Slashdot Mirror

Oh, my mistake, they've actually said 235 patents,.

see here
and here
and here


But I do apologize for saying 135 instead of 235....

Well, I suppose it's time to trot out the old standby articles for this of Linus demanding proof. Torvalds on Microsoft I really don't want to hate Microsoft, or any other company really. I just for once wish that companies would treat people (employees, customers, competitors, etc) with respect. It is still possible to do business and battle with someone and respect them at the same time. This seems to be a lost art for many.

I suppose after Intel gets charged we should get to work on preempting the AMD monopoly then.

yes. that sounds like a great idea.

a) the NSA is already doing it, see the at&t equipment closet 'secret rooms'. Decent article about such

b) people voluntarily chose to allow google to do such when they signed up for gmail. dont like it? dont use gmail. there are thousands if not millions of other email services out there.

After reading about the lawsuit against target.com, under the ADA, for the web site not being friendly to the blind, I was thinking - about a lawsuit against the RIAA for not making music accessible to the deaf? Make them publish all the lyrics or something.

It works by giving in addition to the main volume slider in the mixer/taskbar, providing a slider for each individual program using sound, like this picture. The way, you can have Gaim/Pidgin sounds quite low, while you listen to relaxing music, but are waiting urgently for that important e-mail notification. I've played games where the sound is quite low to begin with, but then I get a message on my IM client, which seems fit to play a deafingly loud sound. IMHO, it's the only thing that Vista got right. I'm not sure how it works, but sound in Linux seems to be flaky at best.

How about like developing a service to store medical information online... and then tying it to a global ID you use for every other one of their online services?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071006-microsoft-wants-your-health-care-records-trust.html

Let's take a look at the case:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071003-judge-bars-riaa-president-from-testifying-in-capitol-records-v-thomas.html

This afternoon also marked the appearance of Jammie Thomas [defendant] on the stand. She was called by the plaintiffs immediately after lunch, who started by questioning her about her experience with computers.

NEVER let the defendant testify, especially in first trial! Or is this a civil case where you have no 5th amendment rights? Anyway...

The questioning then turned to her CD-ripping habits. In her deposition, Thomas said that she ripped no more than six or seven CDs per day, but on the stand today, she said she could have ripped over 2,000 songs in a little over two days.

Wow. Then,

She originally had said that she bought the PC from Best Buy in 2003 and that the hard drive was replaced in January or February of 2004. After her forensic expert inspected the hard drive and found that it wasn't manufactured until January 2005, she then said that she bought the PC in 2004 and that the hard drive was replaced in March 2005. "I was a year off on everything in my deposition," she said.

Lying on the stand isn't good either.

Finally,

"He also said that the 'jury could do the math' on whether it was possible for her to rip 2,000 or so tracks over a two-day period given the demonstration earlier in the day."

Well, I'm a bit surprised too...but...this is the best defense?

Silly me, I thought the RIAA spoofed her computer and faked the whole thing.

That's the good half of the meaning. The bad half of the meaning is that it also means "we intended for courts to award damages of 100,000 times the cost of stolen goods, and for a single mom to be bankrupted for stealing 23 music tracks."
__________
At least the lawsuits costs them millions.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071002-music-industry-exec-p2p-litigation-is-a-money-pit.html

We need lots of rich people letting themselves get sued.
Or perhaps just thousands of people downloading one song?

(1) They wouldn't be going to a "plain filesystem". They've already extended UFS for multiple forks, so the argument that they need HFS+ because a traditional UNIX file system isn't "good enough" is moot.

(2) The fact that people are using HFS+ for demanding tasks doesn't mean that HFS+ is needed for those tasks or even that HFS+ is necessarily well suited to them.

(3) Historically, embedding application level metadata in the file system has had at best mixed results. It's occasionally good for OS manufacturers if applications are dependent on OS-specific features, but it's not necessarily good for the users or developers, and it makes it hard to adapt to new technologies. There's a reason that complex file types have increasingly been replaced by UNIX flat files and "smarts" get moved back to the applications.

So while there may well be technical advantages to staying with HFS+ to maintain application-level metadata in the file system, that doesn't mean it's necessary or that maintaining application-level metadata there is even the right thing to do. Given that the cost of using HFS+ is that the file system is unstable in the face of normal file activity... you don't even need to have hardware problems or hack on the file system below the driver level to trash the catalog... I think that Apple needs to either fix HFS+ properly or abandon it. There is nothing they could write that would justify retaining it in its current form, because there's no justification for ignoring a known flaw that can so easily lead to irrecoverable file system corruption.

Finally, regarding this article, let us say that it's entirely possible for competent people of good will to disagree on issues such as this, and this particular one has proven particularly polarizing.

I remember seeing a post here on slashdot from one of OS X Desktop core authors, possibly the guy who lead the entire project (Quartz etc.) explaining why they decided some methods, what was the reason for deciding them and why some sort of PDF used on OS X.

If one filesystem/kernel developer posts something like that and explains step by step why HFS+ isn't that "horrible" (as people do raw HD editing on very same fs) and why they can't go with a "plain" filesystem, the whole discussion will end for good.

There are lots of junk data even made into Wikipedia as reference information.

As you probably know, the actual power of HFS+ spec is not yet used even by Apple. They have even had to go back in time and add extensions as explained there:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/6

That schizophrenic approach (both resource and extension matters) eventually cost them with that mp3 virus (?) comedy which people should be still glad that it ended up in hands of a security company (one way or another) rather than some really bad guys.

Funny is, MS didn't use the power of NTFS too (it has alternate streams etc.) and yet tried to implement a new filesystem (WinFS) which may have been dropped for same reason.

The promise of ZFS is to be the filesystem which nobody should find any need to add features or enhance so if Apple really decides to give up HFS+, I bet it will be ZFS. The overhead of it is not suitable to current home or even workstation machines though. If flash/magnetic hybrid drives go down to current standard SATA2 drive price levels, overhead wouldn't be issue of course. That time, the redundancy and extra ease of scalability would matter which is provided by ZFS.

Rebooting appendixes and DHCP neurons?

Neat.

then I question why they don't already use xattrs in 10.4. See this to see how you can use them with the present OS.

They already have at Defcon.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070805-only-at-defcon-nbc-dateline-nailed-trying-to-nail-feds-hackers.html
For the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCvmkxO5hoQ

Yes, because in this case the instructions to the jury were to have the plaintiff(various members of the RIAA) prove that the files were "made available" rather than prove that actual downloads had occurred. Here is the article on the jury instrctions

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071004-verdict-is-in.html

fter just four hours of deliberation and two days of testimony, a jury found that Jammie Thomas was liable for infringing the record labels' copyrights on all 24 the 24 recordings at issue in the case of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas. The jury awarded $9,250 in statutory damages per song, after finding that the infringement was "willful," out of a possible total of $150,000 per song. The grand total? $222,000 in damages.

From an article:

Once cross-examination began, Toder started asking Jacobson about things such as MAC address spoofing, cracking, P2P pollution, and multipeer contamination, intimating that one of those things could have been in play when Media Sentry detected the shared folder at the IP address in question. He then questioned Jacobson about his assertion that the music currently on Thomas' computer had to have come from a hard drive and announced that he wanted to demonstrate to the jury that it was possible to rip CDs as quickly as the timestamps from the forensic examination showed (the timestamps were approximately 15-20 seconds apart with a longer 30- to 45-second gap between CDs).

This would tend to prove that the CDs were ripped, and not copied from another hard drive. 15-20 seconds? If they are normal 128kbit MP3 quality, the files are around 5 megabytes. If your hard drive can only copy at 300 kilobytes per second, you need another hard drive. Also that wouldn't account for the extended gap between CDs. If she was copying files from another hard drive, there should be no extra gap. The expert said that speed of ripping wasn't possible, so the defense went on to demonstrate the ripping of a CD and timed it. They came up with 2:36.18, the plaintiff's attorney objected saying it was over 4 minutes. He ripped another coming up with 2:17.71 (the reporter timed this one too and got 2:18.97), and the plaintiff's attorney objected again saying it was over 3 and a half minutes. I hope the jury "got" this. If an "expert" f-ed up this badly, I would disregard everything he said on the stand as unreliable.

During his cross-examination of Geek Squad member Ryan Maki, Toder was able to use Best Buy's sales history of Toder to show that she was an avid music fan that bought a lot of music from the store, both before and after February 2005. "Best Buy's records show that she bought hundreds of CDs before February 2005, did she not?" asked Toder.

"There are quite a few CDs and DVDs purchased," replied Maki. "She's a good customer."

Sadly, according to the update at the end of the Ars Technica article (see http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071004-debate-over-making-available-jury-instruction-as-capitol-v-thomas-wraps-up.html), the "making available" argument will be provided to the jury.

This is sad, because the "making available" argument has no basis in law except when a person is actively promoting infringement (see the Grokster case). There's no proof Jammie ever encouraged infringement.

Here's hoping that Jammie prevails!!!

Regards,
Art

1) We don't know how it's going to turn out. I think the RIAA has actually done the best job they could do to present their case. They have strong circumstantial evidence that this particular defendant uses the Kazaa user name in question, and that she was likely the only person using the computer. The standard in a civil case is proof by a preponderance of the evidence. That is to say, that it's more likely than not that she did what is claimed. It doesn't have to be lock solid, or beyond a reasonable doubt. On the flip side, the defense has also done an excellent job controlling who gets to testify, and appears to have argued for good jury instructions. The most important thing to come from this case may well be the "making available" jury instruction, as that will likely be a major issue for future cases.

2) This is going to be appealed. If the defendant wins, the RIAA will appeal. They have to. If the RIAA wins, I imagine the defendant will appeal so long as she can afford it. As likely, both sides will have parts of the ruling that they're unhappy with, and they will cross-appeal. This decision won't end the case.

It's a very interesting and important case. I look forward to more developments.

I think this misconception (that all wireless syncing requires docking) comes from Microsoft's non-detailed press release. It is, after all, just a press release for products that are coming in November.

• You mentioned XBox Arcade ($280) getting 5 arcade games, but you didn't mention that the Pro ($350) and Elite ($450) are getting bundled with Forza 2 (normally $60 retail) and Marvel Ultimate Alliance ($26).
• You mentioned the Elite having an HDMI port, but the new Pro and Arcade (Core) packages will also be getting HDMI ports.

• You mentioned XBox Arcade ($280) getting 5 arcade games, but you didn't mention that the Pro ($350) and Elite ($450) are getting bundled with Forza 2 (normally $60 retail) and Marvel Ultimate Alliance ($26).
• You mentioned the Elite having an HDMI port, but the new Pro and Arcade (Core) packages will also be getting HDMI ports.

Nope, because they don't see any possible issues with what they're saying. Take this wonderful example from NBC/Universal's counsel.

"NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing when it should be doing something about piracy instead."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070615-copyright-coalition-piracy-more-serious-than-burglary-fraud-bank-robbery.html?bub

I think the best way to view these people is to imagine what happen if someone from the distant past were to come in to our time. For example, Jews from 1000BC or a Kansas school board from 2006. Both groups would have some bizarre views of the world, probably arguing with passion that heliocentrism and evolution are totally false. They may even advocate burning at the stake for people consorting with evil by using post-it notes or computers.

The legal counsel and the PR departments of these record companies face a similar handicap, in that they can't possible adjust to our time. We need to develop a time machine so we can return them to a time they understand

details are a bit sketchy. According to the actual microsoft partner website it seems that the license is not for vista or anything, just for XP. Which is completely pointless since you can download updates without validating your system anyway, not to mention shady depending on more "hidden updates" that break features. Just get the list of updates that haven't been done and download. Voila.

In addition another of sketchy aspect is the questionable nature whether this will be used as a marketing tool for MSFT, aka "we sold xyz more copies of windows, even though we nobody really bought anything". They claim "40 million is lost in piracy" from their own bullshiat study which was debunked about a million times .

Why does it also talk about financing for the actual copies of XP that companies will receive won't be free, as they original stated? I suspect they will go after people who inquire but don't follow through.

I bet they'll release a kit when they're sure they've frozen the API.

Apple recently released the Human Interface Guidelines for the iPhone, which says at one point: "Currently, developers create web applications for iPhone, not native applications." (emphasis added). I suspect the iPhone API is still very much in flux, which probably explains the fairly small updates we've seen so far.

Apple hasn't shied away from games on the iPod, so why not the iPhone? Because the API isn't set in stone yet. Once Apple firms it up, you'll probably start to see third party games from companies like EA. If that works out, then you may finally see a public API.

You also get such wonderful combinations as "Core 2 Solo", and bizarre words as "Tigerton". I heard there was an attempt by Intel to simplify their nomenclatures, but that got canceled. I found an article on Arstechnica concerning it: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070808-intel-announces-plan-to-unify-product-naming-scheme.html Of course, that proposed naming system made even less sense...

Let me just point out that WebKit, the Apple HTML rendering engine, which is based upon KHTML, the origional KDE HTML rendering engine, has a Subversion repository from which you can download code, that you can submit patches just like you can for Firefox, and that the code is now used by KDE, AtheOS, Apple, and ... wait for it ...

NOKIA.

WebKit
Ars Technical article about unforking of KHTML and WebKit
Aplications Using WebKit
Nokia S60 website page for WebKit based web browser (yeah, the registrant for that website is Nokia).

So, you see, things are a lot more complicated than some folks seem to think.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/09/11/apple-you-have-our-blessing-to-hack-the-iphone-to-bitsDoes this count?

I believe that we have borne witness to ATT's censorship attempts before, if you can recall the issue of an ATT subcontractor bleeping out a verbal attack on the President. Here's the Ars article for a refresher: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070809-pearl-jam-censored-by-att-calls-for-a-neutral-net.html
ATT has also joined other big telcos in lobbying Congress and begging for protection from lawsuits for violating their own terms of service and privacy agreements. There is no limit to what ATT will try to get away with.
This is why there needs to be real competition in the telco world and not just one or two companies. We eight or ten companies in every market to create real competition. Unless consumers have a real choice there is a monopoly and with that monopoly comes the ability to control and stifle dissident speech or any speech which the provider is not comfortable with regardless of whatever you may think your first amendment rights are. Oh..and for the record...the first amendment guarantees you the ability to say something but it does not protect you from the consequences of that speech. If you say something negative about your employer, your employer has every right to can you. Even if your comments were made after work hours. With that in mind, we should expect some fallout if we say something that is unpopular and only be surprised when it does not occur and not vice-versa.

I got really curious about this "King of the World MMORPG" and attempted to search it with good ol' Google. To my surprise, I could not find the site nor the game, other than the links to the main topic. However, I did run into this article http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070927-chinese-mmorpg-banning-cross-gender-roleplayers.html which I found interesting.

Riiight.. Remote desktop? Piece of cake! Howabout hacking the non-Server termsrv.dll? Terminal Server? For what? Office? Have 10MB of RAM per user ready. Ouch. Virtual Server? Not ready for production.

  And none of this addresses my original point: Out of the box, users get a small bit of handholding to guide them through XP's detailed permissions. Either it's the dumb-down interface or the whole kaboodle. XP is a solid OS for stability.

  Look, I'm coding up a large office Automation server and get to enjoy their help files like this. No office app designed for multi-user, server-based hosting. Nice. The MVC pattern is what, 15 years old now?

  As to the rest of my rant, I see your retort explains everything. Perhaps you like XP's GDI, Win32. Funny sense of design, you. Vista is a necessary upgrade - it was simply done wrong.

Here's one:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/09/21/amdati-release-register-specifications-novell-follows-with-alpha-driver

Considering that there are businesses in place betting on this, you can be sure that people will get that stuff to market. As for cards they also have to be licensed by the FCC. But WiMax is going to be online very soon -- Motorola will now not only be developing the network in Chicago, but also in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. Samsung will also be developing the market in a number of cities: Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, and the previously-announced Washington D.C. Finally, Nokia will be responsible for developing the network in Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and Seattle. All in all, Sprint plans to roll out WiMAX in 19 cities across the US by April 2008.

Considering that there are businesses in place betting on this, you can be sure that people will get that stuff to market. As for cards they also have to be licensed by the FCC. But WiMax is going to be online very soon -- Motorola will now not only be developing the network in Chicago, but also in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. Samsung will also be developing the market in a number of cities: Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, and the previously-announced Washington D.C. Finally, Nokia will be responsible for developing the network in Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and Seattle. All in all, Sprint plans to roll out WiMAX in 19 cities across the US by April 2008.

Fortunately, those laws are routinely thrown out as unconstitutional.

Right now but in florida they are closing down used CD shops.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070507-record-shops-used-cds-ihre-papieren-bitte.html

I havent read TFA but Jon Stokes at arstechnica.com has a quite enthusiastic review on Intel's new 45nm mobile processor. He foresees standard x86 operating systems (windows or linux) running even on am/fm radios :P

Intel's x86 ISA grows down: today laptops, tomorrow the iPhone.

2008 will be the year of the must-have x86-based ultramobile PC (UMPC) and mobile Internet device (MID), and from there it's a straight march into a future iteration of the iPhone.

This might speed-up the development of the wanted-by-all linux (smart)phone...

Just a question here, but why 16 years? where is that number derived from? The only analysis I have seen which attempts to mathematically derive the optimum copyright term is this one which states the optimum is 14 years, and in fact is related to the costs of producing both originals (manuscripts and authorised copies etc) and copies (unauthorised) in the sense that as those costs drop so does the optimum copyright term in general.

Here's an ars technica analysis of the three disputed Verizon patents.

This blog references 2 Sprint patents 6,373,930 and 6,731,735 but I can't seem to find any references listing the patents in the Sprint lawsuit.

The Ars science journal, Nobel Intent provides me with my daily science geek fix. Perhaps it isn't dumbed down enough for most folks?

*shrug*

Legally, the government has recognized the consumer's right to unlock a cellphone. The FCC is big on phone portability and number portability.

Yes, so far the it's only been recognized in regards to a DMCA exemption, but I have a feeling both the government and the courts would look well upon consumers who unlock iPhones.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061124-8280.html

The lack of online co-op doesn't seem as though it's a big deal any more, as we're not hearing much about it.

I'm looking forward to checking it out at a friend's house, as I haven't bought any of the new consoles yet. If it's as good as expected, it could be the kicker that gets me to buy a 360. Online still isn't an option for those of us on dial-up (too slow) or satellite (Hughes, too much lag/loss), but the single-player looks like it will be a blast.

The Ars Techinca review strictly deals with the single-player component, for those who are looking for another viewpoint (from another tech site that's not solely focused on gaming).

where did you get the idiotic idea that the iPod database encryption was a feature? if by feature you mean "ensures you will be using apple software unless you go out of your way to figure out why your iPod now reports 0 songs" yeah, I guess it is. This is the equivalent of MS making windows only work cleanly with IE back in the mid 90's. All it does is make other software look "incompatible" and create a false perception of superiority for apple.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070916-gtkpod-coders-crack-apples-new-ipod-checksum.html

yeah, it was cracked, but don't act like it was anything other than trying to keep the iPod locked to iTunes for the vast majority of users.

Of course, I love your last line. You act like any joe can actually go about doing even the first of your 3 step process.

I have no problem adding actual features to your database. YOu change it so you can include pictures and movies? great.

FYI, Someone who has a problem with the drug laws in sweeden or any other country is not necessarily a drug user or "Pro Drug", there are numerous other reasons why drug laws based on prohibition are inherently flawed laws, including the obvious fact that in a free market where there is a demand and willingness to pay high prices someone will step in to supply it, that organised crime in itself creates far more harm to society than the drugs themselves ever could, and that high prices leave addicts in a situation where they are are forced to commit crimes to afford prices inflated by up to 3000% of the costs of production, transport even seizure. That is before anyone even looks at the human rights perspective that one has the right to harm themselves as much as they like provided they do not force harm onto anyone else, one has to remember here that even suicide is legal in most places of the world (although it was outlawed in some places that since repealed that law). Anyway end of that rant, there is plenty of discussion on this topic on sites like this if anyone is interested.

On topic, It seams to me that the facts supporting the merits of a copyright law as it currently stands are quite lacking, especially the often used shout of **AA that "Infringement harms content producers"/"Infringement costs the content producers x millions of dollars a year" etc, it seams to me that these arguments are based on a logical fallacy, namely that persons who commit Infringement would have purchased the information were an Infringing copy not available, which is clearly false, sometimes people who obtain an infringing copy would simply not access the information at all were it not available.

I read an article which suggested that the optimal copyright term is 14 years, there is only one reason I can think of where copyright really would be needed and that would be for example to prevent a person call them alice who has written a manuscript for a book, they show the manuscript to bob who is a publisher, bob copies the manuscript then returns the original to alice refusing to publish the book, however bob then publishes the manuscript in his name not giving any compensation to alice. Although it seams to me that such could be dealt with through the use of a Non-Disclosure Agreement or similar instead of by copyright law.

Other than that I do not really see the need for the copyrighting of information especially music, theatre plays, movies, all three have a valid revenue stream through performance (provision of a service, ie is more than simply information). Even from software money could be made without copyright by the provision of services to users (technical support, online services etc), or by the provision of other materials (physical media, manuals, packaged sets including media/manuals and/or other items). Books obviously have the potential to earn money through sales of physical books. I have heard some argue that physical media sales without copyright could be dented by counterfeit goods, but to the best of my knowledge counterfeiting would violate other laws, trade descriptions for one (namely in this case deceiving buyers into believing the product they are buying was a product of another company).

If this does mean that the amount of money made by content producers decreases then that would simply prove that the free market disagrees with the producers assessment of value, and if that is the case then the law should definitely not be used to artificially inflate the market price of goods, if it were used to this end then it would be no different that price-fixing which is illegal under the anti-trust laws of most every country.