Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:I think he's got a case (Score 1) 307

I can't say I understand your 2nd to last point. Coulton got permission to use the lyrics from the copyright owner.
He then WROTE ENTIRELY UNIQUE MUSIC to accompany those lyrics. The music he wrote and recorded is entirely his creation and owes nothing to the original recording made by Sir Mix-a-lot. Its Coulton's musical creation, performed and arranged by him and using the original lyrics with permission, with the addition of a minor change in the lyrics as well.
The folks at Glee, took his music and performed it without permission. They appear to have in fact taken his actual recording and removed his voice, substituting their own performers voices, BUT INCLUDING THE CHANGES HE MADE TO THE LYRICS.
Surely, that is them clearly making 2 violations of his copyright - first to his music, and then to the portion of the lyrics he changed - both without his permission. I don't understand how it can be interpreted differently.

He should immediately file a DMCA takedown notice (although it will do little real good I am sure since FOX has deeper pocketbooks) to at least indicate that he is pursuing his own rights in the matter actively. Then he should find a good lawyer and sue their ass off. If copyright works when a corporation is concerned at their financial loss, then it has to work when an artist is concerned at their financial loss or the law is not functioning fairly at all.

All that said though, FOX will most likely win, they have more money and money is what buys justice in the modern day.

Comment Re:Funny how nobody remembers The Mummy.... (Score 1) 514

Yes there was plenty of Westerners exhibiting massive ignorance, but humanities "bacon" was saved mostly by the characters Rick and Evelyn, and to a lesser degree Jonathan her brother, all of whom are Western.
Sure, there were the mysterious desert warriors led by Ardeth Bey who swoop in to save the day like the proverbial cavalry, but they are not key characters in comparison to Rick or Evelyn. Its still the White folks showing the brown folks how to do things in large part. This was/is very common in a lot of Hollywood movies - which are made apparently with the white audience in mind.

Comment Re:Funny how nobody remembers The Mummy.... (Score 1) 514

In general most Americans will not watch a movie that does not have an American in it. As well of course, most Westerners will not watch or accept a movie plot where we are not seen as superior to the foreigners (who are usually some shade of brown or black). Its stupid, its racist but its also the way things are.

In the Mummy it takes the clever and heroic Westerners to save the bacon of the ignorant middle easterners.

With regards to Start Wars: Lucas obviously borrowed heavily from different cultures to create his Star Wars cultures. I am surprised it took anyone this long to notice it anywhere in the world.

Also the films do have massive racist overtones IMHO. Look at the Trade Representatives in Episode I (I think it is): They look and sound very Japanese, and what do they do - they organize a massive secret attack. They are untrustworthy, bumbling, ineffective and they have massive numbers of very poor quality troops that all look the same. All they had to do was throw big round glasses on the droids to make them more like the WWII propaganda the US put out about the Japanese.

Jar-Jar Binks brings to mind the stereotypes of blacks in the south - at least to me as a Canadian.

Naturally the Empires officer corps look amazingly like WWII German Wehrmacht and Nazi troops in their uniforms - although I give him massive points for the white Stormtrooper armor (perhaps we were supposed to feel some sympathy for them, I always did).

I love the SW movies but they are heavily cliche ridden and fairly biased, if not exactly racist. I think to say otherwise is foolish.

Comment Re:High-tech !? (Score 2) 377

And if they did that, the US would invade Antigua on some trumped up reason and just coincidentally the server farms for that DCMA ignoring service would be hit by hellfire missiles. The US has used its military to back up corporate rights many many times in the past, particularly in the Caribbean, I don't think things have changed all that much, just the media spin required...

Comment Oh thats nothing (Score 4, Informative) 231

If you want to see *really* abusive language and offensive comments concentrated into their purest form, go play an mmoRPG and try *Roleplaying*. Nothing gets the 12 yr old mentality for heaping offensive abuse on other players up more than encountering a roleplayer in a roleplaying game, believe me.
In Dark Age of Camelot we had 3 Roleplaying/PvP servers, with a specific set of rules intended to foster RP behavior. We also had some of the best PvPing in the game going. However, there were regularly people who would create a character on one of these RP servers (there were like 17 other servers they could have chosen instead) *solely* for the purpose of standing in a populated area and heaping abuse on anyone they found. I would say I appealed at least 1 person per play session typically for this sort of behavior. I just don't get it. Its not like I logged into the non-Rp servers to insult them for not choosing to roleplay, that would just be a massive waste of my time if nothing else. I can't imagine being so bored as to have nothing better to do that insult people I will never play with.
Now, I am not gay, but I can easily understand why those who are would group together to form their own community and avoid the abuse they probably get on a regular basis - or at least manage to avoid the typically offensive speech of the gamers around them.
I cannot really imagine wanting to claim a term that would focus that abuse on me though. That seems *to me* to smack of wanting a reason to get outraged and complain about. Still whatever fills your boots I suppose...

However I agree that online gamers are typically highly offensive and ignorant as a baseline behavior. Sure, some rise above that but they are the rarity, the vast, vast majority start at pig-ignorant and dig their way down from there. Admittedly this is mostly true only of RPGs that have a heavy PvP element to them. My wife plays LOTRO and it seems fairly mild, but then PvP there is a minor afterthought really.

Comment Re:Heh... Radical...Islamists...redundant... (Score 1) 564

On becoming a True Scotsman:
* I would suggest a Utilikilt yes, unless you have some Scottish blood in you, in which case you might adopt a standard kilt using the appropriate tartan - keep in mind there are also national tartans, city tartans, and tartans for various professions you might utilize. Also keep in mind that historically speaking the concept of a particular tartan pattern belonging to a particular clan is of course a later invention (probably of British origins). At most I believe we can say that certain tartans came from certain areas of Scotland at best.
The utilikilt seems like a fairly practical garment generally. I have been tempted to buy one.
* Learn Gaelic - its a tough language to learn (particularly the inconsistent spelling, but then if you have learned English already it should be like old home week). Its a very mellifluous language. Make sure you are learning Scottish Gaelic mind you, not Irish. BBC Scotland has entire broadcasts in Scot's Gaelic if you wish to acquire the sounds of it while trying to learn the vocabulary and grammar.
* Buy a practice chanter and start learning how to play the bagpipes. Now, by no means does every Scot know how to play the pipes - or even like them necessarily - but for most people there are a few key things that are associated with a true Scot and playing the pipes is one of them.
* Drink Whiskey - Single malts only, avoid blends.
* Pick an accent and acquire it - I particularly like Billy Connolly's accent myself (Glasgow I believe), but the Highland accents from somewhere like the Isle of Skye or the Hebrides, are very attractive.
* Learn to love football (i.e. Soccer) like your life depends on it.

Comment Re:And in other completely unrelated news (Score 1) 95

Well read this then, and other articles like it:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/10/18/pol-navigable-waters-protection-budget-bill.html

or:
http://o.canada.com/2012/10/29/after-federal-changes-to-waterways-rules-89-per-cent-of-protected-lakes-lap-on-conservative-shores/

The changes to the Navigable Waters Protection act (which is almost as old as Canada) have been changed in bill C-45, so that a huge majority of Canadian lakes and Rivers will no longer have environmental protection. Perhaps coincidently, 89% of those lakes and rivers that will STILL have protection under the new changes, are in Conservative Ridings.

"Bill C-45 would mean tens of thousands of lakes and rivers will no longer be covered by the NWPA, leaving protection for just 97 lakes, 62 rivers and the three oceans." http://www.lethbridgeherald.com/letters-to-the-editor/bill-c-45-will-do-away-with-protection-for-waterways-11313.html

Now who is spreading disinformation? Is it you for denying that anything is wrong?

Comment Re:Let us celebrate.. (Score 1) 232

"One Treatment" might mean removing stem cells from the patient, cultivating them in a lab to introduce this new protein, then surgically implanting them in the patient's bone marrow if I heard what the researcher said correctly. It would only need to be done once, but its not gonna be a single pill or injection either.
Although at this stage who knows. It does mark a major breakthrough if it works. Hopefully no one gets a patent on it :P

Comment Re:And in other completely unrelated news (Score 1) 95

Oh we are leading the way in political apathy with regards to the environment as well! Prime Minister Harper doesn't believe in environmentalism and is doing his best to eradicate all environmental groups in Canada, pass laws that remove environmental protection from 95% of Canada's waterways, and push through massive pipeline projects despite citizen's concerns or the objections of the indigenous peoples who live on the lands those pipes will cross.
If there is a way to fuck up the world's environment, sell ownership of Canada's natural resources to foreign companies, or screw over the public in favour of large corporations, private interests or to curry favour with the US - Steven Harper is your man.

Comment Re:Maybe it was a bad idea in the first place (Score 2) 320

Well I agree with you. I use the web to read stuff, sometimes to view stuff, and to post information back. I use applications for pretty much any other use of the web.

I don't need a lot of the "functionality" that seems to important to web developers these days. A lot of that stuff could be done on the back end, or at least with a much more secure system than relying on Javascript to implement it.

Its perhaps time for a new client-side coding mechanism that starts with security first and foremost, and adds enough client-server interaction to be useful without exposing the user to as many possible exploits?

Slashdot Top Deals

"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker

Working...