How many more years more will it take for people to get the point? Intellectual property is not property. If I stole your lawn mower, you can press charges for theft. If I released a book you made about Scientology and its impact on western civilization, you can sue me for copyright infringement. That's how it should be in any sane country. Throwing IP violations into criminal court is doing nothing but wasting tax dollars on private matters. That money (court and paying people to monitor that one person for that spit of a violation) could have been better spent to help build a new jail or courthouse. It makes me sad to think I'm throwing away money just so a few well-off companies can have fewer costs.
There sure is! We'll get a seer to predict the outcome of each election and compare it to the results. If they don't match, we'll give the seer the benefit of the doubt. Really, other than counting ballots the old fashioned way and the new way of having machines count them out, what do you propose? I'm all for paper myself, as paper ballots are much harder to forge en masse. It may take longer and more people, but I wouldn't mind a little extra out of the budget helping to determine the next four years.
Somewhat off-topic, two other things that I think would do wonders to improve the current system would be educational programs in schools to increase voter turn-out and doing away with the party system; the current red/blue way of thinking is just ridiculous.
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather live in a small apartment than a prison. Just look at all the changes over the last eight years in the US. All it would take to screw a country over for decades would be a few bad leaders.
I agree with most of what you said on patents, though I feel the owner should have the full 5-7 years to produce a product. As for copyrights, I feel that they should last 20-40 years for long books and 10-20 years for more 'disposable' works such as 3D models, music, films, and software, with unaltered or slightly altered photographs and instructional works ineligible for copyright. After the copyright expires, the author should merely be required to publish the source of the last five major revisions with all following revisions getting a mere three years to encourage fast development (in the case of software), lyrics and notes for music, with the owners of movie copyrights only having to declare something is public domain and the authors/publishers of books providing the raw text or an ODF copy.
The copyright holder should not be required to release a full movie or song. These things make their way around just fine on the torrent trackers.
2. Patent to be supported by product within a period of 3 years. It is the responsibility of the patent holder to provide proof that a product that was created by his patent has been made after 3 years. This product has to be a) made by the patent holder or b) the patent holder has given license to the company which creates it. Otherwise the patent lapses. This would again take care of the patent trolls + help actual good inventions
But why would I bother paying for licensing if I could just wait three years? I could just look on Google for good products that are reasonably easy to manufacture, then start manufacturing it and patent it myself. Or would it fall into public domain afterwards? (Do expired patents count as prior art if they weren't used for anything?)
If the mods would wake up and mod the original opportunist offtopic, which he is in the context of that thread, I think we'd see a lot more thread diversity around here.
I don't think a discussion about semi-frozen urine in a mug would last too long.
So it's unethical to make up the losses incurred by paying people (or taking hours to days out of my life I could use to make money through other means) to write a useful program that a handful of people want but don't want to pay for? The cost isn't just in pressing CDs and running servers to download copies from. I might torrent Torque, but I'm not putting some philosophical spin on it to argue that not paying for a decent codebase is a natural human right. If you're so tied up on ethics, think of the time that went into making the programs you use. By not complying with the author's terms, you're committing partial murder.
On another note, what's your take on bookstores, anyway?
Well it's not like anyone would report seeing a rock in a large truck driving down the street. I doubt the place was guarding something that huge, either. Would you expect a house to be stolen?
There's absolutely no point in embedding virtualization with desktop servers for home users.
I take it you've never written any code for more than one OS, then? Also, keep in mind that OS X 10.4.5 (x86 builds) on are heavily dependent on an EFI chip. What if I wanted to use OS X without paying the white plastic fee? (Let's not get into a Mac price argument here.) There might not always be a situation where I can find someone with a Mac to test something for me.
Unless there's some way to assign a penalty that really hurts or put a stop to their abuse of the legal system altogether they will continue to sue even if they lose almost every case.
Countersuits are one way to deal with this. Though, I imagine most people just want to get everything over than enter another legal battle. (I'm in favor of some government-enforced penalty for frivolous lawsuits, but I'm sure most of the money taken would go to finding a rigid definition of the word 'stupid'.)
I don't think a regular gas giant would be too hospitable, either. (On a slightly related note, wouldn't the object you described be a dwarf star, rather than a planet?)
But then again, maybe not. I know people who pay more for bottled water price-per-gallon than gasoline... and they complain about the price of gasoline.
Then again, people don't drink more than maybe a gallon a day. Even those people who obsessively overhydrate can only get in two gallons or so before ending up dead or in the hospital. You might spend several hundred on gas alone during a long trip, while I can pick up enough water to last me a week (the tapwater here has a rusty taste to it, so I'm not too crazy about drinking it) for ~$10.
I never said anything was wrong with that; just that it's stupid to use it as a selling point, when it's primarily due to their low market share.
Macs DON'T GET VIRUSES. There were some for OS 9, but there are none (beyond a few "proofs-of-concept") for OS X. NONE.
Funny, I could have sworn that's what the article was about.
Strange how you jump from viruses to worms, btw.
A worm is a virus that propagates over a network, not much of a stretch. Really, at least read the title.
OS X is very much like Linux, and very much unlike Windows,
Technically true, since it's based off of UNIX, but...
where with the former, you know the potential almost certainly exists for your machine to be hacked into, but it's just not something you have to worry much about, while with the latter, if you aren't taking proactive measures to protect your system, you are taking a huge risk.
...that's a steaming load, unless you're only talking about the people who regularly google "free __" and constantly download email attachments. The only serious fault in any modern OS is that idiotproofing them is nigh impossible. You can't just open the command line and type in "own *.*.*.* on port *".
Modding someone flamebait is usually a way to say you disagree without taking the time to write a response. Anyway, I'll have to say the AC hit the nail on the head here. I think it has more to do with the 'Macs don't get viruses.' ads we see every now and then. We've just come to expect this kind of thing from Windows (although there was quite a bit of acrid comments after MS boldly claimed Vista wouldn't even need an AV in the hands of the average newbie). Linux/*BSD get their fair share of worms, but also have legions of nerdy fanboys to fix vulnerabilities, and no one important foolishly calls them impenetrable. Most of us just hate to see software companies get so damn cocky.
You mean like how MS crippled the stack in SP2 by lowering the cap on half-open connections to 10 to slow worm propagation? (I know there are times when a solution isn't always immediately obvious, but I'd rather not have my OS force me to live in a bubble.)
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How many more years more will it take for people to get the point? Intellectual property is not property. If I stole your lawn mower, you can press charges for theft. If I released a book you made about Scientology and its impact on western civilization, you can sue me for copyright infringement.
That's how it should be in any sane country. Throwing IP violations into criminal court is doing nothing but wasting tax dollars on private matters. That money (court and paying people to monitor that one person for that spit of a violation) could have been better spent to help build a new jail or courthouse. It makes me sad to think I'm throwing away money just so a few well-off companies can have fewer costs.
Maybe.
I think that's the reasoning behind modding the GGP redundant. (Though I find it rather harsh, myself.)
Really, other than counting ballots the old fashioned way and the new way of having machines count them out, what do you propose? I'm all for paper myself, as paper ballots are much harder to forge en masse. It may take longer and more people, but I wouldn't mind a little extra out of the budget helping to determine the next four years.
Somewhat off-topic, two other things that I think would do wonders to improve the current system would be educational programs in schools to increase voter turn-out and doing away with the party system; the current red/blue way of thinking is just ridiculous.
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather live in a small apartment than a prison. Just look at all the changes over the last eight years in the US. All it would take to screw a country over for decades would be a few bad leaders.
I agree with most of what you said on patents, though I feel the owner should have the full 5-7 years to produce a product.
As for copyrights, I feel that they should last 20-40 years for long books and 10-20 years for more 'disposable' works such as 3D models, music, films, and software, with unaltered or slightly altered photographs and instructional works ineligible for copyright.
After the copyright expires, the author should merely be required to publish the source of the last five major revisions with all following revisions getting a mere three years to encourage fast development (in the case of software), lyrics and notes for music, with the owners of movie copyrights only having to declare something is public domain and the authors/publishers of books providing the raw text or an ODF copy.
The copyright holder should not be required to release a full movie or song. These things make their way around just fine on the torrent trackers.
But why would I bother paying for licensing if I could just wait three years? I could just look on Google for good products that are reasonably easy to manufacture, then start manufacturing it and patent it myself. Or would it fall into public domain afterwards? (Do expired patents count as prior art if they weren't used for anything?)
You'd also have to prove that you did nothing but leech content from others (no uploading).
What's wrong with clinging to a troll FP? There was no topic there to stray from. It's not like there's a '-1, cheater' moderation.
So it's unethical to make up the losses incurred by paying people (or taking hours to days out of my life I could use to make money through other means) to write a useful program that a handful of people want but don't want to pay for? The cost isn't just in pressing CDs and running servers to download copies from. I might torrent Torque, but I'm not putting some philosophical spin on it to argue that not paying for a decent codebase is a natural human right.
If you're so tied up on ethics, think of the time that went into making the programs you use. By not complying with the author's terms, you're committing partial murder.
On another note, what's your take on bookstores, anyway?
Well it's not like anyone would report seeing a rock in a large truck driving down the street. I doubt the place was guarding something that huge, either. Would you expect a house to be stolen?
Wouldn't rain have eroded it quite a bit by now?
Don't be ridiculous! Everything was reverse-engineered from Megatron.
DARPATech Shows off Robot Doc and Cancer Breathalyzer
Looks like it would have fit. But really, what's the problem? We all know what it means by now.
"Dude, you're gettin' a Cray!"
That would be rather easy to remove, though; making it easy to avoid the kind of situation the GGP was talking about.
I don't think a regular gas giant would be too hospitable, either. (On a slightly related note, wouldn't the object you described be a dwarf star, rather than a planet?)
I never said anything was wrong with that; just that it's stupid to use it as a selling point, when it's primarily due to their low market share.
Funny, I could have sworn that's what the article was about.
A worm is a virus that propagates over a network, not much of a stretch. Really, at least read the title.
Technically true, since it's based off of UNIX, but...
Modding someone flamebait is usually a way to say you disagree without taking the time to write a response.
Anyway, I'll have to say the AC hit the nail on the head here. I think it has more to do with the 'Macs don't get viruses.' ads we see every now and then. We've just come to expect this kind of thing from Windows (although there was quite a bit of acrid comments after MS boldly claimed Vista wouldn't even need an AV in the hands of the average newbie). Linux/*BSD get their fair share of worms, but also have legions of nerdy fanboys to fix vulnerabilities, and no one important foolishly calls them impenetrable. Most of us just hate to see software companies get so damn cocky.
You mean like how MS crippled the stack in SP2 by lowering the cap on half-open connections to 10 to slow worm propagation? (I know there are times when a solution isn't always immediately obvious, but I'd rather not have my OS force me to live in a bubble.)
Well then it's free...for him.