People quit thinking they are entitled to the benefit of other people's time and work without proper compensation as asked by the person doing the work. "Easy digital communication" doesn't presume any kind of rampant copyright violation. Nifty. What's your plan for making people quit thinking something? You going to just tell them that they should stop thinking that? How's that been working out for you? The aspect of the economy that I was talking about was the internet iteslf, not piracy in specific. You could shut down piracy by shutting down the internet. I can't think of any other way. Your moralistic telling of people that they shouldn't be engaging in piracy doesn't seem to have any effect to me. Maybe you disagree? Possibly you see the world as full of people who have simply never had anyone inform them that piracy is wrong. I see the world as full of people who just don't care, and that's the world that we have to develop a set of rules to cope with.
Errr....Wellll.....actually it doesn't matter if you accelerate the vessel or the whole universe except the vessel. The principle of no privileged reference frame means that these are identical statements.
The likelihood of any hypothetical "bug" from an alien world being being biochemically compatible with humans is very very tiny. It approaches zero. Even if we and it are descended from the same pangenic life spores, we would have evolutionarily diverged a long, long time ago. The odds that we would be able to go out on a hypothetical life inhabited alien planet and just be able to eat whatever happens to be growing is larger, but still very small. However, assuming said life is carbon based, the odds that there is some feasible chemical process we can use to convert said native life into something that can be digested by humans is actually not that bad. After all, given enough time and energy you can convert almost any form of organic matter into ethanol, which can be turned into glucose through a reverse fermentation process.
Within the next couple hundred years we will probably have the ability to digitize the human mind. At that point colonization becomes easy. You just download a few hundred thousand colonists to storage media, send them off in a slow ship and they can make new bodies for themselves when they arrive.
I think that the point being made is that with respect to the music industry in particular, technology has made the current system unworkable. You can rail against piracy all you want, you can call it immoral theft, you can make it illegal, but you can't stop it without crippling the economy in other ways. That being the case, lets try to find a reasonable way to set things up so that entertaining things still get made. The GP came up with a scheme whereby entertainment still gets made that avoids the problems inherent in the clash between modern digital technology and copyright based distrobution. You have pointed out that his scheme is not a perfect system. You have a better proposal? State it. Without changing the nature of humanity or destroying privacy rights, how would you set up a system that allows both for the existence of easy digital communication and simultaneously allows for artists to receive just compensation for their work?
Until everyone thinks that way, in which case the whole business model collapses. That's the problem with people who leech, it works out fine for them (in the short run) but they fuck things up for everyone else. You know, I always find this idea curious. It seems to imply that before there were copyright protections there could be no music/books/art/plays/etc because there would be no way to get rich off it. Yet there are plenty of examples of works from the pre-copyright era. We call such works "classics" and they are generally held to be of superior quality. Production of art in all it's various forms is one of the earliest and most fundamental of all human qualities, arising in all branches of human civilization. We seem to be biologically wired for such behavior. I'm pretty sure that if you got rid of all copyright protections artists would still produce art because that's what artists do. If they can't get paid for it that just means they have to get a day job, they don't stop producing art. Possibly Brooks and Jordan would have to stop rewriting Tolkien every time a mortgage payment comes due and have to go get real jobs, but I don't see any problem with that. Tolkein, you will note, never really expected to make money off his epic and it was initially published under the assumption that it may actually lose money.
This seems like an interesting story, but it lacks the earthshaking importance of the "chairbot" article. Slashdot really needs to refocus it's priorities.
All of what you said is true, except that UV is not ionizing radiation. DNA absorbs in the UV range at 260 nm. UV radiation at that specific wavelenth causes the DNA to become a reactive species and chemically crosslink with nearby DNA. It never enters an ionic state
The robot was doing it's best to protect the soldiers and taking blasts meant for them. One sympathizes best with those that one is most similar to, and the modern american soldier has more in common with that robot than most iraqis. In more ways than one.
His interview with police will not show up on any background check, of any kind, anywhere, ever. Unless someone, you know, googles him or something. But what are the chances of that happening?
Spacifically the conversation was about how he was buying a particular gun because it would be very difficult to kill someone by accident with it and he didn't want to hurt anyone. How do you interpret that as a threat? It's like if I said "I don't want to kill anyone." and the response was "You're talking about killing people! You're dangerous!"
I work in a science lab. Recently a new rule was instituted, you can't throw anything that might concievably have been used to do science (which, being a science lab, is pretty much everything we use) in the trash. Apparently the janatorial staff had seen some tubes in the trash and were worried about catching some horrible mutant disease or something, dispite the fact that we don't actually work with any horrible mutant diseases. Whatever. My point is people will freak out and get scared over totally stupid shit all the time. If you respond by firing every employee who manages to scare the most scarable employee you will eventually end up with an organization that consists of one employee. And you will end up with science labs where no one is allowed to do science and janitors paid to empty trash bins with nothing in them.
The IBM thinkpad is a Bear. If you can afford it, it is the only PC laptop worth getting (not sure how the switch to Lenovo has effected them though). My mom's friend had a thinkpad that she spilled an entire can of beer on. While it was on. It sparked and shut off. Mom asks me what to do. We soak it and wash it in water, spray it with rubbing alcohol, let it dry overnight, turn it on, and the damn thing works! I did horrible things to mine and it still works. Needs more RAM, but works like a charm. And they're comparable with most linux distros.
No, I think it means that if you don't want to liscense your music and don't want it played by someone, you can't stop them from doing so if they pay the SoundExchange collective liscensing fee. All you can do is join SoundExchange and try to recoup some fraction of your fees. At a price, mind you. Basically, SoundExchange claims the right to liscense any and all copyrighted music ever created for the purpose of internet rebroadcasting and to collect fees on behalf of the copyright holder. That's compulsory. You don't have a choice in SoundExchange liscensing your music. You can liscense it seperately, under different terms, if you want. But you can't stop SoundExchange from liscensing it. Basically it is a scheme that is good for SoundExchange and anyone who can afford their fees, but it dicks over artists and small broadcasting outlets. You can still broadcast your own music (that you own copyright to) under whatever terms you like. But beware, if your stuff catches on SoundExchange can come in and undercut you with your own music, force you out of the marketplace, collect fees on your behalf, and force you to pony up to the table if you ever want to see a fraction of compensation from all the play your music is getting.
In the US you can patent anything that is original, nonobvious, and useful. Anything. I recently heard of a guy who patented a system for filing your taxes. Not software for doing it, an algorithim for how to list deductions.
You're not debating with the fanatics who're producing the material. You're presenting your counter-claims and viewpoints to the OTHER people who might be listening to them. Who, if they're going to be taking that stuff seriously, are probably also irrational and impossible to engage in a debate. You would think that, but if you read the personal history profiles of, say, the 911 hijackers you would be surprised at how normal and rational they started off. These were not raving lunatics who were going to latch on to some wacked out ideology no matter what. They were, by and large, normal people who were feeling lost and out of place with the world and then someone came and gave them an answer. They weren't born fanatics. They didn't become fanatics instantly. And rational debate is often one of the most useful tools used to convert them. You don't think that it took at least a little bit of argument to get them to kill themselves? Yes, by 9/10 they were almost certainly irrationally convinced they were right, but I gurantee you that there were lots of points previous to that when they could have been turned from that path if somebody had taken an interest and explained the other side of the story.
Slashdot Mirror
Errr....Wellll.....actually it doesn't matter if you accelerate the vessel or the whole universe except the vessel. The principle of no privileged reference frame means that these are identical statements.
The likelihood of any hypothetical "bug" from an alien world being being biochemically compatible with humans is very very tiny. It approaches zero. Even if we and it are descended from the same pangenic life spores, we would have evolutionarily diverged a long, long time ago. The odds that we would be able to go out on a hypothetical life inhabited alien planet and just be able to eat whatever happens to be growing is larger, but still very small. However, assuming said life is carbon based, the odds that there is some feasible chemical process we can use to convert said native life into something that can be digested by humans is actually not that bad. After all, given enough time and energy you can convert almost any form of organic matter into ethanol, which can be turned into glucose through a reverse fermentation process.
Within the next couple hundred years we will probably have the ability to digitize the human mind. At that point colonization becomes easy. You just download a few hundred thousand colonists to storage media, send them off in a slow ship and they can make new bodies for themselves when they arrive.
I think that the point being made is that with respect to the music industry in particular, technology has made the current system unworkable. You can rail against piracy all you want, you can call it immoral theft, you can make it illegal, but you can't stop it without crippling the economy in other ways. That being the case, lets try to find a reasonable way to set things up so that entertaining things still get made. The GP came up with a scheme whereby entertainment still gets made that avoids the problems inherent in the clash between modern digital technology and copyright based distrobution. You have pointed out that his scheme is not a perfect system. You have a better proposal? State it. Without changing the nature of humanity or destroying privacy rights, how would you set up a system that allows both for the existence of easy digital communication and simultaneously allows for artists to receive just compensation for their work?
Except that each PS3 sold looses sony money
This seems like an interesting story, but it lacks the earthshaking importance of the "chairbot" article. Slashdot really needs to refocus it's priorities.
He is. He's suing google, yahoo, wikipedia, etc.
Depends on the state. Some states have laws against selling certain games to minors.
All of what you said is true, except that UV is not ionizing radiation. DNA absorbs in the UV range at 260 nm. UV radiation at that specific wavelenth causes the DNA to become a reactive species and chemically crosslink with nearby DNA. It never enters an ionic state
They're rubbing something in glee, but it sure isn't their hands.
The robot was doing it's best to protect the soldiers and taking blasts meant for them. One sympathizes best with those that one is most similar to, and the modern american soldier has more in common with that robot than most iraqis. In more ways than one.
"We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor, maam."
Spacifically the conversation was about how he was buying a particular gun because it would be very difficult to kill someone by accident with it and he didn't want to hurt anyone. How do you interpret that as a threat? It's like if I said "I don't want to kill anyone." and the response was "You're talking about killing people! You're dangerous!"
I am impressed by your knowledge of his contract terms. Could you post a link to where you read them?
I work in a science lab. Recently a new rule was instituted, you can't throw anything that might concievably have been used to do science (which, being a science lab, is pretty much everything we use) in the trash. Apparently the janatorial staff had seen some tubes in the trash and were worried about catching some horrible mutant disease or something, dispite the fact that we don't actually work with any horrible mutant diseases. Whatever. My point is people will freak out and get scared over totally stupid shit all the time. If you respond by firing every employee who manages to scare the most scarable employee you will eventually end up with an organization that consists of one employee. And you will end up with science labs where no one is allowed to do science and janitors paid to empty trash bins with nothing in them.
The IBM thinkpad is a Bear. If you can afford it, it is the only PC laptop worth getting (not sure how the switch to Lenovo has effected them though). My mom's friend had a thinkpad that she spilled an entire can of beer on. While it was on. It sparked and shut off. Mom asks me what to do. We soak it and wash it in water, spray it with rubbing alcohol, let it dry overnight, turn it on, and the damn thing works! I did horrible things to mine and it still works. Needs more RAM, but works like a charm. And they're comparable with most linux distros.
No, I think it means that if you don't want to liscense your music and don't want it played by someone, you can't stop them from doing so if they pay the SoundExchange collective liscensing fee. All you can do is join SoundExchange and try to recoup some fraction of your fees. At a price, mind you. Basically, SoundExchange claims the right to liscense any and all copyrighted music ever created for the purpose of internet rebroadcasting and to collect fees on behalf of the copyright holder. That's compulsory. You don't have a choice in SoundExchange liscensing your music. You can liscense it seperately, under different terms, if you want. But you can't stop SoundExchange from liscensing it. Basically it is a scheme that is good for SoundExchange and anyone who can afford their fees, but it dicks over artists and small broadcasting outlets. You can still broadcast your own music (that you own copyright to) under whatever terms you like. But beware, if your stuff catches on SoundExchange can come in and undercut you with your own music, force you out of the marketplace, collect fees on your behalf, and force you to pony up to the table if you ever want to see a fraction of compensation from all the play your music is getting.
Why would anyone mod you troll? Bashing the RIAA on slashdot is like making fun of France at the RNC. No one listening is going to disagree with you
In the US you can patent anything that is original, nonobvious, and useful. Anything. I recently heard of a guy who patented a system for filing your taxes. Not software for doing it, an algorithim for how to list deductions.