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Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

shutup. just shut the fuck up. you neither know you are talking about, nor have any valid point to make. its not about solving the digital divide any more than the housing thing is about solving poverty. its been widely and clearly shown that there is an increase in opportunity and outcomes between homes with and home without internet access. you're essentially complaining about improving someones potential opportunities to enrich themselves and make their life better and maybe even get out of that housing you mock. but again, you have no valid point, so therefore theres little sense in talking sense, like pointing out to you that without subsidized housing many of these people would be on street, homeless, increasing both crime rates and homeless and deaths among the impoverished. Theoretically we are a civilized nation. But a civilized nation doesnt advocate intentionally making it harder if not impossible for those most disadvantaged to improve themselves, nor advocate for them to die quickly and get out of the way.

Well spoken, bro

Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

The "digital divide" is a real thing. It's the difference between spoiled people like yourself growing up with a computer in your home, and inner city kids who have no computer access at home and have to wait on line at the public library to get a 15 minute time slot.

If you don't recognize that in this society those without computer access are at a disadvantage, you are as stupid as you are uncaring.

Comment Re:And people who write software (Score 3, Informative) 152

It seems obvious to me that the person who came up with the idea and directed it's creation is the copyright holder.

It's really a matter of directing its creation. Mere ideas aren't copyrightable, and merely coming up with one doesn't matter. If you use someone else's idea but are the only creative participant, they won't get rights in tor work.

And if you direct creation, you don't have to be the person who literally brings it about, either. But this is more than just paying someone a commission, or giving them the basic idea. It means that the other active participant isn't contributing anything creative.

So for example, if you tell a photographer that you want a photo of some subject, the photographer will end up being the author. If you tell him exactly what camera settings to use, what lighting, choose the subject, pose the subject, etc., then you're engaging in authorship.

. Likewise, if I hire someone to take wedding photos, then the photo copyrights are mine, as I commissioned the person to take them.

No, they're not. Being the author means having sole artistic control. Being a joint author would involve two parties having artistic control, and an intent to produce a joint work. And a work for hire, in which authorship is attributed to an employer requires more than merely commissioning a work. It requires actual employment, with all the relevant indicia (tax forms, insurance, providing the tools and work area, etc.) or in a handful of cases, contractual language.

You might be interested in Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony and Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid.

Does Keanu Reeves own the copyright for Edward Scissorhands? No.

I think you mean Johnny Depp.

Submission + - Power -- And by that I mean Free Broadband -- To the People

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: Slashdot member and open source developer Ben Kallos @KallosEsq — who is now a NYC Councilman — is pushing to make it a precondition to Comcast's merging with Time Warner that it agree to provide free broadband to all public housing residents in the City (and by free I mean free as in beer). Kallos, along with NY's Public Advocate, Letitia James, are leading a group of state and local politicians calling on Comcast to help bridge the digital divide in NY.

Comment Re:Another failure of ZAW!!! (Score 1) 347

How could anyone competent ever call scripting obsolete?

It is no more or less than a tool to tell the computer wtf you want it to do in precise terms. If you don't have that you're reduced to hoping someone already thought of the things you're trying to do and implemented the correct clicky bit for you to click on. If not, you're SOL.

Comment Re:And... (Score 2) 347

The Registry.

Oh, god, the Registry.

Those of you know more than me can maybe advise: why the hell does this thing even exist? Why not stick with ordinary text files containing things like

# set the preferred meaning of life
meaningoflife = 42

like sane OS's? Yes, okay, sometimes they're hard to find, but if you want to mimic the "registry" idea, make it standard practice to name them "foobar.ini" and symlink them into a central location.

Comment Re:Global warming for the win! (Score 0) 384

Don't tow the "Climate Change" line, don't get funded

Exactly! Without scientists to move it, the "climate change" line, or for that matter, any line marking the boundaries of current human knowledge, it stays stagnant and fixed. Towing the lines helps our society prosper and grow...

And to think that George Orwell thought it a Dying Metaphor!

Comment Re:These laws are hard to grasp (Score 1) 475

There are clear indications that traditional porn serves as cathartic material and reduces the number of instances of rape and other acts inspired by sexual frustration. The same does not seem to hold for child pornography, where the opposite seems to be the case

When you say "seems" are you to referring to anecdotal comments rather than research?

For an earlier comment here I did a Google Scholar search on the rate of sex-crimes before and after countries changed pornography laws, and some of those studies included changes in the legality of child pornography. It seems that every scientific study found the same result - countries where child pornography became legal experiences a decrease in rates of child molestation, countries where child pornography became illegal experienced an increase in rates of child molestation.

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Comment Re:Distasteful stuff, but should not be illegal (Score 2) 475

The easiest way to tell might be to compare cultures where normal pornography is easy to get, to those where it is very difficult to get, and see if the rates of sexual attacks and deviant acts vary between the cultures. Does anyone know if such a study has been done?

Comparing different cultures with each other doesn't work, you can't determine weather differences are due to the availability of pornography or to a wide range of other cultural factors.

What you do is compare a single culture with itself, before and after a major change in the availability and content-range of porn. In fact a substantial number of such studies have been done, across a substantial number of countries. The results are consistent. Increases in the availability and content-range of pornography are generally followed by a decrease in rape and other sex crimes, or at worst no change in those rates. This result also extends to a smaller number of country-cases that included child pornography becoming legal. In every such case rape, other sex crimes, and child molestation always decreased. Countries where child pornography changed from legal-to-illegal had increases in child molestation rates.

A Google Scholar search can turn up a variety of such studies. Here are links to one two of them.

Abstract one:
The Danish liberalization of legal prosecution and of laws concerning pornography and the ensuing high availability of such materials present a unique opportunity of testing hypotheses concerning the relationship between pornography and sex offenses. It is shown that concurrently with the increasing availability of pornography there was a significant decrease in the number of sex offenses registered by the police in Copenhagen. On the basis of various investigations, including a survey of public attitudes and studies of the police, it was established that at least in one type of offense (child molestation) the decrease represents a real reduction in the number of offenses committed. Various factors suggest that the availability of pornography was the direct cause of this decrease.

Abstract two:
Pornography continues to be a contentious matter with those on the one side arguing it detrimental to society while others argue it is pleasurable to many and a feature of free speech. The advent of the Internet with the ready availability of sexually explicit materials thereon particularly has seemed to raise questions of its influence. Following the effects of a new law in the Czech Republic that allowed pornography to a society previously having forbidden it allowed us to monitor the change in sex related crime that followed the change. As found in all other countries in which the phenomenon has been studied, rape and other sex crimes did not increase. Of particular note is that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease in the incidence of child sex abuse.

I wonder what the world would look like if we had legislators who legislated on the basis of evidence and reality rather than ideologies and soundbites.

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Comment Re:Deletionists (Score 1) 98

Sure sure, verifiable is important. But even with something to verify the information on the page, you still get those deletionists that will claim notability, and fast-track the page for deletion.

If you were paying attention, I explained exactly how to prevent an article from being deleted. Include a couple of independent Reliable Sources talking about the topic, saying things that can be used to build an article. Once you have that then primary sources can help expand the article if used properly, but we have rules against articles built solely with primary sources because primary-source-only articles raise a shitton of problems.

But no, you're high and mighty and you just don't give a fuck about how many pokemon there are.

What the hell are you ranting about? Not only does Wikipedia have an article on Pokemon, we've got literally hundreds of Pokemon articles. That includes a list of SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN pokemon running up to Number 719: Diancie.

Hey man, you want to trim down Wikipedia of random meaningless shit nobody cares about? Try taking on football.

I would personally be delighted if the world got over it's nutty fascination with football. However the fact is that the world does treat football as important, and there does exist an crazy amount of Published sources Taking Note of every minute facet of football. As a Wikipedia Editor I accept it's not my place to delete other people's football contributions based on my opinion of football's level of "importance". If someone complies with Wikipedia policies, if their article satisfies sourcing requirements etc., then I'll either leave the article alone or I'll work to improve it. Hell, some of my most resent edits were fixes to professional Wrestling articles, which I consider about 42 level lower than football in stupidity. Football is a genuine idiotic violent sport, Wrestling is a fake idiotic violent sport. ~~~~

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