Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Transparency, USB, Europatents
Now even less than a week ... mpawlo writes "As reported by Greplaw, although I am still looking for further confirmation, it seems like the EU vote on software patentability has been moved from the late fall to June 30, 2003. Yes, that is in one (1) week. If you have more information and another source - please comment on this news item."
Mikael writes: "Personally, I find it somewhat disturbing from a democracy perspective that this proposal seems to be fast-tracked in the middle of the summer, when most Europeans want to focus on whether they should have strawberry or vanilla ice cream. In Sweden, we also got our Swedish version of the DMCA this week. I guess the ice cream will have to wait."
DoSthAboutIt points out that "A 'Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents' has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a 'patent landgrab.' The whole article can be found here, including some statistics like signatories by country"
The story of Peng. mantispraying writes "Looks like the college student who settled with the the RIAA for $12,000, his entire life savings, has recouped all of his money thanks to a very generous file sharing community. Also, the search engine he created that got him in trouble is back online, for demonstration purposes only, of course."
Reader T points out that while one of the students who lost his life savings to RIAA has made it back through PayPal donations, "the other, Dan Peng, is still short about $12,000. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
I'd prefer the garrote and the stick, but hey. Mark Ferguson writes: "I attended the FTC spam forum. It seems I was on their call list :-) I parlayed that into getting several others on the panels as well. While there I spoke with bulk emailers and other industry folks. Some people defined Confirmed OPT-IN to mean you sending a confirmation that the email address was subscribed so they were doing double, confirmed OPT-IN.
My heads spins.
What I figured from what I learned was these folks truly refused to accept real definitions the Service Providers have been using for years so I decided to do a site for just this. ... Anyway, reboot, aka Andrew Cockrell myself and another built The Carrot and the Stick to explain email, define the best practices and to get people to abide by them.
Thoughts, comments and/or suggestions?"
Sooner or later, that DeLorean's going to land someone in jail. hackwrench writes "According to channel WSMV news, Alternate Energy Inventor Carl Tilley's compound was raided. Tilley was previously mentioned on Slashdot here."
Tilley had announced the then-upcoming demonstration of his perpetual-motion DeLorean.
My nanodots can fit inside your nanodots! Rocky Rawstern writes "I recently had the distinct pleasure to interview one of my favorite authors, Wil McCarthy. Upon completing three of his latest books - two sci-fi and one work of non-fiction - I realized that others would probably enjoy his ponderings as much as I. The questions for this interview stem from my own interest in programmable matter, and the awe-inspiring possibilities raised by Wil in his book Hacking Matter."
How to succeed (not necessarily) in business. jameshowison writes "A few months ago Ask Slashdot published Kevin Crowston's question on what makes open source software successful ... well the results are in and the paper typed. We ran the responses through a funky content analyser (called Grad Students). The metrics that academics and the industry have used for years simply don't work for OSS.
More and more it seems that we'll need to survey the number of job offers developers get and the size of the community to get at this one ..."
You sound very familiar to me. Interested Observer writes "Thanks to a slashdot article discussing false positives using Soundex I thought if Soundex can be used for something as important as "no-fly" lists then certainly we should be able to get some entertainment value out of it! See if your Soundex last name-counterparts show up in a Google News search."
A member of the USB-IF Administration writes to dispel the confusion raised by the seeming conflict between many USB products' labels and their actual data-transfer speeds:
"The source of confusion derives from the fact that USB specification revision numbers and data-transfer rates are often being used in place of the logo on consumer packaging, a purpose for which they were not originally intended. The USB-IF's recommended nomenclature for consumers is 'USB' for slower speed products (1.5 Mb/s and 12Mb/s) and "Hi-Speed USB" for high-speed products (480Mb/s), as signified in the USB logos that were introduced in late 2000. In short, consumers wishing to be certain they are getting the performance they paid for in their USB products can use the logo for clarification.
The USB-IF's naming and packaging recommendations for low- or full-speed USB products, as listed at the website http://www.usb.org/developers/packaging, state that such products can carry only the basic version of the USB logo, which simply states "Certified USB." We state clearly that manufacturers should avoid using terminology such as USB 2.0 Full Speed, Full Speed USB or USB 2.0. These formal recommendations were published to the USB-IF membership and posted on the website in August 2002.
The USB-IF is a nonprofit industry organization. We do not and cannot control how manufacturers label their products. We do work continuously with system and peripheral manufacturers, striving to provide consistency in the use of this nomenclature and the logos. The logo indicates that a product's performance against and conformance with the standard have been tested, and that the product has passed the USB compliance program.
Anyone having questions about the performance of a product should contact the manufacturer for clarification.
For a brief Q & A on this topic, please visit our website at http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature."
That's my question.
Kevin "KevX45" Myrick
"Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky"-Pink Floyd
On that EU petition. IBM is one of the most patent-laden companies in the US, yet some of their officers are signing onto a petition to prevent such a rush in the EU. What does this tell you about the US patent process? Patents and lawsuits are the price of doing business in the US. Meanwhile countries with more SANE "IP laws" are going to command more and more of the market share in an increasingly competetive world market.
He's not going to admit it was a scam. He was taking lots of money from private investors, telling them that he had this new magical source of energy. The amounts probably total in the millions of dollars. If he publicly admitted misleading investors, then he would be instantly convicted of fraud and go directly to jail (after a brief trial, of course). He is granted a right to not be forced to incriminate himself (the 5th amendment).
However, there was a great suspicion that he has been committing fraud (magic isn't real). Therefore, the government goes in to gather evidence against him. They'll come up with enough evidence, try the guy for fruad, and hopefully send him to jail. The people who gave the crackpot money will still be out of luck though.
My other first post is car post.
After trying the Soundex tool, I am just bewildered how anyone could think this algorithim is appropriate for a no-fly list. Example:
Name: Hughes
Soundex code: H220
Matches: haessig hages haggis haghighi hagos hajek hakes hasak hasas haschke hasegawa hasek hassick hassig haukaas hawkes haycock haycook heacock heacox hecox heikes heschke hescock heziak hickock hickok hickox higashi highshaw higuchi hikes hiscock hiscox hojczyk hojeij hokes hoosock hosack hosaka hoschek hoseck hosek hosick hossack hougas hoysock huges hugghis hughes hughs hugus husak husayko hykes housekeeper
Hawkes? Housekeeper? Hickox?
No wonder there's so many complaints!
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
At least to a US economy. It won't shock me if it turns out to be a hoax, but it probably scares some people that it might not be. This could be the basis for a push to the "raid the compound" stage instead of less aggressive measures. If the invention is not snake oil, the crude oil industry would like to know before it's released. I'm not screaming conspiracy, but it's realistic that people in oil would nudge investors and the govt. in this direction. "Hey, don't you want to know what he's doing with all that money?"
Just suppose for a moment that he stumbled on easy cold fusion, and then actually started to produce a product. Then release the details the day before the product ships. There is no time for FUD, and the economy could go into a tail spin. People doubting the value of cars, oil, etc. I'm all for free energy, but don't start a fire under a snow covered tree.
Well that was interesting. I just did the soundex test, and the soundex code S450 sure looked familiar. That's because it's the first four characters of my Illinois drivers license number. Aha! I had been wondering about that part of the code for years.
I now know that the coding (for males) is:
aaaa-bbbc-cddd
aaaa = soundex of last name
bbb = ?
cc = year of birth
ddd = (month of birth - 1) * 31 + day of birth
I seem to recall that ddd is altered for females.
Anyone have a decoding for bbb? I'm guessing that it's just a serial number to ensure unique IDs.
Exactly which part of the Laws of Thermodynamics did you not understand... that energy could be neither created nor destroyed, or that all systems tend towards maximum entropy?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Er, you somehow messed up :
... or, if opposite position, privatize, liberalize, and so on. state give (tax) money to parties and politician for campaings/...
...
EU : citizen elect politicians. Depending on that choice : politicians (usually left) favors national companies, ev. buy some shares,
US : citizen elects politicians. companies give money to politicians. then, honestly, what will they favor ?
Add to that the factor that you'll need (proportionaly) much more money to get elected in US
Btw, to correct a few details
- Airbus : As if boeing wasn't paying contributions to US politicians which accidently rose army's budgets ???
- VW had to pay a few hundred billions euro fines a few years ago due to some fraud charge with the EU
- Peugeot : it's a trademark law, not a patent. and it's based on international agreements. and this law (as the patent laws) do not favor specifically some companies over others.
And btw, if you really want to dig up that and makes your final statement worth it, look at how things are going in Switzerland vs western europe for those points.
#include "coucou.h"