"European Parliament Takes Step Toward Burying ACTA"

Re:paying more attention 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Thursday March 29, @02:13PM (#39513067) 

You tell me. As an honest quiz question, do you know the fate of PC-FIPA HR1981?

Remember the run up to busting SOPA? PC-FIPA is *worse* yet I have barely seen any articles on it.

And we also almost missed the boat on ACTA too. I think we finally woke up barely in time to stop that one too, but it got a lot farther.

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Re:Wow 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Friday March 30, @07:21AM (#39520879) 

Yep.

Wow #1: The title. It's not even evil media corps this time, it's got a different and nastier packaging.

Wow #2: That you hadn't heard of it. Not even on here. I submitted a story on it once to the firehose and it was blocked.

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Re:hadn't heard of that one before 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Friday March 30, @07:28AM (#39520907) 

And there's two more behind that, back in the "cyber security" packaging again, and those are even more obscure.

Those are even just the "big packaging engines" to sell these bills. Lately they're getting ludicrous, like the recent move to *kill* the amendment that *stops* employers from asking for your Facebook logins.

Or how about the new Troll trick of using Florida law to attempt to get your name from your ISP for troll-suit purposes. Those got barely stopped last week by a couple of awake judges, but it is partially working.

And there's been a couple stories that back to my original theme, "wrap it so ludicrously that it sends a reviewer into a mental coma". Like the one that ..wait for it ... *wants to build a national database of cars, owners, and GPS locations in real time* (yikes!) so they can ... wait for it ... deny gasoline people who haven't registered for insurance.

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"Mozilla Ponders Major Firefox UI Refresh"

Re:DoNotWant 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Thursday May 03, @08:20AM (#39877211) 

Somebody over there is feeling desperate to "Metro-ize" Firefox. Or something.

Why can't there just be an interface for a 24" Desktop and a second for a Tablet? Is it suddenly that hard to maintain "two products"?

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Re:Thank God 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Thursday May 03, @08:18AM (#39877201) 

Or maybe even if not fully open source, at least forks.

Cometbird. PaleMoon. Your choice of others. Someone's going to keep the classic UI.

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Re:why people stuck to... 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Thursday May 03, @08:45AM (#39877343) 

Dunno if it's just me, but there feels like a massive shift in computing coming through soon. It's this weird Tech version of the Mayan doomsday where everybody is going all "OMG Mobile!"

So desktop users will be sorta pushed to the sidelines, and then we're all supposed to live on our phones or something.

But once those UI switches are made, ... then what? It's creating a kind of "block in the prophetic visions of the future", so everyone scrambles for two years because Mobile Is Da Hotness, ... then what?

Are we just going to stare at each other in a kind of giant fishbowl meta-boredom having reached a point where there "isn't any innovation left"? Oh, they'll do small things, like add ons, and maybe "smart clothing" with GPS enhancements, etc etc, but after everyone finishes this big "Mobile or Die" push, it feels like it will be almost a letdown of "what do we do with ourselves now?"
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"Best-Selling Author Refuses $500k; Self-Publishes Instead"

Re:Taking our souls 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @01:46AM (#35568912)

Hmm - this line of the license says that we can modify and then use the text without pre-securing permissions from you.

"You are allowed to use it, view it, modify it without permission of the author Eugene Blanchard."

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Re:whoosh 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @02:01AM (#35568976)

There Is No Whoosh in copyright discussions anymore.

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Re:Taking our souls 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @03:51AM (#35569534)

Shang Tsung, is that you?

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Re:bunch of conditions 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @03:54AM (#35569552)

Been there, Agreed to that. You can check my web branding if you like.

So I shall honorably enter your text into my collection of source materials for web-justice projects.

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Re:Motivation to revise it 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @01:57AM (#35568960)

Honest question, which I feel is key to this area of copyleft etc -

Why is there no motivation for updating and revising it? Your original goal can't have been To Get Rich. What is your official opinion of people doing derivative works? I would advise you think in terms of the Creative Commons spread of licenses.

I have marked it for my notes, at the minimum to read, but also for alternative web experiments.

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Re:Motivation to revise it 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @04:00AM (#35569572)

Fair answer, and a perfect lead in to my next theme - the Web desperately needs source materials released by the original authors. Despite your amusing license, if you are willing to do that, it will be an important step in the war against copyright tyranny.

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Re:Struggling to sell on Amazon 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @02:10AM (#35569016)

With the decline and fall of the outlets for actual paper books, comes exactly the dilemma you are in. I am actually not interested in how some previously established writer decides to feel all bold and self publish. I am more interesed in cases like yours - how do I as a user decide whether to download such books? Rather than my typical 4 paragraph posts, since people have told me I kept getting whooshed on this thread, I'll leave it as the rhetorical but honest question.

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Re:First Chapter

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @04:14AM (#35569624)

The first chapter is rarely enough for me to determine if I like something. I much prefer scanning a book at a store because I am good at getting the overall flow of a text by flipping through it. The good stuff in most books starts about chapter 3.

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Re:Reviews 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @11:37PM (#35582498)

Fair reply, but perhaps it doesn't work the same way across all categories. You would be right for fiction novels. However for nonfiction texts, I buy according to what I am or one day want to research. Unless the review is a warning against a badly produced book, reviews for nonfiction are actually irrelevant.

Easy example. I have a strong interest in Buddhism. Seung Sahn in Compass of Zen worked out or re-transmitted an innovation that solves a key problem with many old classical koans. "...Everything is truth, so everything is Buddha. Everything is God, or nature, or mind, or truth. This kind of answer shows metaphysical-style function. However, we encounter many kinds of situations every day that require us to respond more meticulously and clearly. They require some action that works more completely than a mere reflection or explanation of truth. Most situations in our life demand a complete function, some complete action."

This appears on page 232. In a bookstore, a practiced researcher can survey the entire shelf of offerings over a few days, knowing the approximate kinds of answers contained in the 100,000 pages of texts. There is simply no way to determine that a passage like this exists in a text by "heuristic methods" alone.

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Re:Struggling to sell on Amazon 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @11:46PM (#35582530)

Hi there.

Your thoughful reply still leaves aspects of the problem to be thrashed out. If a Big Box bookstore has some 400 tomes per topic section, "there they are". However if I were to try to look at a big list on Amazon, somehow I find myself getting lost in clicks. Something like click on a title, click on preview, click on chapter 1, make a new browser tab to open Wikipedia to cross check something about the book, and more. This is especially bad for when I am researching nonfiction topics. Nothing beats just opening the tome to see how a Buddhist author handled the notoriously difficult passage in chapter nine where the Pali source was damaged. I haven't yet been able to answer those kinds of queries online yet. If it were all in a Google Scan of some kind maybe - but not with "first chapter and reviews".

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Re:new and unknown writers like myself 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Wednesday March 23 2011, @12:04AM (#35582644)

(Snarkiness On!)

"new and unknown writers like myself".

You are hereby ordered to send me anything that doesn't offend your copyright stance so that you can cease being unknown, starting with an audience of one. Now! Author, transform and roll out!

(Snarkiness Off)

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Re:Dean Koontz 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @01:34AM (#35568858)

You might have been whooshed by a troll. Watch out for that spread between "critically acclaimed" and "commercially popular". He found a market for Scouts With Issues - and makes money at it. I'd call that a genius at literary branding.

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Re:Taking our souls 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @01:46AM (#35568912)

Hmm - this line of the license says that we can modify and then use the text without pre-securing permissions from you.

"You are allowed to use it, view it, modify it without permission of the author Eugene Blanchard."

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