Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 22 Mar 2013 @ 7:40am
Re: Re:
Tell me this, when has copyright ever been about maximizing the some function?
"To promote the progress of science and the useful arts..."
The purpose of copyright is to encourage learning and the creation of new works. If it does that, great. If it instead discourages the creation of new works, we have a problem.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 22 Mar 2013 @ 6:34am
Re: Panspermia
why would finding fossels from other planets support the panspermia theory, that is that life started somewhere else and 'migrated' to earth.
Because panspermia theory does not attempt to explain where life came from. It only tries to explain where life *on this planet* came from.
We know that meteor impacts on a planet can launch rock off that planet with escape velocity. We know the early solar system had a lot of large meteors/comets flying around. We're pretty sure that Mars had an environment suitable for life prior to Earth. If we find distinct evidence of microbial life on Mars, it would support the possibility that panspermia theory is correct.
We know that very shortly after conditions were right on Earth for life, it was here. One of the reasons panspermia theory is around is because some think that this time period is too small. Panspermia theory offers an explanation that life could have easily formed elsewhere in the time required, and then ended up here.
I personally don't think that time is an issue for life appearing here as soon as it did, but panspermia is an interesting idea that could explain something if time really is a problem. That is what science is - our attempts to explain things using evidence and observations.
And no, god and religion have nothing to do with it.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 21 Mar 2013 @ 8:58am
Re:
Given the 2 choices of doing nothing about it, or doing something but ending up worse off (See EA and SimCity), what is the rational choice?
Of course, that's a false dichotomy. There is a 3rd choice: embracing the methods that pirates use to make more money by giving your customers what they want in a convenient manner for a reasonable price.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 21 Mar 2013 @ 8:10am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
What are your assumptions about the size of those markets?
That they may be small in terms of the US market right now, but growing rapidly.
What is your assumption about the cost and even capacity to produce a world-class text from within one of those markets?
India, population 1.2 billion. China, population 1.3 billion. Add in the rest of south and east Asia and you're over 3 billion. If you think they're not in need of low-price, quality textbooks then you're crazy. If you think they can't produce something as high quality as a US or other western nation publisher, then you're operating under a bias.
Do you see any barriers to entry for foreign text book producers to the US market?
Of course there are barriers - I never said or implied otherwise. But they are not insurmountable, and the textbook market is ripe for disruption from competition on many fronts.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 19 Mar 2013 @ 2:45pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Now; tell me what you think is going to happen next to prices of Wiley textbooks in these markets?
Wiley (stupid and short-sightedly) will raise their prices in the smaller markets.
Those markets can't afford the prices, which will force those in the markets to start creating their own equivalent books (legally). The first ones may not be quite the quality that Wiley currently provides, but they will quickly rise to the level. The new publishers from the smaller markets will then realize there's a large an inviting market (North America) that they can enter by selling an equivalent product for a much lower price. Wiley will be forced to lower their prices, or go out of business, because of perfectly legal competition that they created by refusing to adjust to the market.
"Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? It is the sound of inevitability."
Economics tells us that the price of a good moves toward its marginal cost. What you see about to happen is economics in action. You can keep denying the water is rising. You can keep filling sandbags (copyright law) to wall it off. Eventually you run out of sandbags, and then its too late to save your house, when you could have used all the time you spent building the levee to move out of the flood plain.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 18 Mar 2013 @ 12:57pm
Re: Re:
suggest the person simply didn't sync his changes to the server; from my reading it is that the person can't sync his changes to the server.
It's unclear which is the case. However, which it is can be thought of as a security competence question - wether or not EA can design and build a robust server infrastructure to prevent PersonA making changes to PersonB's stuff. Let's take a quick look at EA's past competence level in regards to SimCity.
1) Competence in allocating enough server resources to handle load?
Fail.
2) Competence in adjusting to unforseen load?
Fail.
3) Competence in designing software to meet their own goals?
Fail (fudging population/simulation of individual agents).
Fail (dumb as a box of dull rocks pathing AI).
Fail (secure software, ie left developer mode in, leading to this possibility).
4) Overall competence in admitting when they were wrong so they could salvage the situation?
Fail.
Since they fail at so much, what makes you think their server design/infrastructure is competently designed to disallow Godzilla-ing someone else's city?
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 18 Mar 2013 @ 6:39am
I am in awe. To misquote someone...
Live by your horribly twisted lawyers, pay through the nose for something you already own by your horribly twisted lawyers.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 13 Mar 2013 @ 1:39pm
Risk
"Of course, this makes you wonder why Warner Bros. was so unsure that there would be a market for this movie in the first place."
Because the studios are horrendously risk averse. It makes me roll my eyes every time someone trots out the line that it's risky financing movies and albums and thus we need copyright. Sure, it's risky. But the studios aren't taking that risk. The investors and backers get screwed (Michigan pension plan), while the studios get to funnel all the profits through their businesses as expenses.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 13 Mar 2013 @ 10:03am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Gates and Jobs both recognized themselves as criminals,
You work the system but until the day the law is stricken from the books it's still a law.
Pretty much everyone who advocates or has ever advocated civil disobedience disagrees.
I don't disagree that breaking laws creates disorder and unrest. The civil rights movements of the 1960s created all sorts of disorder. But we're in a better society now because of that disorder.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 13 Mar 2013 @ 9:23am
Re: Manning recording
Seems you neither read the story nor the many comments above that said the same thing.
He did not need to research each and every document. He used the classifications that the writers of those documents or the analysts that included them in the document storage system specified.
Although I'll admit, I find your use of the handle 'DB Cooper' amusing when you call for someone else to spend the rest of their life in jail.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 13 Mar 2013 @ 6:28am
Re: Re: Re: Gates and Jobs both recognized themselves as criminals,
Bright minds have nothing to do with it. It depends on the law they broke, and the actions of the government. If the law itself is wrong, they don't deserve to go to jail. If the law is not applied equally, they don't deserve to go to jail. If the government violated their rights (did not follow due process, abuse to get a confession, mishandling of evidence, etc.), they do not deserve to go to jail.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 12 Mar 2013 @ 12:36pm
Re: What innovators?
I have no love for any of the 3, nor the companies they founded, but you can't argue they weren't innovators.
Gates: the real innovation - and it was primarily a business one, I won't argue - was seperating the hardware and operating system from control by the same company. He licensed the OS to IBM and retained his control to improve and sell it to other companies. And ultimately, that is what made DOS and later Windows successful, in that it allowed a huge amount of competition in the hardware space and made the PC revolution possible.
Jobs: yes, he took everything that Xerox had (and wasn't using) and turned it into something that people wanted (and yes, Gates then copied it all, too). But without him, we may never have had personal computers.
And since you wrote that comment on some version of a personal computer (or smartphone descended from them), and the comment travelling over a network-of-networks used to allow all those PCs to communicate, then I can say that they contributed in a positive way. Unless you want to return to a time before these things, you need to accept that.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 11 Mar 2013 @ 7:38am
Re: how?
The parameter(number) you're entering is a decryption key, which you may not be "authorized" to possess, allowing you to circumvent a "technological protection measure", and tools that allow you to bypass those protection measures are illegal under the DMCA.
The prime (pun for you crypto fans!) example of this is the AACS encryption key, which if you know it, you can decrypt the copyright protection on most Blu-ray discs.
On the post: A Tale Of Two Studies: File Sharing Hurts Sales!
Re: Re:
"To promote the progress of science and the useful arts..."
The purpose of copyright is to encourage learning and the creation of new works. If it does that, great. If it instead discourages the creation of new works, we have a problem.
On the post: DailyDirt: Life On Other Worlds
Re: Panspermia
Because panspermia theory does not attempt to explain where life came from. It only tries to explain where life *on this planet* came from.
We know that meteor impacts on a planet can launch rock off that planet with escape velocity. We know the early solar system had a lot of large meteors/comets flying around. We're pretty sure that Mars had an environment suitable for life prior to Earth. If we find distinct evidence of microbial life on Mars, it would support the possibility that panspermia theory is correct.
We know that very shortly after conditions were right on Earth for life, it was here. One of the reasons panspermia theory is around is because some think that this time period is too small. Panspermia theory offers an explanation that life could have easily formed elsewhere in the time required, and then ended up here.
I personally don't think that time is an issue for life appearing here as soon as it did, but panspermia is an interesting idea that could explain something if time really is a problem. That is what science is - our attempts to explain things using evidence and observations.
And no, god and religion have nothing to do with it.
On the post: Motion Picture Association: The Cloud Is A Threat To Us And The Best Response Is Censorship
Re:
Of course, that's a false dichotomy. There is a 3rd choice: embracing the methods that pirates use to make more money by giving your customers what they want in a convenient manner for a reasonable price.
On the post: Supreme Court Gets It Right In Kirtsaeng: You Can Resell Things You Bought Abroad Without Infringing
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That they may be small in terms of the US market right now, but growing rapidly.
What is your assumption about the cost and even capacity to produce a world-class text from within one of those markets?
India, population 1.2 billion. China, population 1.3 billion. Add in the rest of south and east Asia and you're over 3 billion. If you think they're not in need of low-price, quality textbooks then you're crazy. If you think they can't produce something as high quality as a US or other western nation publisher, then you're operating under a bias.
Do you see any barriers to entry for foreign text book producers to the US market?
Of course there are barriers - I never said or implied otherwise. But they are not insurmountable, and the textbook market is ripe for disruption from competition on many fronts.
On the post: Supreme Court Gets It Right In Kirtsaeng: You Can Resell Things You Bought Abroad Without Infringing
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Wiley (stupid and short-sightedly) will raise their prices in the smaller markets.
Those markets can't afford the prices, which will force those in the markets to start creating their own equivalent books (legally). The first ones may not be quite the quality that Wiley currently provides, but they will quickly rise to the level. The new publishers from the smaller markets will then realize there's a large an inviting market (North America) that they can enter by selling an equivalent product for a much lower price. Wiley will be forced to lower their prices, or go out of business, because of perfectly legal competition that they created by refusing to adjust to the market.
"Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? It is the sound of inevitability."
Economics tells us that the price of a good moves toward its marginal cost. What you see about to happen is economics in action. You can keep denying the water is rising. You can keep filling sandbags (copyright law) to wall it off. Eventually you run out of sandbags, and then its too late to save your house, when you could have used all the time you spent building the levee to move out of the flood plain.
On the post: Maxis: Your Reward For Buying Our Horribly Launched SimCity Is The Previous, Better Version Of It
Re: Can you say Damage Control?
So for screwing up, they give you a free game so you can then spend more money buying DLC instead of fixing the game you originally purchased.
That'll go over well.
On the post: SimCity Always-Online DRM Lets Hackers Play Godzilla With Anyone's Cities
Re: Re:
It's unclear which is the case. However, which it is can be thought of as a security competence question - wether or not EA can design and build a robust server infrastructure to prevent PersonA making changes to PersonB's stuff. Let's take a quick look at EA's past competence level in regards to SimCity.
1) Competence in allocating enough server resources to handle load?
Fail.
2) Competence in adjusting to unforseen load?
Fail.
3) Competence in designing software to meet their own goals?
Fail (fudging population/simulation of individual agents).
Fail (dumb as a box of dull rocks pathing AI).
Fail (secure software, ie left developer mode in, leading to this possibility).
4) Overall competence in admitting when they were wrong so they could salvage the situation?
Fail.
Since they fail at so much, what makes you think their server design/infrastructure is competently designed to disallow Godzilla-ing someone else's city?
On the post: SimCity Always-Online DRM Lets Hackers Play Godzilla With Anyone's Cities
Re:
On the post: Giant Pharma Company Claims Releasing Data On Drug Safety Is Illegal As It's Confidential And 'Commercially Sensitive'
Re:
FTFY
On the post: Righthaven Copyrights 'Sold' Back To Stephens Media For $80k To Pay Legal Fees
Live by your horribly twisted lawyers, pay through the nose for something you already own by your horribly twisted lawyers.
On the post: Maxis GM: Our Vision Is More Important Than Our Customers & Lots Of People Love Our Crappy DRM
Re: Re:
How would you feel about "wouldn't've"?
On the post: Maxis GM: Our Vision Is More Important Than Our Customers & Lots Of People Love Our Crappy DRM
Re: Re: So, basically...
On the post: Details Come Out On US Attorneys Withholding Evidence In Aaron Swartz Case
Re: Re: Re:
Did it work? :game show buzzer: No, no it did not.
On the post: Warner Bros. Lets Veronica Mars Crew Prove Demand For A Movie Via Kickstarter
Risk
Because the studios are horrendously risk averse. It makes me roll my eyes every time someone trots out the line that it's risky financing movies and albums and thus we need copyright. Sure, it's risky. But the studios aren't taking that risk. The investors and backers get screwed (Michigan pension plan), while the studios get to funnel all the profits through their businesses as expenses.
On the post: Startups And Innovators Speak Out In Favor Of Fixing CFAA
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Gates and Jobs both recognized themselves as criminals,
Pretty much everyone who advocates or has ever advocated civil disobedience disagrees.
I don't disagree that breaking laws creates disorder and unrest. The civil rights movements of the 1960s created all sorts of disorder. But we're in a better society now because of that disorder.
On the post: Recording Of Bradley Manning's Statement In Court Leaked
Re: Manning recording
He did not need to research each and every document. He used the classifications that the writers of those documents or the analysts that included them in the document storage system specified.
Although I'll admit, I find your use of the handle 'DB Cooper' amusing when you call for someone else to spend the rest of their life in jail.
On the post: Startups And Innovators Speak Out In Favor Of Fixing CFAA
Re: Re: Re: Gates and Jobs both recognized themselves as criminals,
On the post: Innovators Break Stuff, Including The Rules: How Gates, Jobs & Zuckerberg Could Have Been Targeted Like Aaron Swartz
Re: What innovators?
Gates: the real innovation - and it was primarily a business one, I won't argue - was seperating the hardware and operating system from control by the same company. He licensed the OS to IBM and retained his control to improve and sell it to other companies. And ultimately, that is what made DOS and later Windows successful, in that it allowed a huge amount of competition in the hardware space and made the PC revolution possible.
Jobs: yes, he took everything that Xerox had (and wasn't using) and turned it into something that people wanted (and yes, Gates then copied it all, too). But without him, we may never have had personal computers.
And since you wrote that comment on some version of a personal computer (or smartphone descended from them), and the comment travelling over a network-of-networks used to allow all those PCs to communicate, then I can say that they contributed in a positive way. Unless you want to return to a time before these things, you need to accept that.
On the post: Senator Tweets About 'Very Uncomfortable' TSA Pat Down: 'OMG'
The test for explosive residue was positive? And all she got was an aggressive pat-down? They still let her board?
Sounds like she still got the VIP treatment.
On the post: Project Launched To Fix The Anti-Circumvention Clause Of The DMCA
Re: how?
The prime (pun for you crypto fans!) example of this is the AACS encryption key, which if you know it, you can decrypt the copyright protection on most Blu-ray discs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_numbers
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