
Personally, I think these efforts are going to result in an ad supported edition of Windows. While it will be the horrific user experience everyone here predicts, I also predict it will be entirely optional.
Merely, that when it comes time to buy a computer, you can get Vista Home Basic Ad-supported edition for free, or Vista Ultimate for $500.00 with the ability to make proper backups, support for encryption, and no built-in adware.
It would be an interesting development. How would linux fare in the home market if a version of Windows were "free", and you could install it on as many computers as you wanted without violating the license?
How many people would pay for the 'ad-free' version?
Food for thought.
I don't think Microsoft is being evil. I think its smart, and good business.
I wonder if someone will release an ad supported linux distro, where the ads cover the cost of providing support. So you can get Linux with community support for free, or ad-Linux with, phone support, and remote-access technicians fluent in your language of choice.
It will be FOSS, so anyone who wants to can disable the ads, but doing so of course will terminate your support service.
Actually copyright for a photo belongs to the photographer. A self-portrait, unless the photo clearly shows you taking the picture of yourself, is not obviously yours.
The Wiimote gives me hope for a tolerable or even fun interface, though as it currently is, I don't think it quite trumps a mouse and keyboard.
In precision and flexibility of control?
No. A wii-remote has under 10 buttons. My mouse alone has almost that many, and I have a 100+ key keyboard too.
A good gaming laser mouse is a very precise instrument, and ones hands/fingers are well suited to controlling it. Swinging a Wii-remote around is a little clumsier. Your arms aren't as precise. You can't stop and hold a single pixel under the cross hairs for 30 seconds with a wii-remote like you can with a mouse, etc.
But in immersion? Wii FTW. Hands down. No question. No contest. Resident Evil on the Wii was incredible, and that was a port - I can't wait to try the new Metroid.
They don't claim that. The NDP numbers are sales not shipments.
NPD (not NDP) numbers are indeed 'sales' not 'shipments'.
However, due to the way NPD tracks numbers, warranty exchanges/replacements handled and documented by retailers, those units frequently count as 'sales' as far as NPD counts are concerned.
To sum up, NPD numbers show units that have been delivered to end users. Which is more useful than Microsoft's number telling us how many they've shipped to retailers (and which may be sitting in warehouses for months to come)... but as to the question of how many of these are 'new sales' vs 'warranty replacements'; its anyones guess.
It will be quite a bit less than the actual failure rate, becauwse NPD doesn't count warranty units shipped direct from microsoft. But if you take your ringed unit into BestBuy and they send you home with a new one, it will likely count as a new sale by NPD's sales tracking. It all depends on how the retailers process warranty exchanges and doa replacements.
Normally, the likes of NPD don't care about warranty exchanges because the rates are low enough that its just noise in the data, and not worth the trouble to track, and all consoles are expected to have similiarly low failure rates, so even if they are over reporting a half percent or so; it doesn't really skew the data in anyones favor.
Finally, this is not a new problem. The PS2 worldwide sales is similarly badly distorted. The PS2 didn't have the level of problems the 360 has, but first generation PS2's had weak drives, that burned out (especially if used for watching movies). This led a LOT of them to die AFTER the 1 year warranty.
Of the 100 million+ PS2's sold. How many of them were just re-purchased to replace dead out of warranty PS2's? I've heard estimates as high as 20-35% there too.
Of course, in this case at least, Sony got paid twice, so in some sense its fair to call the 2nd sale "legitimate" and count it in 'total sales'. But from a developer's standpoint the size of the market is grossly inflated.
In the same way that 400 million downloads of firefox don't count as 400 million users.
Its a "You did $500 in unfair and illegal damages to us, an association of mega-corporations (and that's a high estimate). So we're going after you for $75,000 in unfair but legal damages to you, and that's not counting the stress, lost time at work, and other intangibles."
, but that bit conjured up an image of a limited national resource of secretiveness that should be used sparingly lest it run out.
Secrecy may not be resource itself, but it consumes real resources to keep going. Fortunately, the resource is cash, which is not limited, as the government will print itself as much as it needs. Unfortunately, continually doing so, devalues the currency and undermines the health of the economy.
Therefore I wish the government was less secretive, as the secrecy allocation is soaking up resources that could be better spent on well.. something useful.
OS X seems to be better at it but it too can suffer from dumb user syndrome.
At least OSX by virtue of their control of the hardware, generally just work. But adding wifi to an older mac can be a pain.
That aside OS X has its own neurotic issues all its own. For example, if you join a WPA network, and then the admin changes the WPA password OS X is just mental to update the password on.
If you connect to a network via the 'automatic wizard' you get presented the option of storing the password in the keychain; if you connect manually by entering in the SSID manually you don't. Unfortunately, if you are already 'connected' to a network (even though the password is wrong and it can't get an ip address) you can't re-select that network via the wizard. And if you do it via the manual option where you type in the SSID yourself you can't store the password in the keychain. So as soon as the mac sleeps or powers down it uses the old stored password and can't get on the network when it comes back up.
The only GUI way out of the mess is to connect to a different network, delete the old network profile/keychain and then come back to the original network via the wizard, which is a pain if all your neighbors are out of range and or WEP/WPA protected.
And dropping to the command line, can work, but its a messy process, and decidely un-mac-like.
IMO There is absolutely no point in having a login password for stand-alone machines as it is TRIVIAL to bypass with something as easy as a boot CD/floppy that just resets the passwords, as long as you have physical access to the box, (or just yank out the hard drive and remount somewhere else).
IMO There is absolutely no point in having a lock on a bathroom door, as it is TRIVIAL to bypass with something as simple as a small screwdriver.
Oh wait, yet, despite that, it is remarkably effective at keeping people out while your in there.
Many locks and passwords are more symbolic than anything else. Most people respect the implied privacy requested by a lock or password. Even if they know they could circumvent it trivially, they don't do it.
Safe - check Secure - check Easy to use - check Scalable text - check
Its only downsides are 1) is that its not HD/VGA/DVI capable, but if you hook it do a decent large TV screen its bearable; especially for the elderly who don't have great vision and wouldn't have their monitor set to 1280x1024 and beyond anyway.
2) While the Wii remote isn't bad for surfing, link clicking, etc. It isn't great for manually entering URLs or filling out forms. If the Wii supported a Keyboard you'd be set.
And keyboard support looks like its coming. Apparently attaching a USB keyboard already works in the Wii shop channel as of the latest update; but not in the Internet channel. But the rumour is that Nintendo is releasing an official keyboard at some point. There are also rumours that the gamecube keyboard works (if you can find one).
As a bonus, the Wii sports is also proving fairly popular with seniors.
I don't know what the situation is with the other consoles, you might have luck there too. An Xbox 360, for example, I believe already has keyboard support, and support for HD resolutions. I don't know how friendly / easy to use it is... but it probably easily beats a full on PC.
Despite all the scaremongering, there is little actual data to support such a statement.
U.S. GDP is still the largest in the world by a factor of about 3, and the U.S. is still #2 in exports and #1 in imports
That merely shows that it is a BIG economy, which it is, not a healthy one, which it isn't.
The US has too much debt.
Your observations about GDP etc are like watching a has been celebrity continuing to live beyond his means; and saying: Look how much he buys! he has a 5 million dollar summer home with a gold plated gate! he has custom made parachute pants!' How could you possibly say he's on the brink of ruin?
Simple. Yes he has assets, yes he makes more money than most people alive. But he spends more than he makes, his debts far exceed his assets, and the balance is worsening daily.
Sooner or later it will come crashing down.
FWIW I don't think utter ruin is in the cards. This isn't some minor South African 3rd world country. The rest of the world simply can't afford to let the US collapse. China would lose billions to trillions. They have 1.3 trillion USD in reserve; every time the USD falls a penny the chinese held usd reserves lose 13 billion dollars of buying power. Clearly its in everyone's best interest for the dollar not to collapse.
The rest of the world will do what it can to soften a US economic crash out of their own self interest.
I wasn't aware of the fact that the UK, France, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan had gotten rid of their nukes.
They haven't of course. For the sake of the argument and simplicity I assumed they did, to show the effect of a policy of have vs have not.
That in reality a half dozen other countries do in fact have nukes is immaterial, and if anything, I think, has proven to be a stabilizing force in the world. Enough countries in the world need to have them in order to keep the others in check.
I am European, but the answer seems simple to me: if USA has nukes it is not a threat to the USA. If allies of USA has nukes, it is not a big threat to the USA. If enemies of the USA has nukes on the other hand, it is a big treat to the USA. In other words it is in the USA's interest to have nukes, but deny their enemy to have nukes.
Except it is not so simple. It is not a foregone conclusion that it really is in the US's best interest to have nukes, and to deny them to anyone they don't like.
There are plenty of arguments that argue for everyone having nukes.
Given the US has nukes and no one else does, the US is both resented and feared. Worse the US is tempted to use them as leverage to further its own goals, which in the short term leads to 'benefits' to the US, but in the long term leads to things like terrorist attacks on US cities, and violent anti-americanism around the globe.
Clearly this wouldn't be in the US's best interest.
Now I'm not saying the current situation is the result of the US having nukes, per se, but it is the result of the US leveraging its economic and military superiority against the rest of the world.
And now, its economic superiority is crumbling, and the world is faced with a lone superpower that is increasingly desperate. I don't think that is in anyone's best interest.
Its eerily frightening. Bush/Cheney in particular have shown that congress, the courts, and so-called checks and balances are weaker than we might have hoped. Calling one's opponents terrorist sympathizers, perpetrating the pretense of war, shrouding everything as a national security issue, stuffing the supreme court with allies, and all the other political tricks when taken together... well... a "Hitler" could potentially do a lot of damage at the helm of the US before he was stopped; and its not clear exactly who would stop him.
Could the US elect a madman? Why not? Its happened elsewhere. And if history has shown us anything, its shown us that it tends to repeat itself.
Primarily as it leads to people without capital being left out, or worse having to sell all or part of their rights on order to get funding to secure their rights for a longer period.
Well, the presumption was largely that people making money from their work wouldn't have to release it so quickly if they didn't want to. So the capital to protect the work is coming from selling/licensing the work itself.
I agree that leaves a gap where an author with an unprofitable work can't prevent it from becoming public domain... but really this was to give CocaCola and Disney a solution, while still having most property end up in the public domain quickly.
I'm not sure that unprofitable work needs to be protected from the public doman. If the author wasn't making any money from it, why would he really need/want to keep it?
wouldn't you agree that the ability for society to make use of a work previously under copyright is an essential part of the copyright bargain?
yes.
If you do agree do you not further agree that a work should leave copyright whilst it is still to some degree useful as a work from which further works can be derived, moreover shouldn't the work lose its copyright status whilst it is still relevant?
on the former yes (but I think even a 100 year term satisfies that for most works). on the latter 'relevancy' is undefined. If by 'relevant' you mean it should become public domain while a lot of people would be willing to pay for it -- that seems perverse.
If you find that you do agree then surely you would also agree that any relevant work leaving copyright and then being improved upon or redistributed would be a work that would still have potential value to the original author.
A potential value? yes. A likely value? no. A potential negative value? yes. A likely negative value? yes.
If my 5 year old painting/song/work shows up in a commercial supporting a product or cause I oppose, or presented in a manner I find undignified such as printed on toilet paper or as a jingle for fried chicken - I don't see that having value to me; quite the opposite.
(For example the author could sell or license the work (if it were still under copyright) they would see financial gain but society would not get the benefit of a freely exploitable work.) A reduction in the term of copyright *would* take potential revenue from the author and allow any one else to exploit that work, but that would be a potential benefit to society as a whole and therefore forms the cost to the author for the benefit of any copyright protection in the first place.
One of my main issues is that a too-short term makes it too tempting/easy to dodge the "copyright bargain". The idea that I may profit from a short monopoly of control is undermined if the time is short enough that society will choose to simply wait me out. The movie industry will drag out releasing their movie adaptations for 5 years to dodge paying for rights.
Or they will approach the author in year 3 and say we'll give you a pittance for the rights, and you better take it, because if you don't we'll just release after it becomes public domain and you'll get nothing. Knowing that its going to be PD that quickly seriously weakens the negotiating position of the author.
They are effectively holding a rotting fruit; if its not an instant success they've got to dump it for whatever they can get for it, before its worthless.
We need a halfway point, after all it is not possible to assess the value of a work before it is published, and it is hardly fair to apply legislation ex post facto.
I suggested a solution to that. Short copyright, but extendable by the author, per work, for a price.
Thereby Society benefits, (consumers get more choice, the arts should benefit as there is both an incentive to create original works and an incentive to improve upon existing work).
You are an optimist. In my opinion, most 'improvements' to works of fiction, for example, are quite the opposite. In China for example there are tons of Harry Potter books written by third parties; most of them are beyond dismal. But the author has no control over the situation at all. I think an author should be allowed to restrict access longer. I don't think it is an overall benefit to society or the author to allow a crapflood of knockoffs into the market. The only ones who benefit from that are the lowest common denominators - the purveyers of the crap.
Does anyone know of a legitimate use for them (especially cross-server) that could not be done with a bit of easy server-side including?
They are efficent; they let you change the content of part of your page without reloading the whole thing. I use them frequently with venture capital company websites to display slightly delayed stock charts and share price information for example. They can update themselves every couple minutes without reloading the whole page.
Additionally, because the chart and share information is provided by 3rd party company, the iframe is cross-server. I suppose one could write a proxy layer to make the iframe appear to come from the same server, but I don't see any real benefit to that.
And it goes without saying that they are heavily used for advertising; again because they don't reload the whole page the ads can be roated.
You could use ajax style programming to get the same effect I suppose, but that would be more work; and again I'm not sure how it would make it more secure.
A film about a book is a derivative work anyway unless you are copying everything word for word,
A film adaptation of a book is a derivative work, yes, and the author should benefit from its creation while the book is copyprotected. And that protection should last more than a couple years. (Which is all a 5 year term effectively does, as by year 4 the product is virtually unsellable anyway because everyone knows it will free in just a few more months.
and derivative works, extensions and improvements should be encouraged.
Of GPL software sure.
Given that say, the first harry potter novel was release in 97, a great deal of harry potter would now be public domain, and anyone could exploit the franchise by flooding the market with harry potter books, set in hogwarts or whatever. Because it was all Public domain. Is that really a 'good thing'? What is the benefit to anyone from that? The series is half finished in 2002; the original author is still writing sequels, and suddenly its public domain?
Further, the FIRST harry potter movie, was released in November 2001. (that would be the 5th year after initial publication. In your world, they would have pushed the movie r elease back a few more months and not paid Rowling a dime.)
Not to mention the crapflood of other Harry potter movies that would have been released simultaneously by any other studio who wanted in on the hype.
Personally; it doesn't really bother me that Disney wants to hang onto Mickey Mouse forever, or that CocaCola doesn't want generic cola to taste exactly like 'the real thing'. I dont' have a problem with that.
It does bother me that in order to do it they have locked EVERYTHING up for 100 years and are seeking to lock it up longer. What I'd like to see is renewable copyright on specific works; so if something like Mickey mouse is that valuable the copyright holder can hang onto it and pay hefty annual fees (where proceeds go to fund the arts). But if they don't pay the fee it becomes public domain and that's the end of it. Hell, I'd agree to just giving them the first 5 years free, and making them pay after that. Then most stuff which isn't worth anything to the copyright holder after 5 years can slide into the public domain very quickly; while stuff that the rights holder doesn't want to release can be extended.
I'd anticipate that a lot of stuff, like software would slide into the public domain after the 5 years, as would most one-hit-wonder music and small artists, movies and so forth. Rights holders that go bankrupt or die will automatically roll into the public domain as they won't renew. And the fees would be hefty enough to keep most stuff from being held much beyond its commercial viability. Make them slide; so they gradually go up the longer you hang onto stuff; or for the more stuff you hang onto.
Let the Coca-Cola's and the Disney's hang onto their flagship products until they tire of them, while getting most stuff into the public domain as fast as possible.
but in this wonderfully modern world communication is so rapid that the exploitation of any work of art seems to happen fairly quickly (assuming copyright starts at the point of publishing rather than at the end of production).
5 years is enough to get past the hey-its-new-hype but consider what it will do to derivative product:
Sure, maybe the nutjob writing Harry Potter books will get paid for the rights to the movie, but most of the time they'll just get the shaft as the studio will wait out the 5 years to release the movie. (Given that it takes a year plus to make a movie, and a year before the book is an established best seller (given that most books aren't book 7 in a best selling series...) they can start production in year two or three, get the hype for the movie going while the book is still in its heyday, and then pop out the movie the moment the book goes public domain.
Maybe even 2 or three studios will have a go at it; a couple them releasing decidedly low quality releases. Hell, even the Porn industry can release a version, without having to keep it below the radar by changing the names and story and using parody. And since The Fellowship of the Ring would already be public domain the porn version of that could cut and mix in scenes from the actual movie.
Similarly the movie version of Doom, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, etc would have to pay nothing, and again we'd be inundated with low quality knockoffs looking to leech off the brand.
Mucisions would have to put up with their song being the new jingle for everything from Tampax to the theme song for the Republican Presidential candidate. I don't know what artists you care about, but anything from 2001 backwards is fair game.
The simpson's, futurama, family guy, calvin and hobbes - all of it would be public domain. Any jackass who wanted to make episodes, t-shirts, movies, porn, using their images could do so.
And as for software; i think the real effect would be to shift them all to SAAS models immediately. You don't buy software. You subsbribe to it where it runs on their server; and you just pay access to their server. That's already where they want to go. This would just make sure it happened.
I agree with you in principle that 20 years of copyright on software doesn't reflect the reality that the hardware will be utterly obsolete by then, and thus the software may well be useless to the public by the time it becomes available. But a 5 year term isn't going to motivate innovation; its going to motivate them to not publish their software, and instead publish access to it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a pretty rough criticism of a man who wrote a story that would humble Tolkien himself.
I doubt it. Tolkien knew how to tell a story. In particular he knew that not everything that he ever envisioned happening on the face on the face of middle earth should be puked out into the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Tolkien could let characters like Gandalf go off on side quests without covering every detail. We only knew Gandalf was rescued by the eagles - that's about all that's in the book. Jordon would have taken us on that flight. We know he found his way back to Rivendell; Jordon would have taken us on that walk. At one point Sam is cooking some rabbits he caught - Jordon would have made damned sure we knew exactly how and where they were caught. And gollum? Jordon would have been sure to cover everything he did too... from leaving the mountains, to being captured and tortured, to his release, and tracked him all the way back to Moria. When the sword that was broken was remade, we didn't have half a book dedicated to the tale, nor the tale of its delivery.
Tolkien's world is famous because of its immense depth and detail. Lord of the Rings is good writing because while you get a sense of all the depth and detail, its history, and its complexity. Very little of it is actually in the book; you know its there because you can see its 'edges'; but Tolkien didn't try to tell EVERYBODY'S story. He knew better.
Consider that Tolkien had the fellowship break up. He elected to chase essentially 3 paths, not ALL of them. We could have had books dedicated to what Gandalf was doing, we could have followed Boromir's boat over the falls and into the hand's Faramir, and followed Faramir from there. We could have followed Wormtongue after he was cast out of Theoden's throne room back to Isendgard, or followed the Ents after they were roused... but we didn't.
And had we done so, it would not have improved the book.
At the other end of good 'epic' writing is the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov. Its the complete opposite of Tolkien - Asimov tells the story of the galactic empire seen through shifting perspectives at critical turning points. The effect works. You see Seldon's vision unfold, and though the vignettes are character driven and you connect with the characters, at the end of each vignette you see the big picture take another step forward.
While it may be difficult to follow the individual plots of dozens of major and semi-major characters, that is a shortcoming of the readers mind and not the author.
What is the Wheel of Time about exactly? Its not really about anything because its about everything. And its not about everything because its spends to much time focused on the minutia of individuals. It tries to paint a forest by telling you the story of every tree. And in the end you have neither a good sense of the forest, nor any decent connection to any particular trees.
That's not the failure of the reader, that's a failure of the author. Because its a poor way to tell a story.
Are copies of Windows2000 or Windows98 worth much more than cruddy beer coasters today?
More valuable today to me than extra copies of XP.
I actually prefer to use 2K in Windows VMs than XP; its smaller, faster, needs less resources, and isn't burdened with Activation, etc.
Granted, with Win2k you can re-use the same key in all your VMs, but I'm the honest sort, and prefer to have everything properly licensed. To me, it serves two purposes - first, I think its 'the right thing to do' and 2nd if the licensing/drm/copyproection becomes a burden, I'm motivated not to use the product at all.
The copyright for a photo belongs to the person that owns the copyright for the photo. It sounds redundant
Because it is.
but just because someone operates a camera (or operates a device that triggers a photographic process) doesn't make them the owner of the copyright. This does not automatically imply that the photographer is the one that owns the copyright.
Actually it does automatically do just that. It takes 'special exceptional circumstances' for it not to be the case. Circumstances like a contract/agreement assigning the copyright elsewhere.
But in the absence of exceptional circumstances, the photographer is the implied copyright holder. So if you take a picture of yourself taking a picture of yourself, its true that you might not be the copyright holder, but at least its highly probable. If all you have is a self portrait, no conclusion about the likelihood that you took it yourself and/or own the copyright can reaonably be drawn.
As a counter-example: I set my camera down, and an acorn falls from the tree onto the shutter release. Since I wasn't the photographer, do I not own the copyright to the photo taken?
Ok... lets play with that.
If I set my camera down, and you pick it up and take a picture. Who owns the copyright? Me or you? You of course. No different than if you'd written a poem on a piece of my paper. I could claim ownership of the piece of paper if I was dick, but it would still be your poem.
If I set my camera down, and you're picture taking trained pet monkey picks it up and takes a picture? Me or you? You again. What the monkey creates, as your propery, belongs to you. (There was actually case somewhere about this for elephant art iirc.)
If I set my camera down, and you're untrained pet monkey picks it up and takes a picture? Me or you? Interesting question - I could argue that the creative act was me enticing your monkey to take a picture, while you could argue its still your monkey that took the picture. I figure it would still be you. If your 3 year old makes a doodle its her copyright, even if I put a pen and paper in her hand. If I put it in your monkey's hands, then its yours.
On the other hand if I deliberately set the camera down, and coax the monkey into pushing the button - using it as a glorified remote button presser, then its my copyright. But if I try to get the monkey to 'express itself' as your property the expression belongs to you.
If I set my camera down, and an acorns falls out of your tree... same thing... I basically used the tree as an remote button pusher. Its absurd to make the claim the tree did anything creative, so even if its your tree, you have no claim. And my setting the camera down, setup, and pointed at something is (at least marginally) the creative act.
I'm curious if you disagree.
-cheers
Personally, I think these efforts are going to result in an ad supported edition of Windows. While it will be the horrific user experience everyone here predicts, I also predict it will be entirely optional.
Merely, that when it comes time to buy a computer, you can get Vista Home Basic Ad-supported edition for free, or Vista Ultimate for $500.00 with the ability to make proper backups, support for encryption, and no built-in adware.
It would be an interesting development. How would linux fare in the home market if a version of Windows were "free", and you could install it on as many computers as you wanted without violating the license?
How many people would pay for the 'ad-free' version?
Food for thought.
I don't think Microsoft is being evil. I think its smart, and good business.
I wonder if someone will release an ad supported linux distro, where the ads cover the cost of providing support. So you can get Linux with community support for free, or ad-Linux with, phone support, and remote-access technicians fluent in your language of choice.
It will be FOSS, so anyone who wants to can disable the ads, but doing so of course will terminate your support service.
Obviously they couldn't for your self-portrait.
Actually copyright for a photo belongs to the photographer. A self-portrait, unless the photo clearly shows you taking the picture of yourself, is not obviously yours.
I'd rather Microsoft have my personal info than the government. Any government.
If Microsoft had it they'd just sell it to the governent. Any government.
The Wiimote gives me hope for a tolerable or even fun interface, though as it currently is, I don't think it quite trumps a mouse and keyboard.
In precision and flexibility of control?
No. A wii-remote has under 10 buttons. My mouse alone has almost that many, and I have a 100+ key keyboard too.
A good gaming laser mouse is a very precise instrument, and ones hands/fingers are well suited to controlling it. Swinging a Wii-remote around is a little clumsier. Your arms aren't as precise. You can't stop and hold a single pixel under the cross hairs for 30 seconds with a wii-remote like you can with a mouse, etc.
But in immersion? Wii FTW. Hands down. No question. No contest. Resident Evil on the Wii was incredible, and that was a port - I can't wait to try the new Metroid.
They don't claim that. The NDP numbers are sales not shipments.
NPD (not NDP) numbers are indeed 'sales' not 'shipments'.
However, due to the way NPD tracks numbers, warranty exchanges/replacements handled and documented by retailers, those units frequently count as 'sales' as far as NPD counts are concerned.
To sum up, NPD numbers show units that have been delivered to end users. Which is more useful than Microsoft's number telling us how many they've shipped to retailers (and which may be sitting in warehouses for months to come)... but as to the question of how many of these are 'new sales' vs 'warranty replacements'; its anyones guess.
It will be quite a bit less than the actual failure rate, becauwse NPD doesn't count warranty units shipped direct from microsoft. But if you take your ringed unit into BestBuy and they send you home with a new one, it will likely count as a new sale by NPD's sales tracking. It all depends on how the retailers process warranty exchanges and doa replacements.
Normally, the likes of NPD don't care about warranty exchanges because the rates are low enough that its just noise in the data, and not worth the trouble to track, and all consoles are expected to have similiarly low failure rates, so even if they are over reporting a half percent or so; it doesn't really skew the data in anyones favor.
Finally, this is not a new problem. The PS2 worldwide sales is similarly badly distorted. The PS2 didn't have the level of problems the 360 has, but first generation PS2's had weak drives, that burned out (especially if used for watching movies). This led a LOT of them to die AFTER the 1 year warranty.
Of the 100 million+ PS2's sold. How many of them were just re-purchased to replace dead out of warranty PS2's? I've heard estimates as high as 20-35% there too.
Of course, in this case at least, Sony got paid twice, so in some sense its fair to call the 2nd sale "legitimate" and count it in 'total sales'. But from a developer's standpoint the size of the market is grossly inflated.
In the same way that 400 million downloads of firefox don't count as 400 million users.
Yeah, I don't get it either. "Since you're trying to reduce the number of parked cars, how about we help you by offering free parking!"
They suggested the strip be turned into a no parking zone instead, and offered them 3 years worth of revenue for the meters to do it.
That ought to reduce the number of parked cars, non?
Pretty much.
Its a "You did $500 in unfair and illegal damages to us, an association of mega-corporations (and that's a high estimate). So we're going after you for $75,000 in unfair but legal damages to you, and that's not counting the stress, lost time at work, and other intangibles."
, but that bit conjured up an image of a limited national resource of secretiveness that should be used sparingly lest it run out.
Secrecy may not be resource itself, but it consumes real resources to keep going. Fortunately, the resource is cash, which is not limited, as the government will print itself as much as it needs. Unfortunately, continually doing so, devalues the currency and undermines the health of the economy.
Therefore I wish the government was less secretive, as the secrecy allocation is soaking up resources that could be better spent on well.. something useful.
OS X seems to be better at it but it too can suffer from dumb user syndrome.
At least OSX by virtue of their control of the hardware, generally just work. But adding wifi to an older mac can be a pain.
That aside OS X has its own neurotic issues all its own. For example, if you join a WPA network, and then the admin changes the WPA password OS X is just mental to update the password on.
If you connect to a network via the 'automatic wizard' you get presented the option of storing the password in the keychain; if you connect manually by entering in the SSID manually you don't. Unfortunately, if you are already 'connected' to a network (even though the password is wrong and it can't get an ip address) you can't re-select that network via the wizard. And if you do it via the manual option where you type in the SSID yourself you can't store the password in the keychain. So as soon as the mac sleeps or powers down it uses the old stored password and can't get on the network when it comes back up.
The only GUI way out of the mess is to connect to a different network, delete the old network profile/keychain and then come back to the original network via the wizard, which is a pain if all your neighbors are out of range and or WEP/WPA protected.
And dropping to the command line, can work, but its a messy process, and decidely un-mac-like.
IMO There is absolutely no point in having a login password for stand-alone machines as it is TRIVIAL to bypass with something as easy as a boot CD/floppy that just resets the passwords, as long as you have physical access to the box, (or just yank out the hard drive and remount somewhere else).
IMO There is absolutely no point in having a lock on a bathroom door, as it is TRIVIAL to bypass with something as simple as a small screwdriver.
Oh wait, yet, despite that, it is remarkably effective at keeping people out while your in there.
Many locks and passwords are more symbolic than anything else. Most people respect the implied privacy requested by a lock or password. Even if they know they could circumvent it trivially, they don't do it.
it will work great as long as you don't mind being ripped into your component particles and then having 50% of them left behind in the process
Oh, so its a weight loss program too? Gad, is there anything quantum physics can't do!!!11
Evaluate the Nintendo Wii.
Seriously. No, really.
Its almost perfect actually.
Safe - check
Secure - check
Easy to use - check
Scalable text - check
Its only downsides are 1) is that its not HD/VGA/DVI capable, but if you hook it do a decent large TV screen its bearable; especially for the elderly who don't have great vision and wouldn't have their monitor set to 1280x1024 and beyond anyway.
2) While the Wii remote isn't bad for surfing, link clicking, etc. It isn't great for manually entering URLs or filling out forms. If the Wii supported a Keyboard you'd be set.
And keyboard support looks like its coming. Apparently attaching a USB keyboard already works in the Wii shop channel as of the latest update; but not in the Internet channel. But the rumour is that Nintendo is releasing an official keyboard at some point. There are also rumours that the gamecube keyboard works (if you can find one).
As a bonus, the Wii sports is also proving fairly popular with seniors.
I don't know what the situation is with the other consoles, you might have luck there too. An Xbox 360, for example, I believe already has keyboard support, and support for HD resolutions. I don't know how friendly / easy to use it is... but it probably easily beats a full on PC.
Despite all the scaremongering, there is little actual data to support such a statement.
U.S. GDP is still the largest in the world by a factor of about 3, and the U.S. is still #2 in exports and #1 in imports
That merely shows that it is a BIG economy, which it is, not a healthy one, which it isn't.
The US has too much debt.
Your observations about GDP etc are like watching a has been celebrity continuing to live beyond his means; and saying: Look how much he buys! he has a 5 million dollar summer home with a gold plated gate! he has custom made parachute pants!' How could you possibly say he's on the brink of ruin?
Simple. Yes he has assets, yes he makes more money than most people alive. But he spends more than he makes, his debts far exceed his assets, and the balance is worsening daily.
Sooner or later it will come crashing down.
FWIW I don't think utter ruin is in the cards. This isn't some minor South African 3rd world country. The rest of the world simply can't afford to let the US collapse. China would lose billions to trillions. They have 1.3 trillion USD in reserve; every time the USD falls a penny the chinese held usd reserves lose 13 billion dollars of buying power. Clearly its in everyone's best interest for the dollar not to collapse.
The rest of the world will do what it can to soften a US economic crash out of their own self interest.
I wasn't aware of the fact that the UK, France, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan had gotten rid of their nukes.
They haven't of course. For the sake of the argument and simplicity I assumed they did, to show the effect of a policy of have vs have not.
That in reality a half dozen other countries do in fact have nukes is immaterial, and if anything, I think, has proven to be a stabilizing force in the world. Enough countries in the world need to have them in order to keep the others in check.
I am European, but the answer seems simple to me: if USA has nukes it is not a threat to the USA. If allies of USA has nukes, it is not a big threat to the USA. If enemies of the USA has nukes on the other hand, it is a big treat to the USA. In other words it is in the USA's interest to have nukes, but deny their enemy to have nukes.
Except it is not so simple. It is not a foregone conclusion that it really is in the US's best interest to have nukes, and to deny them to anyone they don't like.
There are plenty of arguments that argue for everyone having nukes.
Given the US has nukes and no one else does, the US is both resented and feared. Worse the US is tempted to use them as leverage to further its own goals, which in the short term leads to 'benefits' to the US, but in the long term leads to things like terrorist attacks on US cities, and violent anti-americanism around the globe.
Clearly this wouldn't be in the US's best interest.
Now I'm not saying the current situation is the result of the US having nukes, per se, but it is the result of the US leveraging its economic and military superiority against the rest of the world.
And now, its economic superiority is crumbling, and the world is faced with a lone superpower that is increasingly desperate. I don't think that is in anyone's best interest.
Its eerily frightening. Bush/Cheney in particular have shown that congress, the courts, and so-called checks and balances are weaker than we might have hoped. Calling one's opponents terrorist sympathizers, perpetrating the pretense of war, shrouding everything as a national security issue, stuffing the supreme court with allies, and all the other political tricks when taken together... well... a "Hitler" could potentially do a lot of damage at the helm of the US before he was stopped; and its not clear exactly who would stop him.
Could the US elect a madman? Why not? Its happened elsewhere. And if history has shown us anything, its shown us that it tends to repeat itself.
And I was just poking fun. :)
Solitaire and minesweeper have been THE staple time wasters in offices accross the globe since windows 3.0 was inflicted upon the world.
I just brought them up because they fit your criteria exactly -- probably one of the (several) reasons they were as successful as they were.
You might check out Solitaire.
Its installed on 90% of PCs by default and has been the white collar time waster of choice since before most PCs were connected to the internet.
Primarily as it leads to people without capital being left out, or worse having to sell all or part of their rights on order to get funding to secure their rights for a longer period.
Well, the presumption was largely that people making money from their work wouldn't have to release it so quickly if they didn't want to. So the capital to protect the work is coming from selling/licensing the work itself.
I agree that leaves a gap where an author with an unprofitable work can't prevent it from becoming public domain... but really this was to give CocaCola and Disney a solution, while still having most property end up in the public domain quickly.
I'm not sure that unprofitable work needs to be protected from the public doman. If the author wasn't making any money from it, why would he really need/want to keep it?
wouldn't you agree that the ability for society to make use of a work previously under copyright is an essential part of the copyright bargain?
yes.
If you do agree do you not further agree that a work should leave copyright whilst it is still to some degree useful as a work from which further works can be derived, moreover shouldn't the work lose its copyright status whilst it is still relevant?
on the former yes (but I think even a 100 year term satisfies that for most works). on the latter 'relevancy' is undefined. If by 'relevant' you mean it should become public domain while a lot of people would be willing to pay for it -- that seems perverse.
If you find that you do agree then surely you would also agree that any relevant work leaving copyright and then being improved upon or redistributed would be a work that would still have potential value to the original author.
A potential value? yes.
A likely value? no.
A potential negative value? yes.
A likely negative value? yes.
If my 5 year old painting/song/work shows up in a commercial supporting a product or cause I oppose, or presented in a manner I find undignified such as printed on toilet paper or as a jingle for fried chicken - I don't see that having value to me; quite the opposite.
(For example the author could sell or license the work (if it were still under copyright) they would see financial gain but society would not get the benefit of a freely exploitable work.) A reduction in the term of copyright *would* take potential revenue from the author and allow any one else to exploit that work, but that would be a potential benefit to society as a whole and therefore forms the cost to the author for the benefit of any copyright protection in the first place.
One of my main issues is that a too-short term makes it too tempting/easy to dodge the "copyright bargain". The idea that I may profit from a short monopoly of control is undermined if the time is short enough that society will choose to simply wait me out. The movie industry will drag out releasing their movie adaptations for 5 years to dodge paying for rights.
Or they will approach the author in year 3 and say we'll give you a pittance for the rights, and you better take it, because if you don't we'll just release after it becomes public domain and you'll get nothing. Knowing that its going to be PD that quickly seriously weakens the negotiating position of the author.
They are effectively holding a rotting fruit; if its not an instant success they've got to dump it for whatever they can get for it, before its worthless.
We need a halfway point, after all it is not possible to assess the value of a work before it is published, and it is hardly fair to apply legislation ex post facto.
I suggested a solution to that. Short copyright, but extendable by the author, per work, for a price.
Thereby Society benefits, (consumers get more choice, the arts should benefit as there is both an incentive to create original works and an incentive to improve upon existing work).
You are an optimist. In my opinion, most 'improvements' to works of fiction, for example, are quite the opposite. In China for example there are tons of Harry Potter books written by third parties; most of them are beyond dismal. But the author has no control over the situation at all. I think an author should be allowed to restrict access longer. I don't think it is an overall benefit to society or the author to allow a crapflood of knockoffs into the market. The only ones who benefit from that are the lowest common denominators - the purveyers of the crap.
Does anyone know of a legitimate use for them (especially cross-server) that could not be done with a bit of easy server-side including?
They are efficent; they let you change the content of part of your page without reloading the whole thing. I use them frequently with venture capital company websites to display slightly delayed stock charts and share price information for example. They can update themselves every couple minutes without reloading the whole page.
Additionally, because the chart and share information is provided by 3rd party company, the iframe is cross-server. I suppose one could write a proxy layer to make the iframe appear to come from the same server, but I don't see any real benefit to that.
And it goes without saying that they are heavily used for advertising; again because they don't reload the whole page the ads can be roated.
You could use ajax style programming to get the same effect I suppose, but that would be more work; and again I'm not sure how it would make it more secure.
A film about a book is a derivative work anyway unless you are copying everything word for word,
A film adaptation of a book is a derivative work, yes, and the author should benefit from its creation while the book is copyprotected. And that protection should last more than a couple years. (Which is all a 5 year term effectively does, as by year 4 the product is virtually unsellable anyway because everyone knows it will free in just a few more months.
and derivative works, extensions and improvements should be encouraged.
Of GPL software sure.
Given that say, the first harry potter novel was release in 97, a great deal of harry potter would now be public domain, and anyone could exploit the franchise by flooding the market with harry potter books, set in hogwarts or whatever. Because it was all Public domain. Is that really a 'good thing'? What is the benefit to anyone from that? The series is half finished in 2002; the original author is still writing sequels, and suddenly its public domain?
Further, the FIRST harry potter movie, was released in November 2001. (that would be the 5th year after initial publication. In your world, they would have pushed the movie r
elease back a few more months and not paid Rowling a dime.)
Not to mention the crapflood of other Harry potter movies that would have been released simultaneously by any other studio who wanted in on the hype.
Personally; it doesn't really bother me that Disney wants to hang onto Mickey Mouse forever, or that CocaCola doesn't want generic cola to taste exactly like 'the real thing'. I dont' have a problem with that.
It does bother me that in order to do it they have locked EVERYTHING up for 100 years and are seeking to lock it up longer. What I'd like to see is renewable copyright on specific works; so if something like Mickey mouse is that valuable the copyright holder can hang onto it and pay hefty annual fees (where proceeds go to fund the arts). But if they don't pay the fee it becomes public domain and that's the end of it. Hell, I'd agree to just giving them the first 5 years free, and making them pay after that. Then most stuff which isn't worth anything to the copyright holder after 5 years can slide into the public domain very quickly; while stuff that the rights holder doesn't want to release can be extended.
I'd anticipate that a lot of stuff, like software would slide into the public domain after the 5 years, as would most one-hit-wonder music and small artists, movies and so forth. Rights holders that go bankrupt or die will automatically roll into the public domain as they won't renew. And the fees would be hefty enough to keep most stuff from being held much beyond its commercial viability. Make them slide; so they gradually go up the longer you hang onto stuff; or for the more stuff you hang onto.
Let the Coca-Cola's and the Disney's hang onto their flagship products until they tire of them, while getting most stuff into the public domain as fast as possible.
-cheers.
but in this wonderfully modern world communication is so rapid that the exploitation of any work of art seems to happen fairly quickly (assuming copyright starts at the point of publishing rather than at the end of production).
5 years is enough to get past the hey-its-new-hype but consider what it will do to derivative product:
Sure, maybe the nutjob writing Harry Potter books will get paid for the rights to the movie, but most of the time they'll just get the shaft as the studio will wait out the 5 years to release the movie. (Given that it takes a year plus to make a movie, and a year before the book is an established best seller (given that most books aren't book 7 in a best selling series...) they can start production in year two or three, get the hype for the movie going while the book is still in its heyday, and then pop out the movie the moment the book goes public domain.
Maybe even 2 or three studios will have a go at it; a couple them releasing decidedly low quality releases. Hell, even the Porn industry can release a version, without having to keep it below the radar by changing the names and story and using parody. And since The Fellowship of the Ring would already be public domain the porn version of that could cut and mix in scenes from the actual movie.
Similarly the movie version of Doom, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, etc would have to pay nothing, and again we'd be inundated with low quality knockoffs looking to leech off the brand.
Mucisions would have to put up with their song being the new jingle for everything from Tampax to the theme song for the Republican Presidential candidate. I don't know what artists you care about, but anything from 2001 backwards is fair game.
The simpson's, futurama, family guy, calvin and hobbes - all of it would be public domain. Any jackass who wanted to make episodes, t-shirts, movies, porn, using their images could do so.
And as for software; i think the real effect would be to shift them all to SAAS models immediately. You don't buy software. You subsbribe to it where it runs on their server; and you just pay access to their server. That's already where they want to go. This would just make sure it happened.
I agree with you in principle that 20 years of copyright on software doesn't reflect the reality that the hardware will be utterly obsolete by then, and thus the software may well be useless to the public by the time it becomes available. But a 5 year term isn't going to motivate innovation; its going to motivate them to not publish their software, and instead publish access to it.