> There needs to be some way to ensure that money changes hands.
Yes. However, I want to be sure that I can still read the book after my original hardware broke or I replaced it with a newer model from another manufacturer. And even if the publisher and the producer of the reader have gone ot of business.
When there is a standard for e-books that ensures I can keep reading em, I'm willing to pay.
There's no monopoly. However a few companies now control the vast majority of media outlets in the US.
If you'd follow the news, you would have stumbled upon some articles mentioning this, because the FCC currently plans to further deregulate the market.
If you'd followed the news even more closely, you'd also have read about a little scandal about 2500 sponsored flight tickets for FCC members.
After short googling, this article seems to be quite informative: http://www.corpwatch.org/issu es/PID.jsp?articleid= 6850
> Not that VM sharing wouldn't be nice to have, but for the typical uses of java, like server applications or IDE's, 10-20 seconds to start is no problem at all.
Which is an interesting observation in itself. If you remember, Java was once called Oak and was planned to be used on embedded devices. Then the internet hype began, it was renamed to Java, and marketed for internet-centric applications with an emphasis on the client.
Java didn't cut it on the embedded market (although some smartphones sport Java ME as a little extra). Java didn't cut it on internet clients. It has now found a small nieche on enterprise servers.
And your comment makes it sound as if Java was designed for that nieche and other targets wouldn't matter at all.
> It is also true that copyright only lasts for a certain length of time after which a work is freely reproduceable.
The copyright expires after 95(?) years. But when a book hasn't been published for 95 years, it will be forgotten. And if a DVD hasn't been copied for 95 years the information will be physically lost. Also it will still be encrypted and you still aren't allowed to work around the encryption. If the original isn't entrusted to something like a library in unencrypted format, it is likely to be lost.
>And if we look back over history, the important stuff is constantly reproduced in the latest modern formats.
And if you look back over history, you'll find that our knowledge over past epochs and cultures is most depended on storage media. If people wrote on clay tablets, we still have their works. If they wrote on papyrus, we hardly know anything about their culture.
Stuff like Mozart isn't really old, and it's some of a few works that still appeals to people of our culture. And I'm not sure whether his works would still be known if they had only been available on encrypted DVDs and with a copyright of 95 years.
Isn't the poor artist that only gets posthumus fame proverbial? What happens if his works aren't immedeately popular and a company owns the rights to the works of his life for the next 95 years?
I'm replying to my own post because I want to address several similar replies.
First of all, you assume that an author keeps his copyrights. AFAIK this is often not true. In the music industry, the artists usually do sell their copyrights to the labels (correct me if I'm wrong). Also copyrights are problematic for collaborative efforts. Think of how computer games are created. The artists and programmers are not the ones who can decide about the future of their games.
Now what happens when the publisher goes out of business and the last copyprotected DVD is scratched? The work is likely to be lost. In many cases no one really knows who owns the copyrights anymore. You may not care that I wasn't able to get a replacement for my copyprotected floppy of StuntCar Racer. It certainly is not anything remotely on the scale of killing millions of people.
But more and more important information gets published in electronic and copyprotected form. Librarians must be able to preserve it. I want people to be able to make money with their works. But I do also want these works to become PD before they're completely forgotten.
This does also apply to my own works. Authors do want their works to live on.
> Hitler killing 6 million Jews and 4 million non-Jews is a "crime against humanity".
Exactly. Murdering people is a crime against the victims, their friends and their family. Murdering millions is an unimagineable crime. But what makes it a crime against humanity as well as one against humans is this: The Nazis attempted to wipe out an entire race with all their genes and their unique culture.
A society that restricts the spread of information and ideas hampers cultural progress massively. And making it illegal to transfer our knowledge and works of art to reliable media and new display platforms will deny future generations their cultural heritage.
Our culture, our knowledge, all our achievements will be lost to our children. This is a crime against humanity, too.
Over in Germany, we use some of the least advanced voting machinery imagineable. Paper and pencil. Votes are counted by hand, with peer review, faxed in and published in detail in the newspapers.
So far we didn't have any real problems with fraud, ambiguous votes or anything like that. And the results are usually in by the evening or the next day.We have like 70 million inhabitants and I don't see a reason why this shouldn't scale up.
So is there any real reason to replace that with a system that is not transparent and where you have to blindly trust some tech companies?
Read up the case of Enercon (producer of wind power plants).
They thought that they had such a lead that they wouldn't need to rely on patents. Then another company patented Enercons innovations and sued for infringement. That company has AFAIK gone out of business. But as a result of an unfair trial, Enercon was disallowed to sell to the US for ten years.
I think patents are getting abused to a point where it would be better to get rid of them entirely. But you can't opt out.
There exist quite a number of PRT systems that could give us car free cities.
I think Taxi 2000 has the most mature concepts. The Ultra concept is also interesting, mostly because it can make some use of existing streets. They also have a neat test track.
In most cases, the hardware and its limitations can be simulated.
I don't know about AI. But if you want to build a robot, you cannot test the software only on a simulator. You build into it all the distortions and hazards that you think you'll have in a physical environment. And when you transfer the software, nothing will work. Because beforehand, you never have a complete grasp of the problems you'll encounter. This happened times and times and times again.
If you want to build an autonomous robot, begin with the hardware. Give it some fast and simple reflexes. And when everything works, you can begin to move to higher levels of recognition.
> As a comparison approximately 129 soldiers have > died in Iraq out of approximately 150,000.
Surely you mean 129 soldiers of the USA and UK have died? I've never seen any reliable estimates, but housands of Iraqi soldiers have also died. (And unlike US and UK troops, most of them were pressed into service.)
I've seen the new Jukebox Multimedia that was presented at the CeBit fair. It ships with a 320x240 screen like the Zaurus.
But unlike the screen of the Zaurus, it has really good colors and contrast. I think it'll be quite enjoyable to watch even a full length movie on those.:-)
I think those new boxes will ship within Q2.
Wasn't far reaching enough for the FDP
on
DMCA, Auf Deutsch
·
· Score: 1
It's sad to note that the FDP (our "liberal" patry) didn't vote for this bill, because it was not far reaching enough. According to them it limits the rights of copyright owners over their product too much.
Don't do exercises. I don't do exercises because I know I can't keep them up.
The way to keep it up is to make it fun. Go easy, don't expect too much. Try dancing or inline skating or anything that you'll likely enjoy. Don't excercise alone.
Slashdot Mirror
> There needs to be some way to ensure that money changes hands.
Yes. However, I want to be sure that I can still read the book
after my original hardware broke or I replaced it with a newer
model from another manufacturer. And even if the publisher and
the producer of the reader have gone ot of business.
When there is a standard for e-books that ensures I can keep
reading em, I'm willing to pay.
3.3 megapixels is for the camera module.
You can view your snapshots on the inbuilt
screen (320x240) or on TV (640x480), or
transfer them to a PC.
The inbuilt LCD screen has a resolution of 320x240.
And when you attach the device to a TV screen, you
get "near DVD quality".
Don't nail me down on this, but I think you get
something like 640x480 and 25fps.
PS: I had a chance to look at it, and the inbuilt
screen is excellent.
> I only found such pleasure with the Zaurus Qt API... a long, long time later.
I can't agree. I too have coded for BeOS and am now working with Qtopia.
Qt/E shares most of the codebase with Qt/X and is inapropriate for handhelds.
I f.e. was a bit shocked when I saw that a simple QString has UTF16 coding
and an overhead of > 34 bytes.
There's no monopoly. However a few companies now
u es/PID.jsp?articleid= 6850
control the vast majority of media outlets in the US.
If you'd follow the news, you would have stumbled
upon some articles mentioning this, because the FCC
currently plans to further deregulate the market.
If you'd followed the news even more closely, you'd
also have read about a little scandal about 2500
sponsored flight tickets for FCC members.
After short googling, this article seems to be quite
informative:
http://www.corpwatch.org/iss
> Not that VM sharing wouldn't be nice to have, but for the typical uses of java, like server applications or IDE's, 10-20 seconds to start is no problem at all.
Which is an interesting observation in itself. If you remember, Java was once called Oak and was planned to be used on embedded devices.
Then the internet hype began, it was renamed to Java, and marketed for internet-centric applications with an emphasis on the client.
Java didn't cut it on the embedded market (although some smartphones sport Java ME as a little extra). Java didn't cut it on internet clients. It has now found a small nieche on enterprise servers.
And your comment makes it sound as if Java was designed for that nieche and other targets wouldn't matter at all.
> It is also true that copyright only lasts for a certain length of time after which a work is freely reproduceable.
The copyright expires after 95(?) years. But when a book hasn't been published for 95 years, it will be forgotten. And if a DVD hasn't been copied for 95 years the information will be physically lost. Also it will still be encrypted and you still aren't allowed to work around the encryption.
If the original isn't entrusted to something like a library in unencrypted format, it is likely to be lost.
>And if we look back over history, the important stuff is constantly reproduced in the latest modern formats.
And if you look back over history, you'll find that our knowledge over past epochs and cultures is most depended on storage media. If people wrote on clay tablets, we still have their works. If they wrote on papyrus, we hardly know anything about their culture.
Stuff like Mozart isn't really old, and it's some of a few works that still appeals to people of our culture. And I'm not sure whether his works would still be known if they had only been available on encrypted DVDs and with a copyright of 95 years.
Isn't the poor artist that only gets posthumus fame proverbial? What happens if his works aren't immedeately popular and a company owns the rights to the works of his life for the next 95 years?
I'm replying to my own post because I want to address several similar replies.
First of all, you assume that an author keeps his copyrights. AFAIK this is often not true. In the music industry, the artists usually do sell their copyrights to the labels (correct me if I'm wrong).
Also copyrights are problematic for collaborative efforts. Think of how computer games are created. The artists and programmers are not the ones who can decide about the future of their games.
Now what happens when the publisher goes out of business and the last copyprotected DVD is scratched?
The work is likely to be lost. In many cases no one really knows who owns the copyrights anymore.
You may not care that I wasn't able to get a replacement for my copyprotected floppy of StuntCar Racer. It certainly is not anything remotely on the scale of killing millions of people.
But more and more important information gets published in electronic and copyprotected form. Librarians must be able to preserve it. I want people to be able to make money with their works. But I do also want these works to become PD before they're completely forgotten.
This does also apply to my own works. Authors do want their works to live on.
> Hitler killing 6 million Jews and 4 million non-Jews is a "crime against humanity".
Exactly. Murdering people is a crime against the victims, their friends and their family. Murdering millions is an unimagineable crime.
But what makes it a crime against humanity as well as one against humans is this: The Nazis attempted to wipe out an entire race with all their genes and their unique culture.
A society that restricts the spread of information and ideas hampers cultural progress massively. And making it illegal to transfer our knowledge and works of art to reliable media and new display platforms will deny future generations their cultural heritage.
Our culture, our knowledge, all our achievements will be lost to our children. This is a crime against humanity, too.
Over in Germany, we use some of the least advanced voting machinery
imagineable. Paper and pencil. Votes are counted by hand, with peer
review, faxed in and published in detail in the newspapers.
So far we didn't have any real problems with fraud, ambiguous votes or
anything like that. And the results are usually in by the evening or the next
day.We have like 70 million inhabitants and I don't see a reason why this
shouldn't scale up.
So is there any real reason to replace that with a system that is not
transparent and where you have to blindly trust some tech companies?
Read up the case of Enercon (producer of wind power plants).
They thought that they had such a lead that they wouldn't need to rely on patents.
Then another company patented Enercons innovations and sued for infringement. That company has AFAIK
gone out of business. But as a result of an unfair trial, Enercon was disallowed to sell to the US for ten years.
I think patents are getting abused to a point where it would be better to get rid of them entirely. But you can't opt out.
There exist quite a number of PRT systems that could give us car free cities.
I think Taxi 2000 has the most mature concepts.
The Ultra concept is also interesting, mostly because it
can make some use of existing streets. They also have a neat test track.
In most cases, the hardware and its limitations can be simulated.
I don't know about AI. But if you want to build a robot, you cannot test the software only on a simulator.
You build into it all the distortions and hazards that you think you'll have in a physical environment.
And when you transfer the software, nothing will work. Because beforehand, you never have a complete
grasp of the problems you'll encounter. This happened times and times and times again.
If you want to build an autonomous robot, begin with the hardware. Give it some fast and simple reflexes.
And when everything works, you can begin to move to higher levels of recognition.
> As a comparison approximately 129 soldiers have
> died in Iraq out of approximately 150,000.
Surely you mean 129 soldiers of the USA and UK have
died?
I've never seen any reliable estimates, but housands
of Iraqi soldiers have also died. (And unlike US and
UK troops, most of them were pressed into service.)
Please note that Copyleft is currently sued over
their t-shirts with DeCSS source code on them.
I think the code in this case does not have that
"functional aspect".
> Why don't all the countries come together to
> eliminate spam like they did with nuclear bombs?
In other news, the first plutonium pits since 13 years ago were just produced inside the USA.
(A plutonium pit is the core of a nuclear warhead.)
Well - we wrote an AAC decoder based on libfaad2
for the Zaurus. But I'm not sure whether one is
openly available.
However this won't help you a bit. Apples DRM will
likely make sure that files purchased from them
will only run on Apples hardware.
In other news, Apple will soon introduce the
service for European customers. Prices are
expected to be in the range of E 1.50 per song.
(This is sarcasm.)
(Ok, slashdot is not the place to ask this.)
But don't the USA have laws against racism and discrimination that might apply?
simple
You don't leave your door unlocked, do you?
OpenBSD is too secure for DARPAs liking and doesn't seem to contain backdoors?
With that kind of recommendation, I consider switching my server software to OpenBSD.
I've seen the new Jukebox Multimedia that was
:-)
presented at the CeBit fair. It ships with a
320x240 screen like the Zaurus.
But unlike the screen of the Zaurus, it has
really good colors and contrast. I think it'll
be quite enjoyable to watch even a full length
movie on those.
I think those new boxes will ship within Q2.
It's sad to note that the FDP (our "liberal" patry) didn't vote for this bill, because it was not far reaching enough. According to them it limits the rights of copyright owners over their product too much.
Don't do exercises. I don't do exercises because I know I can't keep them up.
The way to keep it up is to make it fun. Go easy, don't expect too much.
Try dancing or inline skating or anything that you'll likely enjoy.
Don't excercise alone.