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3626

General Software Discussion / Re: Another experiment in free software profit models from Bryan Lunduke

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 06, 2012, 09:11 AM »

I dunno, as a non-techie this bothers me. I can't compile my own binaries so to me it just becomes another form of paid software.

The line I like better is contributors get to vote on what he works on for the second week of a month. So instead of just $2 for 2 votes, a power user could just blast it with like $100 and win the vote then you get a dev for a week making a custom feature! 

3627

Living Room / Re: Reader's Corner - The Library of Utopia

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 06, 2012, 09:07 AM »

Iain, the tricky part of the used software/ebook is that proving that you don't have / can't use your copy that you just sold requires some kind of DRM lock.

You know what show is starting to feel quaint these days to me? Star Trek. We're basically in the early throes of the Replicator, and 3d printing is catching up. Let's give the Original Series a break for being in happy go lucky 1960's, but anyone else notice that basically *none* of the series really ever dealt with copyright?

3628

Living Room / Re: Reader's Corner - The Library of Utopia

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 06, 2012, 09:00 AM »

Yeah, ebook readers shouldn't be examining your reading habits and then reporting that info anywhere. Plus, if some company gets hacked that kind of database can become blackmail city.

3629

General Software Discussion / Re: Used Software Can Be Sold, Says EU Court of Justice

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 04, 2012, 06:35 PM »

Here is another good read to explain the issues with reproduction and First Sale Doctrine, under current US law, and why the doctrine doesn't apply to software in the US: http://www.justice.g.../title9/crm01854.htm

-app103 (July 04, 2012, 04:49 PM)

So the key section seems to be here:
The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) & (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction.

So is the US version saying that you have trouble selling "that particular copy" because if it was a download on to a HD it can never be the same file if you put it anywhere else for the buyer? What if the original download was on a removable medium?

3630

General Software Discussion / Re: European Parliament Votes to Reject ACTA

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 04, 2012, 04:06 PM »

Though now that we made this milestone, and a couple of others, I might slow down and back away from this stuff for a while. I've got to catch up on personal stuff that's slid for a long time now.

3631

General Software Discussion / Re: European Parliament Votes to Reject ACTA

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 04, 2012, 02:31 PM »

Won a battle - the war is far from over and the deck is stacked!

Good news for now though.

-Carol Haynes (July 04, 2012, 02:16 PM)

I *so* wish I could develop an Intellectual Property News Collectible Card Game. I see all these little things like SOPA and ACTA and the rest almost like gaming decks. The **AA's friends open their binders of pieces, pick out their favorites, and shuffle them together!

3632

General Software Discussion / Re: European Parliament Votes to Reject ACTA

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 04, 2012, 12:09 PM »

"So that's two for us" - but are we getting stronger or weaker? Will they spin all the parts like a Rubik's cube and succeed with a different version eventually?

But this is good, because this means that the EU Parliament is now fully aware, so hopefully if it re-emerges as a zombie it won't be the almost-skunking when people were going "huh?"

3633

Developer's Corner / Re: Help me think of a small ipad app idea to code

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on July 02, 2012, 08:27 PM »

Yeah a tower defense game would be a natural choice, since those are the casual games i like.. just don't know if that's a larger project than i have an appetite for at this point -- was hoping for something smaller.  Though i could do a proof of concept one i suppose.

-mouser (July 01, 2012, 10:19 AM)

I played Runestone Defense
http://magigames.org...nestone_defense.html

and thought it was very well done. It also leads me to think it's NOT a "Small" app because the engine really has to get the parsing right for all the moving sprites. It would be very easy for the machine to "cheat" because some effect didn't work right.

3634

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 30, 2012, 01:33 PM »

Heh  - it's only extreme until it's you. Time to make a Canary Server!

"Today I was not arrested for copyright violations".
"Today I was not arrested for copyright violations".
"Today I was not arrested for copyright violations".
(Crickets)

3635

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Are any of the files missing???

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 27, 2012, 05:05 PM »

Oh yeah, TIOOO = There Is Only One Of   

-4wd (June 26, 2012, 06:22 AM)

Are we going to forgo the chance to call it TCBOO aka Highlander's There Can Be Only One?

3636

Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 27, 2012, 07:10 AM »

I'm not denying that.  What I'm saying is that people say that *he* meant the story to be about censorship, not that *I interpret the content of his writing to have themes of censorship* or something similar.  The two are *very* different- one being quite logical, and the other being quite abhorrent to me.

-wraith808 (June 26, 2012, 09:31 PM)

Maybe then he wasn't telling the whole context on what he meant when writing it. If it was just about the vacuousness of TV, it wouldn't include the big plot element of the Firemen teams wearing sexy Salamander jackets.

3637

Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 27, 2012, 06:52 AM »

Just a heads-up, courtesy of Lifehacker:

-IainB (June 25, 2012, 09:05 PM)

Drifting a little off topic, I like to go a little earlier in a news source, trying to get an earlier copy rather than an echo unless the echo copy has new info.

Lifehacker got it from Forbes, and Forbes got it from Gervase Markham.
http://blog.gerv.net...facebook-email-mitm/

3638

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 25, 2012, 12:31 PM »

So is that 8 holes per screw or 1 hole per 8 screws?

-Renegade (June 24, 2012, 10:36 AM)

Heh - and with THAT setup I can not longer resist: Guess the Celebrity!

From Wikipedia:
"He earned a bachelor's degree in education and theatre and a master's degree in special education from Queens College in New York. He taught special-education classes in the New York City area and was a substitute teacher for regular classes."

3639

Living Room / Re: Post Your Funny Videos Here [NSFW]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 25, 2012, 11:00 AM »

How is that an Apple Fanboy post?!

3640

Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 25, 2012, 10:56 AM »

Mind you, on a more serious note, there are those as reckon they can speak with the dead - or that the dead can speak through them (e.g., mediums). "Is anybody there?" - You know, that sort of thing.
When I was a child, I knew of one such person who reckoned that he spoke with his spirit guide who was the spirit of Chief Sitting Bull, or something like that, and I read of another whose spirit guide was apparently the spirit of one of the Egyptian Pharaohs - I forget which one. I'm not sure how they overcame the language barrier in either case.
Oddly enough, though I did look, I never read of anyone who claimed that his spirit guide was someone ordinary - like the spirit of a deceased bus-conductor off a Clapham omnibus, for example. And it made me think "Now why is that?". Very mysterious.     

-IainB (June 25, 2012, 02:15 AM)

(Takes it right back to a less serious note)
Actually, while it's "boring" that there isn't very much paranormal stuff in the world, you're remarking on a rather important proof that the supernatural stuff (mostly?) doesn't exist: "Speak to my dead mother, hmm? And all you got is 'I love you'? I would have believed you if you had said 'eat your veggies, you miserable ungrateful sack of lard!' "
(The argument gets even funnier on the religious side, but that risks the Soap Box).

3641

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: List Newest Files In Some Folder

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 24, 2012, 06:13 PM »

Something like Karen's Directory Printer might be interesting. It's pretty fast, and generates a text file you can save and do things with later.

3642

Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 04:15 PM »

One point that I want to bring up... F451 wasn't about censorship, and Bradbury himself would get wroth when confronted with the fact that people thought it was about the same.

-wraith808 (June 23, 2012, 04:02 PM)

It's been a while, though I might have it in my library - so what was it about? What else were the Firemen doing burning books if it wasn't censorship?

3643

Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 04:14 PM »

http://www.wired.com.../06/IC-IG-Letter.pdf
http://www.networkwo...community/node/80854
http://www.wired.com...m/2012/06/nsa-spied/

3644

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Talking Moose - Mini-Review

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 02:39 PM »

Call it being eternally ruined by my Magic the Gathering days, but I no longer read news stories as stories. I read news stories as *Combos*. So if we Mash-Up Alan Turing and the Loebner contest, are we ready socially for what happens when we get into that level of scary futuristic law tangles? Is Computer Generated text treated differently under the Libel laws?

Right now it's "easy" with computers as "total slaves", but what happens if comps become "personalities"? "If I had X dollars" I think it's easier than it sounds to program a very basic AI system that might miss a lot of common sense questions but could really scare you on the big ticket topics. Very simply, my theory revolves using a systemically inferior hardware configuration such as the legendary Bugged Pentium (though it should be with today's comp processing power), and writing a core routine that, unlike normal comps, *CANNOT* "trust" its results, so that then the meta context must include self awareness that it is fallible, aka mortality. So then it must include the same kinds of caveats that people use because we can't process 1000 numbers is 12 minutes, so we go for "judgements". At the top level, it really isn't that hard, figuratively speaking 5,000 lines of code tops, which for an AI, is peanuts.

The inspiration for this is Ray Bradbury's (RIP) short story The Bicentennial Man.

So then we get into OZ Scarecrow discussions, "At what point do we consider a comp as a Living Item"? All that classic SF from 1940-1980 is gonna show up soon.

3645

Official Announcements / Re: DC going offline to protest SOPA on Jan 18

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 02:22 PM »

I'm starting to think that some of these people know they're full of BS but either they're putting on an act to pander to those with influence, and/or have brainwashed themselves into believing it.

Basically topics like dealing with corruption end up like Prisoner Dilemmas, which pit nasty people who all know each other against the lack of organization of the general population.

3646

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 12:15 PM »

Haha, funny graph "turn the pc off and back on again."

3647

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Talking Moose - Mini-Review

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 12:13 PM »

I don't think this is about losing your protections if you vocoder speak through a text-to-speech engine.  I think it is more about computer-produced content.

"Articles published by the New York Times are often composed using word processors, and pages in the print newspaper are laid out using page layout software. The nytimes.com website is sent to readers by a Web server (a computer program) and rendered by a Web browser (also a computer program).

Of course, Wu isn't talking about those programs. He means programs that are directly involved in the production or selection of content."

However, that's still quite an article to write about, because as we get closer to certain kinds of AI, we're on the verge of computer generated news articles.

3648

Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 12:10 PM »

This was kicking around a few weeks ago on Slashdot too before this article. Last I recall sometimes it's not so easy for the servers to know which is just a permissions "access forbidden" and which is censorship. Also this is sorta a joke, more social commentary, because for 50% of the censorship you can bet the govt won't even allow this error code.

There was a story a few days ago "telling people we are spying on them violates their privacy". (??!)

3649

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 12:07 PM »

BWHAHAHAHA! 

-Mark0 (May 06, 2012, 04:00 PM)

I wish I lived in Warehouse 13's Escher Vault. The "view outside the window" would be hysterical!

3650

Living Room / Re: Don Lapre died sorta recently

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 23, 2012, 06:33 AM »

So maybe someone could do likewise - i.e., create a website about Don Lapre, and tell his true story - whatever that may be.
Shakespeare probably had it right with his ironic:
"The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones."

-IainB (June 23, 2012, 12:52 AM)

In the footnotes, there's a couple of good long articles. It's not so much that Wiki is factually wrong - more like by omission the tone changed when they removed a lot of stuff where he began to fade and began regretting parts of his early career. The guy was a talented salesman; the saying goes that you only parody people who become successful enough to become known for a theme. (Aka trying to parody someone too obscure leaves your audience puzzled.)

Vaguely from what I recall, those earlier pages talked about some corporate shenanigans where media execs started using his name and maybe even his picture to endorse things that he (Don Lapre) didn't get paid for sales. I was satisfied with all of that, he was just one more "where is he now" entry. Of course the guy was sleazy, that's why it was good college-kid fun to watch those infomercials. But it's just a little sad that it all crashed hard with a 41 count fraud charge and suicide.