I just had this idea when I saw this story on Slashdot. These corporations that use their power and money to continuously expand copyright are in fact using our own money against us. The very same dollars that we pay Hollywood, Nashville, et al for the latest CD or DVD are being used for lobbying to increase their power and riches in the form of longer and more draconic copyrights.

What if we turned this around? What if instead of buying the latest CD, MP3, DVD, etc we put that same money into a crowdfunding campaign to start a professional lobbying effort to restore a sane level of copyrights? There have been several kickstarter campaigns now that have gone into the multiple millions of dollars. I would imagine that that would be a nice amount to at least start an organization to begin this lobbying.

It struck me that I don't know of anyone who is actually representing the general public on this fight against endless copyright. It basically seems like RIAA/MPAA/etc lobbyists against no one. Guess who wins in such a lopsided argument? If you do know of organizations that are putting up a fight for us, I would love to hear about them, and perhaps such a money bomb could be directed at them.

Your post started out well and I was agreeing with it, but you quickly veered into shaky logic ground. Remember the axiom often repeated on Slashdot: correlation is not causation.

Perhaps those fans that watch Olympic hockey just do it because they enjoy Olympic sports and competition among countries. After all, viewership figures for gymnastics and track and field also go through the roof during the Olympics, as compared to anytime other than the Olympics. It's not like outside those sports are full of violence outside of the Olympic environment.

But anyway, in general I agree that it's stupid that they allow so much fighting to happen in professional Hockey, and I also believe that they lose more viewers than gain because of that.

Eh, that's why you shell out the $16 to get both unlimited streaming AND unlimited one-at-a-time DVDs. That's one of the strengths of Netflix, and why they messed up when they tried to separate the services. Then you can watch the complete collection, as long as the movie is available on either DVD or streaming. By the way, La Jetee was on Instant Netflix previously as well. That's where I watched it.

Heck, even contemporary humans don't know what they're dealing with: see the case of the people handling the radioactive material that was found at a junkyard in Brazil a few years ago. Ooh, it looks shiny! They died terrible deaths shortly after that.

It was probably based on the VW Beetle chassis, as VW typically did (and does). The classic Beetle has a removable body as well. I saw it done once and it's pretty trippy. Disconnect it from the chassis and you can lift the whole body straight up. Probably why it was a popular car to convert to buggies.

Don't forget that humans used to do these same things to other humans, not just other animals, until very recently. Perhaps they even still do, in some places.

Hmmm... there's a simpler explanation for why French uses many similar words as English: I've heard it said that English is about 60% derived from French. It's really remarkable how many same/similar words between the two languages. The roots of English would explain why there's so many similarities. Instead of the French using English words, it's much more likely that it's the other way around. While on the other hand, Icelandic has probably close to 0% French origins.

I've been thinking a lot about the unrealistic expectations of women recently. Any chance that you could point to those studies that you mentioned confirmed this? I would love to read them. Thanks!

Reposting this at a higher level, since I posted as a response to an AC below you.

It's a very recent example of exactly what you mention:

http://peregrinelabs.com/2012/04/to-our-us-customers/ and here is a long forum thread discussing it, including posts by the patent holder: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=1048283&page=1&pp=15

In my view it's clear to see how this kind of thing has a stifling effect on innovation, business, and the economy of the US, but I suppose some do not share that view.

Here's one that just happened a couple of months ago: http://peregrinelabs.com/2012/04/to-our-us-customers/ - it's an European 3d hair and fur program that is no longer going to be sold in the US because of a patent dispute. You can also read a whole 140+ posts long forum thread about this situation including the patent holder defending himself, here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=1048283&page=1&pp=15

I just happened to know this example of exactly what the GP post mentioned because I frequent the CGSociety forum. I imagine from what GP said that there are probably many other examples.

Woo, I finally got a slashdot submission accepted! The eighth time is the charm! /happyoutburst

Ahem. Actually, I wanted to thank all of you very much for your answers. A lot of good examples, insights, and suggestions, just as I had expected from my fellow slashdotters. If I or anyone decides to go down this road, I'm sure that this information will be useful.

If you're curious, the specific game I had in mind was Richard Burns Rally, which is generally considered to be the best rally car (racing) simulation ever released. From what I've read in your replies, it seems like I (or anyone else) may have to wait a bit longer before it may be feasible to pull this off since it may still be too new and active, and still have valuable code for the publishers to consider it.

If I really decide to pursue this, I may start with some even older but still well-regarded rally sims such as some of the titles in the Rally Championship Series or Rally Trophy.

If all else fails, I suppose I can always learn proper game programming and join an existing open source rally game project like Trigger Rally.

Thank you all again!

Yes. A couple of ACs already mentioned this to you, but I'll reiterate it: many good resume-writing books I've read recommend only including the last 10 years of experience. Not only does this keep your experience appearing "fresh", but it also keeps your resume short and sweet. Remember that the other rule of resume-writing is that it should (with few exceptions) never be longer than 2 pages, and I cannot imagine that you can do justice to your experience all the way back to the 80s in such short space, so you're either breaking this rule or shortchanging yourself in your descriptions.

This indicates to me that perhaps you need to retool your resume in general. Either hit the library (or Amazon) and the web and read all the most recent and best-reviewed relevant material available or pay a professional resume writer to rewrite it for you. There are a lot of things you can do to tweak your resume to emphasize your strengths and de-emphasize your weaknesses.

Good resume writing-techniques are not obvious, so you really need to do non-trivial research on the practice to be any good at it. Good luck.

Unfortunately Apple has been going down the path of form over function in design for a good while now, particularly with their laptops: aluminum bodies that look beautiful but dent if you hit them with anything, "chiclet" keyboards that look cute but are nowhere near as friendly to a human's hands as something like the classic Thinkpad keyboard, non-user replaceable batteries, glossy screens full of glare, etc. So these new moves are no surprise. What other useful things will be gone in the next generation?

Really good point. Although it would work both ways, right? In certain circles, like in the sciences, the survey score for atheism would likely be higher than it really is, while in others, like in the general non-scientific population, the score for religiosity would be higher than it really is.