I am interested in your equation of a progressive to socialists and the assertion that neither allow multiple view points.

Are you saying that the Chinese Socialist Party is progressive? Or just that all progressive parties are socialists(and then that not all socialists are progressive)?

Does this preclude conservative parties from being socialists?

Are you implying that conservative parties always allow multiple view points?

I'm curious.

Given that up until recently this is was how pretty much all music was made, I believe that you have reduced the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach to creating merely stifled and uninnovative music.

I'll agree on the point of big budget movies being thrown out with all this. Games and books however I don't think will be.

I would like to state that I don't think a system that relays on patrons in this day and age would work. But the donations thing may.

I myself would like to see a more sane copyright term. Something like 25 years or so should do it.

There is no reason to let those who make "Intellectual Property" have such a huge monopoly on their works. Other Intellectual Properties, like Patents, expire on a term of 14years. Could you imagine a world where patent law was guaranteed for life +70 years?. I believe the Air Conditioning (invented in 1902) would still be covered. Imagine a world where only Carrier Corporation could make AC systems. Good news would be that in this weird world the patent should be up in 10 more years! Assuming it doesn't get extended any more.

Just imagine the LACK of innovation that would have been brought to the world if this were the case.

There was a time when Patent Law and Copyright Law were in lockstep and now they are not. I think its time that we bring them back together, for better or worse.

~Zehaeva

wow, I never thought i would see what i think is one of the most innovative mmo ideas on /. . I'm really quite impressed. forgive me if i ever make/design an mmo and you see these features in it. mea culpa.

it would be more apt to say that a black hole sucking stuff in is more akin to taking everything in a very messy room and giving it all to the "Will it Blend?" guy, having him whip up a "messy room" shake and compacting that into a very tiny ball.

while your room is indeed clean, everything that was in your room is now in a small ball of disorganized matter where as it used to form nice neat polymer chains and crystalline structures and other such organized molecular structures. now its all just a large amount of goo which is defiantly less organized than a bed room set, sheets, clothes, your favorite plushies and whatever other junk there was there.

~zeh

Let us take this to an insane extreme.

Do you honestly believe that all of the works of Shakespeare should still be controlled by his great great (how ever many) grand kids? Should everyone need to ask him(or her) for permission to use, or modify, 400(ish) year old plays? Should we have needed to track down the scion of Homer to make that movie Troy?

When is the story old enough that it can be in the public domain? Do you see where treating copyright as an eternal property that can be passed down through the generations would cause the world trouble in the future? all you have ot fdo is imagine what the world today would be like if 500 years ago they implemented perpetual copyright. If you honestly don't think there is something wrong with that then I don't think you have anything else to discuss here.

I agree with you that an opt-in is better than an opt-out .. however if it were opt-in then we'd be in the same position we were before google even tried, making the whole exercise moot. we'd still have millions of books that no one could publish because the authors have orphaned the works, either don't care or have dropped off the face of the planet or died and didn't leave any clear manager of their estate, if anyone even cares about their estate.
i'm pretty sure that i saw even google say that this is pretty much a hack, the only way to get around it is to reform copyright law. push it back to a sane limited term and go back to registered works rather than automatically covering every scribble on the back of a napkin for the life of the author + 95 years and allowing 100+ years of time for a work of art(visual or otherwise) to fall into the cracks of cultural oblivion.
its a raw deal but we have it because some aging people have a hard time dealing with the idea that maybe someday in the future some bollywood hotshot will remake their great novel into 10 things i hate about you.
its what we got, until people realize that things like the berne convention are hurting our culture the problem will only become more serious and more out of whack.
~z

that's a very small window to be 11 years old ...

some one who happens to have been born more than 11 years ago and less than 12 years ago? how do you define an eleven year old?

I think you may have confused a few things here. The research that is being touted as the savior off our economy is basic research. The sort of research that has no direction other than to satisfy intellectual curiosity. The sort of research that poses a question and tries to answer it.

This is completely different from the "MR. Smith I see you have a great Idea .." stuff. No one at Bell Labs knew what their research would be used for. Those at DARPA had no idea that Google would be spawned from ARPAnet.

You think the point is the number of people who get jobs to support the inventions, but you still missed out on the basic research aspect of TFA. You point to a specific invention as if that were the point, it is not. The point is to explore new avenues and see if anything falls out of it. TFA points out that a good number of the technologies we have today are not being used in the way they were developed to be used.

I think the major idea to be pulled from this is that the free market has failed us in the area of basic research, Bell Labs is down to 1k employee's focused on development of technologies with a 3-5 year pay off, vs 30k focused on development with a 10-15 year pay off. And in many instances not at all. If the free market has failed us then who should pick up all this basic research? The universities haven't stopped really. The only thing that has changed is the drop off from the corporate sector, they are too scared and too unwilling to aim for anything thats as nebulous or vague as "We should see a solid product in 8-15 years although we have no idea what that product will be".

So who should we look to now?

It rotates, very slowly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/venus/how-long-is-a-day-on-venus/
http://nineplanets.org/venus.html
http://www.doub.net/Enseignement/VRML/Exemples/CyberAstronomy/Venus/HTML/index.html
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/JessicaBrodkin.shtml

But why would you build a backhoe when you already have a gang of 40 slaves that you can work to the death and replace quickly and cheaply? Why would you build a steam engine to move goods around long distances when slaves would do the same! There is a good deal of ancient literature that refers to slaves as tools and gangs of slaves as machines. dan carlin does a good job of distilling this down in his hardcore history episode addicted to bondage. Maybe give it a listen?

Music Guaranteed to last a life time ^__^

I have some other copyrighted material thats been working fine for decades and still hasn't been replaced. they are books but many of the ones that i own still work decades after they were purchased. I even have a few that still work after well over one hundred years! I also still have many vinyl albums that still work some 50 years on as well.

The RC of Win7 was released as both a 64bit version and a 32bit version. While they may not be pushing it, 64bit computing is making inroads into the consumer market.

err? Let me make it simpler for you

NOTHING that is in TFS or TFA mentions that Congress suddenly made a law forcibly taking anything away from anyone due to what anyone said.

All that is mentioned in TFS is a woman being sued for libel by her landlord and an employee who said something that looked badly upon her employer in a public space and was terminated due to said comment

No Laws here taking anything away from anyone just because someone said something they wanted to

Before anyone gets all up in arms about their protected speech getting trampled on why not honestly read and understand what TFC (The Fscking Constitution) says and means?

Seriously, I bet that you think that Carrie Prejean was denied her right to speech when her employer was all up in arms about her views on "opposite" marriage.

The Constitution DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM ANY PRIVATE CITIZEN.

The Constitution PROTECTS YOU FROM THE GOVERNMENT.