merc

@merc@sh.itjust.works

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merc,

I’m pretty sure they’re talking association football. Gridiron football “matches” (which are called games in the US) are 60 minutes of clock-on time but more than 2 hours if you count all the ad breaks and clock-stopped time. The 90 minute figure only makes sense for association football. And yes, it’s at least a billion people watching them every week.

merc,

Yeah, the “magic device” they discover that makes encryption obsolete is unrealistic, as is the way it “decrypts” what shows up on their screens. But, the rest of it is really realistic, down to probing individual leads of a chip to see what kinds of signals they emit.

merc,

Offtopic, but it’s interesting that 3 of the 4 suits are “classes” (paladin, fighter, wizard) and the 4th is more of a role “healers” for hearts.

That gets me thinking, I’d like to see a fantasy game / story where the healers were the arcane magic users (sorcerers, wizards, mages) and the faith-based magic users were purely offensive magic users. Like, a wizard concentrates and weaves fire and water together to cause a fever to break. A sorcerer calls upon supernatural forces to pull the corruption out of a wound. Meanwhile a priest calls down lightning bolts or causes earthquakes, etc. but is unable to offer healing at all.

merc,

Thirty years from publication.

The original was 14 years renewable for another 14. I like that better. It means that abandonware goes into the public domain faster, but it’s easy to renew a copyright if it’s still being used.

No exceptions.

I disagree. Exceptions for sports and software: shorter. Sports is most relevant when it’s live, and copyright-holders for sports content are much more vicious when it comes to taking down tiny clips of goals or something. So, make a special category that gives them extra protection when it comes to tiny clips in exchange for much shorter copyright terms. For software, it’s essential to be able to maintain old equipment, especially old industrial equipment. That soft of software could be used in power plants, medical equipment, water purification plants, etc. Companies are notoriously bad at keeping that stuff safe especially decades later. Instead, make it public domain faster.

merc,

It’s tricky. Sometimes changing things truly is a creative act. A big portion of Disney’s portfolio is from retelling European fairy tales: Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, etc. It would be hard to argue that they added nothing of value when they remade those fairy tales. In many cases, people wouldn’t recognize the original stories because Disney changed so much.

OTOH, it seems like bullshit when tiny elements are changed. For example, the Conan-Doyle estate has sued because although Sherlock Holmes was in the public domain, they said that was only the stories where he was aloof and analytic. They said that in stories published in the 1920s he was more capable of empathy, so any depiction of Holmes where he was empathetic infringed on their copyright.

If I were on a jury deciding this sort of thing, I’d require that there be something brand new. For example, Beauty and The Beast is public domain, and as long as someone is making an animated movie based on that story the default assumption should be that they’re inventing new aspects based on the public domain story, not based on the Disney movie. OTOH if they have an animated candle / candelabra, it’s reasonable to assume that infringes on the new character created by Disney.

merc,

I think just reading his Wikipedia entry, I caught someone at CNN being kind:

O’Brien left CNN in December 2008. He was rehired by CNN as an aviation analyst in March, 2014.

2008–present: owner Miles O’Brien Productions, LLC in Washington, DC

In February, 2014, O’Brien was injured when a Pelican case filled with television equipment fell on his left forearm, causing acute compartment syndrome and resulting in the amputation of his left arm above the elbow.

So, the month after a gruesome injury he was re-hired by CNN, who probably have a pretty good medical plan, better than what he probably would have had when he was self-employed. Maybe not, maybe it’s just coincidence. But, it’s nicer to believe that someone at CNN thought they should look out for a former colleague / friend who needed some help.

merc,

Nope, just a massively overcrowded office building. The ventilation system could barely keep up. But, management made it clear to us that the reason for the open office layout was to encourage collaboration and foster creativity!

merc,

What part of that statement suggests that the artist no longer has the original art? As stated, no theft occurred.

merc,

Yes, which is not theft. It’s not murder either. Nor is it blasphemy. It’s just copyright infringement.

merc,

Copyright infringement isn’t theft, that’s the main point. It’s breaking a rule that the government created giving people a temporary (now extremely long term, but temporary) right to control the spread of ideas. Whether or not you approve of that law is beside the point. The point being, theft is as old as the ten commandments, if not older. Copyright is a new thing that’s only a few centuries old.

merc,

Same with copyright theft

Is this when you steal someone’s copyright and collect licensing fees posing as the legitimate copyright holder?

They didn’t steal from you directly

Or indirectly.

still caused harm.

Maybe, maybe not. But no theft occurred.

merc, (edited )

If it’s theft, it’s theft. If it’s fraud, it’s fraud. It could be either. But “wage theft” is not copyright infringement, which is not theft.

Here’s what California’s Department of Industrial Relations says:

Wage theft is a form of fraud

www.dir.ca.gov/fraud_prevention/Wage-Theft.htm

merc,

Freelancers may be upset if they’re mistreated, but that doesn’t mean they get to declare they were murdered, or that they were raped, or any other crime that didn’t occur. Theft has a specific definition, and fraud is not the same thing as theft.

merc,

Yeah, apparently you need to know the origin of the word to know how to pluralize it.

One octopus, two octopuses. But you can also say “octopodes” because the elements used to create the word are originally Greek (okto for 8, pous for foot), and that’s how Greek words get pluralized. But, although it was based on Greek elements it was never used in Ancient Greek. It was a modern Latin word, created in the 1700s as a scientific term using those Greek elements. As a Latin word, the “us” ending should be pluralized with “i”, so “octopi” (which is one of the oldest known pluralizations of the word). But, it’s an English word, and the proper way to pluralize an English word ending in “us” is to tack on “es”.

So, you can go with “octopodes”, “octopi” or “octopuses” and have an argument why any of them is correct.

For Unix, since it’s a word created in English, it’s probably “unixes”. To claim it’s “unices” you’d have to pretend that “unix” is a Latin word, which it isn’t, and never was, but “ix” is a common declension pattern in Latin, and an uncommon ending in English, so it’s fun to pretend it’s a Latin word and doesn’t get pluralized normally.

merc,

The smell of the magic smoke that gets released from the electronics, preventing them from working.

merc,

Yeah, I don’t get that. Bicycling requires strength and endurance. It exposes you to the elements. Why is sitting in a cushy car something some people think as being more macho? Is it that you’re in control of a heavier and more powerful machine?

merc,

There are, there are just exceptions. For example, an e at the end of the word is silent. I’m certain you can give me a word where it’s not, but there are at least six in this paragraph alone where it is.

One of the most common words with a final “e” in that paragraph is “the” which not only has a final “e” sound, but has two different final “e” sounds depending on the context: “the end” uses a /ði/ pronunciation but “the word” uses a /ðə/ pronunciation. English is very stupid.

But, I agree with your assessment. English has rules, or at least patterns. “G” is most often hard, not soft, because “J” is available for the soft version, but there’s no alternative for the hard version. English tends to follow patterns, and “gift” has a hard g, and it (and words based on it) are the only ones that start with “gif”, so every “gif” word is hard. Because “t” (unlike “e”) can’t change the sounds before it, the pattern says that “gif” should have a hard “g”.

If it were “gir”, then there would be more debate. The word “giraffe” has a soft “g” but “girl” has a hard one, so the pattern is more muddy.

Also, people who coin words don’t get to decide how they’ll be pronounced. They can certainly try, but they’ll often lose. There are plenty of words in English borrowed from other languages that not only sound nothing like the original language, but that sound nothing like they’d sound if they were English words. For example, “lingerie”. It’s a French word, but the English pronunciation sounds nothing like a French word. In fact, if someone just sounded out the word as if it were an English word, they’d probably get much closer to the French pronunciation than the awful “lawn-je-ray” which is the current accepted English pronunciation (though, they’d probably assume a hard “g” sound).

In this case, it’s too bad that Steve Wilhite didn’t have a background in linguistics or he would have realized that people would see “gif” and assume a hard “g”. It was a losing fight from the start because he either didn’t understand the assumptions people would have when they saw those letters, or he thought that somehow he could successfully fight the tide all by himself.

merc,

Linus is the one who got a workable thing out in the public’s hands. He didn’t even want to name it Linux, but someone came up with that name and it stuck.

The GNU project did a lot of great things, but ultimately they weren’t able to get a full-fledged operating system out that people could use, so they lost the opportunity to name it. It really shouldn’t matter to them though. GNU is well known, its philosophies are critical to how the free software and open source communities work, it was basically a massive success in the way almost no other volunteer non-commercial projects ever are.

But tagging “GNU/” in front of Linux is dumb.

merc,

Nah, Starbucks is MacOS.

It’s more expensive than it needs to be, but it looks really pretty, and fundamentally it’s still coffee, just like MacOS is Unix-based under the hood.

A chromebook is more like a can of coke. It’s caffeinated, has mass-market appeal, but nobody’s going to be spending hours talking about just how great their can of coke is vs. someone else’s can of coke. A high-end chromebook is maybe a glass bottle of Mexican Coke.

merc,

That doesn’t change the chemistry.

merc,

Probably. Maybe Gentoo is the one where you get the furnace and various molds for various tools, but you have to cast the tools yourself.

merc,

So, you know some people who were in a mass shooting, but they lived. If they know some people who died in a mass shooting that’s two degrees of separation between you and a mass shooting death.

As for the mass shootings this week, they include a convenience store robbery, something that seems to be a murder-suicide where someone killed their family, a shootout over a stolen car, shots at a house party. And, in only 2 of those cases (the 5 dead in a house, and the rampage in Maine) were more than 1 person killed. These all technically qualify as mass shootings, but the rampage in Maine is the only kind we really think of as being a typical mass shooting.

It’s far too many. There’s no question about that. It’s also absurd how much more frequent it is in the US compared to other places. On the other hand, the US has a population of 330 million people. So, while the odds of dying in a mass shooting are higher in the US than any other developed country in the world, it’s hardly a warzone. The vast majority of people in the US will not be in a mass shooting ever. Most people will never be shot in their lives. And tourists shouldn’t avoid the US out of a fear of being involved in a mass shooting. Yes, it’s much more likely in the US than in say Japan. But, the overall odds are low.

merc,

Games is one of the blockers for me. I’m really hoping the Steam Deck changes things so that Windows is no longer needed at all.

Right now we’re just on stage 1, where almost everything that runs on the Steam Deck needs a compatibility layer. I’m hoping that the next step is developers building for Linux as well as Windows to run better on the Steam Deck, which would mean zero performance loss playing on a Linux desktop.

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