When Apple introduces eye-candy, they use it sparingly themselves, and make a great API and developer tools so developers can also use it in their apps.
Linux eye-candy seems to hit a dead end, where all it gets used for is for the original project that developed it to see how many different flashy effects they can make.
The Linux projects need to realize that it is not about the flashy eye-candy itself--it's about providing more capabilities to application developers.
Nintendo used an interesting strategy. They basically conceded that the Gamecube controllers and Wii Classic controller infringed, and concentrated on making sure that only those would be found to infringe. The Wii remote was also accused, and their goal was to keep that from being found to infringe.
Judge Clark commented on this when denying Nintendo's motion for remittitur:
It appears to the court that Nintendo made some skillfully calculated decisions regarding trial tactics to protect the Wii Nunchuk with Remote. Sales revenue to date from the Wii Nunchuk totals more than the revenue from the other three products combined. In terms of an on-going royalty or compulsory license, that is where substantial future damages would have been. Having virtually admitted that three 'old school' products infringe, and having made no serious attempt to rebut Anascape's damage calculations, Nintendo is not in a good position to argue that the jury's verdict is the result of passion or prejudice, or even that it is disproportionate to the injury sustained.
Sales are not going to stop. Nintendo will, of course, either post a bond or put the royalties in an escrow account, and continue on manufacturing the infringing items while they appeal. If they win on appeal, they get the money back. If they lose, they pay it, and pay a reasonable royalty from then on, or change the design of their devices to not infringe.
Loser pays is great if you don't give a dang about civil rights, or are in Europe. Let me elaborate
In Europe, where loser pays is widespread, they don't use the courts to enforce civil rights. They do it via government bureaucracy. So, if you have a problem with discrimination in hiring, or housing, or something like that, you go to the appropriate government agency, and they take care of you.
In the US, we generally don't do it that way. Instead, our civil rights laws make it so that if you think your civil rights were violated, you can sue the alleged violator.
Loser pays here would throw a big wrench into that, as poor people whose rights are violated would not want to take the risk. Even if you have a good case, you still might lose, and if your opponent is a big company, they might have racked up some pretty big legal expenses.
On the off chance that someone might like actual information about this, instead of the random uninformed speculation most people seem to be basing their comments on, here is the official FAQ for this proposed law.
To anybody that has even the most basic understanding of how technology works, that sounds downright RETARDED
You've got that completely backwards. To anyone who has even the most basic understanding of the technology, it is obvious that a copy has been made when digital data is loaded into RAM. If we tried to say that was not a copy, then we'd have to explain why loading into, say, a Flash drive IS a copy (else distributing copyrighted material on Flash drives would be legal). Same for loading into ROM. The law, or the courts, would have to end up making all kinds of subtle and arbitrary distinctions.
The right approach, which is what was done, was to say that yes, loading into RAM makes a copy, and then put an exception in copyright law that says this is OK, because of the PURPOSE of making the copy. That's section 117 of the Copyright Act in the US.
That link shows how out of touch the FSF is with reality. Let's look at each of their points.
No free software. So? Using it just as it came out of the box, it is a far better phone than any other phone I've had.
It can play DRM media. Since they would not have any DRM media to play, how is this a problem for them? Are they under the mistaken impression that it can ONLY play media that has DRM?
It exposes your whereabouts. They don't say on what they base this claim.
Won't play patent-free and DRM-free formats. Simply wrong. It plays WAV and AIFF files. Note also that MP3 is an ISO standard, and a de facto standard. The formats FSF recommends have not been submitted for standardization. Based on their rhetoric in other areas (such as document formats), it is vital to support standards, and avoid non-standards. Oops.
FreeRunner. Hahahaha. Oh, they are serious? They seem to overlook that when people buy a phone, they want something that actually functions well as a phone.
How far do you take this? If you are using one of those free-only distributions that gnu.org lists, you still are probably using non-free software. There are very likely microprocessors in your mouse, your keyboard, and your monitor, all of which are probably running closed, proprietary software.
How come choosing a keyboard based on functionality only, ignoring freedom, is evidently fine with them, but the FSF doesn't want us to do that for, say, video cards, cell phones, and software?
The first impression I get, after a quick skim of the article, is that it sounds like they are having the same kind of problems with KDE 4 acceptance that Microsoft is having with Vista. Their users like the previous version a lot, don't see the value of the changes, and so on.
No real world implementation exists, so anyone who wants to actually use a standard is still going to have to use ODF
Office implements OOXML. It has some minor deviations from the standard, but it is closer to the OOXML standard than OpenOffice is to the ODF standard, as measured by the number of validation errors you get if you validate real-world documents against the schema for the two specs.
Of course they "only" give away 10%. That's what most charitable foundations do. Do the math. If you give away 100%, it is game over. If you invest, earn 10%, and give that away, then in 10 years, you've given away 100% of the original endowment. In 20 years, you've given away 200%. And so on.
Could you please explain why you think giving away 100% quickly and shutting the doors is better than giving away 10% a year forever?
One of the things the Foundation does is run the investment side and the giving side separately. That is, the investment side has a big pile of money, and their job is to invest it the same way any other group with a giant pile would invest, to generate maximal revenue. The giving side then gives away the profits from that.
Result: the investment side of the Foundation invests in some companies that RMS thinks help cause some of the problems the giving side tries to solve, or at least harm the people the Foundation is trying to help. He thinks this is a problem.
Most of us here on Slashdot have similar investments, of course. The companies the Foundation invests in that are doing harm are most likely part of most of 401k investments and our mutual fund investments.
Many or all of these things are already punishable by death in Iran if you do them without the internet. Go over there and start distributing literature trying to convert people from Islam to another religion, and you've got a potential date with the executioner.
Hence, it is not blogging that they are making punishable by death. They are simply closing a loophole that may have let yo escape punishment by using blogs instead of, say, print or radio.
If we are going to be upset, we should be upset at apostasy being a capital crime at all, not that they have noticed that blogs can be used for apostasy and are closing that loophole.
I'm going to use US copyright law in this comment, but I believe other countries have similar provisions.
US copyright law says that the owner of a particular copy of a program can make modifications to the program in order to adapt it for use on his machine, without violating copyright. The case law has interpreted this to include modifications beyond just what is necessary to make the program run--it includes adding features if those features are necessary for what you are trying to use the program for. See 17 USC 117 for the statute itself.
Section 9 of AGPL says this:
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
But what is modifying? That is defined in section 0:
To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a "modified version" of the earlier work or a work "based on" the earlier work.
Because of 17 USC 117, and the interpretation of the scope of that in the case law, most use of AGPL software in a software as a service environment will NOT involve "modifying" the software as defined by AGPL, and you won't be required to make your changes available.
If it is used for defensive measures, it is a sign of the patent system working as intended. Someone invents something and gets a patent. Others who are interested in practicing that invention obtain permission from the inventor. In this case, they do so by acquiring the patent for money.
Because the display is not back lit. The technology it uses is called e-ink. Here's how Wikipedia describes the technology:
The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule to become visible to the reader. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.
To view an e-ink display, you illuminate it from the front, and view the reflected light, just like you would for ink printed on paper. Hence, the utility of a reading light when you want to read it in the dark.
I'm sure they could have designed some kind of built-in front illumination, maybe even incorporated something like a Book Wedge light, but tastes in reading illumination vary a lot, so leaving it up to people to add their own book lights was probably the right choice.
So essentially your argument is that we have enough good movies and games now that we don't need to have any more? Where would you put the time at which the existing material was enough to be worth giving up on new stuff? Considering that some of the best games and movies are less than 10 years old, I find it hard to believe that we've reached the peak yet.
As far as costs go, why do you think not having to license or work around copyrighted material would cut much of the cost of making a movie or a game? It might save some costs for the score, but most movies want an original score. The costs are for things like sets, effects shots, costumes, travel to location shots, electricians, carpenters, and many many more--go read the complete credits of a major film. There are a LOT of people involved, and most of their work would be the same whether or not they are using or producing copyright work. Same for games--you've got artists designing characters, modelers making the models, animators, people designing levels, and things like that, and voice actors, and of course, programmers.
To give a concrete example, let's look at the latest Dreamworks movie. Here's what I count:
2 directors
4 writers
26 voice actors
4 producers
2 composers
1 cinematographer
1 editor
1 production designer
1 art director
6 production managers
11 person art department (1 sculptor, 7 visual development artists, 2 storyboard artists, and 1 art researcher)
17 sound people
110 or so visual effects people
40 animation people
2 people in casting
26 people for music
75 listed as 'other crew'
That's animated. How about a big more conventional movie? The new Hellboy movie looks like it has over 500 people in the credits.
Hell, Clerks, about as minimalist as you can get, has somewhere between 50 and 100 people listed.
Second, the legal system loves basing later decisions on prior landmark cases. this has just told every judge for the next fifty years that criminal punishment id ok for civil infractions
That's not how the law, or precedent, works. This was not a civil infraction.
Judges cannot impose criminal penalties for civil infraction. And if one did, it would not stand. Furthermore, it would not be precedent, since district courts do not set precedent.
I suggest you pick a few good games, and a few good movies, and take a good hard look at the complete credits.
It takes millions of dollars to get that many skilled people together for the time it takes to make a game or move. Can you make a concrete suggestion as to where the money for this would come from if every movie and game were immediately available for free to everyone? By concrete I mean an actual mechanism that would lead to anyone being willing to put up the tens of millions of dollars to produce these games and movies, not just the empty hand waving you gave above?
Slashdot Mirror
You are massively wrong. There has never been a DNS attack anywhere remotely as dangerous and effective as this one.
It is people making boneheaded statements like yours that make people think it is no big deal and they can put off patching.
When Apple introduces eye-candy, they use it sparingly themselves, and make a great API and developer tools so developers can also use it in their apps.
Linux eye-candy seems to hit a dead end, where all it gets used for is for the original project that developed it to see how many different flashy effects they can make.
The Linux projects need to realize that it is not about the flashy eye-candy itself--it's about providing more capabilities to application developers.
Nintendo used an interesting strategy. They basically conceded that the Gamecube controllers and Wii Classic controller infringed, and concentrated on making sure that only those would be found to infringe. The Wii remote was also accused, and their goal was to keep that from being found to infringe.
Judge Clark commented on this when denying Nintendo's motion for remittitur:
Nice rant. Now go read the patents in question, and feel real stupid.
Sales are not going to stop. Nintendo will, of course, either post a bond or put the royalties in an escrow account, and continue on manufacturing the infringing items while they appeal. If they win on appeal, they get the money back. If they lose, they pay it, and pay a reasonable royalty from then on, or change the design of their devices to not infringe.
US goes by invention date, not application date, so move that back somewhat.
Loser pays is great if you don't give a dang about civil rights, or are in Europe. Let me elaborate
In Europe, where loser pays is widespread, they don't use the courts to enforce civil rights. They do it via government bureaucracy. So, if you have a problem with discrimination in hiring, or housing, or something like that, you go to the appropriate government agency, and they take care of you.
In the US, we generally don't do it that way. Instead, our civil rights laws make it so that if you think your civil rights were violated, you can sue the alleged violator.
Loser pays here would throw a big wrench into that, as poor people whose rights are violated would not want to take the risk. Even if you have a good case, you still might lose, and if your opponent is a big company, they might have racked up some pretty big legal expenses.
When doing maintenance on someone else's code, use their style, even if it is one you hate.
This is a contender for dumbest statement in the history of security.
On the off chance that someone might like actual information about this, instead of the random uninformed speculation most people seem to be basing their comments on, here is the official FAQ for this proposed law.
You've got that completely backwards. To anyone who has even the most basic understanding of the technology, it is obvious that a copy has been made when digital data is loaded into RAM. If we tried to say that was not a copy, then we'd have to explain why loading into, say, a Flash drive IS a copy (else distributing copyrighted material on Flash drives would be legal). Same for loading into ROM. The law, or the courts, would have to end up making all kinds of subtle and arbitrary distinctions.
The right approach, which is what was done, was to say that yes, loading into RAM makes a copy, and then put an exception in copyright law that says this is OK, because of the PURPOSE of making the copy. That's section 117 of the Copyright Act in the US.
That link shows how out of touch the FSF is with reality. Let's look at each of their points.
No free software. So? Using it just as it came out of the box, it is a far better phone than any other phone I've had.
It can play DRM media. Since they would not have any DRM media to play, how is this a problem for them? Are they under the mistaken impression that it can ONLY play media that has DRM?
It exposes your whereabouts. They don't say on what they base this claim.
Won't play patent-free and DRM-free formats. Simply wrong. It plays WAV and AIFF files. Note also that MP3 is an ISO standard, and a de facto standard. The formats FSF recommends have not been submitted for standardization. Based on their rhetoric in other areas (such as document formats), it is vital to support standards, and avoid non-standards. Oops.
FreeRunner. Hahahaha. Oh, they are serious? They seem to overlook that when people buy a phone, they want something that actually functions well as a phone.
How far do you take this? If you are using one of those free-only distributions that gnu.org lists, you still are probably using non-free software. There are very likely microprocessors in your mouse, your keyboard, and your monitor, all of which are probably running closed, proprietary software.
How come choosing a keyboard based on functionality only, ignoring freedom, is evidently fine with them, but the FSF doesn't want us to do that for, say, video cards, cell phones, and software?
The first impression I get, after a quick skim of the article, is that it sounds like they are having the same kind of problems with KDE 4 acceptance that Microsoft is having with Vista. Their users like the previous version a lot, don't see the value of the changes, and so on.
Office implements OOXML. It has some minor deviations from the standard, but it is closer to the OOXML standard than OpenOffice is to the ODF standard, as measured by the number of validation errors you get if you validate real-world documents against the schema for the two specs.
Of course they "only" give away 10%. That's what most charitable foundations do. Do the math. If you give away 100%, it is game over. If you invest, earn 10%, and give that away, then in 10 years, you've given away 100% of the original endowment. In 20 years, you've given away 200%. And so on.
Could you please explain why you think giving away 100% quickly and shutting the doors is better than giving away 10% a year forever?
One of the things the Foundation does is run the investment side and the giving side separately. That is, the investment side has a big pile of money, and their job is to invest it the same way any other group with a giant pile would invest, to generate maximal revenue. The giving side then gives away the profits from that.
Result: the investment side of the Foundation invests in some companies that RMS thinks help cause some of the problems the giving side tries to solve, or at least harm the people the Foundation is trying to help. He thinks this is a problem.
Most of us here on Slashdot have similar investments, of course. The companies the Foundation invests in that are doing harm are most likely part of most of 401k investments and our mutual fund investments.
Many or all of these things are already punishable by death in Iran if you do them without the internet. Go over there and start distributing literature trying to convert people from Islam to another religion, and you've got a potential date with the executioner.
Hence, it is not blogging that they are making punishable by death. They are simply closing a loophole that may have let yo escape punishment by using blogs instead of, say, print or radio.
If we are going to be upset, we should be upset at apostasy being a capital crime at all, not that they have noticed that blogs can be used for apostasy and are closing that loophole.
It worked with Germany and Japan, didn't it?
I'm going to use US copyright law in this comment, but I believe other countries have similar provisions.
US copyright law says that the owner of a particular copy of a program can make modifications to the program in order to adapt it for use on his machine, without violating copyright. The case law has interpreted this to include modifications beyond just what is necessary to make the program run--it includes adding features if those features are necessary for what you are trying to use the program for. See 17 USC 117 for the statute itself.
Section 9 of AGPL says this:
But what is modifying? That is defined in section 0:
Because of 17 USC 117, and the interpretation of the scope of that in the case law, most use of AGPL software in a software as a service environment will NOT involve "modifying" the software as defined by AGPL, and you won't be required to make your changes available.
If it is used for defensive measures, it is a sign of the patent system working as intended. Someone invents something and gets a patent. Others who are interested in practicing that invention obtain permission from the inventor. In this case, they do so by acquiring the patent for money.
Because the display is not back lit. The technology it uses is called e-ink. Here's how Wikipedia describes the technology:
To view an e-ink display, you illuminate it from the front, and view the reflected light, just like you would for ink printed on paper. Hence, the utility of a reading light when you want to read it in the dark.
I'm sure they could have designed some kind of built-in front illumination, maybe even incorporated something like a Book Wedge light, but tastes in reading illumination vary a lot, so leaving it up to people to add their own book lights was probably the right choice.
So essentially your argument is that we have enough good movies and games now that we don't need to have any more? Where would you put the time at which the existing material was enough to be worth giving up on new stuff? Considering that some of the best games and movies are less than 10 years old, I find it hard to believe that we've reached the peak yet.
As far as costs go, why do you think not having to license or work around copyrighted material would cut much of the cost of making a movie or a game? It might save some costs for the score, but most movies want an original score. The costs are for things like sets, effects shots, costumes, travel to location shots, electricians, carpenters, and many many more--go read the complete credits of a major film. There are a LOT of people involved, and most of their work would be the same whether or not they are using or producing copyright work. Same for games--you've got artists designing characters, modelers making the models, animators, people designing levels, and things like that, and voice actors, and of course, programmers.
To give a concrete example, let's look at the latest Dreamworks movie. Here's what I count:
That's animated. How about a big more conventional movie? The new Hellboy movie looks like it has over 500 people in the credits.
Hell, Clerks, about as minimalist as you can get, has somewhere between 50 and 100 people listed.
That's not how the law, or precedent, works. This was not a civil infraction.
Judges cannot impose criminal penalties for civil infraction. And if one did, it would not stand. Furthermore, it would not be precedent, since district courts do not set precedent.
I suggest you pick a few good games, and a few good movies, and take a good hard look at the complete credits.
It takes millions of dollars to get that many skilled people together for the time it takes to make a game or move. Can you make a concrete suggestion as to where the money for this would come from if every movie and game were immediately available for free to everyone? By concrete I mean an actual mechanism that would lead to anyone being willing to put up the tens of millions of dollars to produce these games and movies, not just the empty hand waving you gave above?