It is much much worse than a claim on use of shared memory. The real killer broad claim is #2, which is an attempt to claim ALL pre-compiled user-specific template pages.
Use of shared memory (#4), server-farms (#5), and cacheing (#6) are additional claims over and beyond the basic claim #2. Claim 2 applies whether these other claims are implemented or not.
The nitty-gritty of claim #1 is just a fallback position, which protects Yahoo's detailed process in the event that Yahoo's other claims are ruled too abstract. Claim #1 does not apply unless you specifically generate lists of relevant sports teams and weather reports from user postcodes. The real horror is claim #2.
Claim 2
2. Using a page server, a method of providing real-time responses to user requests for customized pages, the method comprising the steps of:
obtaining user preferences, wherein a user's user preferences indicate items of interest to that user;
obtaining real-time information from information sources;
storing the real-time information in a storage device;
combining the user preferences for the user and a template to form a template program specific to the user;
receiving, from a user and at the server, a user request for a customized page customized according to the user preferences;
executing the template program specific to the user using the real-time information stored in the storage device as input to the template program to generate the customized page; and
providing the user with the customized page, wherein the steps of executing and providing are performed in real-time response to receipt of the user request in the step of receiving and wherein the customized page includes at least one item of real-time information selected from the storage device.
Claim 4
4. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of storing the real-time information in a storage device is a step of storing the real-time information in a memory having a capacity to simultaneously contain all of the real-time information that could be required for execution of the template program.
The term "template program" would appear to cover any per-user pre-generated page which includes ASP or PHP or Javascript to fill in the blanks. Bespoke formats in which the user template contains just field names instead of script fragments might also be considered "programs", executable by the web-server plus appropriate module.
the Germans changed something, and from then on the Polish guys were not able to crack anything.
According to Jack Good's article in Turing's collected papers:
In September and December of 1938 the Germans introduced two changes, one of which was an increase in the number of wheels in the "library" from three to five. There were now therefore 5x4x3=60 possible wheel orders. The method for indicating the settings of the wheels was also changed. At about the same time the number of unplugged letters (or self-steckers) was decreased from 12 to 6. The number of possible pluggings was now 26!/(10!6!2^10)=1.51x10^14, which is greater than if there were no self-steckers. The Poles were able to discover what changes had been made, and to discover the wirings of the two new wheels, but they didn't have the facilities to cope with these changes on a regular daily basis and accordingly decided to give all their methods and results to the British and French. They managed to do so, late in July 1939, only weeks before Poland was overrun.
M. Rejewski "How Polish mathematicians deciphered the Enigma" (with discussion) Ann. Hist. Comput. 3, 213-234 (1981)
A different translation of this paper appears as an appendix to the book by Kozaczuk (1984) recommended by the original poster.
Rejewski was the brilliant Polish mathematician who achieved the original theoretical success against the commercial version of Enigma in 1932-33. The Poles were later able to achieve substantial success against the military variant, aided by intelligence material supplied by Gustave Bertrand of the French Secret Service. According to Rejewski this material was "the decisive factor in breaking the machine's secrets". The work was the foundation for many of the attacks used against Enigma at Bletchley Park.
Why is it that history always credits Alan Turing with cracking Enigma, when in fact the Poles were reading Enigma encrypts prior to 1940? As I remember it Turing didn't become a player at Bletchley Park until about 1943, LONG after all of the theoretical work on the Enigma cipher had passed.
This is not correct:
From September 1938 Turing had given part-time assistance to the British cryptanalytic organisation, the Government Code and Cypher School. Their work was transformed by the transfer of information from Polish mathematical cryptanalysts in July 1939. From 4 September 1939, Turing worked full-time at the GC&CS war-time headquarters, Bletchley Park.
During 1939-40 Turing was foremost in developing logical, statistical and mechanical methods which allowed rapid decryption of some Enigma cipher traffic in 1940. The vital naval ciphers resisted decryption, mainly through an extra complexity (a bigram substitution) in the key-system. Turing took charge of a section (Hut Eight) devoted to this problem.
In this time he made a number of important contributions, including
working out the new indicator system being used by the German navy to transmit the machine settings;
'simultaneous scanning', the simultaneous tracing of all of the possible consequences of a hypothesis about the plugboard settings and testing for contradiction. This accelerated the rate at which the Bombes could test codes by a factor of 26
the 'Banburismus' statistical method for guessing the rotor order, which effectively used mutual information as a scoring system seven years before Shannon (and inspired both I.J. Good and S. Kullback in their later work on information theory).
Bletchley was never a one man project; but Turing's achievments were far from insignificant.
I have just been reading Anthony Cave Brown's history of intelligence and deception in the Second World War, "Bodyguard of Lies" (1975), and it certainly was not just the Allies making extensive use of signal intelligence.
The German navy had cracked certain Admiralty ciphers in early 1940 and again in 1943, which were of considerable importance in the naval actions off Norway, and then in the battle of the convoys. Luftwaffe cryptanalysis also penetrated some of Bomber Command's ciphers. Even some of the private messages between Churchill and Roosevelt were intercepted, in 1940 when the American "Gray code" cipher was betrayed by a State department clerk in London, and at intervals between 1941 and 1943 when parts of telephone messages could be read due to deficiencies in the AT&T "A-3" scrambler.
The Germans were also quick to take advantage of poor wireless security in the field. As well as revealing the theft of the "Black code" cipher, used by American military attaches throughout the world, which (as other posters have said) was giving the Germans detailed reports on the British morale, dispositions and plans throughout the Middle East, the Australian attack on Rommel's wireless intelligence unit at Tel-el-Eisa in July 1942 showed just how much the Germans had been able to learn from British radio traffic. Use of radiotelephones, call signs, cryptographic procedures, voice codes, wireless silences for units on the move -- all had been found wanting, and were shown to need deep reform.
However, the comprehensive records also underlined how effective wireless signals could be for deception, and German analysis of fake radio traffic later led to many misdirections. In particular, false signals traffic was extensively used in the deception to persuade Hitler that an even larger invasion army under Patton was preparing to land at Calais. This ultimately prevented German deployment of their main Panzer divisions for several weeks even after the actual invasion in Normandy.
Even so, signal intelligence did give them a strong clue as to the truth:
"In late April [1944],... after an intensive study of the wireless traffic of both British and American divisions, Funkabwehr analysts realised that when they heard the distinctive traffic indicating that an air liaison official had been assigned to a division to provide a link between ground and air forces, it could be assumed, first, that it was an assault division and, second, that it was preparing for offensive operations. In a relatively short period of time, the Funkabwehr heard all the divisions in southern and southwestern England broadcasting air liaison traffic, and they deduced, with considerable accuracy, that the invasion was imminent, and that the axis of the attack would be in the direction of Plymouth/Portsmouth and LeHavre/Cherbourg." (p.550)
In the event there was no weakening of the garrisons in the Pas-de-Calais; but the Germans began to double the anti-tank and anti-aircraft defences in Normandy, and two further divisions were ordered in.
Cave Brown summarises:
"The German wireless intelligence and cryptoanalytical service -- the Funkabwehr -- had been responsible for a remarkable series of triumphs throughout the war. It would claim total penetration of French codes and ciphers, including machine ciphers; and it had consistently broken into every Russian cryptosystem from the highest commands down to battalions. As for the United States, a high officer of the Funkabwehr would later claim that German wireless intelligence had had no difficulty in penetrating American radio communications because of exteremly poor security. The same was not true of the British; they had learnt their lesson in North Africa. The Funkabwehr official would state that British radio communications were the most effective and secure of all those with which the German wireless intelligence had to contend, adding that the higher-echelon cryptosystems of the British were never compromised during the Second World War. But while the Germans had not been able to penetrate the systems, they were quite successful in analysing the characteristic patterns of British wireless traffic -- particularly the traffic of the RAF signals service. The Funkabwehr official would state that the RAF was not aware that it was responsible for revealing many carefully guarded plans of the British army and thus for many losses and casulaties; and he would add that the only possible explanation was interservice jealousy, which led the RAF to overestimate the quality and security of its wireless communications and to refuse to let them be subject to the supervision of the army." (p.549)
The law prohibits technology designed primarily for copyright violations, or having limited purpose other than copyright violation, or being 'marketed' for purposes or copyright infringement.
That is an accurate summary (near enough).
According to the law, a technological protection measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or process or treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
The question is whether the copyright owners are demonstrating, by using CSS when they have the option not to, that they are only authorising access to their work through players with licenses from the DVD consortium. If that is the case, then the use of a non-licensed player would indeed be a copyright violation under this section.
I suspect what Nick has written is exactly what Derek's lawyers told him in the UK -- back down, and quick.
But what would happen to somebody in the similar position in the US, eg as regards either (a) publishing the analysis of CSS, (b) writing the code, (c) hosting the CVS server, (d) co-ordinating the overall effort, or (e) including player in a linux distro ?
The relevant law appears to be 17 USC ch.12 sec.1201, but unfortunately this is not currently up on the Cornell LII site.
Section 1201 is set to be amended by HR 2281, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I'm not sure what the current status of this act is, and whether or not it has or will be signed into law by the president. The key relevant provision under the new law would appear to be (a)(2):
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
`(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
`(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
and section (b)(1), in which 'controls access' is relaced with 'protects a right of a copyright owner'
Some questions:
What does 'provide technology' mean ? Does software code count as technology ? What about technical descriptions of CSS ?
Do people still have a first amendment right to discuss CSS and write not-for-profit de-CSS code ? According to subsection (c)(4) below:
`(4) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products.
Does a commercial ISP who allows such code to be published on their server trafficking in a service ? Or do they count as a free press ?
Does a linux distro which includes a DVD player allowing a disc to be viewed on screen circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title (ignoring any patent issues) ? Would it make any difference if the code was binary only ?
And finally, haven't these lawyers ever heard of writing laws for easy maintenance and reliability ?? The control flow in (a)(1) has to be worse than anything I've seen in a Perl program! But I wonder, do you think we could get the Librarian of Congress to declare an exception under (a)(1), regarding the current poor availability for use of copyright works under Linux, to allow the situation to be improved ?
For a lot of the transmitters, switching from 8-VSB to CODFM would just be a firmware patch, requiring no hardware changes at all.
For example, according to Itelco, who have supplied a number of 8-VSB transmitters:
"Broadcasters who have purchased 8-VSB modulators can retrofit their transmitters with COFDM circuitry if necessary. Itelco's digital systems use programmable digital signal processors that can be reprogrammed to transmit COFDM."
So changing to COFDM may well just be a firmware change. But even in the worst case Sinclair are saying that a change to COFDM should cost broadcasters no more than $20,000.
Also, note that Sinclair are not petitioning to force broadcasters to change to COFDM -- they are petitioning for broadcasters to be allowed to use COFDM if they choose to do so.
Since the US broadcast standard for DTV is contained within the same 6MHz channel as NTSC, I propose that cable CAN carry DTV. The main problem is co-channel interference, since 8VSB does use a bit more of the channel than NTSC. It may be necessary to skip channels to avoid this entirely. Will the cable companies do it? Not unless they are forced as were/are the TV stations.
Both 8-VSB and COFDM are designed to minimise co-channel interference -- very much less interference than NTSC (in fact they are being broadcast between existing NTSC channels without upsetting them).
As for switching to COFDM, you can rule that out in the top 11 markets, which have already built transmission systems for 8VSB. I suppose the systems could be modified, but in all liklihood, the cost would be close to purchasing all new equipment. Not gonna happen. Maybe the smaller markets can build agile or go COFDM, which would in fact complicate reception quite a bit.
Many digital transmitters are effectively dual standard (including all those bought by Sinclair, no surprise), and can change from 8-VSB to COFDM at the flick of a switch.
The others would need some hardware modules changed -- but the cost of a switch is only a few thousand dollars. COFDM is a more valuable standard for data-casting, so this would be recouped quite easily.
Slashdot readers should be aware that the EU and USA standard are worlds apart in terms of future potential.
Apart from reception quality, the main difference is that the European DVB standard is a lot more flexible in how it lets you configure the bandwidth and the error correction between different services running in the same 6 MHz channel multiplex.
The bandwidth is there, same as ASTC, to run an HDTV channel. Australia in particular is mandating HDTV content over DVB from its broadcasters. But what the broadcasters in Oz think will make the DVB standard really pay are the possibilities for datacasting over some of the bandwidth -- and there is a huge plus in being able to datacast to people on the move.
COFDM is a much more rugged standard for mobile reception -- remember that very cute thinkpad sized combined TV/data terminal/GSM phone from Nokia. Mobile reception is easy with COFDM, but not possible with 8-VSB; in fact it's hard enough with the ATSC standard even to get good static reception.
This article by Craig Birkmaier does a particularly good job comparing the two standards, and brings out the exciting possibilities for a combined mobile data/TV/phone system.
It's known as the cliff effect -- analogue signals just get slowly worse and worse, but once you start losing digital packets, you lose *everything*, because they might be coding for the most significant bits.
It really depends how bad the picture is that you see on analogue TV at the moment. If the major problem is 'ghosting', ie spurious extra images caused by multiple reflection paths off the mountains, COFDM is particularly good at sorting these out to achieve constructive interference between the different paths.
If the major problem is 'snow', a signal amplifier box can help, just like for analogue TV. But if there's too much snow, this will destroy the digital signal.
One other trick with COFDM is that the TV company can add additional transmitters on the same frequency to sort out reception blackspots. With analogue signals this would just cause particularly bad destructive interference, and would be a Bad Idea. But because COFMM can make the two signals interfere constructively, this opens the door to networks of transmitters all on the same frequency.
This article by Craig Birkmaier is very good on COFDM vs 8-VSB generally, and covers the possibility of Single Frequency Networks in a bit more detail.
To reopen the standard now would set back the upgrade to TV technology by ten to fifteen years. Remember, COFDM is already up and running in Europe, and already approved in large parts of the rest of the world.
Mostly the boxes (and transmitters) are made by exactly the same manufacturers.
For a lot of the transmitters, switching from 8-VSB to CODFM would just be a firmware patch, requiring no hardware changes at all.
As for the reception, with so many COFDM systems already in volume production in the rest of the world, I would be surprised if it took longer than about 3 months to get boxes into the shops.
To grant Sinclair's petition would if anything be likely to accelerate consumer uptake, and accelerate the transition to digital.
The thing you don't mention is something that will doom HDTV - it requires a roof antenna!
This is why Sinclair are so desperate to have COFDM -- for most of each market it doesn't need a roof antenna. 8-VSB not only needs the roof antenna, but you have to rotate the antenna round to point at different TV towers when you change channels.
There's a bit more to it. You can't set up both standards, they'd be on the same allocated frequency and so would not play well. You also can't set up just COFDM, because the government has required all stations to be broadcasting an 8VSB signal by a certain date (which I don't remember offhand, anyone wanna help me here?) Unless the federal government changes the legislation and/or regulation, we're stuck with 8VSB
Exactly. Sinclair etc are petitioning to be allowed the choice of which format to broadcast in. For more details (and who to write to if you want to support them), see http://www.sbgi.net/dtv/.
CODFM chipsets are already in volume production -- over 500,000 systems shipped just in the UK already, and accelerating (compared to only 50,000, and slowing, for 8VSB in the US).
Dual standard boxes could be on the market within 3 months of any decision -- after all, it's the same manufacturers making the boxes for both markets.
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection, as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
The difference is that in the US the author is in the clear unless the plaintiff can prove that the author knew the statement was false and published regardless.
In the UK the burden of proof is reversed: the author has to prove that their statement is true; moreover it is not a defence merely that they had reasonable grounds to believe it at the time.
This of course makes libel very much harder for the author to defend. But trying to prove the truth of their statements did enable the McLibel defendants to force McDonalds to disclose an enormous pile of embarrassing documents.
Other defences are fair comment on a matter of public interest, and certain other exemptions such as parliamentary privilege.
Selling jeans over its own web site was unaffordable, a Levi-Strauss spokesman told the Financial Times last week. "We felt from a selling perspective our sites were very successful, but it is very costly to run a truly world-class e-commerce business."
Could this be the first pricking of the e-commerce bubble ?
Or is it just, as the Register claimed, that Levi's couldn't ever get both legs to be the same length ?
Slashdot Mirror
It is much much worse than a claim on use of shared memory. The real killer broad claim is #2, which is an attempt to claim ALL pre-compiled user-specific template pages.
Use of shared memory (#4), server-farms (#5), and cacheing (#6) are additional claims over and beyond the basic claim #2. Claim 2 applies whether these other claims are implemented or not.
The nitty-gritty of claim #1 is just a fallback position, which protects Yahoo's detailed process in the event that Yahoo's other claims are ruled too abstract. Claim #1 does not apply unless you specifically generate lists of relevant sports teams and weather reports from user postcodes. The real horror is claim #2.
Claim 2
Claim 4
The term "template program" would appear to cover any per-user pre-generated page which includes ASP or PHP or Javascript to fill in the blanks. Bespoke formats in which the user template contains just field names instead of script fragments might also be considered "programs", executable by the web-server plus appropriate module.
Very, very nasty.
According to Jack Good's article in Turing's collected papers:
In September and December of 1938 the Germans introduced two changes, one of which was an increase in the number of wheels in the "library" from three to five. There were now therefore 5x4x3=60 possible wheel orders. The method for indicating the settings of the wheels was also changed. At about the same time the number of unplugged letters (or self-steckers) was decreased from 12 to 6. The number of possible pluggings was now 26!/(10!6!2^10)=1.51x10^14, which is greater than if there were no self-steckers. The Poles were able to discover what changes had been made, and to discover the wirings of the two new wheels, but they didn't have the facilities to cope with these changes on a regular daily basis and accordingly decided to give all their methods and results to the British and French. They managed to do so, late in July 1939, only weeks before Poland was overrun.
M. Rejewski
"How Polish mathematicians deciphered the Enigma" (with discussion)
Ann. Hist. Comput. 3, 213-234 (1981)
A different translation of this paper appears as an appendix to the book by Kozaczuk (1984) recommended by the original poster.
Rejewski was the brilliant Polish mathematician who achieved the original theoretical success against the commercial version of Enigma in 1932-33. The Poles were later able to achieve substantial success against the military variant, aided by intelligence material supplied by Gustave Bertrand of the French Secret Service. According to Rejewski this material was "the decisive factor in breaking the machine's secrets". The work was the foundation for many of the attacks used against Enigma at Bletchley Park.
Why is it that history always credits Alan Turing with cracking Enigma, when in fact the Poles were reading Enigma encrypts prior to 1940? As I remember it Turing didn't become a player at Bletchley Park until about 1943, LONG after all of the theoretical work on the Enigma cipher had passed.
This is not correct:
Source: http://www.turing.org.uk/turi ng/papers/profsbook.html
In this time he made a number of important contributions, including
Bletchley was never a one man project; but Turing's achievments were far from insignificant.
The German navy had cracked certain Admiralty ciphers in early 1940 and again in 1943, which were of considerable importance in the naval actions off Norway, and then in the battle of the convoys. Luftwaffe cryptanalysis also penetrated some of Bomber Command's ciphers. Even some of the private messages between Churchill and Roosevelt were intercepted, in 1940 when the American "Gray code" cipher was betrayed by a State department clerk in London, and at intervals between 1941 and 1943 when parts of telephone messages could be read due to deficiencies in the AT&T "A-3" scrambler.
The Germans were also quick to take advantage of poor wireless security in the field. As well as revealing the theft of the "Black code" cipher, used by American military attaches throughout the world, which (as other posters have said) was giving the Germans detailed reports on the British morale, dispositions and plans throughout the Middle East, the Australian attack on Rommel's wireless intelligence unit at Tel-el-Eisa in July 1942 showed just how much the Germans had been able to learn from British radio traffic. Use of radiotelephones, call signs, cryptographic procedures, voice codes, wireless silences for units on the move -- all had been found wanting, and were shown to need deep reform.
However, the comprehensive records also underlined how effective wireless signals could be for deception, and German analysis of fake radio traffic later led to many misdirections. In particular, false signals traffic was extensively used in the deception to persuade Hitler that an even larger invasion army under Patton was preparing to land at Calais. This ultimately prevented German deployment of their main Panzer divisions for several weeks even after the actual invasion in Normandy.
Even so, signal intelligence did give them a strong clue as to the truth:
"In late April [1944], ... after an intensive study of the wireless traffic of both British and American divisions, Funkabwehr analysts realised that when they heard the distinctive traffic indicating that an air liaison official had been assigned to a division to provide a link between ground and air forces, it could be assumed, first, that it was an assault division and, second, that it was preparing for offensive operations. In a relatively short period of time, the Funkabwehr heard all the divisions in southern and southwestern England broadcasting air liaison traffic, and they deduced, with considerable accuracy, that the invasion was imminent, and that the axis of the attack would be in the direction of Plymouth/Portsmouth and LeHavre/Cherbourg." (p.550)
In the event there was no weakening of the garrisons in the Pas-de-Calais; but the Germans began to double the anti-tank and anti-aircraft defences in Normandy, and two further divisions were ordered in.
Cave Brown summarises:
"The German wireless intelligence and cryptoanalytical service -- the Funkabwehr -- had been responsible for a remarkable series of triumphs throughout the war. It would claim total penetration of French codes and ciphers, including machine ciphers; and it had consistently broken into every Russian cryptosystem from the highest commands down to battalions. As for the United States, a high officer of the Funkabwehr would later claim that German wireless intelligence had had no difficulty in penetrating American radio communications because of exteremly poor security. The same was not true of the British; they had learnt their lesson in North Africa. The Funkabwehr official would state that British radio communications were the most effective and secure of all those with which the German wireless intelligence had to contend, adding that the higher-echelon cryptosystems of the British were never compromised during the Second World War. But while the Germans had not been able to penetrate the systems, they were quite successful in analysing the characteristic patterns of British wireless traffic -- particularly the traffic of the RAF signals service. The Funkabwehr official would state that the RAF was not aware that it was responsible for revealing many carefully guarded plans of the British army and thus for many losses and casulaties; and he would add that the only possible explanation was interservice jealousy, which led the RAF to overestimate the quality and security of its wireless communications and to refuse to let them be subject to the supervision of the army." (p.549)
The text is up on the web of a lecture by Tony Sale on the workings of the German's Lorenz code and the Colossus machine, which might be of interest.
That is an accurate summary (near enough).
According to the law, a technological protection measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or process or treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
The question is whether the copyright owners are demonstrating, by using CSS when they have the option not to, that they are only authorising access to their work through players with licenses from the DVD consortium. If that is the case, then the use of a non-licensed player would indeed be a copyright violation under this section.
Repost is below, properly formatted.
But what would happen to somebody in the similar position in the US, eg as regards either (a) publishing the analysis of CSS, (b) writing the code, (c) hosting the CVS server, (d) co-ordinating the overall effort, or (e) including player in a linux distro ?
The relevant law appears to be 17 USC ch.12 sec.1201, but unfortunately this is not currently up on the Cornell LII site.
Section 1201 is set to be amended by HR 2281, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I'm not sure what the current status of this act is, and whether or not it has or will be signed into law by the president. The key relevant provision under the new law would appear to be (a)(2):
and section (b)(1), in which 'controls access' is relaced with 'protects a right of a copyright owner'Some questions:
I suspect what Nick has written is exactly what Derek's lawyers told him in the UK -- back down, and quick. But what would happen to somebody in the similar position in the US, eg as regards either (a) publishing the analysis of CSS, (b) writing the code, (c) hosting the CVS server, (d) co-ordinating the overall effort, or (e) including player in a linux distro ? The relevant law appears to be 17 USC ch.12 sec.1201, but unfortunately this is not currently up on the Cornell LII site. Section 1201 is set to be amended by HR 2281, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I'm not sure what the current status of this act is, and whether or not it has or will be signed into law by the president. The key relevant provision under the new law would appear to be (a)(2): (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that-- `(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; `(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or `(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. and section (b)(1), in which 'controls access' is relaced with 'protects a right of a copyright owner' Some questions: What does 'provide technology' mean ? Does software code count as technology ? What about technical descriptions of CSS ? Do people still have a first amendment right to discuss CSS and write not-for-profit de-CSS code ? According to subsection (c)(4) below: `(4) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products. Does a commercial ISP who allows such code to be published on their server trafficking in a service ? Or do they count as a free press ? Does a linux distro which includes a DVD player allowing a disc to be viewed on screen circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title (ignoring any patent issues) ? Would it make any difference if the code was binary only ? And finally, haven't these lawyers ever heard of writing laws for easy maintenance and reliability ?? The control flow in (a)(1) has to be worse than anything I've seen in a Perl program! But I wonder, do you think we could get the Librarian of Congress to declare an exception under (a)(1), regarding the current poor availability for use of copyright works under Linux, to allow the situation to be improved ?
For example, according to Itelco, who have supplied a number of 8-VSB transmitters:
"Broadcasters who have purchased 8-VSB modulators can retrofit their transmitters with COFDM circuitry if necessary. Itelco's digital systems use programmable digital signal processors that can be reprogrammed to transmit COFDM."
So changing to COFDM may well just be a firmware change. But even in the worst case Sinclair are saying that a change to COFDM should cost broadcasters no more than $20,000.
Also, note that Sinclair are not petitioning to force broadcasters to change to COFDM -- they are petitioning for broadcasters to be allowed to use COFDM if they choose to do so.
Both 8-VSB and COFDM are designed to minimise co-channel interference -- very much less interference than NTSC (in fact they are being broadcast between existing NTSC channels without upsetting them).
As for switching to COFDM, you can rule that out in the top 11 markets, which have already built transmission systems for 8VSB. I suppose the systems could be modified, but in all liklihood, the cost would be close to purchasing all new equipment. Not gonna happen. Maybe the smaller markets can build agile or go COFDM, which would in fact complicate reception quite a bit.
Many digital transmitters are effectively dual standard (including all those bought by Sinclair, no surprise), and can change from 8-VSB to COFDM at the flick of a switch.
The others would need some hardware modules changed -- but the cost of a switch is only a few thousand dollars. COFDM is a more valuable standard for data-casting, so this would be recouped quite easily.
Apart from reception quality, the main difference is that the European DVB standard is a lot more flexible in how it lets you configure the bandwidth and the error correction between different services running in the same 6 MHz channel multiplex.
The bandwidth is there, same as ASTC, to run an HDTV channel. Australia in particular is mandating HDTV content over DVB from its broadcasters. But what the broadcasters in Oz think will make the DVB standard really pay are the possibilities for datacasting over some of the bandwidth -- and there is a huge plus in being able to datacast to people on the move.
COFDM is a much more rugged standard for mobile reception -- remember that very cute thinkpad sized combined TV/data terminal/GSM phone from Nokia. Mobile reception is easy with COFDM, but not possible with 8-VSB; in fact it's hard enough with the ATSC standard even to get good static reception.
This article by Craig Birkmaier does a particularly good job comparing the two standards, and brings out the exciting possibilities for a combined mobile data/TV/phone system.
It really depends how bad the picture is that you see on analogue TV at the moment. If the major problem is 'ghosting', ie spurious extra images caused by multiple reflection paths off the mountains, COFDM is particularly good at sorting these out to achieve constructive interference between the different paths.
If the major problem is 'snow', a signal amplifier box can help, just like for analogue TV. But if there's too much snow, this will destroy the digital signal.
One other trick with COFDM is that the TV company can add additional transmitters on the same frequency to sort out reception blackspots. With analogue signals this would just cause particularly bad destructive interference, and would be a Bad Idea. But because COFMM can make the two signals interfere constructively, this opens the door to networks of transmitters all on the same frequency.
This article by Craig Birkmaier is very good on COFDM vs 8-VSB generally, and covers the possibility of Single Frequency Networks in a bit more detail.
Mostly the boxes (and transmitters) are made by exactly the same manufacturers.
For a lot of the transmitters, switching from 8-VSB to CODFM would just be a firmware patch, requiring no hardware changes at all.
As for the reception, with so many COFDM systems already in volume production in the rest of the world, I would be surprised if it took longer than about 3 months to get boxes into the shops.
To grant Sinclair's petition would if anything be likely to accelerate consumer uptake, and accelerate the transition to digital.
http://www.sbgi.net/dtv/support.htm
This is why Sinclair are so desperate to have COFDM -- for most of each market it doesn't need a roof antenna. 8-VSB not only needs the roof antenna, but you have to rotate the antenna round to point at different TV towers when you change channels.
Exactly. Sinclair etc are petitioning to be allowed the choice of which format to broadcast in. For more details (and who to write to if you want to support them), see http://www.sbgi.net/dtv/.
Dual standard boxes could be on the market within 3 months of any decision -- after all, it's the same manufacturers making the boxes for both markets.
Devices designed to circumvent copy-protection
296
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection, as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
Not correct.
The difference is that in the US the author is in the clear unless the plaintiff can prove that the author knew the statement was false and published regardless.
In the UK the burden of proof is reversed: the author has to prove that their statement is true; moreover it is not a defence merely that they had reasonable grounds to believe it at the time.
This of course makes libel very much harder for the author to defend. But trying to prove the truth of their statements did enable the McLibel defendants to force McDonalds to disclose an enormous pile of embarrassing documents.
Other defences are fair comment on a matter of public interest, and certain other exemptions such as parliamentary privilege.
Could this be the first pricking of the e-commerce bubble ?
Or is it just, as the Register claimed, that Levi's couldn't ever get both legs to be the same length ?
(see above)
5,668,989 is for storing the decade digit as binary coded decimal, so 1905 -> 0x0005, 2005 -> 0x0A05.
5,806,063 is indeed the windowing patent given to McDonnell Douglas, as I posted.
Even more staggering, if anything, is 5,630,118. It just says "give it to a subroutine to decide" -- any subroutine!
Here is the full text from the USPTO server.
It really is as simple as it sounds. Quite unbelievable.
Still time to support Sinclair Broadcasting's petition on COFDM for digital TV.