They sold 2 million copies over 30 years, you asshat. If you were a bit less clueless about the book industry you'd know that it's very hard to make a living off solely writing books and my parents did it (my father was over 60 the whole time). Although, book publishers tend to screw you over a bit, i.e. by paying you only once a year and one year late. You tend to stack up debts in that case.
I personally have no qualms about rich brats getting large sums of money left to them. Their parents earned it and saved it up wisely throughout their life time. That's how children benefit. They get money and actual property, all of which is taxed. If your parents made any money off their works and wanted to leave it to you, not a problem at all.
That's a completely retarded point since basically it amounts to the same thing, that is the kids get money they didn't work to get.
So your point against copyright is basically.. so you can get it for free without being a pirate? Are you a fucking retard? Why would my parents have written a book in the first place if it was to give it away to suckers like you who only want to get it for free? And "creating imaginary things"? Books = imaginary things? If you do please do slap books into your face, if you have any (books, not face). I don't even get your whole point, what are you suggesting, that everything falls into the public domain to begin with and then wait for the few benevolent artists to keep working?
And a right that only a minority have is indeed a priviledge, however still a right.
a) The general book market has little in common with the scifi niche
b) Way to miss the point. Of course they like to publish what's already been published, it's risk free, and all the work has been done. Believe it or not but it takes some work and time for the first publisher to go from the manuscript to the final book, and also quite some risks, which is nothing like republishing Don Quixote. So of course they wouldn't want to take all the risks and put all the work in it to make all the concurrence use what they've done just as soon.
c) That's just stupid it doesn't need an explanation (actually I can't explain, like, there's nothing to explain). That's not how it works in the real world.
d) Duh, just what I thought, you see the world through the goggles of over-simplification. Of course concurrence is usually beneficial, but what you failed to realise is that when you hear "hey let's privatise this public service, concurrence will only make it better for you!" that's 90% of the time bullshit. Which was the point, which you proved while attempting to defuse it.
Nice. Except no one ever talked about perpetual copyright or even suggested it. Read what I said again. I never talked about perpetual copyright, only about copyright that doesn't expire before the author's death.
Besides, that's a point poorly made. "most of these variations on Paganini's theme would be ILLEGAL under current copyright law". OMG ILLEGAL!! You mean like the 182 times that James Brown's Funky Drummer was sampled? OMG.. so if we follow your logic, all of these would be.. illegal?! So how could all these people get away with it?!
Answer : by paying the copyright holder. So nothing in your example would be lost. Your example just falls apart (I like to call this 'argument tipping', like cow tipping except with arguments). Oh noes you have to pay someone (or their heirs) to use their work! How unfair! Why can't you just rip people's work off!
so that others may use that as inspiration for their own creative works
Yeah, inspiration, right. If it's inspiration that would involve a copyright violation rather than inspiration than makes you create something truly original, then yeah, I've already been acquainted with that sort of inspiration. Namely some guy copied my parents entire first book and had the nerve to say he was 'inspired by their work'.
There are several works today, that if copyright laws were as strict when they were made as they are today, those works would have been copyright violations.
You're not showing how that would be a bad thing? If you could just give an example, so that I might see if I consider it something bad or good..
Copyright is something that a Society grants the creator of a work in exchange for the work entering the public domain. In essence, the public has purchased the rights to the work in exchange for temporary monopoly.
Funny, the definition of copyright I have (from Wiktionary) is quite different and says nothing about Society buying your work : "The right by law to be the entity which determines who may publish, copy and distribute a piece of writing, music, picture or other work of authorship.". So while practically a copyrighted work ends up in the public domain, the copyright is not a pact to enter the public domain in exchange of a temporary privilege. It's just a right that, in practice but not by definition, is temporary. I, in advance, accept your concession of this point.
If you claim that the length of copyright needs to be extended, then the compensation to the public needs to be increased.
That would work if the premise of your definition of copyright was correct.
My signature. And I'm a 22 year old wanker, who's getting a kick out of how easy it is to manipulate you into proving yourself when it's not required at all. And yeah, my parents wrote books for a living, what they wrote wasn't even art (they didn't write novels), no kind of social engineering was needed to find that out, only asking, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
The intrinsic value of a piece of music, or a novel, or a textbook is virtually nil in the absence of copyright, since anyone who is willing to make the effort can copy the work, and now that digital formats are commonplace the effort required to make a copy is neglegible.
It is only copyright that ensures that these works have value, by artificially restraining others from making copies.
Good point. However the copyright's value all depends on the artists' creation. So to put it this way, the copyright is the shell that prevents the artwork from having its added value squished, as the resulting value depends solely on the artwork, the copyright being the same invariable protection.
And I'm not a leech, I'm an heir. Leeches suck, heirs have it all falling in their lap without having to ask for a thing.
And why don't you make a living for yourself instead of expecting to receive royalties for your parents' works?
My money my problem. This is irrelevant to the problem at hand.
Well, in an "art as a service" world, anyone willing to enter the market would have to start by writing short stories published in anthologies and through this build a reputation as a good author, for only then to start being paid well enough to produce book-sized works as a full job.
Riiiight. Like that could work even a second.
Authors could maybe leverage concepts such as having an "official" or "preferred" publisher
You know that most writers have exclusivity deals with their publishers, right? That means they can't publish something with another publisher before their exclusive publisher refuses to publish something. I don't see why that would change with that wage idea thing. The contract between a writer and a publisher doesn't rely on copyrights. Besides if there was no copyright, the writer wouldn't even have their say, any publisher could publish any book, which would pretty much kill the incentive of being a publisher to begin with, right?
"denouncing" those that didn't compensate him back in some way by asking fans to not purchase from those
lol, right. You know, most writers don't appear on TV. A lot don't even have a website. Some (mainly the oldest generation alive) write their books with a pen. So how would they get the word out to their audience? The only words coming from you that 99% of your readers will have heard will be from nothing but your book.
On the plus side, the world as a whole would benefit more promptly from said successes, as they would get into the hands of most, in the most languages, the fastest. The social dynamic would in fact be entirely other.
Suuuuuure. What are you going to tell me next, that concurrence ultimately benefits the customer?? Right..
When my parents are gone, best believe I want to be paid by their employer as if they were still working at their job. Failing that, I feel I deserve any 'retirement money, welfare, etc...' that they would be getting if they were still alive.
The difference between you and I is that you wish you'd get paid for that, and I do get paid for that. The real difference? It's in our respective parents' contracts.
14 years? Are you kidding me? Not only is that awfully short, but my parents' first book had only sold about half its copies within its first 14 years. Why should they be paid for the copies sold until then and not for the copies sold after that? And most importantly, why should they bother making new editions of the same book after those 14 years? Or does that 14 year limit get renewed with new editions, thus offering a loop-hole? Why should it only last an arbitrary duration? How can anyone be okay with a one-size-fits-all copyright duration like "14 years ought to be enough for anybody", as if it magically was as suited for books as it'd be suited for music? Why shouldn't your copyright last for your entire lifetime? Why should one day what you've created only 14 years ago fall into the public domain? Why should you live to see your copyrights disappear?
Also, why are you so eager to see copyrights expire? What's the benefit for you? I mean besides getting the right to get all the music and movies released before 1995 for free? What's your stated reason?
Oh and I have to disagree with your "the cost to market a work is nearly zero" statement. Sure, you can print your book on lulu.com or whatever and talk about it on your website, but that's not even comparable to being really published and marketed. Same thing with putting up a MySpace music page and getting a record deal and being played on radio, or putting a paper on arXiv and getting published in Nature. Sure, some achieve great recognition through those new means, but that's rare enough you might as well compare it to how lottery winners give other lottery players hope in winning.
How dare you compare doing engineering for a car manufacturer with creating works of art sold as such? So what, you got hired by General Motors to make fucking speedometers? So yeah you signed a contract that meant you would engineer all that stuff for your employer for a fixed wage, and nothing else. My parents signed a contract that said they'd get a percentage on book sales for up until 70 years after the death of the author (something like that) which of course is transmitted to the heirs. You don't like it, so what, who cares, it's in the fucking contract.
And yeah it was safe to assume that you never created shit worthy of a copyright and I fail to see where you prove it wrong. And who cares about anyone's panties, I get money over not doing anything, you don't and you whine about it. 'Nuff said.
the artist should keep receiving his wages (yes, wages) for as long as he is actively making art
The glaringly obvious flaw with this is that it doesn't work. Imagine that you're a nobody in the world of literature. You write a book in your spare time, with difficulty you find a publisher. To everybody's surprise, including yours, you quickly sell you first million copies. Now imagine you're Stephen King. You write some bullshit ass story about people on an island in the middle of a hurricane who get disemboweled (the people, not the hurricane) by a mysterious creature for a mysterious reason. Publishers don't even care what's your book about, all they want is to have their name on the same book cover as yours. Only your book doesn't sell so great cause well, it's not just that it sucks but it's like a mashup of two stories you wrote back when you had something to write about.
If the 'wage' idea was taken, the new guy in the game will get literally the minimum wage for his best seller (after which he'd probably go back to his previous job, as all best seller writers don't have a follow-up best seller coming next), because even as of now publishers are never too careful with newcomers (as in they don't take big risks), while the Stephen King type guy will get millions thrown at him, for a bullshit ass book he probably paid a ghost writer 40 times less to write.
Oh well, not like anyone on Slashdot would seem to care about the financial fate of the guy who gets $10,000 instead of $2,000,000 for his best seller, but the net effect of this for the reader would be basically more books written by ghost writers with John McCain's or Paris Hilton's name on it, and less books written by previously unknown writers like JK Rowling or Charles Dickens (sorry if comparing the two offends anyone).
And what's your justification for believing you're entitled to royalties? Simply because they were your parents? Sorry, copyright doesn't work like that.
Justification here. And yes, copyright does work like that, which is why I'm currently living off a $3,000 royalty check I got last month. You just *wish* it didn't work like that.
Because society is the true owner of those works
Fucking communists. Yeah it's convenient for you to go by these principles, you never created shit worthy of a copyright, all you want to do is get the art works of your interest for free and get away with it, and in the meantime you forged a philosophy to give yourself good conscience that brings your greed down (or should I say up) to the 'noble cause' of "sticking it up to the man". If you had ever created anything and heard some fucker claimed that society inherently owns what you've created you'd feel like putting your foot up their arse. Fortunately in the real world, irrelevant arseholes like you aren't the ones in charge or even have their say (well you do but the only ones to listen are other irrelevant arseholes of your very kind).
Fortunately, I get my check, and all you get is an erection of my middle fingers. The world is well done.
Why should an adult receive royalties for what their parents did?
Turn it around. Why shouldn't your children benefit from the fruits of your work in case you don't live to benefit fully from them? Oh well you surely don't have any children so you'd probably go "fuck the little fuckers, they have to work hard to get 'rewarded' just like anyone else". All fuckers like you want is artists to 'stop being greedy' (i.e. let you have their work for free) so that you don't have to pay a thing.
And anyways what you pointed out doesn't have directly to do with the problem at hand but with inheritance. Why should Paris Hilton inherit from all that money without doing a thing for it? Cause she can, and she says fuck you. And why should you have had the chance to have a proper education as you grew up as well as decent conditions of life whereas others didn't even have electricity or where born in a war zone? Cause it's like that, same reason. Or even yet that other kid's parents have half a dozen PhDs, so naturally he didn't have to work as hard as you did at school to get much better grades than you cause he was born smarter. Booo hooo, it's unfair, so what? You wanna split your salary with some unfortunate guy from Alabama or Africa? Go ahead, show the example.
Oh and back to my case. So if my parents' books fell in the public domain, so what? The books are not suddenly going to sell for 5% cheaper. It's the book publisher that will eat my share of the cake. Is that what you want? Oh yeah, that would make us really even. Except that maybe when your parents die they leave behind much more than 400 euros. Oh no then it would be unfair for me! Or maybe the smarter kid had a predisposition for depression and ended up killing himself, so maybe you had better chances than him to begin with, who would know?
It's hard to even calculate at which point to persons with different backgrounds get even, so yeah, how could "equal chances" become a reality when you couldn't even define equal chances? Or are you a Communist hippie who's under the delusion that if you strip anyone of privileges from the start it'd make us equal? Yeah, that would be a way, that would make us even, evenly fucked (not to mention that genetic inheritance couldn't be accounted for).
Why? Chairmakers don't receive compensations for as long as people are enjoying their chairs. Builders don't receive compensation for as long as people enjoy their houses.
Awful analogy. Artists make money off what they sell only as long as copyright laws allows them. They make money off what they sell. A better analogy would be "Chairmakers receive compensations for as long as people buy their chairs". Artists make a product, they don't offer a service. If what they produce is still worth something (as in, people would pay for it) after 100 years, why artificially remove its added value by declaring it's free? That's right, artists create added value. When everybody agrees not to pay and get what the artists did for free, then this value vanishes into this air.
Disclaimer : my parents were book writers (nothing else), the proverbial starving artists, and best believe I want to get royalties off their work as long as there's someone who wants to buy their books.
So it is either hire him and earn loyalty for the term of the contract so that once it's over he knows much more than he needs to know about your infrastructure to do anything he wants with it, or he might just hack you.
There, fixed it for you. Your argument comes down to "Instead of letting the wolf outside the chicken coup and let him try to attack, let him inside the coop and put him in charge of the security, namely making sure no other wolf gets in". What's the worst that could possibly happen?
Well that would make sense considered how hard JFK and RFK allegedly tried to assassinate Castro. And that was LBJ's opinion [citation needed, I know, can't be arsed to look] on JFK's assassination that Castro had called the shots.
And I have an AZERTY layout, you insensitive clouds. I'm French, and because I have a French keyboard basically I can't use the WASD configuration in any game. Which is why it's a major pain in the arse when such a layout is hardcoded. If you want to hard-code a "neutral" layout, avoid QWAZM, as these tend to move around. Therefore ESDF replaces advantageously WASD.
Re:Jobs role in Apple is overrated
on
Inside Steve's Brain
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Indeed, picture Apple without Jobs' contribution surviving until the 2000s whereas every other non-IBM PC clone died in a way or another. Right, that sounds impossible without Jobs' charisma, leadership and vision. And the Apple II only got Apple that far, Apple would have experienced a relatively quick death without the Macintosh, which I believe wouldn't have occurred if it wasn't for Jobs.
Wow internet in 1984, I thought internet was only for Big Brother back then.....I guess George Orwell forgot to mention "Internet & Slashdot" in his story!!!:D
Huh.. You know 1984 wasn't just a novel, it was also a year. If I recall correctly it took place about 24 years ago and lasted for about 366 days. Look it up!
Leek? What does a vegetable have to do with C? Sure, some C programmers are very much like vegetables, but...
Give me a break, I'm French. At this point you should be amazed I'm even capable of not sounding like one.
And you forgot to mention garbage collection. "Oh boo hoo, I don't want to have to free my allocations when I'm done with them."
What do you think I was refering to by leek? However I forgot about exception handlers. "Whaaaaa, Whaaaaa, I can't be arsed to fix my mistakes so I just put something on top of them that makes it about right".
And for Christmas we only had an orange and we didn't complain.
(They wouldn't be, of course, and my other major omission is the need to orbit the moon -- I have no idea how the moon's gravity would perturb the ISS as it approached, I suppose it would increase or decrease orbital transfer efficiency but I don't know which.)
My intuition is that if it took that long for ISS's orbit to go near the Moon as it would get close to it the Moon would make it the ISS's orbit more and more eccentric, and the result would be quite chaotic. Without any possibility of a short but strong impulse, one strong enough that it could keep the ISS within the Moon's Hill sphere on the occasion of it shooting into it, then things would only get worse with time and eventually the ISS would get shot out of Earth's Hill sphere and start to orbit the Sun in an orbit slightly more eccentric than ours that would eventually cross ours.
My conclusion being, technically impossible, not if you're able of quick enough accelerations, which the ISS couldn't even remotely possibly be capable of with what's been suggested.
Well, that's great in theory. But part of the reason for getting rid of what junk we have up there is that space (in orbit) is a lot smaller than it seems. Having something the size of a penny smash into your craft while orbiting can really ruin your day, let alone what might happen if creamed by something the size of MIR.
More like the orbit of MIR quickly decays if you don't give it the fuel to occasionally thrust a bit to make up for the atmospheric drag. Yes, atmospheric drag, low-earth orbit satellites suffer from atmospheric drag, which makes them get lower and lower until they eventually get so low they burn. Which is why you either keep them fueled or they're goners anyways. "Getting hit by MIR" wouldn't have been a risk for very long I believe.
It may even evolve into a completely integrated system, where you can watch movies, watch television programs, play games, and surf the net all from the same device.
The only thing that's lacking to your post is "you'll consult video e-mails on your living room big screen TV" to sound like a bad "Your home in 20 years" prediction/fiction from the early 1990s.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry your parents were such shitty writers
They sold 2 million copies over 30 years, you asshat. If you were a bit less clueless about the book industry you'd know that it's very hard to make a living off solely writing books and my parents did it (my father was over 60 the whole time). Although, book publishers tend to screw you over a bit, i.e. by paying you only once a year and one year late. You tend to stack up debts in that case.
I personally have no qualms about rich brats getting large sums of money left to them. Their parents earned it and saved it up wisely throughout their life time. That's how children benefit. They get money and actual property, all of which is taxed. If your parents made any money off their works and wanted to leave it to you, not a problem at all.
That's a completely retarded point since basically it amounts to the same thing, that is the kids get money they didn't work to get.
So your point against copyright is basically.. so you can get it for free without being a pirate? Are you a fucking retard? Why would my parents have written a book in the first place if it was to give it away to suckers like you who only want to get it for free? And "creating imaginary things"? Books = imaginary things? If you do please do slap books into your face, if you have any (books, not face). I don't even get your whole point, what are you suggesting, that everything falls into the public domain to begin with and then wait for the few benevolent artists to keep working?
And a right that only a minority have is indeed a priviledge, however still a right.
a) The general book market has little in common with the scifi niche
b) Way to miss the point. Of course they like to publish what's already been published, it's risk free, and all the work has been done. Believe it or not but it takes some work and time for the first publisher to go from the manuscript to the final book, and also quite some risks, which is nothing like republishing Don Quixote. So of course they wouldn't want to take all the risks and put all the work in it to make all the concurrence use what they've done just as soon.
c) That's just stupid it doesn't need an explanation (actually I can't explain, like, there's nothing to explain). That's not how it works in the real world.
d) Duh, just what I thought, you see the world through the goggles of over-simplification. Of course concurrence is usually beneficial, but what you failed to realise is that when you hear "hey let's privatise this public service, concurrence will only make it better for you!" that's 90% of the time bullshit. Which was the point, which you proved while attempting to defuse it.
Nice. Except no one ever talked about perpetual copyright or even suggested it. Read what I said again. I never talked about perpetual copyright, only about copyright that doesn't expire before the author's death.
Besides, that's a point poorly made. "most of these variations on Paganini's theme would be ILLEGAL under current copyright law". OMG ILLEGAL!! You mean like the 182 times that James Brown's Funky Drummer was sampled? OMG.. so if we follow your logic, all of these would be.. illegal?! So how could all these people get away with it?!
Answer : by paying the copyright holder. So nothing in your example would be lost. Your example just falls apart (I like to call this 'argument tipping', like cow tipping except with arguments). Oh noes you have to pay someone (or their heirs) to use their work! How unfair! Why can't you just rip people's work off!
so that others may use that as inspiration for their own creative works
Yeah, inspiration, right. If it's inspiration that would involve a copyright violation rather than inspiration than makes you create something truly original, then yeah, I've already been acquainted with that sort of inspiration. Namely some guy copied my parents entire first book and had the nerve to say he was 'inspired by their work'.
There are several works today, that if copyright laws were as strict when they were made as they are today, those works would have been copyright violations.
You're not showing how that would be a bad thing? If you could just give an example, so that I might see if I consider it something bad or good..
Copyright is something that a Society grants the creator of a work in exchange for the work entering the public domain. In essence, the public has purchased the rights to the work in exchange for temporary monopoly.
Funny, the definition of copyright I have (from Wiktionary) is quite different and says nothing about Society buying your work : "The right by law to be the entity which determines who may publish, copy and distribute a piece of writing, music, picture or other work of authorship.". So while practically a copyrighted work ends up in the public domain, the copyright is not a pact to enter the public domain in exchange of a temporary privilege. It's just a right that, in practice but not by definition, is temporary. I, in advance, accept your concession of this point.
If you claim that the length of copyright needs to be extended, then the compensation to the public needs to be increased.
That would work if the premise of your definition of copyright was correct.
Yay, a pissing contest, I love these!
What have *you* brought to society lately?
My signature. And I'm a 22 year old wanker, who's getting a kick out of how easy it is to manipulate you into proving yourself when it's not required at all. And yeah, my parents wrote books for a living, what they wrote wasn't even art (they didn't write novels), no kind of social engineering was needed to find that out, only asking, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
"Software development, heat shield testing and other complex work remain behind schedule or over budget."
"Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget."
No, copyright creates added value.
The intrinsic value of a piece of music, or a novel, or a textbook is virtually nil in the absence of copyright, since anyone who is willing to make the effort can copy the work, and now that digital formats are commonplace the effort required to make a copy is neglegible.
It is only copyright that ensures that these works have value, by artificially restraining others from making copies.
Good point. However the copyright's value all depends on the artists' creation. So to put it this way, the copyright is the shell that prevents the artwork from having its added value squished, as the resulting value depends solely on the artwork, the copyright being the same invariable protection.
And I'm not a leech, I'm an heir. Leeches suck, heirs have it all falling in their lap without having to ask for a thing.
And why don't you make a living for yourself instead of expecting to receive royalties for your parents' works?
My money my problem. This is irrelevant to the problem at hand.
Well, in an "art as a service" world, anyone willing to enter the market would have to start by writing short stories published in anthologies and through this build a reputation as a good author, for only then to start being paid well enough to produce book-sized works as a full job.
Riiiight. Like that could work even a second.
Authors could maybe leverage concepts such as having an "official" or "preferred" publisher
You know that most writers have exclusivity deals with their publishers, right? That means they can't publish something with another publisher before their exclusive publisher refuses to publish something. I don't see why that would change with that wage idea thing. The contract between a writer and a publisher doesn't rely on copyrights. Besides if there was no copyright, the writer wouldn't even have their say, any publisher could publish any book, which would pretty much kill the incentive of being a publisher to begin with, right?
"denouncing" those that didn't compensate him back in some way by asking fans to not purchase from those
lol, right. You know, most writers don't appear on TV. A lot don't even have a website. Some (mainly the oldest generation alive) write their books with a pen. So how would they get the word out to their audience? The only words coming from you that 99% of your readers will have heard will be from nothing but your book.
On the plus side, the world as a whole would benefit more promptly from said successes, as they would get into the hands of most, in the most languages, the fastest. The social dynamic would in fact be entirely other.
Suuuuuure. What are you going to tell me next, that concurrence ultimately benefits the customer?? Right..
When my parents are gone, best believe I want to be paid by their employer as if they were still working at their job. Failing that, I feel I deserve any 'retirement money, welfare, etc...' that they would be getting if they were still alive.
The difference between you and I is that you wish you'd get paid for that, and I do get paid for that. The real difference? It's in our respective parents' contracts.
14 years? Are you kidding me? Not only is that awfully short, but my parents' first book had only sold about half its copies within its first 14 years. Why should they be paid for the copies sold until then and not for the copies sold after that? And most importantly, why should they bother making new editions of the same book after those 14 years? Or does that 14 year limit get renewed with new editions, thus offering a loop-hole? Why should it only last an arbitrary duration? How can anyone be okay with a one-size-fits-all copyright duration like "14 years ought to be enough for anybody", as if it magically was as suited for books as it'd be suited for music? Why shouldn't your copyright last for your entire lifetime? Why should one day what you've created only 14 years ago fall into the public domain? Why should you live to see your copyrights disappear?
Also, why are you so eager to see copyrights expire? What's the benefit for you? I mean besides getting the right to get all the music and movies released before 1995 for free? What's your stated reason?
Oh and I have to disagree with your "the cost to market a work is nearly zero" statement. Sure, you can print your book on lulu.com or whatever and talk about it on your website, but that's not even comparable to being really published and marketed. Same thing with putting up a MySpace music page and getting a record deal and being played on radio, or putting a paper on arXiv and getting published in Nature. Sure, some achieve great recognition through those new means, but that's rare enough you might as well compare it to how lottery winners give other lottery players hope in winning.
How dare you compare doing engineering for a car manufacturer with creating works of art sold as such? So what, you got hired by General Motors to make fucking speedometers? So yeah you signed a contract that meant you would engineer all that stuff for your employer for a fixed wage, and nothing else. My parents signed a contract that said they'd get a percentage on book sales for up until 70 years after the death of the author (something like that) which of course is transmitted to the heirs. You don't like it, so what, who cares, it's in the fucking contract.
And yeah it was safe to assume that you never created shit worthy of a copyright and I fail to see where you prove it wrong. And who cares about anyone's panties, I get money over not doing anything, you don't and you whine about it. 'Nuff said.
the artist should keep receiving his wages (yes, wages) for as long as he is actively making art
The glaringly obvious flaw with this is that it doesn't work. Imagine that you're a nobody in the world of literature. You write a book in your spare time, with difficulty you find a publisher. To everybody's surprise, including yours, you quickly sell you first million copies. Now imagine you're Stephen King. You write some bullshit ass story about people on an island in the middle of a hurricane who get disemboweled (the people, not the hurricane) by a mysterious creature for a mysterious reason. Publishers don't even care what's your book about, all they want is to have their name on the same book cover as yours. Only your book doesn't sell so great cause well, it's not just that it sucks but it's like a mashup of two stories you wrote back when you had something to write about.
If the 'wage' idea was taken, the new guy in the game will get literally the minimum wage for his best seller (after which he'd probably go back to his previous job, as all best seller writers don't have a follow-up best seller coming next), because even as of now publishers are never too careful with newcomers (as in they don't take big risks), while the Stephen King type guy will get millions thrown at him, for a bullshit ass book he probably paid a ghost writer 40 times less to write.
Oh well, not like anyone on Slashdot would seem to care about the financial fate of the guy who gets $10,000 instead of $2,000,000 for his best seller, but the net effect of this for the reader would be basically more books written by ghost writers with John McCain's or Paris Hilton's name on it, and less books written by previously unknown writers like JK Rowling or Charles Dickens (sorry if comparing the two offends anyone).
And what's your justification for believing you're entitled to royalties? Simply because they were your parents? Sorry, copyright doesn't work like that.
Justification here. And yes, copyright does work like that, which is why I'm currently living off a $3,000 royalty check I got last month. You just *wish* it didn't work like that.
Because society is the true owner of those works
Fucking communists. Yeah it's convenient for you to go by these principles, you never created shit worthy of a copyright, all you want to do is get the art works of your interest for free and get away with it, and in the meantime you forged a philosophy to give yourself good conscience that brings your greed down (or should I say up) to the 'noble cause' of "sticking it up to the man". If you had ever created anything and heard some fucker claimed that society inherently owns what you've created you'd feel like putting your foot up their arse. Fortunately in the real world, irrelevant arseholes like you aren't the ones in charge or even have their say (well you do but the only ones to listen are other irrelevant arseholes of your very kind).
Fortunately, I get my check, and all you get is an erection of my middle fingers. The world is well done.
Why should an adult receive royalties for what their parents did?
Turn it around. Why shouldn't your children benefit from the fruits of your work in case you don't live to benefit fully from them? Oh well you surely don't have any children so you'd probably go "fuck the little fuckers, they have to work hard to get 'rewarded' just like anyone else". All fuckers like you want is artists to 'stop being greedy' (i.e. let you have their work for free) so that you don't have to pay a thing.
And anyways what you pointed out doesn't have directly to do with the problem at hand but with inheritance. Why should Paris Hilton inherit from all that money without doing a thing for it? Cause she can, and she says fuck you. And why should you have had the chance to have a proper education as you grew up as well as decent conditions of life whereas others didn't even have electricity or where born in a war zone? Cause it's like that, same reason. Or even yet that other kid's parents have half a dozen PhDs, so naturally he didn't have to work as hard as you did at school to get much better grades than you cause he was born smarter. Booo hooo, it's unfair, so what? You wanna split your salary with some unfortunate guy from Alabama or Africa? Go ahead, show the example.
Oh and back to my case. So if my parents' books fell in the public domain, so what? The books are not suddenly going to sell for 5% cheaper. It's the book publisher that will eat my share of the cake. Is that what you want? Oh yeah, that would make us really even. Except that maybe when your parents die they leave behind much more than 400 euros. Oh no then it would be unfair for me! Or maybe the smarter kid had a predisposition for depression and ended up killing himself, so maybe you had better chances than him to begin with, who would know?
It's hard to even calculate at which point to persons with different backgrounds get even, so yeah, how could "equal chances" become a reality when you couldn't even define equal chances? Or are you a Communist hippie who's under the delusion that if you strip anyone of privileges from the start it'd make us equal? Yeah, that would be a way, that would make us even, evenly fucked (not to mention that genetic inheritance couldn't be accounted for).
Why? Chairmakers don't receive compensations for as long as people are enjoying their chairs. Builders don't receive compensation for as long as people enjoy their houses.
Awful analogy. Artists make money off what they sell only as long as copyright laws allows them. They make money off what they sell. A better analogy would be "Chairmakers receive compensations for as long as people buy their chairs". Artists make a product, they don't offer a service. If what they produce is still worth something (as in, people would pay for it) after 100 years, why artificially remove its added value by declaring it's free? That's right, artists create added value. When everybody agrees not to pay and get what the artists did for free, then this value vanishes into this air.
Disclaimer : my parents were book writers (nothing else), the proverbial starving artists, and best believe I want to get royalties off their work as long as there's someone who wants to buy their books.
So it is either hire him and earn loyalty for the term of the contract so that once it's over he knows much more than he needs to know about your infrastructure to do anything he wants with it, or he might just hack you.
There, fixed it for you. Your argument comes down to "Instead of letting the wolf outside the chicken coup and let him try to attack, let him inside the coop and put him in charge of the security, namely making sure no other wolf gets in". What's the worst that could possibly happen?
Well that would make sense considered how hard JFK and RFK allegedly tried to assassinate Castro. And that was LBJ's opinion [citation needed, I know, can't be arsed to look] on JFK's assassination that Castro had called the shots.
And I have an AZERTY layout, you insensitive clouds. I'm French, and because I have a French keyboard basically I can't use the WASD configuration in any game. Which is why it's a major pain in the arse when such a layout is hardcoded. If you want to hard-code a "neutral" layout, avoid QWAZM, as these tend to move around. Therefore ESDF replaces advantageously WASD.
Indeed, picture Apple without Jobs' contribution surviving until the 2000s whereas every other non-IBM PC clone died in a way or another. Right, that sounds impossible without Jobs' charisma, leadership and vision. And the Apple II only got Apple that far, Apple would have experienced a relatively quick death without the Macintosh, which I believe wouldn't have occurred if it wasn't for Jobs.
Wow internet in 1984, I thought internet was only for Big Brother back then.....I guess George Orwell forgot to mention "Internet & Slashdot" in his story!!! :D
Huh.. You know 1984 wasn't just a novel, it was also a year. If I recall correctly it took place about 24 years ago and lasted for about 366 days. Look it up!
Leek? What does a vegetable have to do with C? Sure, some C programmers are very much like vegetables, but...
Give me a break, I'm French. At this point you should be amazed I'm even capable of not sounding like one.
And you forgot to mention garbage collection. "Oh boo hoo, I don't want to have to free my allocations when I'm done with them."
What do you think I was refering to by leek? However I forgot about exception handlers. "Whaaaaa, Whaaaaa, I can't be arsed to fix my mistakes so I just put something on top of them that makes it about right".
And for Christmas we only had an orange and we didn't complain.
(They wouldn't be, of course, and my other major omission is the need to orbit the moon -- I have no idea how the moon's gravity would perturb the ISS as it approached, I suppose it would increase or decrease orbital transfer efficiency but I don't know which.)
My intuition is that if it took that long for ISS's orbit to go near the Moon as it would get close to it the Moon would make it the ISS's orbit more and more eccentric, and the result would be quite chaotic. Without any possibility of a short but strong impulse, one strong enough that it could keep the ISS within the Moon's Hill sphere on the occasion of it shooting into it, then things would only get worse with time and eventually the ISS would get shot out of Earth's Hill sphere and start to orbit the Sun in an orbit slightly more eccentric than ours that would eventually cross ours.
My conclusion being, technically impossible, not if you're able of quick enough accelerations, which the ISS couldn't even remotely possibly be capable of with what's been suggested.
Well, that's great in theory. But part of the reason for getting rid of what junk we have up there is that space (in orbit) is a lot smaller than it seems. Having something the size of a penny smash into your craft while orbiting can really ruin your day, let alone what might happen if creamed by something the size of MIR.
More like the orbit of MIR quickly decays if you don't give it the fuel to occasionally thrust a bit to make up for the atmospheric drag. Yes, atmospheric drag, low-earth orbit satellites suffer from atmospheric drag, which makes them get lower and lower until they eventually get so low they burn. Which is why you either keep them fueled or they're goners anyways. "Getting hit by MIR" wouldn't have been a risk for very long I believe.
It may even evolve into a completely integrated system, where you can watch movies, watch television programs, play games, and surf the net all from the same device.
The only thing that's lacking to your post is "you'll consult video e-mails on your living room big screen TV" to sound like a bad "Your home in 20 years" prediction/fiction from the early 1990s.
P.S. he didn't "find" the planets, they were already there.
Your definitions of words are intriguing to me and I wish to order your dictionary.