Forgotten?
Surely a 'right to be forgotten' ought to entail removing the information at source. Merely removing a pointer to the information is more like a 'right to have a blind eye turned' at whatever it is that needs hushing up.
220 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2010
But once the content has been created, artificially limiting sales to particular regions would result in lower revenue.
Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't - I'd be surprised if the businesses involved were not maximising their revenue over the longer term. Maybe they see things from a different perspective from the consumer.
Whatever their reasons, if they own the copyright then it's up to them to market it as they see fit. It is not anyone else's right to distribute or take copies for free, no matter how frustrating it may be that it's unavailable to them through legitimate channels.
"But I really, really, really want it!" isn't a valid excuse to take something that isn't on offer to you.
Clearly society values creative works, hence the urge for some people to obtain them through whatever channel they choose, illicit or otherwise. But as Bunbury pointed out above, if the professional creators are not adequately compensated for creating then they will stop doing it, and then only those who dabble will be left to produce inferior stuff just for the 'fun' of producing it. That's a race to the bottom, and everyone loses in the end.
As I see it, the purpose of copyright law should be to allow a creator to be able to claim enough reward for creating so that (s)he will go on to produce more works for everyone's benefit and enjoyment.
I think the 'lifetime plus <n> years' thing is unreasonably greedy and provides a kind of self-justification for people who rip stuff off - but I also think the people who insist that all copyright should simply be ignored are just as greedy, wanting to obtain for nothing the results of someone else's efforts.
Copyright is indeed a kind of state-granted monopoly, but if we as a society want to enjoy creative works, how else can we ensure that it's worth the creators' while to spend their time and money producing these things for us?
I can understand people wanting to view/listen to content that hasn't been made available by the relevant author/distributor/copyright owner, but I don't agree with this entitlement mentality that seems to say "I demand this content, and if you're not prepared to sell it to me at the price I'm willing to pay then I'm just going to take it anyway". Sometimes you just can't have what you want.
Making content is a costly commercial enterprise, and the content creators have the right to determine and control how they recoup their costs, just like any other manufacturer.
I sense downvotes coming...
What if I accidentally put a mirror next to a newspaper, should I be fined for making a copy? What if nobody looks at it, is the copy still there?
And if there happened to be two mirrors facing each other, should I be fined an infinite number of times?
These questions must be answered, lest civilisation as we know it collapse into utter anarchy!
This is happening too frequently. It seems every website you go to these days wants you to create a permanent account, with an associated unique (hence forgettable) password. I'm sick of it. The other day I wanted to buy my sister a Next voucher, which should have been a simple online process, but there was no way to do it without creating an account - so they lost my business.
Retailers - if someone placed a one-off order over the phone, would you force them to create an account? No? Then why would you do that for an online purchase? By all means provide an option for people to have their details stored with you for their own convenience (not yours) if they choose to accept the risk that you'll disclose (accidentally or deliberately) that information to others, but don't make it a prerequisite for business, or you will lose customers.
Say, Haven't you heard?
I think some more interesting verb conjugations are needed. I would suggest:
"Sally normally tweets once a day",
"John twit Sally yesterday",
"He twote about something completely mundane",
"Has she twat him back yet?"
"No, she hasn't twotten anything all day"
"Oh. He probably should have Skyppen her instead."
"Yes, I Skope Sally last week - we Skap for half an hour"... etc.
scientists were able to spot a number of distinctive geysers near the moon's south pole, something no-one has ever seen on Europa.
And by a curious coincidence there are currently also a number of distinguished European geezers near the Earth's south pole: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25354839
"We also suspect that they added "ene" simply because, well, it's the materials science suffix du jour."
The '-ene' ending in graphene and buckminsterfullerene has a meaning, by analogy with alkenes. From the Wikipedia article on Fullerenes:
The suffix "-ene" indicates that each C atom is covalently bonded to three others (instead of the maximum of four), a situation that classically would correspond to the existence of bonds involving two pairs of electrons ("double bonds").
Given that this new material has a similar structure to graphene, 'Stanene' seems to be a meaningful name - although I think 'Stannene' would avoid ambiguity in pronunciation and would be more in keeping with Stannic and Stannous.
I've seen armies of machines DOS-ing Google. I've seen worms DOS'ing Google to find vulnerabilities in other people's software. I've seen criminal gangs figure out malware. I've seen spyware masquerading as toolbars so thick it breaks computers because it interferes with the other spyware.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain. Time... to die...
The company has previously defended its tax arrangements in the UK by claiming that it helps the British economy by hiring staff here, who in turn pay taxes to the government.
When I spend money at the shops I also help the British economy by paying VAT and providing employment for checkout staff, so maybe I shouldn't have to pay income tax either.
I've recorded songbirds and played them back at quarter-speed or slower - the amount of detail present in the song is incredible, far more than can be perceived (at least by me) listening at normal speed. I can't imagine the birds would bother with the detail if they couldn't hear it, so it seems clear to me that songbirds at least must experience the world at a different rate from humans.
And this clip of fighting goldfinches from BBC Autumnwatch http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v0v4l (skip to about 1:20) shows that they must have vastly faster reaction times than we do.
Do your friends also eat chocolate bars and hide the wrappers before getting to the supermarket checkout? Are they the sort who will happily let someone buy them a drink but never buy a round themselves?
Just because you can get away with doing something, doesn't mean you should do it.
The experiment detected two of these neutrino interactions in a volume of 1 cubic Km in two years, so a rate of about 1E-9 per year per m3
The global population is about 7E9, and let's say the volume of a human is about 0.07 m3 - so the global volume of human beings is roughly 5E8 m3
So you'd expect 5E8 * 1E-9 = 0.5 ultra powerful neutrino interactions with a human being per year, i.e. one every two years.
I read elsewhere that the energy of these neutrinos is about the same as a raindrop falling on your head - so every couple of years someone, somewhere will probably feel one of these cosmic neutrinos. Presumably they'll emit a small flash of blue light at the same time.
If you put a neuroscience researcher in an fMRI machine and showed them pictures of their own brain working, would they find the part of the brain responsible for doing neuroscience?
Or would it induce some weird kind of video feedback loop like in the early Dr Who title sequences?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8Xm3EA3_XE
If it works with methane, would it also work with longer-chain hydrocarbons? Imagine such a device being used in a car or HGV engine, you could fill up with normal liquid fuel - easy to store and handle - burn the hydrogen, and the waste products would be water and solid carbon. Fill up with fuel, empty out the tank of soot (any diamonds in it? :-) ) at the same time.
I imagine a vehicle engine containing 1000C molten metal might be a bit intimidating though.
"We'll send scouting parties to collect books and stuff, and men like you'll teach the kids. Not poems and rubbish - science, so we can get everything working. We'll build villages and towns and... and... we'll play each other at cricket! Listen, maybe one day we'll capture a Fighting Machine, eh? Learn how to make 'em ourselves and then wallop! Our turn to do some wiping out! Whoosh with our Heat Ray - Whoosh! And them running and dying, beaten at their own game..."
I think that in the test, the space blanket might have reduced the heat transfer to the heatshrink somewhat due to trapped air pockets. But I think it would be far better deployed on the outside (ideally with as little contact as possible between the heatshrink and the space blanket) so that the silvery non-radiative surface is presented to the sky, rather than the efficient black radiator made of heatshrink.
If you still want the sandwich, at least put another layer of space blanket on the outside so that the external surface won't radiate so much. At altitude, radiation will be the main factor causing cooling.
Yes, advertisers doing antisocial things is irritating. I think a large part of the resentment comes from feeling powerless to let them know how irritating they are being.
Surely if the service is able to track individuals, then it should be possible for advertisers and the broadcaster to get simple feedback from listeners. If a number of people switch off when a particular advert is played then the station is going to be unhappy with the advertiser as they are driving down audience figures, and the sellers of the product are going to be unhappy with an ad agency that irritates potential customers - so there would be market pressure on advertisers to make more audience-friendly ads.
That could be augmented by individuals opting to provide information about what ads they prefer to hear, so for example male geeks might get fewer ads for beauty products (unless they ask for them). Everyone would win, nobody would need to feel they were being spied upon.