I had a similar experience, only I was far less prepared. I guess that makes this sorta OT since I didn't use technology to get out of it, but whatever...
I was commuting from downtown Cleveland to the suburbs along Carnegie Ave, which ran from downtown (with dynamic lanes) all the way out into the 'burbs, where it turned into Cedar Rd. One of the first suburbs it went through was Cleveland Heights, whose police are notoriously anal-retentive about speeding (stories of people being ticketed for doing 3mph over the limit are common). Worse, the limit drops (or dropped, it's been several years) from 35 to 25 as you enter town.
So I'm driving home and, as usual, I drop to precisely 25mph as I enter Cleveland Heights. As I do so, I see a cop sitting at a gas station on the corner, just waiting. A moment later someone whizzes by me at at least 45 and, predictably, the cop pulls out. The car had slowed as soon as he saw the cop, and was now not very far ahead of me, but it was too late.
The cop came up behind me but didn't hit his sirens until he was right beside me, at which both I and the guy he was after pulled over. So once we're all at a stop -- the speeder in front of the cop, with me behind both -- I start to pull back out onto the street and resume my drive. At this point, the officer flags me down and writes me a ticket for failing to yield to him.
Now, since I did, in fact, yield, I decided to fight it. The only defense I could come up with was that I ended up stopped behind the cop and therefore must have yielded, but frankly, that was a pretty weak defense. I refused to roll over, though.
So the court date arrives and the jury box is being used to house all the Cleveland Heights policemen who are there to testify in traffic cases. I couldn't even tell which one had pulled me over because they were all large, pale, and redheaded -- the Irish policeman stereotype. My weak defense in hand, I strode to the front of the court once my name was called and I waited as the judge consulted with the officer who had come out of the jury box.
Then the judge said that the officer couldn't recall the circumstances of the ticket, and dismissed my case. I like to imagine that he wrote so many BS tickets that he couldn't remember which was which...
A window should never fall off, it should've been tested, found a weak spot and replaced. What would've happened if it didn't fall off. It most likely would've come off during liftoff, which is probably the second most traumatic time for the shuttle after re-entry.
The window didn't fall off. A panel that covers the windows before launch did. In other words, it's a temporary part that's intended to be removed before anything happens.
I am glad that they are scrubbing the mission for saftey. I'd rather it be years before we get back to space than to lose a few more astronauts.
When asked, those same astronauts whose lives are at risk generally think the risk is worth it. Spaceflight isn't safe. You're packing overevolved monkeys into a tin can and shooting them out of the atmosphere of the planet they evolved on, using enormous amounts of energy in the process. What part of that sounds safe, exactly?
Now, sure, that doesn't mean we can't mitigate risks to some degree, but it will take improvements of several orders of magnitude in materials science and in the creation of energy before the whole thing even begins to resemble something a normal, risk-averse ape should do. The astronauts know what they're getting into. Frankly, I'd probably risk it, too.
What claim to the moon? We were under an international agreement explicitly forbidding any such claims, hence the engraving on Eagle's base: "We came in peace for all mankind." The US flag was symbolism (and something to rub the Soviets' noses in), not a territorial claim.
I'm often accused of being a grammar nazi. With that said, I do it online amongst friends in the general spirit of giving each other shit. Even the most pedantic don't really care if your grammar sucks in an informal setting like Slashdot or IRC; we do, however, get bored sometimes.
Now, on to my point: Those who claim that they're ignoring the accepted conventions of English grammar and spelling simply because "it's just a forum" or "it's just chat" generally seem to screw it up in more formal settings, too. I've got a coworker who is consistently guilty of this. I don't think he's subhuman because he can't spell -- in fact, he's a great guy -- but when I see emails going to management with basic mistakes of grammar and spelling, it makes me cringe. We gave him crap about it until he started spellchecking every email he sends, but as often as not, his typos are bad enough that the spellchecker picks some other word entirely. Naturally, he blindly accepts the suggestion. Yes, he is a native English speaker -- monolingual, in fact.
I'm sure I'll catch flak for a generalization like this, but most of the "it doesn't matter under this circumstance" types (at least of those I've gotten to know) can't properly spell (or assemble a sentence) when it does matter, either. As a result, such proclamations usually ring hollow, at least to me. I suspect that I'm far from alone in this.
Well, I'm sure I'll get endless crap for this, but I still find it hilarious. I swear, I don't usually go for lowest-common-denominator humor, but man, that still cracks me up:(.
This argument is horseshit. It's been horseshit for years and it will always be horseshit. The blacklists exist for the sole purpose of allowing other people to block mail based on the data contained therein. The blacklist operators don't get off the hook for having some frickin' responsibility just because they're not holding a gun to anyone's head. They publish this information with precise knowledge of what it will be used for, so this argument is basically just the administrators trying to weasel out of personal responsibility for what they list.
In case you're wondering, I do use a couple of blacklists. I use them to reject mail, as intended. I like to think that the ones I use are operated by folks who take seriously the fact that people like me are using it for that purpose.
Manned missions in space don't make sense from scientific or economic perspectives.
Manned space missions make plenty of sense from a scientific perspective, if your eventual goal is to put a significant number of people into space (and onto other bodies). But more on that later.
The reason that our space program is doomed is the second half of that statement. Manned space missions never made sense from an ecomonic perspective. That wasn't the point then, and it still isn't now. We're just not in a pissing match with the Soviets anymore, so the whole thing has become substantially less popular.
The point is discovery, knowledge, exploration, figuring out how to hedge our species' bets by getting all of our eggs out of this one fucking handbasket that we're already halfway to hell in.
You may not think that's worth the money, and you're well within your rights to do so. My worry is how many others in America seem to agree with you. Sure, that's democracy, but I can still decry the opinion.
What you might call pragmatism, I call a crying shame. All this civilization and advancement and the best we can do is worry about the fucking coffers.
I don't think there's enough left of this horse to make glue with.
Mr. Berman, I am a Trekker. I have been one all my life. When I was a kid, my parents would sometimes punish me by forbidding me from watching the week's new episode of TNG. It was pretty far down the list of last resorts. I grew up on Star Trek (the newer ones, even), and I would like for you to just leave it alone. Please. It's ceased to be entertaining or interesting or emotionally involving, except in the "stolen childhood" sense that most geeks remember from Star Wars ep1. I'm sure you'll continue to be able to put food on your family's table.
Haha, dude. I've seen it, but c'mon... spoiler alert? I've got several friends who didn't wanna jump into it mid-season and waited for the repeats to start...
This is all relatively secret, but yes, there will be another rerelease of the original trilogy. First, though, the LucasFilm team will have to work out some minor changes...
I'm not making these, oddly enough, to be giant, successful blockbusters.
Well-put! In fact, that's one of the things my talking Jar-Jar Binks doll says. He also says "Ewoks are cute and cuddly; collect all 50!" and "Meesa stereotype, yousa hate n*ggers".
I guess Jar-Jar was rated PG-13 for the sake of art, too...
Folks like this is why there may never be an 'Ender's Game' movie, because someone will complain the that naked boy soap fight scene was missing...
You know what, though? Fuckem. They're the same people who, with something like 10-12 unique hours of Lord of the Rings trilogy available on DVD, complain about how several Ents were left out or condensed into a revised Treebeard. They're the ones who want a 15-hour movie that's paced like a snail just so that no detail is ever missed. They'll always exist. They're a few levels up from the "the book is always better than the movie" snobs, and their reserved parking in hell is significantly hotter for the fact that they don't even have any examples with which to back up their snobbery; in the end, they don't mean shit. I think New Line's revenues are all the evidence you need of that.
And yes, I will be very pissed if the Ender's Game movie doesn't get made because of such idiocy. Which reminds me, I still haven't started on the new Shadow book...
Re:live performances vs. commercial product
on
EZTree Shuts Down
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· Score: 1
I would think that the record company does hold some rights to the live performances.
Not likely... Unless the label hired someone to write the material (as in the case of a number of pop stars), the artist retains the rights to the music itself, while the label owns only the mechanical copyright for the album recording (and, as such, the distribution rights to that recording). The mechanical copyright covers that specific recording, though, not all recordings of that material.
In other words, you own what you wrote, but they own what they paid for you to record (to oversimplify things a bit).
The labels aren't generally the ones who pay for the tours. Generally speaking, the labels make their money off the albums; the bands make their money off the concerts. In fact, I've read that a lot of less-successful artists on major labels need to tour just to pay back the advance.
Now, with all that said, most artists on major labels are also under exclusive contract, which can get you into trouble if you sell any performance of theirs. That's a contractual issue, though, not a copyright one, and that ends when the contract does (usually after the required number of albums have been released).
Maybe I'm being a pedant (and it wouldn't be the first time), but how are we to trust the judgment of ADTI on the topic of licensing and IP when they aren't even aware of the difference between copyleft and public domain?
Public domain is pretty clearly defined under current IP laws, and just about the only thing it has in common with open source, free software, copyleft, etc. is the fact that all generally permit anyone to look and touch. In fact, public domain refers to who owns it and only implies the license terms (to the best of my understanding, it's basically "the public owns this and, as the owner, the public can do whatever they want with it"). Copyleft does not release ownership of IP to the public.
Then again, that's probably exactly what these clowns want the public to think it does...
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. Who wants to worry about pulling the holographic memory modules because their power armor is trying to kill them?
I had a similar experience, only I was far less prepared. I guess that makes this sorta OT since I didn't use technology to get out of it, but whatever...
I was commuting from downtown Cleveland to the suburbs along Carnegie Ave, which ran from downtown (with dynamic lanes) all the way out into the 'burbs, where it turned into Cedar Rd. One of the first suburbs it went through was Cleveland Heights, whose police are notoriously anal-retentive about speeding (stories of people being ticketed for doing 3mph over the limit are common). Worse, the limit drops (or dropped, it's been several years) from 35 to 25 as you enter town.
So I'm driving home and, as usual, I drop to precisely 25mph as I enter Cleveland Heights. As I do so, I see a cop sitting at a gas station on the corner, just waiting. A moment later someone whizzes by me at at least 45 and, predictably, the cop pulls out. The car had slowed as soon as he saw the cop, and was now not very far ahead of me, but it was too late.
The cop came up behind me but didn't hit his sirens until he was right beside me, at which both I and the guy he was after pulled over. So once we're all at a stop -- the speeder in front of the cop, with me behind both -- I start to pull back out onto the street and resume my drive. At this point, the officer flags me down and writes me a ticket for failing to yield to him.
Now, since I did, in fact, yield, I decided to fight it. The only defense I could come up with was that I ended up stopped behind the cop and therefore must have yielded, but frankly, that was a pretty weak defense. I refused to roll over, though.
So the court date arrives and the jury box is being used to house all the Cleveland Heights policemen who are there to testify in traffic cases. I couldn't even tell which one had pulled me over because they were all large, pale, and redheaded -- the Irish policeman stereotype. My weak defense in hand, I strode to the front of the court once my name was called and I waited as the judge consulted with the officer who had come out of the jury box.
Then the judge said that the officer couldn't recall the circumstances of the ticket, and dismissed my case. I like to imagine that he wrote so many BS tickets that he couldn't remember which was which...
It's Mega-Maid! She's gone from suck to blow!
The window didn't fall off. A panel that covers the windows before launch did. In other words, it's a temporary part that's intended to be removed before anything happens.
When asked, those same astronauts whose lives are at risk generally think the risk is worth it. Spaceflight isn't safe. You're packing overevolved monkeys into a tin can and shooting them out of the atmosphere of the planet they evolved on, using enormous amounts of energy in the process. What part of that sounds safe, exactly?
Now, sure, that doesn't mean we can't mitigate risks to some degree, but it will take improvements of several orders of magnitude in materials science and in the creation of energy before the whole thing even begins to resemble something a normal, risk-averse ape should do. The astronauts know what they're getting into. Frankly, I'd probably risk it, too.
What claim to the moon? We were under an international agreement explicitly forbidding any such claims, hence the engraving on Eagle's base: "We came in peace for all mankind." The US flag was symbolism (and something to rub the Soviets' noses in), not a territorial claim.
So let's arrest the people who do that, too. Hell, let's give the death penalty for all crimes, even the smallest misdemeanors!
I'm often accused of being a grammar nazi. With that said, I do it online amongst friends in the general spirit of giving each other shit. Even the most pedantic don't really care if your grammar sucks in an informal setting like Slashdot or IRC; we do, however, get bored sometimes.
Now, on to my point: Those who claim that they're ignoring the accepted conventions of English grammar and spelling simply because "it's just a forum" or "it's just chat" generally seem to screw it up in more formal settings, too. I've got a coworker who is consistently guilty of this. I don't think he's subhuman because he can't spell -- in fact, he's a great guy -- but when I see emails going to management with basic mistakes of grammar and spelling, it makes me cringe. We gave him crap about it until he started spellchecking every email he sends, but as often as not, his typos are bad enough that the spellchecker picks some other word entirely. Naturally, he blindly accepts the suggestion. Yes, he is a native English speaker -- monolingual, in fact.
I'm sure I'll catch flak for a generalization like this, but most of the "it doesn't matter under this circumstance" types (at least of those I've gotten to know) can't properly spell (or assemble a sentence) when it does matter, either. As a result, such proclamations usually ring hollow, at least to me. I suspect that I'm far from alone in this.
Batman: The Movie
Well, I'm sure I'll get endless crap for this, but I still find it hilarious. I swear, I don't usually go for lowest-common-denominator humor, but man, that still cracks me up :(.
This argument is horseshit. It's been horseshit for years and it will always be horseshit. The blacklists exist for the sole purpose of allowing other people to block mail based on the data contained therein. The blacklist operators don't get off the hook for having some frickin' responsibility just because they're not holding a gun to anyone's head. They publish this information with precise knowledge of what it will be used for, so this argument is basically just the administrators trying to weasel out of personal responsibility for what they list.
In case you're wondering, I do use a couple of blacklists. I use them to reject mail, as intended. I like to think that the ones I use are operated by folks who take seriously the fact that people like me are using it for that purpose.
Manned space missions make plenty of sense from a scientific perspective, if your eventual goal is to put a significant number of people into space (and onto other bodies). But more on that later.
The reason that our space program is doomed is the second half of that statement. Manned space missions never made sense from an ecomonic perspective. That wasn't the point then, and it still isn't now. We're just not in a pissing match with the Soviets anymore, so the whole thing has become substantially less popular.
The point is discovery, knowledge, exploration, figuring out how to hedge our species' bets by getting all of our eggs out of this one fucking handbasket that we're already halfway to hell in.
You may not think that's worth the money, and you're well within your rights to do so. My worry is how many others in America seem to agree with you. Sure, that's democracy, but I can still decry the opinion.
What you might call pragmatism, I call a crying shame. All this civilization and advancement and the best we can do is worry about the fucking coffers.
It's not recursive, just repetitive.
I don't think there's enough left of this horse to make glue with.
Mr. Berman, I am a Trekker. I have been one all my life. When I was a kid, my parents would sometimes punish me by forbidding me from watching the week's new episode of TNG. It was pretty far down the list of last resorts. I grew up on Star Trek (the newer ones, even), and I would like for you to just leave it alone. Please. It's ceased to be entertaining or interesting or emotionally involving, except in the "stolen childhood" sense that most geeks remember from Star Wars ep1. I'm sure you'll continue to be able to put food on your family's table.
You mean he funded an "independent" study that just happened to find that Mozilla has a lower TCO?
Nah. If we did that, it would just make the whole Great Firewall undertaking that much easier...
Lots, probably. Like come up with a new fucking joke. :)
Haha, dude. I've seen it, but c'mon... spoiler alert? I've got several friends who didn't wanna jump into it mid-season and waited for the repeats to start...
This is all relatively secret, but yes, there will be another rerelease of the original trilogy. First, though, the LucasFilm team will have to work out some minor changes...
Until a spammer notices your domain name and tries a directory harvest/dictionary attack...
Well-put! In fact, that's one of the things my talking Jar-Jar Binks doll says. He also says "Ewoks are cute and cuddly; collect all 50!" and "Meesa stereotype, yousa hate n*ggers".
I guess Jar-Jar was rated PG-13 for the sake of art, too...
You know what, though? Fuckem. They're the same people who, with something like 10-12 unique hours of Lord of the Rings trilogy available on DVD, complain about how several Ents were left out or condensed into a revised Treebeard. They're the ones who want a 15-hour movie that's paced like a snail just so that no detail is ever missed. They'll always exist. They're a few levels up from the "the book is always better than the movie" snobs, and their reserved parking in hell is significantly hotter for the fact that they don't even have any examples with which to back up their snobbery; in the end, they don't mean shit. I think New Line's revenues are all the evidence you need of that.
And yes, I will be very pissed if the Ender's Game movie doesn't get made because of such idiocy. Which reminds me, I still haven't started on the new Shadow book...
English translation, anyone?
Not likely... Unless the label hired someone to write the material (as in the case of a number of pop stars), the artist retains the rights to the music itself, while the label owns only the mechanical copyright for the album recording (and, as such, the distribution rights to that recording). The mechanical copyright covers that specific recording, though, not all recordings of that material.
In other words, you own what you wrote, but they own what they paid for you to record (to oversimplify things a bit).
The labels aren't generally the ones who pay for the tours. Generally speaking, the labels make their money off the albums; the bands make their money off the concerts. In fact, I've read that a lot of less-successful artists on major labels need to tour just to pay back the advance.
Now, with all that said, most artists on major labels are also under exclusive contract, which can get you into trouble if you sell any performance of theirs. That's a contractual issue, though, not a copyright one, and that ends when the contract does (usually after the required number of albums have been released).
All that, of course, is AFAIK, and IANAL
Real geeks know we're already up to the 3rd edition of the Bat Book... ;)
Maybe I'm being a pedant (and it wouldn't be the first time), but how are we to trust the judgment of ADTI on the topic of licensing and IP when they aren't even aware of the difference between copyleft and public domain?
Public domain is pretty clearly defined under current IP laws, and just about the only thing it has in common with open source, free software, copyleft, etc. is the fact that all generally permit anyone to look and touch. In fact, public domain refers to who owns it and only implies the license terms (to the best of my understanding, it's basically "the public owns this and, as the owner, the public can do whatever they want with it"). Copyleft does not release ownership of IP to the public.
Then again, that's probably exactly what these clowns want the public to think it does...