I would say that the following comment is at least as good
as the one provided by Quora:
"Here are some tips:
Most guys have problems approaching strangers and seeming creepy. If you can strike up a conversation with girls, just drop a few comments that you're hanging out with "a really cool friend". It makes things easier when you introduce him later on.
When you do introduce him, drop a few conversation starters where there might be common interest or where he can demonstrate expertise. If he likes cooking, mention the mean casserole he whipped up for your Christmas party or something.
Remember that this is an interaction, and you should stay until both he and the target female are comfortable in conversation. Participate in the interaction until then, and when they are warming up to each other THEN excuse yourself to get a drink, say hi to someone else or whatever.
Encourage him to lead in the interaction. The more he does this, the easier it will be for him to seem attractive. Let him choose the way the conversation is going, when it ends, etc.
It may take a bit of work to get both of you synced, but when it happens you'll be the best thing that happens to his social life."
It is true that Italians don't care much about privacy but old and backward?
Italy is neither old (Italy was born as a state in 1861) nor backward. The problem is that our prime minister has a personal interest in shutting down as much as possible the web as a news/social service.
It is possible to argue that, as you said, "many people don't have a clue what is going on" but I believe it applies to most (all?) other countries as well.
Dropping an undefined "better" into a post like that is a bit unfair, since it is basically tautological most ways you could mean that. I'm going to guess you would agree that there is no objective "better", in which case it's totally just defining yourself the win.
I will say this; I have a clear preference for some modern stuff over the older stuff. The biggest one is modern TV vs. older TV; going back to 1960 or 1970 and trying to watch TV for me is simply infuriating; it's all so damned slow. Actually running it 30% faster (as in, watching it literally sped up 30%) helps quite a bit.
My point is that, in my opinion, there is no progress in art exactly for the reason you have just given that there is no objective "better" to measure progress with.
About TV..., if you are talking about TV shows I wouldn't consider them art at all.
"if you are talking about TV shows I wouldn't consider them art at all."
Also tautological depending on your definition of "art". The definition I favor doesn't disqualify something for the medium it is in, but it certainly isn't the only relevant definition.
Every time somebody express an opinion somebody else can call it a tautology if he decides that the speaker is willing to tweak the definition as he likes.
To point it out is pleonastic.
The following sentence is tautological.
The previous sentence is tautological and pleonastic.
I am sensitized to it on the issue of art. The word is in the class of words that are content free and should never be used without at least some cursory stab at which of the virtually infinite definitions you actually mean.
"TV isn't art" carries a lot of connotation, but no actual denotation. I object to just lobbing the connotation into a conversation and acting as if something has actually been established.
I'd argue that there was more interesting video content being produced for TV in the last ten years than movies. (Maybe you don't consider movies art either...) I'll put The Wire up against any movie in the last ten years.
There is a point that I don't see mentioned in any other comments, maybe because it applies only in my country (Italy).
The main benefit of not watching TV here is that you avoid the relentless, hidden or explicit, endorsement of our right-wing party and the consequent manipulation of reality.
I remember reading a sci-fi novel that impressed me as a child about the wife of a recently deceased composer corrupting a politician to not vote for a proposal to extend the copyright on the basis that there are only a limitited number of possible "interesting" combinations of notes. Hence an unlimited copyright is like a death sentence to the creativity of all future musicians. I believe that the actual limit of 50 years is already too much.
50 years is definitely excessive. One can argue that for very successful authors/artists it can provide income for heirs. In most cases it only benefits publishers. 30 years sounds like a reasonable period for me.
It seems to me that a reasonable compromise would be to make automatic copyright a relatively short term deal in the neighborhood of 15-25 years. But at the same time, allow copyright holders to pay a fee to extend the copyright for a further term. If the fee went up on each term, it would encourage owners to only maintain their hold on particularly marketable properties, allowing the rest to lapse into public domain.
As a side benefit, this would go a long way towards reducing the ambiguity that plagues older copyrighted works that don't have a clear owner, but still haven't reached a date where their copyright has expired. Either there would be a clear chain of documentation from when the rights were extended, or else you could safely assume the copyright had lapsed.
I remember this too -- saw it on reddit, had a title that had something to do with elephant's memory or something to that. Anyone know exactly what this was?
This is very similar to the philosophical implications that all mathematics are out there and we are just discovering them. In this light one can always use the example of the infinite monkeys typing random characters and producing all the works of Shakespeare. If you do the Maths though you will need more time than the predicted life-span of our Universe.
In the UK the Gowers review did some economic analysis and found that the current length (50 years) was too long to benefit the UK economy.
They didn't bother trying to argue that point though, as they were too busy trying to prevent the length from being increased to 95 years, which was being lobbied for strongly by various interests.
I wonder why there aren't copyright trolls similar to patent trolls. They could just release huge libraries of computer generated music with all of these interesting combinations of notes. Then do automated comparisons of popular songs to find "violations." Could also be another one of those cases of getting an absurd law revoked by exercising it.
One of the main differences between copyrights and patents is that in order to infringe on a copyright, you have to be willfully imitating it. Coincidentally creating an identical work is not copyright violation if you didn't know about it.
I'm no lawyer, but that doesn't seem consistent with any other law in the US. Ignorance is never an excuse. Also, the first result from a google search for 'copyright infringement willful' yields this:
'Copyright infringement is determined without regard to the intent or the state of mind of the infringer; "innocent" infringement is infringement nonetheless.'
As with patents though, I think the intent does play a role in determining damages.
IANAL either, but I think you're misunderstanding. Ignorance of the law is not generally an excuse for breaking the law. But if you're not copying the original copyrighted source, you're not breaking the law in the first place. Copyright only protects against copying, and unlike patents, does not protect against independently creating the same or similar work (operative word "independently").
Relevant quotes from wikipedia:
> "... two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that the duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other."
> "Infringement requires... that the defendant copied the protected work... if two individuals both create a story that by pure coincidence is nearly identical, but each without knowledge of the other, there is no infringement since there is no copying."
So in the example the poster above gave, you can't just own the copyrights. You also have to get your work distributed widely enough to claim that the author was aware of your work, from which you can build a troll-ish infringement claim.
Ignorance of the law is never an excuse, but ignorance of the facts is frequently an excuse. "Innocent" copyright infringement can occur when you think it is legal to copy something (e.g. the copyright has expired, it is fair use, etc.), but it turns out that you are mistaken.
However, for copyright to apply, you actually have to copy something. If you coincidentally come up with the exact same song that someone else wrote already, but you never heard about the other person's song, you would not infringe copyright in the other person's song.
In contrast, patents infringement is "strict liability," meaning that you can infringe a patent without even knowing that the patent exists.
If this is really the case, then it seems to be a loophole for a reverse scenario. You write a computer algorithm to generate vast collections of music. Since the computer, pretty much by definition, is ignorant of other music then you can claim copyright over everything it generates. Wait for it to produce "copies" of popular melodies and then you can publish cheap clones or license popular songs to people for a fraction of the cost of the originals.
If there is an objection that the computer isn't considered a person, then form a corporation and copyright the songs to the corporation. The corporation is equally ignorant of any other music. Human judgment is only exercised by a second corporation that searches the first corporations extensive database to find popular melodies to license.
Courts are not computers; they apply subtle judgments based on a total reading of scenario.
If your intent was to discover and then market tunes identical to popular copyrighted tunes, a court can view the totality of your system as 'copying' existing works. If your two corporations exist to obscure the real intent of the people behind them, a court can treat them as co-defendants.
"Here are some tips: Most guys have problems approaching strangers and seeming creepy. If you can strike up a conversation with girls, just drop a few comments that you're hanging out with "a really cool friend". It makes things easier when you introduce him later on.
When you do introduce him, drop a few conversation starters where there might be common interest or where he can demonstrate expertise. If he likes cooking, mention the mean casserole he whipped up for your Christmas party or something. Remember that this is an interaction, and you should stay until both he and the target female are comfortable in conversation. Participate in the interaction until then, and when they are warming up to each other THEN excuse yourself to get a drink, say hi to someone else or whatever. Encourage him to lead in the interaction. The more he does this, the easier it will be for him to seem attractive. Let him choose the way the conversation is going, when it ends, etc. It may take a bit of work to get both of you synced, but when it happens you'll be the best thing that happens to his social life."