Are you sure? Men at Work aren't ethnic, nor is the composer of the music that was allegedly plagiarized.
Wikipedia says: "The flute part of the recording of the song is allegedly based on the children's rhyme "Kookaburra", written by Marion Sinclair for a Girl Guides competition in 1935."
I've heard that it is based on aboriginal music, but you see that the lawsuit wasn't from aborigines. This is the kind of abuse that I was referring to. Once the music gets outside of the group that wrote it, it becomes just another financial asset.
Doesn't sound like evolution, it sounds like going back to the roots.
Music is a celebration of community when it is done well. It fits in with the group of people who are making it.
Despite your comments about Lawrence Welk recently, the fact is that there was a huge community of polka fans across the country. Polka bands toured all over, in small towns and large, delivering the music that people wanted to hear.
I hate to think what would happen to ethnic music if somebody decided to start enforcing copyright on it. Tradition plays a huge part in ethnic music of all kinds. There are traditional songs, harmonies, riffs, stories, all of which are traded around and enlarged upon. If copyright broke this chain, then the music would die.
So keep on dissing Welk. I' d like to keep my cultural heritage free of entanglement with the **AAs. And here is some food for thought: Why isn't there more of a problem with copyright in ethnic music than there is?
Maybe I should have used Linux/GNU instead. I suppose that some deeply buried brain cell wanted to troll. I don't call it GNU/Linux, either, but I am amazed at those who get worked up over someone else calling it that. Credit where credit is due and all that.
I, too, remember Stallman's announcement, but from a magazine article, not from a newsgroup. I was working in a Prime 750 powered Center for Computer Aided Design at the University of Iowa as a graduate research assistant after Reagan's veto of the Synfuels bill changed my career path.
I expect that eventually, some third party will arise and write a new kernel based on GPL V3 that will be accepted because the litigation climate in the US will have passed Doomsday proportions. Linux will never become V3, and FSF is focused on Hurd, so it will have to be someone else.
Linus' efforts were really needed at that time, but he had no desire to be a real part of Free Software, as far as I can see. He is focused on implementation, as his comments reveal. No problem with that. The GPL supports it. But Linux doesn't fully support the GPL, so things must eventually change.
The idea of writing a kernel for Richard Stallman's GNU operating system was obvious to everyone -- it was the key piece still missing.
It wasn't obvious to write the kernel until the supporting cast was written. Or to put it another way -- the kernel wasn't a key piece until the supporting utilities were written. The kernel couldn't be written first. Most people seem to miss that small detail. Linux grew in the field of GNU.
As Linus said, it wasn't the idea, it was the implementation. I am glad Linux has succeeded. I use it every day. I would probably be using some ancient copy of Concurrent DOS/86 otherwise, with somebodies cobbled-up drivers inserted to make it work with modern hardware. Thank God nobody is the gatekeeper on trying things out.
I didn't realize that this would be such a hot topic for so many people. It isn't an either/or situation, it is both/and. There is a time and a place for everything.
I am not endowed with manual dexterity, so I find it hard to carry on a conversation via texting. But for me it is wonderfully handy for those short exchanges that can make things happen.
I read the article. It helps to understand what the topic of discussion is. Her points are well made, but may be incomprehensible to someone who isn't familiar with them, just like discussing the finer points of the interactions of the whang bar and string-bending is lost on me because of my lack of manual dexterity.
Face to face conversation is irreplaceable. There are nuances of nonverbal communication that just don't go over the wire. I have a hard time with the telephone (pre-cell) just because of this. I miss out on half the conversation because I can't see the person. Perhaps you get along just fine without this. It may be an unused talent for you. It is still out there if you ever want to try it.
The article mentions a new skill: maintaining eye contact while texting. What we give up when we learn this skill is the ability to give someone 100% of our attention, to make that person the focus of our mind, and to listen with our whole being. That isn't something that we need to do all the time, but if we have given it up entirely, then we are poorer as a culture because of it.
The other thing that we lose with texting is timing. When speaking to someone, I have to listen while they speak. I can't read their words after I am done speaking. There is a give and take that, to me, is the core of the skill of communication. Some people never learn it, even before texting came along.
Finally, she is absolutely right about the need for solitude so that I can be in community. Until I can stand my own company, why should you put up with me? Do you know anybody like that? Where she is wrong is that this has been going on long before technology made it easy - technology just upped the ante by several orders of magnitude.
Spiritual writers have a lot to say on this topic. It is difficult to stay in solitude, and most of us automatically put up a wall of busy-ness to prevent solitude. This wall is difficult to break down, and it has been reinforced through our life. Unless I am in contact with that small source of silence within me, I will never reach my potential. Your experience may say otherwise, but the potential may still be there.
If you are interested in some writers who have more to say about silence, check out Thomas Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux, Teresa of Avila, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Richard Rohr, Henry Nouwen and Ron Rohlheiser. I get a lot out of Thich Nhat Hanh on the Buddhist view, and the entire Zen tradition, too.
Silence is an important missing piece of today's culture. Try it sometime and see what you think. It can be uncomfortable at first, but persistence pays dividends.
Or you can continue on as you are. I have no need to change you.
First they came for the rappers, and I said good riddance.
Then they came for the pop singers, and I didn't care.
Then they came for the rock singers, and it bothered me, but I didn't say anything.
Then they came for the blues singers, and there was nobody left to care.
The only result of voting for a major party candidate is to buy in to the idea that there should only be two parties in the US. As long as they keep fighting each other, they aren't working for the voter.
I have toyed with the idea of trying to get people to agree not to vote for someone who takes money above a certain level. Why does a state candidate need more than a million dollars? [Amount up for debate] Why do national interests get to dump enormous amounts of money into states that have the first caucuses and primaries? [I am a resident of the state of Iowa.]
If a candidate is really appealing to voters, then he can get out and meet people where they live. And believe me, the rental rates for most community centers is in the hundred dollar range, not the thousand or million dollar range.
How about it, are you ready to implement some campaign finance reforms of your own, without waiting for Congress to do it?
I recently became aware of just who was on the sex offender registry, and have been telling friends about it ever since.
The first post mentioned urinating in public. I hardly think that we need to be protected from drunks who don't know where the can is.
The largest segment of people entering the sex offender registry is young boys, children, actually, between the ages of 14-16. There is no way to get off the sex offender registry. I checked with an attorney friend here in Iowa, and the law has no provision for removing someone from the registry. Two children involved in sex exploration who are more than 24 months apart in age will get the male put on the sex offender registry. Any sex exploration will get him on the list. Whether you think that child sex play is OK or not, the results are too draconian to tolerate. Children (under 18) almost never match up with the female older than the male. Males don't mature as fast as females, and it is easy for the gap to be two years. Think back to your high school days and look at the couples you remember. How many of them would have been on the sex offender registry?
When I told one woman about this, she was upset that she could no longer trust the registry to protect her children by checking who the REAL problem people were that she needed to worry about. They are now hidden in a thicket of miscellaneous offenders, most of whom are not dangerous to children, as Zachary pointed out in his article.
This whole mess is indicative of the lack of oversight on legislatures, who make meaningless laws that are not integrated into the existing body of law. No wonder judges' decisions make no sense when the corpus of law is such a Gordian knot. Discussions over the years have suggested sunset laws, or requiring legislators to fund enforcement of the laws they pass, or other schemes to bring this mess into some sort of order. But nothing ever gets done.
Anyway, it is time to stop criminalizing our children, besides all the criminalizing that the **AA's would have the government do to the rest of the population.
The core asset of the creative work is that the RIAA/MPAA/others get paid for it. How much better can you get than that?
The real pirates are the companies who have somehow (Oh, my!) ended up owning content created by others.
Meanwhile, I quit watching TV about 20 years ago and never looked back. People keep telling me I have to watch The Big Bang Theory. I don't HAVE to watch anything! But someday, I plan on catching up on Star Trek.
Current patent law allows someone to play "dog in the manger" with their patents ... thus patent trolls. Assuming that ANY change in the patent laws are possible without someone screaming about damaging "Amurican biznuss", I would suggest that if a patent is not being applied in a certain field, that the patent holder loses rights in that field.
If the law says that patents are granted as a state monopoly for the advancement of science, then they better show some advancement, or let someone else do it!
a) trying to get Enders Game banned for being pornographic,
b) using that to prove that religion is a blight on the earth, or
c) getting upset because there are some (numerically indeterminate) nutcases that don't like [my|your|his|her|its] views.
I think this thread is entertaining. I just don't know if I can stomach it. Prejudice is not the exclusive property of any one group.
Someday, I got to figure out just what "Get off my lawn" really means.... ;-)
Is that like the old fogeys (older than me) in the Woodstock movie complaining about all the hippies cluttering up the neighborhood?
Or maybe it's like all those people who see my farm, and decide that since it isn't being used, and God made it anyway, then they can take whatever they want?
I appreciate his argument. It has been valid for millenia.
Unfortunately for him, he seems to have a sense of entitlement when it comes to using this thing that the Digital Age has invented called the Internet.
If you want to use digital media, accept the fact that copying is inseparable from it. Otherwise, it's like he wants to ride public transportation, but he doesn't want anybody else on it with him.
Accept copying, or don't use digital media. It's as simple as that.
Signed,
A grumpy old codger - and no, the Internet does not belong to the young.
For others who are curious, I saw this link on Groklaw. The article is on Digital Journal, the title is "U.S. army warns soldiers of dangers of Facebook geotagging"
When your ship is blown out of the water, it doesn't matter what got you, just that you've been had.
I was responsible for security as a Data Center Manager. Our approach was wide spectrum, from code deficiencies to not pointing out the location of the Data Center on public tours. Physical security is the first rank of protection. Every aspect of security has to be addressed.
If we start to compartmentalize security, then we end up with the same sorry mess that Congress is looking at. It's all or nothing! I cannot succeed if you fail, so we all have to address the issues.
That is why it is so painfully obvious that the Congressional move is a smoke-screen: it only addresses one small part of the security problem.
Well then, we need to make you the new CyberSecurity Czar! Or else you need to take a closer look at your company. I'm not sure which.
It isn't what you know about your company that will get you in trouble. It isn't the documented architecture that provides the loophole to allow the bad guys to enter. It is the work-arounds that people have put in place to allow them to do their jobs because what was installed doesn't address how they do their jobs. Or it is the gaps in the architecture that the designers just didn't see.
I've seen this at every company I've ever been at. At one Fortune 100 company, if we found a problem outside the scope of our technology (something that would obviously never be a problem at a Fortune 100 company) I would get on the modem, dial up my BBS, and download some tool that would fix said problem. Then other people in IT started doing the same thing. What are you going to do about something like that?
If large numbers of utility and industrial systems were connected to the Internet, then we would hear about large numbers of utility and industrial systems grinding to a halt with each virus infection that spreads across the world. (Iranian uranium fuel enrichment plants and Bradley Manning aside)
My only hesitation about this is that management PHBs are sure to have cut funding for _extra_ workstations to keep the two networks separate in those utilities and industries.
The real problem is not that legislation is needed, even if there is a danger present. It is that training is needed for employees who operate these systems so that they recognize the threats that they could potentially transmit.
Now, this is a tall order. I just saw an article about the military warning soldiers not to post pictures on the Internet taken with smartphones, and not to use social networks that use the same geolocation services that smartphones offer. They offer the example of someoone posting a picture of a new fleet of helicopters on the Internet, which, of course, contained geolocation data, which was followed by a mortar attack that destroyed four of the helicopters.
You would think that it would be a no-brainer for someone to understand, "Hey guys, please don't call in a mortar attack on yourselves, pretty please?" But that is the real problem that we face. Technology is so complex that the average person cannot understand the FULL implications of his actions. Hey, I have problems with it, and I bet you've been nipped in the wringer once or twice (understatement).
Re: Re: Doesn't sound like evolution...
Are you sure? Men at Work aren't ethnic, nor is the composer of the music that was allegedly plagiarized.
Wikipedia says: "The flute part of the recording of the song is allegedly based on the children's rhyme "Kookaburra", written by Marion Sinclair for a Girl Guides competition in 1935."
I've heard that it is based on aboriginal music, but you see that the lawsuit wasn't from aborigines. This is the kind of abuse that I was referring to. Once the music gets outside of the group that wrote it, it becomes just another financial asset.
Doesn't sound like evolution...
Doesn't sound like evolution, it sounds like going back to the roots.
Music is a celebration of community when it is done well. It fits in with the group of people who are making it.
Despite your comments about Lawrence Welk recently, the fact is that there was a huge community of polka fans across the country. Polka bands toured all over, in small towns and large, delivering the music that people wanted to hear.
I hate to think what would happen to ethnic music if somebody decided to start enforcing copyright on it. Tradition plays a huge part in ethnic music of all kinds. There are traditional songs, harmonies, riffs, stories, all of which are traded around and enlarged upon. If copyright broke this chain, then the music would die.
So keep on dissing Welk. I' d like to keep my cultural heritage free of entanglement with the **AAs. And here is some food for thought: Why isn't there more of a problem with copyright in ethnic music than there is?
Re: Re: Obligatory GNU/Linux comment
Maybe I should have used Linux/GNU instead. I suppose that some deeply buried brain cell wanted to troll. I don't call it GNU/Linux, either, but I am amazed at those who get worked up over someone else calling it that. Credit where credit is due and all that.
I, too, remember Stallman's announcement, but from a magazine article, not from a newsgroup. I was working in a Prime 750 powered Center for Computer Aided Design at the University of Iowa as a graduate research assistant after Reagan's veto of the Synfuels bill changed my career path.
I expect that eventually, some third party will arise and write a new kernel based on GPL V3 that will be accepted because the litigation climate in the US will have passed Doomsday proportions. Linux will never become V3, and FSF is focused on Hurd, so it will have to be someone else.
Linus' efforts were really needed at that time, but he had no desire to be a real part of Free Software, as far as I can see. He is focused on implementation, as his comments reveal. No problem with that. The GPL supports it. But Linux doesn't fully support the GPL, so things must eventually change.
Obligatory GNU/Linux comment
It wasn't obvious to write the kernel until the supporting cast was written. Or to put it another way -- the kernel wasn't a key piece until the supporting utilities were written. The kernel couldn't be written first. Most people seem to miss that small detail. Linux grew in the field of GNU.
As Linus said, it wasn't the idea, it was the implementation. I am glad Linux has succeeded. I use it every day. I would probably be using some ancient copy of Concurrent DOS/86 otherwise, with somebodies cobbled-up drivers inserted to make it work with modern hardware. Thank God nobody is the gatekeeper on trying things out.
Some things that we lose in digital communication
I didn't realize that this would be such a hot topic for so many people. It isn't an either/or situation, it is both/and. There is a time and a place for everything.
I am not endowed with manual dexterity, so I find it hard to carry on a conversation via texting. But for me it is wonderfully handy for those short exchanges that can make things happen.
I read the article. It helps to understand what the topic of discussion is. Her points are well made, but may be incomprehensible to someone who isn't familiar with them, just like discussing the finer points of the interactions of the whang bar and string-bending is lost on me because of my lack of manual dexterity.
Face to face conversation is irreplaceable. There are nuances of nonverbal communication that just don't go over the wire. I have a hard time with the telephone (pre-cell) just because of this. I miss out on half the conversation because I can't see the person. Perhaps you get along just fine without this. It may be an unused talent for you. It is still out there if you ever want to try it.
The article mentions a new skill: maintaining eye contact while texting. What we give up when we learn this skill is the ability to give someone 100% of our attention, to make that person the focus of our mind, and to listen with our whole being. That isn't something that we need to do all the time, but if we have given it up entirely, then we are poorer as a culture because of it.
The other thing that we lose with texting is timing. When speaking to someone, I have to listen while they speak. I can't read their words after I am done speaking. There is a give and take that, to me, is the core of the skill of communication. Some people never learn it, even before texting came along.
Finally, she is absolutely right about the need for solitude so that I can be in community. Until I can stand my own company, why should you put up with me? Do you know anybody like that? Where she is wrong is that this has been going on long before technology made it easy - technology just upped the ante by several orders of magnitude.
Spiritual writers have a lot to say on this topic. It is difficult to stay in solitude, and most of us automatically put up a wall of busy-ness to prevent solitude. This wall is difficult to break down, and it has been reinforced through our life. Unless I am in contact with that small source of silence within me, I will never reach my potential. Your experience may say otherwise, but the potential may still be there.
If you are interested in some writers who have more to say about silence, check out Thomas Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux, Teresa of Avila, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Richard Rohr, Henry Nouwen and Ron Rohlheiser. I get a lot out of Thich Nhat Hanh on the Buddhist view, and the entire Zen tradition, too.
Silence is an important missing piece of today's culture. Try it sometime and see what you think. It can be uncomfortable at first, but persistence pays dividends.
Or you can continue on as you are. I have no need to change you.
Progression
Why do they keep calling culture "theft"?
First they came for the rappers, and I said good riddance.
Then they came for the pop singers, and I didn't care.
Then they came for the rock singers, and it bothered me, but I didn't say anything.
Then they came for the blues singers, and there was nobody left to care.
Wasted Votes
I agree completely.
The only result of voting for a major party candidate is to buy in to the idea that there should only be two parties in the US. As long as they keep fighting each other, they aren't working for the voter.
I have toyed with the idea of trying to get people to agree not to vote for someone who takes money above a certain level. Why does a state candidate need more than a million dollars? [Amount up for debate] Why do national interests get to dump enormous amounts of money into states that have the first caucuses and primaries? [I am a resident of the state of Iowa.]
If a candidate is really appealing to voters, then he can get out and meet people where they live. And believe me, the rental rates for most community centers is in the hundred dollar range, not the thousand or million dollar range.
How about it, are you ready to implement some campaign finance reforms of your own, without waiting for Congress to do it?
Thanks for speaking out on this
I recently became aware of just who was on the sex offender registry, and have been telling friends about it ever since.
The first post mentioned urinating in public. I hardly think that we need to be protected from drunks who don't know where the can is.
The largest segment of people entering the sex offender registry is young boys, children, actually, between the ages of 14-16. There is no way to get off the sex offender registry. I checked with an attorney friend here in Iowa, and the law has no provision for removing someone from the registry. Two children involved in sex exploration who are more than 24 months apart in age will get the male put on the sex offender registry. Any sex exploration will get him on the list. Whether you think that child sex play is OK or not, the results are too draconian to tolerate. Children (under 18) almost never match up with the female older than the male. Males don't mature as fast as females, and it is easy for the gap to be two years. Think back to your high school days and look at the couples you remember. How many of them would have been on the sex offender registry?
When I told one woman about this, she was upset that she could no longer trust the registry to protect her children by checking who the REAL problem people were that she needed to worry about. They are now hidden in a thicket of miscellaneous offenders, most of whom are not dangerous to children, as Zachary pointed out in his article.
This whole mess is indicative of the lack of oversight on legislatures, who make meaningless laws that are not integrated into the existing body of law. No wonder judges' decisions make no sense when the corpus of law is such a Gordian knot. Discussions over the years have suggested sunset laws, or requiring legislators to fund enforcement of the laws they pass, or other schemes to bring this mess into some sort of order. But nothing ever gets done.
Anyway, it is time to stop criminalizing our children, besides all the criminalizing that the **AA's would have the government do to the rest of the population.
[/vent]
Those poor, misunderstood content owners!
The core asset of the creative work is that the RIAA/MPAA/others get paid for it. How much better can you get than that?
The real pirates are the companies who have somehow (Oh, my!) ended up owning content created by others.
Meanwhile, I quit watching TV about 20 years ago and never looked back. People keep telling me I have to watch The Big Bang Theory. I don't HAVE to watch anything! But someday, I plan on catching up on Star Trek.
Re:
Reading the story is highly recommended before commenting.
The story says that they tried that route, but that the devices are sized for an adult. It's a fail for a toddler.
Use it or lose it
Current patent law allows someone to play "dog in the manger" with their patents ... thus patent trolls. Assuming that ANY change in the patent laws are possible without someone screaming about damaging "Amurican biznuss", I would suggest that if a patent is not being applied in a certain field, that the patent holder loses rights in that field.
If the law says that patents are granted as a state monopoly for the advancement of science, then they better show some advancement, or let someone else do it!
Re: Re: Jeepers, Mr. Wizard!
Yes, I implicated myself in the criticism when I posted, as I then became part of the thread that I criticized.
Catch 22!
Jeepers, Mr. Wizard!
I don't know which is worse:
a) trying to get Enders Game banned for being pornographic,
b) using that to prove that religion is a blight on the earth, or
c) getting upset because there are some (numerically indeterminate) nutcases that don't like [my|your|his|her|its] views.
I think this thread is entertaining. I just don't know if I can stomach it. Prejudice is not the exclusive property of any one group.
Re: Re: He's right... and so am I
Someday, I got to figure out just what "Get off my lawn" really means.... ;-)
Is that like the old fogeys (older than me) in the Woodstock movie complaining about all the hippies cluttering up the neighborhood?
Or maybe it's like all those people who see my farm, and decide that since it isn't being used, and God made it anyway, then they can take whatever they want?
Life is so complex!
He's right... and so am I
I appreciate his argument. It has been valid for millenia.
Unfortunately for him, he seems to have a sense of entitlement when it comes to using this thing that the Digital Age has invented called the Internet.
If you want to use digital media, accept the fact that copying is inseparable from it. Otherwise, it's like he wants to ride public transportation, but he doesn't want anybody else on it with him.
Accept copying, or don't use digital media. It's as simple as that.
Signed,
A grumpy old codger - and no, the Internet does not belong to the young.
Priorities
At least the ISPs are going after serious problems like copyright infringement instead of wasting their time on unsolvable problems like spam.
Re: Re:
For others who are curious, I saw this link on Groklaw. The article is on Digital Journal, the title is "U.S. army warns soldiers of dangers of Facebook geotagging"
http://digitaljournal.com/article/320997
Re: Re:
Re: Social engineering vs. viruses....
When your ship is blown out of the water, it doesn't matter what got you, just that you've been had.
I was responsible for security as a Data Center Manager. Our approach was wide spectrum, from code deficiencies to not pointing out the location of the Data Center on public tours. Physical security is the first rank of protection. Every aspect of security has to be addressed.
If we start to compartmentalize security, then we end up with the same sorry mess that Congress is looking at. It's all or nothing! I cannot succeed if you fail, so we all have to address the issues.
That is why it is so painfully obvious that the Congressional move is a smoke-screen: it only addresses one small part of the security problem.
Re:
Well then, we need to make you the new CyberSecurity Czar! Or else you need to take a closer look at your company. I'm not sure which.
It isn't what you know about your company that will get you in trouble. It isn't the documented architecture that provides the loophole to allow the bad guys to enter. It is the work-arounds that people have put in place to allow them to do their jobs because what was installed doesn't address how they do their jobs. Or it is the gaps in the architecture that the designers just didn't see.
I've seen this at every company I've ever been at. At one Fortune 100 company, if we found a problem outside the scope of our technology (something that would obviously never be a problem at a Fortune 100 company) I would get on the modem, dial up my BBS, and download some tool that would fix said problem. Then other people in IT started doing the same thing. What are you going to do about something like that?
(untitled comment)
If large numbers of utility and industrial systems were connected to the Internet, then we would hear about large numbers of utility and industrial systems grinding to a halt with each virus infection that spreads across the world. (Iranian uranium fuel enrichment plants and Bradley Manning aside)
My only hesitation about this is that management PHBs are sure to have cut funding for _extra_ workstations to keep the two networks separate in those utilities and industries.
The real problem is not that legislation is needed, even if there is a danger present. It is that training is needed for employees who operate these systems so that they recognize the threats that they could potentially transmit.
Now, this is a tall order. I just saw an article about the military warning soldiers not to post pictures on the Internet taken with smartphones, and not to use social networks that use the same geolocation services that smartphones offer. They offer the example of someoone posting a picture of a new fleet of helicopters on the Internet, which, of course, contained geolocation data, which was followed by a mortar attack that destroyed four of the helicopters.
You would think that it would be a no-brainer for someone to understand, "Hey guys, please don't call in a mortar attack on yourselves, pretty please?" But that is the real problem that we face. Technology is so complex that the average person cannot understand the FULL implications of his actions. Hey, I have problems with it, and I bet you've been nipped in the wringer once or twice (understatement).