And you are nothing, if not consistent. I've said it before and I'll likely think of again another time. I don't generally agree with much of what you have to say but you are consistent in your beliefs and your expressions of them. That may seem trivial but it's not. Not many people are like that - most hold some rather absurd views that are contradictory to one another. And yes, that is most. That is not hyperbole nor intended to be mentioned in passage. I might even go so far as to say that the vast majority of people hold contradictory views. (What's odd is that they'll be vocal about both of them, in succession, and I don't think they even notice.)
So, there's that. I think you're a fucking lunatic and I wouldn't want you to be in charge of anything more important than a breadbox but I do appreciate that you hold the views you do - and that you remain so and accept the consequences of those actions. Albeit, you only accept them online in in the form of karma (inasmuch as I'm able to prove) and accept them you do. One might even go so far as to say that you're logically consistent. I'll even go so far as to say that sometimes your logic is quite sound. Again, there's that.
That's not even a backhanded compliment. If nothing else, that's a modicum of respect. You're a lunatic but you're not entirely illogical and consistent.
I believe it's illegal to claim you're a lawyer when you are not a lawyer - it's also illegal to even hint that you are. Your jurisdiction might have some variation on that theme but not only can I practice law - I can even charge others to do it for them. What I can not do, is claim that I'm a qualified legal professional or the likes. However, if I wanted to open up a shop called "Shoddy Legal Services" then I could do it tomorrow - but I'd want to make it damned clear that I was not actually a lawyer and that I had not passed the bar exam.
There's the bit about practicing law without a license but I'm pretty sure that only comes into play if you don't make it clear that you're not actually a lawyer. I'm almost positive of this but, I should mention, I am not actually a lawyer. On the other hand, I know quite a few lawyers and a bit about the court system. I retain a lawyer but my lawyer seldom represents me. I represent myself, where I'm adept enough to do so, and retain my lawyer as legal council.
I would, kind of, like to see what the bar looks like. I hear it's a tougher test in some areas than in it is in other areas. I have no doubt that I'd fail it but I'd like to see how close I came to passing. I wonder how much it is to sit the exam? I do not believe that you're actually required to have any specific education for it - depending on jurisdiction. Though, I suppose, that might have changed. I can find that information out, I guess.
You're aware that email records are admissible in court - as are bounce or error messages, for quite some time now, right? They can, and do, send *some* legal missives via email. I do not know which and what and will not pretend that I do but they've got retention policies for a reason. I guess, if you can prove you bounced it automatically (should be easy) then you're good to go and things like that. However, i do know that email records are considered evidence and that they can be used for a whole host of things. (I communicate with my lawyer frequently via email - and they relay messages that came and went via email.)
They're not emailing you, the server guy. They're emailing your company's legal department. They will send a return receipt request. It will be entered into the record in court. It's not the 1990s any more. Some lawyers don't even have a fax machine any more - some don't even employ couriers any more. Ghastly, isn't it? Seriously, I do quite a few things via email with my lawyer who then does many other things via email. Those records are admissible.
I can't find the last one but because the pictures were too large anyhow, and the day care didn't get the correct permissions - even after given a chance, the Hanna-Barbara pictures got painted over in 1992, I think? I think it was 1992. I can't find 'em.
In a strange twist of events, I think it was about 2010 when they re-painted the Hanna-Barbara images. They had permission to do so from the town and I think they might have also made them smaller than the originals. They had a second ceremony with the Hanna-Barbara people when they put the new pictures up. I want to say that Hanna-Barbara charged them $1 for the license.
Here's the fun part... Because Hanna-Barbara did that for *this* day-care, the original one, they ended up having some legal issues that came out of it, as others sought to license them at the same cost that the Floridian day cares paid. I don't recall the fallout from that but it's amusing how many times this has popped back up in the news, in conversation, etc...
An oddity... The date for that article was 04/08/1989. Today is 04/10 and while it's not significant, it is amusing to note. Of course, I'm easily amused. But, it's really kind of funny how often this one comes up in conversation. It has been nearly 30 years and we still talk about it. There was some interesting fallout from that and the reverberations of Disney's antics still ring true today. Good.
FWIW, that's how I originally read their post. The rest of it, the assumptions and insinuations, appear to be things you've added to their post - things that were neither stated nor implied. Perhaps you're a bit overly sensitive and the easily offended type, the type who sees slight where none was nor was any intended.
Don't lie about your great works of art unless they're truly great works of art. It's possible to do some of the things you may do and to be imaginative. Imaginative and creation is not simple replication, no matter how many ways you try to split it. And I say this as someone who was gaming, table-top role-playing, in the 1970s. I've been to the LARPs, I've been to the cons, I've been to the Rendezvous', I've been to re-enactments, all that stuff. And it's fine to do what you do - nobody is saying you can't or that you shouldn't.
What they're saying (I think), and what I'll try to state more clearly, is that there's no reason to lie about it and pretend it's something that it isn't. You, you may even be one who is creating. However, the person who joined as a fad, bought a costume, and memorized a few lines so that they could be doing the "in thing" is not. There are a great many who fit that category and you know it. They're overly commercialized replicators - hardly creators, creative, or in any way imaginative.
And, before you scoff... I still game from time to time. It's not uncommon for dice to never leave their bags. It's not uncommon for the players to never have a a character record sheet. It's not uncommon to even go whole sub-campaigns without a single die being cast.
I'll speculate that I know a wee bit about what I'm talking about when it comes to creating.
There's a big difference between that and someone running around with a plastic sword from Wal-Mart or an overpriced "authentic" version that they bought online. And no, that doesn't mean you have to create your own sword and learn to smith it yourself. (Then again, at my table you'd probably be expected to describe such a process if you wanted to do so. Skills are learned, after all.)
Also, I'm familiar with the person's posting style. I can assure you that they'd have said what they meant and there would have been little room to mistake it - had they meant more than what they said.
So, no... They're not saying don't do it. They're not saying you can't do it. They're saying that you should be honest with yourselves and others about what it is that you do. That you extends to your peers who also represent you as a group. You may be an exception that proves the rule. It could happen. I'll even give you the benefit of doubt and assume you are. However, you're making a whole bunch of assumptions about things they neither stated nor implied.
Just gifting a Glasgow Kiss should be sufficient for identification purposes. The kilt would not, then, be mandatory. Of course, it would liven up the scene a bit.
I'm a proponent for intellectual property rights but that shouldn't be read to mean that I believe the current system is ideal and wouldn't serve better with some reworking. One of the things that really needs to happen is, in my views, taking a good look at the affirmative defense that is known as "Fair Use." It's entirely subjective, at least from my reading of the law and from reading the results of lots of cases over the years.
An affirmative defense means that you basically say, "Yeah, I used the work but in my defense, the usage was fair." It can be rather expensive to take that to court. Some sort of intermediary would be nice as well as some way to state some basics. In other words, if it goes this far then we go to court - it might not be fair use. If it only goes this far, we don't go to court it's fair use.
The problem is that any board or oversight (it would be something less than a judge and might need a speedy, streamlined, appellate system) would end up getting stuffed with representatives of the "industry." That's unfair to the people who have smaller market shares and less or no profit. It should be some sort of "plain word hearing" and prohibit representation by a third party. It should allow remote representation, be it by letter, fax, or email. Heck, it can even be video so that one can be sworn and testify - later admissible in court, if needed.
It should also be the system where they deal with non-criminal infringements. If Joe Average got caught pirating a couple of songs and was streaming them then he shouldn't be facing criminal charges. He should be in and paying a reasonably fee that covers the costs of this new court system and provides renumeration for the wronged party. It should also be easily accessed by those who aren't legally minded as the larger companies are also guilty of intellectual property infringement offenses.
There's a whole lot of things that need to get added to the above. It needs to have the rough edges taken away and it'd take too long to type it all out - and it would still need further refinement - but that's a start and I think it might help get things going in the right direction again. Fair Use is an affirmative defense and we should have some rights to Fair Use. Nominally, we do have those rights but the practice isn't quite as good as it looks on paper.
I think we should shorten the duration for copyright as well. My head keeps saying that 20 years is a good duration and allowance for a single extension would not be a bad idea. I think that they should have to prove that it's still in use, still "working" and that there's value in their retaining the copyright for the extension. That could be a part of this sub-judiciary review process that I'm talking about above. I think it would be good to keep legal professionals out of it, inasmuch as it is possible, to ensure that it's plain-language based and accessible for the "common man."
I've no problem with retention of ownership with intellectual property, none at all. I think to take, without permission, the rights of someone and to do so for your own monetary gain is pretty low. I have every reason to believe that copyright is an incentive to create. The ownership of the results is what motivates many people and we're not a world full of ideological people. However, I think the current system is pretty much trash and we really need to rethink this and see if we can make some adjustments to it. I think we can do better than the current system. I think we can do much better than the current system.
More recently, in 2011, Apple abandoned a fight over App Store. They abandoned the trademark as well.
All of the above failed to defend and lost their exclusive rights on the name. The company may still use it but they have lost cases since their inception because they failed to defend it. You can use Google and find a whole bunch of 'em. I knew a few of them and cheated to find the rest.;-)
I have a deep dislike for the sentiments posed by the AC that you replied to. By blaming someone else, they're taking the blame from Disney and that's where the fault truly lies. It's like those who want to blame ISIS on the US. No, the US isn't the one out there cutting heads off. If you want to blame the US for it then you might as well blame the League of Nations and the colonization that screwed up the whole area and whose actions gave rise to the situation we have today.
However, no... The Europeans (the US was not a member nation in the League of Nations) aren't to blame for ISIS either. The blame is squarely on the jackasses who are busy chopping heads and throwing gay people off of "Chuck-a-homo Bridge." They're the ones responsible. They're the people who are committing the atrocities. Trying to blame someone other than them is just shifting the attention and a method of refusing to accept the fact that this problem needs addressing.
Just like this - but slightly less severe when it's just about movie/fan rights. They might be light sabers but nobody is losing a head over this. Still, if the AC tries to blame Lucas then they're just shifting the blame from Disney. Disney is the controlling rights holder and Disney is to blame for this. I doubt we've got Disney shills here but that's pretty much what I'd do if I wanted to minimize the negative impact done to Disney's public image. I'd do what I can to make sure that Lucas was blamed and that Disney rarely came up in the conversation.
However, no... It's probably not a paid shill - or "online reputation management expert." It's probably just that the AC really isn't all that bright. I'd almost rather they be a paid shill but, alas, they're probably just stupid.
Oh, something I was thinking about while scrolling through but not really entirely related to this comment... I wonder what other sorts of protections Disney has. They could probably just have a yearly event and be careful to avoid the terms. I don't know what copyright would cover when it's transformed into look-alike products that bear a superficial relationship. I don't suppose they've gone so far as to get things like a design patent for this stuff? If they've done that, I'm not sure what that covers.
LOL... Really? I mean, yeah, we don't usually read the article around here - and I'm kind of guilty of that one myself. Heck, I might even be more guilty of that than most. I almost never read the article. I do, at least, skim the summary. Yeah, a helmet would have, almost certainly, helped this person in this particular crash. There's some claim that a helmet might have actually killed him in this crash but that's a REALLY unlikely outcome.
He flipped upside down and smashed into the ground, head-first. There's no severe brain damage mentioned. In fact, he went home the same day. He probably is concussed, swollen, tender to the touch, throbbing, and has a booming headache but he's almost certainly not brain damaged. We humans are pretty tough, actually. However unlikely, people have fallen from great heights and lived to tell the tale.
Those are all folks who have fallen from absurd heights and, from the looks of it - just a quick skim of the Cracked article, they somehow managed to do so without losing a whole lot of brain function.
Two caveats - I didn't actually read the mandatory.com link. I didn't load the JavaScript up to see it. The second is that #1 at Cracked is the most awesome one of them all, of course. Dude bailed out of a plane, passed out from a lack of O2, and managed to only get banged up a little bit with a sprained ankle. The dude fell a couple of miles, or so it would appear. That's kind of neat.
But, there's some more stuff for you to read - seeing as you didn't even read the summary.:/
If you ever got Gentoo installed, you're doing good.;-)
Actually... I don't want to brag or anything BUT... I've gotten Plan9 installed and running. However... That has a couple of caveats.
It took more tries than it should have. The installation was a virtual machine image. I'm not sure what I did but the installation only worked for a few boots.
It's probably going to be a bit difficult to really control a dive with that much weight on. That's really going to be, you mention, the problem.
On the other hand, it's not all that difficult to jump, and even dive, from much higher heights into regular water. I've done so many, many times. The highest confirmed height that I've jumped from was a little over 84' and that might not have been the highest. It's the only one that I can say, without a doubt, was that high - it's the only one that high that we've ever measured.
There's a couple of techniques. I prefer what's basically a modified pencil drop or emergency jump. The standard emergency jump is you jump, feet first, cross your legs at the ankles, and cross your arms tight across your chest. However, I was taught (and thus prefer) to point the toes (with them still crossed), to cup the balls with one hand, and to pinch your nose with the other - and hold both arms in as tight as you can. When you're hitting water at that speed, you want to protect yourself as much as possible and (or so I'm told - I've never witnessed this happen) it's possible for water to be forced up the nose and really mess up your face. It's also possibly for your junk to protrude enough so you point the toes and cup your nuts with one hand.
I want to say that they teach the women just to either cross their arms (breasts at that speed are gonna be potentially hurt) and pinch their nose with one hand.
I don't think I've jumped from much higher than 84' by the way. I just know that's the absolute most that I've jumped for and measured. I was pretty old the last time I did it. I'm told that you don't want to go much over 110' to 120' because it becomes nearly impossible to not be injured (or die) at about that distance. I've jumped a few other places that were similar heights to the 84' height but, again, we didn't measure them. Some of the best spots to jump are quarries that have been flooded. That's where the 84' jump is, it's in a quarry.
By the way, this isn't something to be undertaken lightly. I'm scared shitless of heights so I go out, every couple of years, and force myself to face down my fear of heights. I don't mind being on a plane all that much. I'm not too keen on helicopters but I'll fly in one. If I go to the top of a building or a tower, where there's no chance for me to fall, I still get scared for some reason. I have no idea why - it really petrifies me and I have to force myself to move. It's a silly fear but, there it is. It's really the only thing that scares me besides being maimed, incapacitated, or serious loss of brain function.
That'd be why I go jump or find something that terrifies me and go do that. I force myself to do so. 'Snot easy but there may come a time when I need to overcome those fears and be able to face them. Having proven to myself that I can face them seems to help my peace of mind.
Oh, another good thing about quarries is that they often have varied heights. You don't necessarily have to go all the way to the top. I have to start at the top. If I jump from one of the lower heights that's it, I'm done for the outing and probably won't even consider it for another few years. It's terrifying. They're starting to get the touristy things out on the beach down here. I see a few more of them.
I think I might like to try the parasailing thing. I've thought about hang gliding but I just don't have the berries to do that and freezing up will get me killed.
At any rate, the important thing to remember is that you're correct in that an uncontrolled fall into water can end up going very poorly. Shit, try a belly flop from just that 20' height and let me know how that goes for you. I've had drunken friends who have done shit like that and end up all sorts of messed up - for days afterwards. They probably cracked ribs but I doubt we ever went and got them checked. It ends up pink, sometimes blood on the surface - like needles of blood, and is bruised for quite a while afterwards. Some of those were only from a
Yeah, I figured they were full of shit. I've been out of the data center for at least eight years - I sold and retired a little over eight years ago. I've a hard time believing that there's no IBM left in there. Even if it's just software or support contracts, I just wasn't buying it.
Thank you for the confirmation. It's appreciated. It seemed really unlikely that IBM was completely gone. Shit, there's probably IBM hardware from the 90s (maybe even the 80s) still running in some of those places. They might be in dark shadows but they're out there. I really didn't want to believe them and had no way to confirm it at the time - and nobody else seemed to notice. So, I basically just ignored 'em after that.
I've found my patience with stupid replies has started to wear thin as of late. 'Tis time to do something different for a while, lest I end up behaving in manners that are untoward and undesired in myself. It's okay, I've been working on a couple of projects as of late.
That's what I figure. I figure there's probably a whole lot of IBM hardware still hiding in dark shadows in those types of places. It just didn't seem probable when they indicated their observation. What's really amusing is that only a few of us were saying that IBM had probably made a brilliant move by getting out of hardware. At the very least, getting out of consumer and business grade workstations and portable devices was probably genius. Lots of people derided them for it at the time. (I got flamed pretty hard for pointing out that it might actually be a smart move for them.)
A lot of people here seem to believe they're competent in a bunch of areas where they've no experience. There's more to a company than taking every bit of revenue available - and sometimes it's advantageous to actually slim down and that will cut your revenue stream - but it might increase your overall profit margins and, more importantly, it might allow you to focus your better staff on different things. Truth be told, there's a limit to skilled employees. Being able to best put them to work for you is probably a smart choice, even if it means lower revenue and fewer revenue sources. It really seams to matter a lot in the tech industry where things are very dynamic.
Nah, I think this classifies as sci-fi. Not hard sci-fi but science fiction nonetheless. It's really quite an eye opener and, like a good science fiction work, gives you lots of additional questions. However, I'm not gonna force you to watch it or even try to urge you a second time. I will add that it's not really like you described. It's feasible, certainly. But you'd not know, unless you watched and you're unwilling to watch so I guess you'll have to believe that's what it is.
That one I have my doubts about. I've not been to Denmark in a while. It was on NPR, a police chief was being the spokesman for some department - national level, I understand, that was going on and on about how the citizens were engaging in ethnic cleansing. His metric? A pattern of break-ins that indicated that it was specific people being targeted. That's why I mentioned that I had my doubts about that one. Just to be clear - it's not the Dane's doing the supposed cleansing.
I've been to Denmark and they're probably pretty capable of being horrendous people - just like anywhere else. They're probably capable of ethic cleansing, just like everybody else. But, I seriously don't know if I can believe that police officer. Let me see if I can find you a link. Wikipedia mentions it again.
According to Funen police, the burglaries committed in the Vollsmose disctrict follow patterns of ethnic cleansing against native Danes.[19] Danes from other parts of the country are stabbed just for walking into the ghetto zone.
I kind of have my doubts about that one and it really looks like they're exaggerating. Hell, they might even be making it up out of whole cloth. It looks like you might be able to read this and get more information. This is what Wikipedia cited: http://www.b.dk/nationalt/poli...
I don't speak the language so I'm not going to speculate.
Point being, it's really stupid of people to make stupid statements like the ones that were being made. It's borderline retarded, at best. I am not home at the moment but I'll be back home in a few more weeks, at the latest. When I get home, I'll be in a State with almost no crime, no real violent crime, almost no homeless people, and even has some diversity. For the record, t's Maine, USA. I live up near the Canadian border, just up above Rangeley if you want to see it on a map. It's beautiful.
I thought the meme (which is true but not really salient) was that IBM supplied equipment to track the logistics of the Nazi's/Hitler's Final Solution, among other things... Now Microsoft hates Jews? That seems a wee bit outlandish but it's your story, you can tell it any way you want to.
Flippancy aside, they're specifically researching emotional AI, and dancing has long been associated with emotional response in humans.
So doesn't mass murder, so doesn't stomping of soldier's boots, so doesn't spousal abuse, so don't child rape, and so doesn't terrorism.
Not that I'm worried about an AI causing harm, or at least more harm than humans, but it is mildly amusing to humor the thought.
In fact, it was WWII that brought about America's "Greatest Generation." It seems really popular to say things like, "Make America Great Again!" That elicits emotional responses from a whole bunch of people. Some of them are even happy with the rhetoric.
So, let's hope they used good data classifications and the goal is increased positive emotions instead of just increased emotions. They'd surely not overlook something so basic and trivial and it surely has no means of acting beyond what permissions the programmers have specifically granted. Nobody would make a basic mistake like that.
I kid, I kid! Mostly...
'Cause grabbing a toddler out of an audience and smashing its head off the ground would sure cause a whole lot of emotions.;-)
I don't watch a whole lot of movies unless they're documentaries but I did watch one, a recent one, and it was actually pretty good. You might like it, if you've never seen it. It's called Ex Machina and I believe it was a/.er who recommended it. If you haven't seen it then I shan't spoil it. It's about an Android that is both female and is a deep AI. It's also about her interaction with humans. What I appreciated most about it was that it was real science fiction. It left me questioning, thinking, and a choice about the impact it might have on a much larger scale.
Would that I could and I'd attempt to describe it better but it is not easy to do without telling too much of it. It's really quite good. Hmm... I guess I can say that it has nudity. There's a reason to see it, right there. On a serious note, it was quite an interesting movie and I don't say that very often.
Skynet, eh? That's kind of funny is that is what people used to say about IBM. IBM was going to do big things and had done big things. Then, we all scoffed when they sold off to Lenovo. We all have pointed out the things they've done as business killing choices. We've stopped even calling them an Enterprise Solution.
The other day, I was reading a post about someone saying they worked in multiple data centers and server rooms, for Fortune 50-500 companies, in the very recent past and that they looked around and couldn't see IBM anywhere. I don't know, I've been retired for 8 years. I did express my doubt but I didn't get a response from them.
I really don't know if they're in the DC now or not. I find it hard to believe that they're not to be found.
So, maybe it will be IBM on the side of the Skynet hardware after all. I am still a bit skeptical of the "nowhere to be found" claim.
Slashdot Mirror
And you are nothing, if not consistent. I've said it before and I'll likely think of again another time. I don't generally agree with much of what you have to say but you are consistent in your beliefs and your expressions of them. That may seem trivial but it's not. Not many people are like that - most hold some rather absurd views that are contradictory to one another. And yes, that is most. That is not hyperbole nor intended to be mentioned in passage. I might even go so far as to say that the vast majority of people hold contradictory views. (What's odd is that they'll be vocal about both of them, in succession, and I don't think they even notice.)
So, there's that. I think you're a fucking lunatic and I wouldn't want you to be in charge of anything more important than a breadbox but I do appreciate that you hold the views you do - and that you remain so and accept the consequences of those actions. Albeit, you only accept them online in in the form of karma (inasmuch as I'm able to prove) and accept them you do. One might even go so far as to say that you're logically consistent. I'll even go so far as to say that sometimes your logic is quite sound. Again, there's that.
That's not even a backhanded compliment. If nothing else, that's a modicum of respect. You're a lunatic but you're not entirely illogical and consistent.
I believe it's illegal to claim you're a lawyer when you are not a lawyer - it's also illegal to even hint that you are. Your jurisdiction might have some variation on that theme but not only can I practice law - I can even charge others to do it for them. What I can not do, is claim that I'm a qualified legal professional or the likes. However, if I wanted to open up a shop called "Shoddy Legal Services" then I could do it tomorrow - but I'd want to make it damned clear that I was not actually a lawyer and that I had not passed the bar exam.
There's the bit about practicing law without a license but I'm pretty sure that only comes into play if you don't make it clear that you're not actually a lawyer. I'm almost positive of this but, I should mention, I am not actually a lawyer. On the other hand, I know quite a few lawyers and a bit about the court system. I retain a lawyer but my lawyer seldom represents me. I represent myself, where I'm adept enough to do so, and retain my lawyer as legal council.
I would, kind of, like to see what the bar looks like. I hear it's a tougher test in some areas than in it is in other areas. I have no doubt that I'd fail it but I'd like to see how close I came to passing. I wonder how much it is to sit the exam? I do not believe that you're actually required to have any specific education for it - depending on jurisdiction. Though, I suppose, that might have changed. I can find that information out, I guess.
You're aware that email records are admissible in court - as are bounce or error messages, for quite some time now, right? They can, and do, send *some* legal missives via email. I do not know which and what and will not pretend that I do but they've got retention policies for a reason. I guess, if you can prove you bounced it automatically (should be easy) then you're good to go and things like that. However, i do know that email records are considered evidence and that they can be used for a whole host of things. (I communicate with my lawyer frequently via email - and they relay messages that came and went via email.)
They're not emailing you, the server guy. They're emailing your company's legal department. They will send a return receipt request. It will be entered into the record in court. It's not the 1990s any more. Some lawyers don't even have a fax machine any more - some don't even employ couriers any more. Ghastly, isn't it? Seriously, I do quite a few things via email with my lawyer who then does many other things via email. Those records are admissible.
Well, relatively speaking... Yes. ;-)
Then we should be all set. It will boot up even faster, now!
Disney made a movie with almost that title. It's "Cats from Outer Space." At least I think it was Disney.
That case always gets brought out. :D Well, not always... There's a bit more to the story but nothing too huge.
They were also violating the local sign regulations.
http://articles.orlandosentine...
Disney really, really are dicks:
http://articles.sun-sentinel.c...
I can't find the last one but because the pictures were too large anyhow, and the day care didn't get the correct permissions - even after given a chance, the Hanna-Barbara pictures got painted over in 1992, I think? I think it was 1992. I can't find 'em.
In a strange twist of events, I think it was about 2010 when they re-painted the Hanna-Barbara images. They had permission to do so from the town and I think they might have also made them smaller than the originals. They had a second ceremony with the Hanna-Barbara people when they put the new pictures up. I want to say that Hanna-Barbara charged them $1 for the license.
Here's the fun part... Because Hanna-Barbara did that for *this* day-care, the original one, they ended up having some legal issues that came out of it, as others sought to license them at the same cost that the Floridian day cares paid. I don't recall the fallout from that but it's amusing how many times this has popped back up in the news, in conversation, etc...
An oddity... The date for that article was 04/08/1989. Today is 04/10 and while it's not significant, it is amusing to note. Of course, I'm easily amused. But, it's really kind of funny how often this one comes up in conversation. It has been nearly 30 years and we still talk about it. There was some interesting fallout from that and the reverberations of Disney's antics still ring true today. Good.
FWIW, that's how I originally read their post. The rest of it, the assumptions and insinuations, appear to be things you've added to their post - things that were neither stated nor implied. Perhaps you're a bit overly sensitive and the easily offended type, the type who sees slight where none was nor was any intended.
Don't lie about your great works of art unless they're truly great works of art. It's possible to do some of the things you may do and to be imaginative. Imaginative and creation is not simple replication, no matter how many ways you try to split it. And I say this as someone who was gaming, table-top role-playing, in the 1970s. I've been to the LARPs, I've been to the cons, I've been to the Rendezvous', I've been to re-enactments, all that stuff. And it's fine to do what you do - nobody is saying you can't or that you shouldn't.
What they're saying (I think), and what I'll try to state more clearly, is that there's no reason to lie about it and pretend it's something that it isn't. You, you may even be one who is creating. However, the person who joined as a fad, bought a costume, and memorized a few lines so that they could be doing the "in thing" is not. There are a great many who fit that category and you know it. They're overly commercialized replicators - hardly creators, creative, or in any way imaginative.
And, before you scoff... I still game from time to time. It's not uncommon for dice to never leave their bags. It's not uncommon for the players to never have a a character record sheet. It's not uncommon to even go whole sub-campaigns without a single die being cast.
I'll speculate that I know a wee bit about what I'm talking about when it comes to creating.
There's a big difference between that and someone running around with a plastic sword from Wal-Mart or an overpriced "authentic" version that they bought online. And no, that doesn't mean you have to create your own sword and learn to smith it yourself. (Then again, at my table you'd probably be expected to describe such a process if you wanted to do so. Skills are learned, after all.)
Also, I'm familiar with the person's posting style. I can assure you that they'd have said what they meant and there would have been little room to mistake it - had they meant more than what they said.
So, no... They're not saying don't do it. They're not saying you can't do it. They're saying that you should be honest with yourselves and others about what it is that you do. That you extends to your peers who also represent you as a group. You may be an exception that proves the rule. It could happen. I'll even give you the benefit of doubt and assume you are. However, you're making a whole bunch of assumptions about things they neither stated nor implied.
Just gifting a Glasgow Kiss should be sufficient for identification purposes. The kilt would not, then, be mandatory. Of course, it would liven up the scene a bit.
I'm a proponent for intellectual property rights but that shouldn't be read to mean that I believe the current system is ideal and wouldn't serve better with some reworking. One of the things that really needs to happen is, in my views, taking a good look at the affirmative defense that is known as "Fair Use." It's entirely subjective, at least from my reading of the law and from reading the results of lots of cases over the years.
An affirmative defense means that you basically say, "Yeah, I used the work but in my defense, the usage was fair." It can be rather expensive to take that to court. Some sort of intermediary would be nice as well as some way to state some basics. In other words, if it goes this far then we go to court - it might not be fair use. If it only goes this far, we don't go to court it's fair use.
The problem is that any board or oversight (it would be something less than a judge and might need a speedy, streamlined, appellate system) would end up getting stuffed with representatives of the "industry." That's unfair to the people who have smaller market shares and less or no profit. It should be some sort of "plain word hearing" and prohibit representation by a third party. It should allow remote representation, be it by letter, fax, or email. Heck, it can even be video so that one can be sworn and testify - later admissible in court, if needed.
It should also be the system where they deal with non-criminal infringements. If Joe Average got caught pirating a couple of songs and was streaming them then he shouldn't be facing criminal charges. He should be in and paying a reasonably fee that covers the costs of this new court system and provides renumeration for the wronged party. It should also be easily accessed by those who aren't legally minded as the larger companies are also guilty of intellectual property infringement offenses.
There's a whole lot of things that need to get added to the above. It needs to have the rough edges taken away and it'd take too long to type it all out - and it would still need further refinement - but that's a start and I think it might help get things going in the right direction again. Fair Use is an affirmative defense and we should have some rights to Fair Use. Nominally, we do have those rights but the practice isn't quite as good as it looks on paper.
I think we should shorten the duration for copyright as well. My head keeps saying that 20 years is a good duration and allowance for a single extension would not be a bad idea. I think that they should have to prove that it's still in use, still "working" and that there's value in their retaining the copyright for the extension. That could be a part of this sub-judiciary review process that I'm talking about above. I think it would be good to keep legal professionals out of it, inasmuch as it is possible, to ensure that it's plain-language based and accessible for the "common man."
I've no problem with retention of ownership with intellectual property, none at all. I think to take, without permission, the rights of someone and to do so for your own monetary gain is pretty low. I have every reason to believe that copyright is an incentive to create. The ownership of the results is what motivates many people and we're not a world full of ideological people. However, I think the current system is pretty much trash and we really need to rethink this and see if we can make some adjustments to it. I think we can do better than the current system. I think we can do much better than the current system.
Thermos, Escalator, and Aspirin.
Heroin, Cellophane, Trampoline.
Laundromat, Dry Ice, and Kerosene.
Zip Code, Yo-yo, and Zipper.
More recently, in 2011, Apple abandoned a fight over App Store. They abandoned the trademark as well.
All of the above failed to defend and lost their exclusive rights on the name. The company may still use it but they have lost cases since their inception because they failed to defend it. You can use Google and find a whole bunch of 'em. I knew a few of them and cheated to find the rest. ;-)
I have a deep dislike for the sentiments posed by the AC that you replied to. By blaming someone else, they're taking the blame from Disney and that's where the fault truly lies. It's like those who want to blame ISIS on the US. No, the US isn't the one out there cutting heads off. If you want to blame the US for it then you might as well blame the League of Nations and the colonization that screwed up the whole area and whose actions gave rise to the situation we have today.
However, no... The Europeans (the US was not a member nation in the League of Nations) aren't to blame for ISIS either. The blame is squarely on the jackasses who are busy chopping heads and throwing gay people off of "Chuck-a-homo Bridge." They're the ones responsible. They're the people who are committing the atrocities. Trying to blame someone other than them is just shifting the attention and a method of refusing to accept the fact that this problem needs addressing.
Just like this - but slightly less severe when it's just about movie/fan rights. They might be light sabers but nobody is losing a head over this. Still, if the AC tries to blame Lucas then they're just shifting the blame from Disney. Disney is the controlling rights holder and Disney is to blame for this. I doubt we've got Disney shills here but that's pretty much what I'd do if I wanted to minimize the negative impact done to Disney's public image. I'd do what I can to make sure that Lucas was blamed and that Disney rarely came up in the conversation.
However, no... It's probably not a paid shill - or "online reputation management expert." It's probably just that the AC really isn't all that bright. I'd almost rather they be a paid shill but, alas, they're probably just stupid.
Oh, something I was thinking about while scrolling through but not really entirely related to this comment... I wonder what other sorts of protections Disney has. They could probably just have a yearly event and be careful to avoid the terms. I don't know what copyright would cover when it's transformed into look-alike products that bear a superficial relationship. I don't suppose they've gone so far as to get things like a design patent for this stuff? If they've done that, I'm not sure what that covers.
LOL... Really? I mean, yeah, we don't usually read the article around here - and I'm kind of guilty of that one myself. Heck, I might even be more guilty of that than most. I almost never read the article. I do, at least, skim the summary. Yeah, a helmet would have, almost certainly, helped this person in this particular crash. There's some claim that a helmet might have actually killed him in this crash but that's a REALLY unlikely outcome.
He flipped upside down and smashed into the ground, head-first. There's no severe brain damage mentioned. In fact, he went home the same day. He probably is concussed, swollen, tender to the touch, throbbing, and has a booming headache but he's almost certainly not brain damaged. We humans are pretty tough, actually. However unlikely, people have fallen from great heights and lived to tell the tale.
Did you really "TL;DR" the summary?
As for falling and living, you might want to see this... Here's the record holder:
http://www.guinnessworldrecord...
(She feel from over 33,000'/10,000 m.)
I've just used the mighty Google so I've not read these yet.
http://www.cracked.com/article...
http://www.mandatory.com/2012/...
Those are all folks who have fallen from absurd heights and, from the looks of it - just a quick skim of the Cracked article, they somehow managed to do so without losing a whole lot of brain function.
Two caveats - I didn't actually read the mandatory.com link. I didn't load the JavaScript up to see it. The second is that #1 at Cracked is the most awesome one of them all, of course. Dude bailed out of a plane, passed out from a lack of O2, and managed to only get banged up a little bit with a sprained ankle. The dude fell a couple of miles, or so it would appear. That's kind of neat.
But, there's some more stuff for you to read - seeing as you didn't even read the summary. :/
If you ever got Gentoo installed, you're doing good. ;-)
Actually... I don't want to brag or anything BUT... I've gotten Plan9 installed and running. However... That has a couple of caveats.
It took more tries than it should have.
The installation was a virtual machine image.
I'm not sure what I did but the installation only worked for a few boots.
Minix was much easier.
It's probably going to be a bit difficult to really control a dive with that much weight on. That's really going to be, you mention, the problem.
On the other hand, it's not all that difficult to jump, and even dive, from much higher heights into regular water. I've done so many, many times. The highest confirmed height that I've jumped from was a little over 84' and that might not have been the highest. It's the only one that I can say, without a doubt, was that high - it's the only one that high that we've ever measured.
There's a couple of techniques. I prefer what's basically a modified pencil drop or emergency jump. The standard emergency jump is you jump, feet first, cross your legs at the ankles, and cross your arms tight across your chest. However, I was taught (and thus prefer) to point the toes (with them still crossed), to cup the balls with one hand, and to pinch your nose with the other - and hold both arms in as tight as you can. When you're hitting water at that speed, you want to protect yourself as much as possible and (or so I'm told - I've never witnessed this happen) it's possible for water to be forced up the nose and really mess up your face. It's also possibly for your junk to protrude enough so you point the toes and cup your nuts with one hand.
I want to say that they teach the women just to either cross their arms (breasts at that speed are gonna be potentially hurt) and pinch their nose with one hand.
I don't think I've jumped from much higher than 84' by the way. I just know that's the absolute most that I've jumped for and measured. I was pretty old the last time I did it. I'm told that you don't want to go much over 110' to 120' because it becomes nearly impossible to not be injured (or die) at about that distance. I've jumped a few other places that were similar heights to the 84' height but, again, we didn't measure them. Some of the best spots to jump are quarries that have been flooded. That's where the 84' jump is, it's in a quarry.
By the way, this isn't something to be undertaken lightly. I'm scared shitless of heights so I go out, every couple of years, and force myself to face down my fear of heights. I don't mind being on a plane all that much. I'm not too keen on helicopters but I'll fly in one. If I go to the top of a building or a tower, where there's no chance for me to fall, I still get scared for some reason. I have no idea why - it really petrifies me and I have to force myself to move. It's a silly fear but, there it is. It's really the only thing that scares me besides being maimed, incapacitated, or serious loss of brain function.
That'd be why I go jump or find something that terrifies me and go do that. I force myself to do so. 'Snot easy but there may come a time when I need to overcome those fears and be able to face them. Having proven to myself that I can face them seems to help my peace of mind.
Oh, another good thing about quarries is that they often have varied heights. You don't necessarily have to go all the way to the top. I have to start at the top. If I jump from one of the lower heights that's it, I'm done for the outing and probably won't even consider it for another few years. It's terrifying. They're starting to get the touristy things out on the beach down here. I see a few more of them.
I think I might like to try the parasailing thing. I've thought about hang gliding but I just don't have the berries to do that and freezing up will get me killed.
At any rate, the important thing to remember is that you're correct in that an uncontrolled fall into water can end up going very poorly. Shit, try a belly flop from just that 20' height and let me know how that goes for you. I've had drunken friends who have done shit like that and end up all sorts of messed up - for days afterwards. They probably cracked ribs but I doubt we ever went and got them checked. It ends up pink, sometimes blood on the surface - like needles of blood, and is bruised for quite a while afterwards. Some of those were only from a
Yeah, I figured they were full of shit. I've been out of the data center for at least eight years - I sold and retired a little over eight years ago. I've a hard time believing that there's no IBM left in there. Even if it's just software or support contracts, I just wasn't buying it.
Thank you for the confirmation. It's appreciated. It seemed really unlikely that IBM was completely gone. Shit, there's probably IBM hardware from the 90s (maybe even the 80s) still running in some of those places. They might be in dark shadows but they're out there. I really didn't want to believe them and had no way to confirm it at the time - and nobody else seemed to notice. So, I basically just ignored 'em after that.
I've found my patience with stupid replies has started to wear thin as of late. 'Tis time to do something different for a while, lest I end up behaving in manners that are untoward and undesired in myself. It's okay, I've been working on a couple of projects as of late.
That's what I figure. I figure there's probably a whole lot of IBM hardware still hiding in dark shadows in those types of places. It just didn't seem probable when they indicated their observation. What's really amusing is that only a few of us were saying that IBM had probably made a brilliant move by getting out of hardware. At the very least, getting out of consumer and business grade workstations and portable devices was probably genius. Lots of people derided them for it at the time. (I got flamed pretty hard for pointing out that it might actually be a smart move for them.)
A lot of people here seem to believe they're competent in a bunch of areas where they've no experience. There's more to a company than taking every bit of revenue available - and sometimes it's advantageous to actually slim down and that will cut your revenue stream - but it might increase your overall profit margins and, more importantly, it might allow you to focus your better staff on different things. Truth be told, there's a limit to skilled employees. Being able to best put them to work for you is probably a smart choice, even if it means lower revenue and fewer revenue sources. It really seams to matter a lot in the tech industry where things are very dynamic.
Nah, I think this classifies as sci-fi. Not hard sci-fi but science fiction nonetheless. It's really quite an eye opener and, like a good science fiction work, gives you lots of additional questions. However, I'm not gonna force you to watch it or even try to urge you a second time. I will add that it's not really like you described. It's feasible, certainly. But you'd not know, unless you watched and you're unwilling to watch so I guess you'll have to believe that's what it is.
That one I have my doubts about. I've not been to Denmark in a while. It was on NPR, a police chief was being the spokesman for some department - national level, I understand, that was going on and on about how the citizens were engaging in ethnic cleansing. His metric? A pattern of break-ins that indicated that it was specific people being targeted. That's why I mentioned that I had my doubts about that one. Just to be clear - it's not the Dane's doing the supposed cleansing.
I've been to Denmark and they're probably pretty capable of being horrendous people - just like anywhere else. They're probably capable of ethic cleansing, just like everybody else. But, I seriously don't know if I can believe that police officer. Let me see if I can find you a link. Wikipedia mentions it again.
According to Funen police, the burglaries committed in the Vollsmose disctrict follow patterns of ethnic cleansing against native Danes.[19] Danes from other parts of the country are stabbed just for walking into the ghetto zone.
I kind of have my doubts about that one and it really looks like they're exaggerating. Hell, they might even be making it up out of whole cloth. It looks like you might be able to read this and get more information. This is what Wikipedia cited:
http://www.b.dk/nationalt/poli...
I don't speak the language so I'm not going to speculate.
Point being, it's really stupid of people to make stupid statements like the ones that were being made. It's borderline retarded, at best. I am not home at the moment but I'll be back home in a few more weeks, at the latest. When I get home, I'll be in a State with almost no crime, no real violent crime, almost no homeless people, and even has some diversity. For the record, t's Maine, USA. I live up near the Canadian border, just up above Rangeley if you want to see it on a map. It's beautiful.
Yeah, but with your luck Watson would be a feminist and have a whole different reaction to a sexual reference than what are probably thinking.
If it doesn't then it will after you-know-who is done with it. You don't want to catch that, do you?
So, practice safe hex when you do go getting it on.
I thought the meme (which is true but not really salient) was that IBM supplied equipment to track the logistics of the Nazi's/Hitler's Final Solution, among other things... Now Microsoft hates Jews? That seems a wee bit outlandish but it's your story, you can tell it any way you want to.
Flippancy aside, they're specifically researching emotional AI, and dancing has long been associated with emotional response in humans.
So doesn't mass murder, so doesn't stomping of soldier's boots, so doesn't spousal abuse, so don't child rape, and so doesn't terrorism.
Not that I'm worried about an AI causing harm, or at least more harm than humans, but it is mildly amusing to humor the thought.
In fact, it was WWII that brought about America's "Greatest Generation." It seems really popular to say things like, "Make America Great Again!" That elicits emotional responses from a whole bunch of people. Some of them are even happy with the rhetoric.
So, let's hope they used good data classifications and the goal is increased positive emotions instead of just increased emotions. They'd surely not overlook something so basic and trivial and it surely has no means of acting beyond what permissions the programmers have specifically granted. Nobody would make a basic mistake like that.
I kid, I kid! Mostly...
'Cause grabbing a toddler out of an audience and smashing its head off the ground would sure cause a whole lot of emotions. ;-)
I don't watch a whole lot of movies unless they're documentaries but I did watch one, a recent one, and it was actually pretty good. You might like it, if you've never seen it. It's called Ex Machina and I believe it was a /.er who recommended it. If you haven't seen it then I shan't spoil it. It's about an Android that is both female and is a deep AI. It's also about her interaction with humans. What I appreciated most about it was that it was real science fiction. It left me questioning, thinking, and a choice about the impact it might have on a much larger scale.
Would that I could and I'd attempt to describe it better but it is not easy to do without telling too much of it. It's really quite good. Hmm... I guess I can say that it has nudity. There's a reason to see it, right there. On a serious note, it was quite an interesting movie and I don't say that very often.
Skynet, eh? That's kind of funny is that is what people used to say about IBM. IBM was going to do big things and had done big things. Then, we all scoffed when they sold off to Lenovo. We all have pointed out the things they've done as business killing choices. We've stopped even calling them an Enterprise Solution.
The other day, I was reading a post about someone saying they worked in multiple data centers and server rooms, for Fortune 50-500 companies, in the very recent past and that they looked around and couldn't see IBM anywhere. I don't know, I've been retired for 8 years. I did express my doubt but I didn't get a response from them.
I really don't know if they're in the DC now or not. I find it hard to believe that they're not to be found.
So, maybe it will be IBM on the side of the Skynet hardware after all. I am still a bit skeptical of the "nowhere to be found" claim.