I'm not sure what monopoly you're referring to here, or how copyright law grants monopoly power to any particular actor in the music business. I'd agree with you if you'd said there is a music cartel (an oligopoly) that has managed to manipulate copyright duration to its benefit, but I don't see a monopoly.
The reason people are excited about this (negatively or positively) is because bomb disposal bots were designed to directly protect the lives of US soldiers, rather than to kill the enemy. To a soldier on the ground, any robot that makes you less of a bullet-magnet is good, but to the folks watching the war on the TV, robot warriors are a totally new concept.
It may not have been the exact model, but they were armed robots very similar to these (and in fact were bomb disposal robots). They were armed with a modified 12 gauge shotgun.
Quite true, but my point was that instead of making it easy to read, CIO.com seems to almost want its readers to avoid reading its articles. It's rather rediculous to have to resort to an ad blocker or to viewing the print page just to be able to read an article.
That's simple to solve, just click the print link. It all is on one webpage. Unfortunately my browser print preview shows it's still 11 pages without changing any settings. But there's no ads.
I'm sure you use all of those features to their full potential. But a feature count is a terrible way to determine whether a product really is any good in actual use. Apple has targeted ease of use and overall user experience with the iPhone. Frankly I don't know if they've hit the mark with the iPhone or not, because I've never used one. But just because it doesn't have 25 features that I may or may not ever use doesn't mean I'm going to dismiss it out of hand.
as much as I really love gadgets
The iPhone isn't a device for you. It's for people who are tired of smartphones that aren't smart, and of devices that are jammed full of features yet still aren't satisfying to use. Again, I don't know if it fulfills its promise, but it doesn't make sense to judge it a success or failure on a feature count. It is much more useful to judge it against its promise, which is to provide a smartphone-type device that non-techies will enjoy using.
This reminds me of the iPod rollout, and all the comments about how pathetic it was in comparison to the Nomad, et al.
Uhhh... I'll mod down the next post you make, without even looking at it! Or without even knowing it was yours! Hah! Then I'll go make disparaging comments about you on some random Digg post.
Are you implying that there are already Slashdot readers who don't take the time to read the actual articles? I'm shocked. Shocked!
Sorry, couldn't resist
Understandable indeed.
CIO.com doesn't want us to read the article
on
A CIO's View of Ubuntu
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Good freaquin' googly.
CIO.com sure has a hardon for online ad revenue. Seventeen pages for one article, the article itself taking up only 1/3 of the page real estate for each page. Talk about a pain in the ass to read.
It's bad enough that nobody in Slashdot reads the actual articles. The next time I see a link to a CIO.com article, I'll just skip trying to read it, and go right to throwing down a random opinion based on the Slashdot summary.
P.S.=> Somehow, JUST SOMEHOW, lol (sarcasm)? I just KNEW that "down mod" was coming & that's ok: I have 50 other posts or more here that were modded "up" for technical excellence reasons, rather than just for "useless karma" anyhow... this one? Was actually just to see this post of mine, laughing @ you Pro-Penguins here, GET THAT DOWNWARD MOD (lol, for something YOU guys put up as a photo of, & the fact you have to live in that man's shadow... point blank!)... apk
People make money in pyramid schemes, this is nothing different. Expect a mini dot-com crash when the fad dies off and people have invested in effectively nothing.
There may indeed be a crash in the SL market. Already the mainstream media has caught onto the fact that too many marketing dollars are chasing too few players. However, that doesn't mean people are making money in pyramid schemes. There is nothing nefarious about it, nor are there multiple layers of sellers, all skimming off those below them in a race to get out before the pyramid collapses.
A certain population is willing to spend real money on activities that occur in a virtual environment. The price they pay for these activities may drop, but if it does, that doesn't mean that these people gained nothing from the expense. Nobody is being duped, any more than I was being duped when I was a kid sticking quarters into the Tempest machine at the video game arcade back in the 1980s.
As for SL being a fad, you may be right, and you may be wrong. The concept of commerce in virtual worlds isn't going away, though. The technology is maturing rapidly, and for some kinds of commerce and other interaction, virtual worlds provide advantages the Web can't match. I think this is still at a very early stage of development.
It is embarrassing and no one in the real world cares besides the news media and misc. company bosses.
People are making money in SL. This is the biggest differentiator between SL and previous virtual worlds. As soon as profit enters the picture, everyone starts paying attention.
Your comment reminds me of comments in '94/'95 about the Web. That flash in the pan has carried on pretty well, I'd say.
Since Slashdot mods equate speaking the fucking truth as "trollish", I'm not going to damage my karma, if you wonder why this post is AC.
You are so concerned about your Slashdot karma that you're not willing to post what you think under your ID? That leads me to believe that your Slashdot ID is really just a sham, because you're using it only to whore for karma.
It also strikes me as odd that you bash Slashdot mods for equating "speaking the fucking truth" (which seems to mean making ad hominem attacks against anyone who likes multifunction handhelds) with trolling, but at the same time you're concerned about keeping your karma high. If the system is so damaged, how do you manage to keep your karma high without "speaking the fucking truth?"
Tough luck pal, due process only applies in court.
There are two kinds of due process, the 5th Amendment kind and the 14th Amendment kind. The 5th applies to the US government and the 14th applies to the States. If a State deprives you of a right without due process, they run afoul of the 14th Amendement.
Duke is a private institution, but depending on how much funding it receives from the taxpayers of North Carolina, it could be considered to be fulfilling a state function. Public universities such as the University of California system are definitely state-funded institutions fulfilling a state function. So due process applies.
There are other examples. Any time the government allows (through contract or some other means) an entity to fulfill a vital state function, the potential for a due process argument exists. The rationale is that there is no other alternative, even though the state is not directly involved, so an absence of due process would be harmful to the rights of citizens.
In politics, slow always means "more tyranny," because the people voting for a bill today will not be the ones to enforce it tomorrow.
I'd say it's exactly the opposite. Look at the history of tyranny in the 20th Century. Tyranny moves swiftly, often by popular demand. The Russian Revolution, the rule of Mussolini, the rule of Hitler, and the Killing Fields in Cambodia all came about through rapid unchecked political action. The swiftness with which the Bush White House consolidated Executive Branch power is exactly what I'm talking about.
Swift political change sounds great, until the law of unintendend consequences rears its ugly head. The "special interests" you refer to are really just competing political factions. Special interests is one of those terms used by everyone in politics as a convenient scapegoat. But in reality "special interests" just means whatever interests you politically oppose. When those interests currently in power (be they libertarians pushing for mandated tax cuts, liberals pushing for stricter anti-tobacco laws, or republicans outlawing sodomy), make sweeping political changes, our ability to tweak, modify, and correct those changes is constrained.
I'm anti-patent, of course, but I also would be happy to see a return to a Constitutional patent system. I have a recommendation for Congress to make the patent system more level
Your suggestions seem nice in the abstract, but saying you want to strip down the patent system and start from scratch is completely unworkable. The US is party to several international treaties that make a complete overhaul impossible, for starters.
The current bill is certainly not as far-reaching as most reformers would like, but is a start. The change to first-to-file alone will be a huge change. It is tempting to say that you must have all or nothing solutions, but politics is about compromise. I'd rather have slow change than no change at all.
Watch the press for a few years and it's patently obvious that "word comes from above" when anything like this happens.
The medium is the message. If you watch TV, you won't see anything of any real importance. Get out of TVLand and you'll find a wide variety of news and opinion. The fact is, Americans have become fat and lazy. Most of us get our "news" from the medium that is least capable of providing insight and understanding, and most geared toward instant emotional gratification.
As an aside, if you'd ever worked in government, you'd know that there is no Ministry of Information Control. Your "patently obvious" observation is just a way of ducking the real problem. The real problem is the laziness of the American public. We are throwing away our republic. We should be throwing away our televisions.
A lot of software-related patents end up getting invalidated due to prior art when the patent holder tries to enforce it.
Inside the Slashdot Bubble this may seem true, but do you have any empirical evidence to support this assertion?
Marketshare and cracking
on
Zune DRM Cracked
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
For years now we've been hearing that Mac OS X is less vulnerable to viruses and cracking because it has a far smaller marketshare than Windows. The argument is that nobody bothers with OS X because of the smaller marketshare. Although Zune DRM is being cracked for a different purpose, it does make me wonder if marketshare is much of a factor in decisions regarding which systems crackers attempt to defeat.
You're obviously a person of great intellect and superior ethnic stock. Your clever truncation of "I've seen" to "I seen" tells me you're in firm command of the English language. You must be one of the Master Race indeed.
I also like your smooth analysis and insightful use of facts to back up your well-formulated theories. With this sort of clear logic and solid argumentation, I know you'll go far in life.
Keep up the great work, and thanks for illuminating us with your wisdom!
I seen that a lot of time. Jews has abuse the legal system to oppress poor people for their own gain. Remember the entire music AND movie industry is controlled by jews.
Shhhh... don't let on that you have seen through the charade! The sheep who run your competition will create crappy sites that force visitors to stay on them for a long time in order to get worthwhile content. Users will leave these sites, flocking to sites created by people who, like you, realize that ultimately it's about delivering a site people want to actually use.
The Nielsen metrics debate is really about advertising, which contrary to popular belief, does not apply to all sites. Even those sites that depend on advertising do so in different ways. One metric does not rule them all.
Isn't the sign of a good site that people are able to get what they want QUICKLY?
My main point is that copyright is not necessary for people to produce creative works, or to make money from them.
Nicely put. I strongly agree. Creativity does not depend on copyright. It's a useful tool, but that doesn't mean that as currently enforced it doesn't have serious problems.
Imagine two scenarios:
1. you write successful book/album and it stays copyrighted indefinitely, bringing you income forever
2. you write successful book/album and the copyright expires in 14 years, depriving you of income
Your argument is a sensible one for limiting the TERM of copyright, so the duration does not unduly burden society at the expense of creators of copyrighted works. It is not an argument for eliminating copyright altogether. This is an important distinction that separates the bomb-throwers who think all copyright should be eliminated from those who desire sensible copyright reform.
Any term longer than the life of the author is certainly too long. A one-time renewable 14 year term (for a max of 28 years) would make much more sense, both as an incentive for creators, and for society at large.
It's time to stamp out the myth that "without copyright, nothing creative would ever be produced."
You have given us evidence as to why the term of copyright should be limited, but none that articulates a clear rationale for eliminating copyright.
Being able to unwind for 10 minutes helps you work faster on the whole - and a grand for a table isn't exactly much out of a corporate budget
Good point. I should have been clearer. What I saw a lot of in the Dot Com era was startups throwing down cash for things like foosball tables, when they should have been tightfisted with their dough. They had too much money, and they weren't paying enough attention to how to actually find revenue models that would work. My contention is that it's a valid expense at an established company (you trade perks for upside, and you've got the cash so why not?), but it's a bad idea at startups. When you're small and strapped for cash, pool tables and foosball are distractions you don't need.
Slashdot Mirror
If not for the monopoly provided by copyright law
I'm not sure what monopoly you're referring to here, or how copyright law grants monopoly power to any particular actor in the music business. I'd agree with you if you'd said there is a music cartel (an oligopoly) that has managed to manipulate copyright duration to its benefit, but I don't see a monopoly.
The reason people are excited about this (negatively or positively) is because bomb disposal bots were designed to directly protect the lives of US soldiers, rather than to kill the enemy. To a soldier on the ground, any robot that makes you less of a bullet-magnet is good, but to the folks watching the war on the TV, robot warriors are a totally new concept.
It may not have been the exact model, but they were armed robots very similar to these (and in fact were bomb disposal robots). They were armed with a modified 12 gauge shotgun.
Quite true, but my point was that instead of making it easy to read, CIO.com seems to almost want its readers to avoid reading its articles. It's rather rediculous to have to resort to an ad blocker or to viewing the print page just to be able to read an article.
That's simple to solve, just click the print link. It all is on one webpage. Unfortunately my browser print preview shows it's still 11 pages without changing any settings. But there's no ads.
Let's see, common features the iPhone lacks:
I'm sure you use all of those features to their full potential. But a feature count is a terrible way to determine whether a product really is any good in actual use. Apple has targeted ease of use and overall user experience with the iPhone. Frankly I don't know if they've hit the mark with the iPhone or not, because I've never used one. But just because it doesn't have 25 features that I may or may not ever use doesn't mean I'm going to dismiss it out of hand.
as much as I really love gadgets
The iPhone isn't a device for you. It's for people who are tired of smartphones that aren't smart, and of devices that are jammed full of features yet still aren't satisfying to use. Again, I don't know if it fulfills its promise, but it doesn't make sense to judge it a success or failure on a feature count. It is much more useful to judge it against its promise, which is to provide a smartphone-type device that non-techies will enjoy using.
This reminds me of the iPod rollout, and all the comments about how pathetic it was in comparison to the Nomad, et al.
Lemme see how ya beat that!
Uhhh... I'll mod down the next post you make, without even looking at it! Or without even knowing it was yours! Hah! Then I'll go make disparaging comments about you on some random Digg post.
Man, I need to get outside.
Oh yea, that is original.
Are you implying that there are already Slashdot readers who don't take the time to read the actual articles? I'm shocked. Shocked!
Sorry, couldn't resist
Understandable indeed.
Good freaquin' googly.
CIO.com sure has a hardon for online ad revenue. Seventeen pages for one article, the article itself taking up only 1/3 of the page real estate for each page. Talk about a pain in the ass to read.
It's bad enough that nobody in Slashdot reads the actual articles. The next time I see a link to a CIO.com article, I'll just skip trying to read it, and go right to throwing down a random opinion based on the Slashdot summary.
Your meds aren't working.
P.S.=> Somehow, JUST SOMEHOW, lol (sarcasm)? I just KNEW that "down mod" was coming & that's ok: I have 50 other posts or more here that were modded "up" for technical excellence reasons, rather than just for "useless karma" anyhow... this one? Was actually just to see this post of mine, laughing @ you Pro-Penguins here, GET THAT DOWNWARD MOD (lol, for something YOU guys put up as a photo of, & the fact you have to live in that man's shadow... point blank!)... apk
People make money in pyramid schemes, this is nothing different. Expect a mini dot-com crash when the fad dies off and people have invested in effectively nothing.
There may indeed be a crash in the SL market. Already the mainstream media has caught onto the fact that too many marketing dollars are chasing too few players. However, that doesn't mean people are making money in pyramid schemes. There is nothing nefarious about it, nor are there multiple layers of sellers, all skimming off those below them in a race to get out before the pyramid collapses.
A certain population is willing to spend real money on activities that occur in a virtual environment. The price they pay for these activities may drop, but if it does, that doesn't mean that these people gained nothing from the expense. Nobody is being duped, any more than I was being duped when I was a kid sticking quarters into the Tempest machine at the video game arcade back in the 1980s.
As for SL being a fad, you may be right, and you may be wrong. The concept of commerce in virtual worlds isn't going away, though. The technology is maturing rapidly, and for some kinds of commerce and other interaction, virtual worlds provide advantages the Web can't match. I think this is still at a very early stage of development.
It is embarrassing and no one in the real world cares besides the news media and misc. company bosses.
People are making money in SL. This is the biggest differentiator between SL and previous virtual worlds. As soon as profit enters the picture, everyone starts paying attention.
Your comment reminds me of comments in '94/'95 about the Web. That flash in the pan has carried on pretty well, I'd say.
Pleeeeze?
Since Slashdot mods equate speaking the fucking truth as "trollish", I'm not going to damage my karma, if you wonder why this post is AC.
You are so concerned about your Slashdot karma that you're not willing to post what you think under your ID? That leads me to believe that your Slashdot ID is really just a sham, because you're using it only to whore for karma.
It also strikes me as odd that you bash Slashdot mods for equating "speaking the fucking truth" (which seems to mean making ad hominem attacks against anyone who likes multifunction handhelds) with trolling, but at the same time you're concerned about keeping your karma high. If the system is so damaged, how do you manage to keep your karma high without "speaking the fucking truth?"
Tough luck pal, due process only applies in court.
There are two kinds of due process, the 5th Amendment kind and the 14th Amendment kind. The 5th applies to the US government and the 14th applies to the States. If a State deprives you of a right without due process, they run afoul of the 14th Amendement.
Duke is a private institution, but depending on how much funding it receives from the taxpayers of North Carolina, it could be considered to be fulfilling a state function. Public universities such as the University of California system are definitely state-funded institutions fulfilling a state function. So due process applies.
There are other examples. Any time the government allows (through contract or some other means) an entity to fulfill a vital state function, the potential for a due process argument exists. The rationale is that there is no other alternative, even though the state is not directly involved, so an absence of due process would be harmful to the rights of citizens.
In politics, slow always means "more tyranny," because the people voting for a bill today will not be the ones to enforce it tomorrow.
I'd say it's exactly the opposite. Look at the history of tyranny in the 20th Century. Tyranny moves swiftly, often by popular demand. The Russian Revolution, the rule of Mussolini, the rule of Hitler, and the Killing Fields in Cambodia all came about through rapid unchecked political action. The swiftness with which the Bush White House consolidated Executive Branch power is exactly what I'm talking about.
Swift political change sounds great, until the law of unintendend consequences rears its ugly head. The "special interests" you refer to are really just competing political factions. Special interests is one of those terms used by everyone in politics as a convenient scapegoat. But in reality "special interests" just means whatever interests you politically oppose. When those interests currently in power (be they libertarians pushing for mandated tax cuts, liberals pushing for stricter anti-tobacco laws, or republicans outlawing sodomy), make sweeping political changes, our ability to tweak, modify, and correct those changes is constrained.
The fact that game consoles can't have their video upgraded is what prevents them from ever taking off in the market.
Tears in my eyes.
Too funny.
I'm anti-patent, of course, but I also would be happy to see a return to a Constitutional patent system. I have a recommendation for Congress to make the patent system more level
Your suggestions seem nice in the abstract, but saying you want to strip down the patent system and start from scratch is completely unworkable. The US is party to several international treaties that make a complete overhaul impossible, for starters.
The current bill is certainly not as far-reaching as most reformers would like, but is a start. The change to first-to-file alone will be a huge change. It is tempting to say that you must have all or nothing solutions, but politics is about compromise. I'd rather have slow change than no change at all.
Watch the press for a few years and it's patently obvious that "word comes from above" when anything like this happens.
The medium is the message. If you watch TV, you won't see anything of any real importance. Get out of TVLand and you'll find a wide variety of news and opinion. The fact is, Americans have become fat and lazy. Most of us get our "news" from the medium that is least capable of providing insight and understanding, and most geared toward instant emotional gratification.
As an aside, if you'd ever worked in government, you'd know that there is no Ministry of Information Control. Your "patently obvious" observation is just a way of ducking the real problem. The real problem is the laziness of the American public. We are throwing away our republic. We should be throwing away our televisions.
A lot of software-related patents end up getting invalidated due to prior art when the patent holder tries to enforce it.
Inside the Slashdot Bubble this may seem true, but do you have any empirical evidence to support this assertion?
For years now we've been hearing that Mac OS X is less vulnerable to viruses and cracking because it has a far smaller marketshare than Windows. The argument is that nobody bothers with OS X because of the smaller marketshare. Although Zune DRM is being cracked for a different purpose, it does make me wonder if marketshare is much of a factor in decisions regarding which systems crackers attempt to defeat.
You're obviously a person of great intellect and superior ethnic stock. Your clever truncation of "I've seen" to "I seen" tells me you're in firm command of the English language. You must be one of the Master Race indeed.
I also like your smooth analysis and insightful use of facts to back up your well-formulated theories. With this sort of clear logic and solid argumentation, I know you'll go far in life.
Keep up the great work, and thanks for illuminating us with your wisdom!
I seen that a lot of time. Jews has abuse the legal system to oppress poor people for their own gain. Remember the entire music AND movie industry is controlled by jews.
The ariticle is total bullsh... wait, what were we talking about again?
Shhhh... don't let on that you have seen through the charade! The sheep who run your competition will create crappy sites that force visitors to stay on them for a long time in order to get worthwhile content. Users will leave these sites, flocking to sites created by people who, like you, realize that ultimately it's about delivering a site people want to actually use.
The Nielsen metrics debate is really about advertising, which contrary to popular belief, does not apply to all sites. Even those sites that depend on advertising do so in different ways. One metric does not rule them all.
Isn't the sign of a good site that people are able to get what they want QUICKLY?
My main point is that copyright is not necessary for people to produce creative works, or to make money from them.
Nicely put. I strongly agree. Creativity does not depend on copyright. It's a useful tool, but that doesn't mean that as currently enforced it doesn't have serious problems.
Your argument is a sensible one for limiting the TERM of copyright, so the duration does not unduly burden society at the expense of creators of copyrighted works. It is not an argument for eliminating copyright altogether. This is an important distinction that separates the bomb-throwers who think all copyright should be eliminated from those who desire sensible copyright reform.
Any term longer than the life of the author is certainly too long. A one-time renewable 14 year term (for a max of 28 years) would make much more sense, both as an incentive for creators, and for society at large.
It's time to stamp out the myth that "without copyright, nothing creative would ever be produced."
You have given us evidence as to why the term of copyright should be limited, but none that articulates a clear rationale for eliminating copyright.
Being able to unwind for 10 minutes helps you work faster on the whole - and a grand for a table isn't exactly much out of a corporate budget
Good point. I should have been clearer. What I saw a lot of in the Dot Com era was startups throwing down cash for things like foosball tables, when they should have been tightfisted with their dough. They had too much money, and they weren't paying enough attention to how to actually find revenue models that would work. My contention is that it's a valid expense at an established company (you trade perks for upside, and you've got the cash so why not?), but it's a bad idea at startups. When you're small and strapped for cash, pool tables and foosball are distractions you don't need.