Scientific fact is a very ellusive thing. For every issue, there are differing points of view. On global warming, it is generally agreed that temperatures have risen since the 19th century. But that's about it.
This is one of my favorite articles on the subject (appologies for the repost from my previous response)
"Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers."
Mr. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
You make a valid point - Al Gore has his name on his work. But, that isn't the point I was making. His movie is a one-sided view of the "facts", presented as truth. See http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 as an example.
Both sides are attempting to manipulate public opinion.
"...I suspect you're too busy cheerleading..." Do you mean you're too busy cheerleading? I'm confused:) Yet another irony demonstrating my point. Your side propogandizes (is that a word?) and it's "truth". The other side does and its just more evidence of how evil they are.
That's a really good question. I'm not sure I can answer it, but I'll give it a shot.
The CPU does very primitive things. It adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides, loads memory into registers, and stores registers into memory.
The program's interface to the GPU is at a relatively high level. First, the program sets the GPU's render states. The program sets things like which textures to use, is alpha blending enabled or disabled, which shaders to use etc.... Then tells the GPU to draw some triangles. The driver gets to decide the best way to deal with these requests.
For example: the program may tell the GPU to use a certain pixel shader. The driver can use what it knows about the current render states to decide if the shader is performing instructions that don't matter (for example: calculating the alpha value even though alpha blending is disabled). I don't know if drivers _do_ this, but they could. At the least, the shader program is written in the generic D3D, or OpenGL language. The specific GPU installed may support fancy features (like the capability of performing two dot products in a single instruction). The driver can recompile the shaders to more closely match the capabilities of the actual GPU.
I guess it boils down to the abstraction layer. The CPU instruction set is a very low-level abstraction, the D3D/OpenGL interface is very high level.
Thanks for the well written response. I'm sure our disagreement is at the most fundamental level. We have different premises.
I want to be free to produce, and to decide with whom and under what circumstances I share my productivity. It's mine. It isn't for society to decide their best use of it.
Arguments that revolve around "what's best for society" are extremely frightening to me. Who gets to define society's needs? I'm not a Liberal by any stretch, but I certainly wouldn't approve of the Conservatives deciding "what's best for society" and forcing their views on the Liberals. We should all be free to decide for ourselves (to the extent possible).
Freedom has an awkward side. I want to freely enter into agreements, or choose not to. I want to declare my terms and have the other party agree or disagree, or offer alternative terms for me to consider. The awkward side is, that I must allow others to do the same. It is not for me to declare that, since the recording industries terms are unacceptable to me that their terms are invalid, and I we should ignore them
As so many people have posted: if you don't agree, don't buy the music.
As for the non-DRM music sources, that's awesome! There's a market opportunity for a music publisher to provide a "better" product. They are free to do that. As they should be free not to.
>> No, but the benefit of exclusive ownership of copyrighted works to the rights-holder does need to be balanced against the benefit to society
Part of my point is to make a subtle distinction that your right to fair use does not impose a duty for the music industry to make that easy. DRM does not remove any of your fair use rights. Though, it does have that effect. On the flip side, if someone "cracks" the DRM solution, then (to me) that's the DRM producer's problem, not society's.
>Are you really OK with the idea...
The Constitution is already copyright free. You can't put it in a book and declare that because the book has a copyright that you own the rights to the original. You are free to use the words from the Constitution without copyright limitations. However, If you wanted to republish the book, or even pages from the book, then too bad. As it should be.
I would agree with you that it isn't theft. It's more a breach of contract.
DRM is an attempt by the producer to enforce their agreement with the consumer. The agreement they offer is this (vaguely) "You give us money. We'll let you listen to the music. You agree not to give the music to any one else."
Before DRM, this agreement was widely violated.
Fair use defines your rights to some things with the music. It doesn't obligate them to facilitate those things. You could argue for example that you can make backup copies of DVDs. But, before DVD John, there wasn't any way to do it (macrovision prevents copying to VCR).
DRM is a solution to piracy. It isn't a great solution, but if music is free to redistribute, then very few will be original distributors. Scarcity is an essential concept in economics.
Consider for a moment that you produce an electronic product (e.g., music, movies, video games, etc). How will you get paid for your efforts? If the cost of production (and reproduction) is zero, and you have no way to limit it, you will have a hard road ahead.
Broadcast TV, and radio are free. They use commercials to generate revenue. But, redistributing them is still not legal, even though the original broadcast was free.
It amuzes me that kids think free music is a right. It takes a lot of effort to produce a quality product (of any kind). Demanding that it be free is insane.
I know there are those out there that will split hairs and say "we don't want it to be free, I just want to do what I want with _my_ music". It isn't "your" music. The people that produce and distribute it are willing to let you listen to it, _if_ you are willing to agree to their terms. You don't have to agree to their terms. But, then you don't get to listen.
Put your self in their shoes. Pretend for a moment that you produce something of value (from what I've read on/. that will be a huge stretch ). Then, consider that someone is giving it away for free. Then, you will understand DRM.
From "Climate of Fear" Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
"Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers."
>...because they understand that this would be a major flaw...
I assert that they want to avoid appearing "privileged". Of course, privileged and smart don't automatically go together. But, they appear to for the average American.
Everyone in America wants to be rich, but, one of the dominant American political parties has spent decades and tons of money enrolling people in the concept that rich people are evil. Politicians reasonably want to avoid appearing evil.
> errmmm...If what he said was actually untrue, his boss could have sued him for slander.
Sure - if the employee slanders the boss, the boss could sue. But there wasn't any slander here. My understanding from reading the actual ruling (i.e., the point of my post), is that they had a professional disagreement. The boss and the employee disagree about how to do the job. That won't get you promoted at any job.
> It seems we have a difference of opinion what constitutes 'reasonable'.
I have to admit, I have no idea what you're talking about. Your hypothetical case involves fraud; the case in the ruling doesn't. Also, the ruling doesn't say anything about "talking about it". The boss treated him the way he did because of how Ceballos did his job. There was no whistle blowing, or anything even close to it.
My point is: read the ruling. Don't be a lemming. Don't let the media manipulate you.
It goes without saying that sfgate.com is a Liberal publication. (does that word apply to web sites?) If anything, the headline gives their bias away. They could have titled it "Supreme court rejects rogue government employees claim to wistleblower status." That would, of course, reveal the opposite bias.
What troubles me is that their biased view is accepted by so many people without critical thinking. We are all very comfortable being manipulated, so long as the manipulation agrees with our world view.
I'll summarize (with my bias). Ceballos had a difference of opinion with his superiors about how to handle a case (he was a deputy district attorney for L.A. County). I don't see how this makes him a whistleblower. He wasn't revealing corruption. He disagreed with his boss(es) about the robustness of a search warrant affidavit. I imagine that happens all the time. I infer that he didn't handle this disagreement in a way that endeared him to his boss. His boss responded by transfering him, and denying him a promotion. These sound like reasoanble actions for a boss to take if he doesn't see eye-to-eye with an employee.
Anyway, the truth is out there. What good is intellectual freedom if we merely surrender the forming of our opinions to the media?
You didn't back down. You just weasled out of what you said. In typical Liberal fashion I might add. Your mind tricks have no effect on me. You speak. You take sides. Stand by what you say.
Your statements pick sides. Which side are you on? There are two: the terrorists, and the West. You don't get to be opposed to the West's war on terrorism and not support the terrorists. Although, I'm sure you'll argue that point with Typical Liberal "nuance". Those are the two choices in this fight. You don't get to manufacture choices that you wish were there. They aren't there.
Critisizing the West _does_ provide aid and comfort to the enemy. And, make no mistake, they are the enemy. More innocent people will die because of it. Maybe not from your single voice, but from the resultant choir of Liberal bullshit.
The terrorists want to kill you. They express that without nuance. You are either working toward elliminating that threat or you are supporting it. Take your fancy words that argue to the contrary and shove them.
Oh, I forgot: You're a Liberal. Words, and speech can be twisted to mean whatever you want them to mean.
The purpose of your statement was to declare equivalency. Show me where I used the word "pinhead" in my first statement. I didn't. But, it's clearly implied.
> what's the point? Not being brutally murdered! Not having innocent people murdered. That's the point. You Liberals see this war only in the abstract. You think your childish wordplay has an affect on the terrorists. They terrorists want to kill you! I don't care if they're not "official". They must be stopped.
You (Liberals) need to pull your head out of your (collective) ass and see that the enemy with the gun pointed at your head is the high priority.
So, beheading innocent people (that you know are innocent) is equivalent to detaining suspected terrroists? Detention without trial is bad, but at least they are suspected terrorists.
I guess that's the real cost of the detentions. It gives the Liberals a reason to defend the terrorists and undermine the efforts to defeat them.
Slashdot Mirror
>There are not two sides to scientific fact.
Scientific fact is a very ellusive thing. For every issue, there are differing points of view. On global warming, it is generally agreed that temperatures have risen since the 19th century. But that's about it.
This is one of my favorite articles on the subject (appologies for the repost from my previous response)
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
"Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers."
Mr. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
You make a valid point - Al Gore has his name on his work. But, that isn't the point I was making. His movie is a one-sided view of the "facts", presented as truth. See http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 as an example. Both sides are attempting to manipulate public opinion. "...I suspect you're too busy cheerleading..." Do you mean you're too busy cheerleading? I'm confused :) Yet another irony demonstrating my point. Your side propogandizes (is that a word?) and it's "truth". The other side does and its just more evidence of how evil they are.
So, Al Gore makes a one-sided movie, pretending to be a documentary. His opponents make a spoof pretending to be a grass roots effort.
Slasdot readers accept the first as "truth". The second one gets slashdot readers up in arms.
What have we _really_ measured by this experiment?
That's a really good question. I'm not sure I can answer it, but I'll give it a shot.
The CPU does very primitive things. It adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides, loads memory into registers, and stores registers into memory.
The program's interface to the GPU is at a relatively high level. First, the program sets the GPU's render states. The program sets things like which textures to use, is alpha blending enabled or disabled, which shaders to use etc.... Then tells the GPU to draw some triangles. The driver gets to decide the best way to deal with these requests.
For example: the program may tell the GPU to use a certain pixel shader. The driver can use what it knows about the current render states to decide if the shader is performing instructions that don't matter (for example: calculating the alpha value even though alpha blending is disabled). I don't know if drivers _do_ this, but they could. At the least, the shader program is written in the generic D3D, or OpenGL language. The specific GPU installed may support fancy features (like the capability of performing two dot products in a single instruction). The driver can recompile the shaders to more closely match the capabilities of the actual GPU.
I guess it boils down to the abstraction layer. The CPU instruction set is a very low-level abstraction, the D3D/OpenGL interface is very high level.
Thanks for the well written response. I'm sure our disagreement is at the most fundamental level. We have different premises.
I want to be free to produce, and to decide with whom and under what circumstances I share my productivity. It's mine. It isn't for society to decide their best use of it.
Arguments that revolve around "what's best for society" are extremely frightening to me. Who gets to define society's needs? I'm not a Liberal by any stretch, but I certainly wouldn't approve of the Conservatives deciding "what's best for society" and forcing their views on the Liberals. We should all be free to decide for ourselves (to the extent possible).
Freedom has an awkward side. I want to freely enter into agreements, or choose not to. I want to declare my terms and have the other party agree or disagree, or offer alternative terms for me to consider. The awkward side is, that I must allow others to do the same. It is not for me to declare that, since the recording industries terms are unacceptable to me that their terms are invalid, and I we should ignore them
As so many people have posted: if you don't agree, don't buy the music.
As for the non-DRM music sources, that's awesome! There's a market opportunity for a music publisher to provide a "better" product. They are free to do that. As they should be free not to.
>> No, but the benefit of exclusive ownership of copyrighted works to the rights-holder does need to be balanced against the benefit to society
Part of my point is to make a subtle distinction that your right to fair use does not impose a duty for the music industry to make that easy. DRM does not remove any of your fair use rights. Though, it does have that effect. On the flip side, if someone "cracks" the DRM solution, then (to me) that's the DRM producer's problem, not society's.
>Are you really OK with the idea... The Constitution is already copyright free. You can't put it in a book and declare that because the book has a copyright that you own the rights to the original. You are free to use the words from the Constitution without copyright limitations. However, If you wanted to republish the book, or even pages from the book, then too bad. As it should be.
I would agree with you that it isn't theft. It's more a breach of contract. DRM is an attempt by the producer to enforce their agreement with the consumer. The agreement they offer is this (vaguely) "You give us money. We'll let you listen to the music. You agree not to give the music to any one else." Before DRM, this agreement was widely violated. Fair use defines your rights to some things with the music. It doesn't obligate them to facilitate those things. You could argue for example that you can make backup copies of DVDs. But, before DVD John, there wasn't any way to do it (macrovision prevents copying to VCR).
DRM is a solution to piracy. It isn't a great solution, but if music is free to redistribute, then very few will be original distributors. Scarcity is an essential concept in economics.
/. that will be a huge stretch ). Then, consider that someone is giving it away for free. Then, you will understand DRM.
Consider for a moment that you produce an electronic product (e.g., music, movies, video games, etc). How will you get paid for your efforts? If the cost of production (and reproduction) is zero, and you have no way to limit it, you will have a hard road ahead.
Broadcast TV, and radio are free. They use commercials to generate revenue. But, redistributing them is still not legal, even though the original broadcast was free.
It amuzes me that kids think free music is a right. It takes a lot of effort to produce a quality product (of any kind). Demanding that it be free is insane.
I know there are those out there that will split hairs and say "we don't want it to be free, I just want to do what I want with _my_ music". It isn't "your" music. The people that produce and distribute it are willing to let you listen to it, _if_ you are willing to agree to their terms. You don't have to agree to their terms. But, then you don't get to listen.
Put your self in their shoes. Pretend for a moment that you produce something of value (from what I've read on
From "Climate of Fear"
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
"Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
> ...because they understand that this would be a major flaw...
I assert that they want to avoid appearing "privileged". Of course, privileged and smart don't automatically go together. But, they appear to for the average American.
Everyone in America wants to be rich, but, one of the dominant American political parties has spent decades and tons of money enrolling people in the concept that rich people are evil. Politicians reasonably want to avoid appearing evil.
Hey, I think this is the first time anyone on the Internet has agreed that I might have a valid point :) Thanks.
> errmmm...If what he said was actually untrue, his boss could have sued him for slander.
Sure - if the employee slanders the boss, the boss could sue. But there wasn't any slander here. My understanding from reading the actual ruling (i.e., the point of my post), is that they had a professional disagreement. The boss and the employee disagree about how to do the job. That won't get you promoted at any job.
> It seems we have a difference of opinion what constitutes 'reasonable'.
I have to admit, I have no idea what you're talking about. Your hypothetical case involves fraud; the case in the ruling doesn't. Also, the ruling doesn't say anything about "talking about it". The boss treated him the way he did because of how Ceballos did his job. There was no whistle blowing, or anything even close to it.
My point is: read the ruling. Don't be a lemming. Don't let the media manipulate you.
It goes without saying that sfgate.com is a Liberal publication. (does that word apply to web sites?) If anything, the headline gives their bias away. They could have titled it "Supreme court rejects rogue government employees claim to wistleblower status." That would, of course, reveal the opposite bias.
7 3.pdf
What troubles me is that their biased view is accepted by so many people without critical thinking. We are all very comfortable being manipulated, so long as the manipulation agrees with our world view.
To their credit, sfgate.com links to the actual judgement: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-4
I'll summarize (with my bias). Ceballos had a difference of opinion with his superiors about how to handle a case (he was a deputy district attorney for L.A. County). I don't see how this makes him a whistleblower. He wasn't revealing corruption. He disagreed with his boss(es) about the robustness of a search warrant affidavit. I imagine that happens all the time. I infer that he didn't handle this disagreement in a way that endeared him to his boss. His boss responded by transfering him, and denying him a promotion. These sound like reasoanble actions for a boss to take if he doesn't see eye-to-eye with an employee.
Anyway, the truth is out there. What good is intellectual freedom if we merely surrender the forming of our opinions to the media?
You didn't back down. You just weasled out of what you said. In typical Liberal fashion I might add. Your mind tricks have no effect on me. You speak. You take sides. Stand by what you say. Your statements pick sides. Which side are you on? There are two: the terrorists, and the West. You don't get to be opposed to the West's war on terrorism and not support the terrorists. Although, I'm sure you'll argue that point with Typical Liberal "nuance". Those are the two choices in this fight. You don't get to manufacture choices that you wish were there. They aren't there. Critisizing the West _does_ provide aid and comfort to the enemy. And, make no mistake, they are the enemy. More innocent people will die because of it. Maybe not from your single voice, but from the resultant choir of Liberal bullshit. The terrorists want to kill you. They express that without nuance. You are either working toward elliminating that threat or you are supporting it. Take your fancy words that argue to the contrary and shove them.
What a coward. Be a man and stand behind what you say and do.
Oh, I forgot: You're a Liberal. Words, and speech can be twisted to mean whatever you want them to mean.
The purpose of your statement was to declare equivalency. Show me where I used the word "pinhead" in my first statement. I didn't. But, it's clearly implied.
> what's the point?
Not being brutally murdered! Not having innocent people murdered. That's the point. You Liberals see this war only in the abstract. You think your childish wordplay has an affect on the terrorists. They terrorists want to kill you! I don't care if they're not "official". They must be stopped.
You (Liberals) need to pull your head out of your (collective) ass and see that the enemy with the gun pointed at your head is the high priority.
So, beheading innocent people (that you know are innocent) is equivalent to detaining suspected terrroists? Detention without trial is bad, but at least they are suspected terrorists. I guess that's the real cost of the detentions. It gives the Liberals a reason to defend the terrorists and undermine the efforts to defeat them.