It's nice to see a judge applying some common sense to these RIAA fishing expeditions. You know what would be nicer? If the universities showed some spine. Something along the lines of: "Our students pay $x thousand per year to attend our institution. They entrust us with their future, their physical well-being, and every single piece of personal information they have. We have an obligation not to allow every scum-sucker who wants a piece of them to abuse that unique relationship." (As a public institution, UNM could also add something like, "The citizens of the great state of New Mexico do not allocate a substantial portion of their money to us so that..." etc.) Honestly, if universities didn't knuckle under as easily as they do, most of these cases would probably never make it to court -- or if they did, it would be the RIAA vs. universities instead of individual students, which would at least be something closer to a fair fight.
Indeed. And your line, "To do so is a disservice to those who fought to protect the freedoms you call into question," is both.
It is both entirely honest and an act of true patriotism to ask whether the government is in fact protecting the freedoms it is established to defend... and to call it on its actions when it doesn't. Those who find this offensive are the enemies of liberty. Tell me, how do you feel about the following?
"... to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
You are posting on the internet questioning your own government. You have the freedom to do so.
Don't for a second compare your government to China.
To do so is a disservice to those who fought to protect the freedoms you call into question.
I fought to protect those freedoms too, and I don't have a single problem with what the GP said. Playing that card ("You can't say X about our government, that means you don't support the troops!") is contemptible, and if you are a veteran, you are the one doing a disservice -- to yourself, and other veterans -- by suggesting that people should muzzle themselves because, you know, some vet's feelings might get hurt.
Grow up. We dealt with people shooting at us, we can deal with political hyperbole.
GMAFB. I grew up in Colorado, was stationed in North Dakota, and now live in Minnesota. The whole time, I drove, in order: a Corolla, a Storm, a Prelude, a Jetta, and now another Corolla. And the only times I've ever been unable to get where I was going because of snow was when it was so bad that the people in the 4x4's weren't going anywhere either, although a lot of them thought they could... It was particularly amusing driving between the town of Minot (ND), where I lived, and the base -- the ditch on either side of that stretch of highway was just littered with SUV's and pickup trucks, while I went along just fine in my little Geo. It's not the vehicle, it's the driver.
I don't think it's blowing things out of proportion to say "this could be a problem." Look, I'm not saying Ancestry.com should be prohibited from doing what they're doing; I'm not even saying you shouldn't send them a sample if you're interested in genealogical research and think you might get something out of it. But it is a situation which deserves careful monitoring. The fact of the matter is, innocent people do get investigated, charged, and even convicted on the flimsiest of evidence, particularly when dealing with politically charged crimes.
Here's the worry, I think: law enforcement agencies could take a crime scene sample, run it against the entire Ancestry.com database, and decide that whoever comes up with the closest match must have done it. And in the current climate, they might well make it stick, even if the crime involves... [gasp] pedophilia... or [shock] terrorism... or [falls over dead from the horror of it] record piracy.
Another option would have been Comcast, but the Comcast lady told me that cable internet doesn't work with Macs (which I know is a lie because I've had Roadrunner in the past). She said if I can't install Comcast's software on Windows XP I can't have internet.
The appropriate response at that point would have been, "Get your supervisor on the line."
Whenever I read something like this, I get a reminder how poor is biologists' comprehension of Computer Science, Information Theory, and languages.
Whenever I read a post like this, I get a reminder how poor is most techies' comprehension of biology, and more specifically, what biologists do.
Third, why this obsession with zeroing in on a magic gene that causes X? Do they think the language of DNA is context free? Defects could indeed be expected to have no context, but for the rest-- which genes determine a person's blood type? Eye color? Skin color? Going about that task by trying to find the magic gene for something like that is like a person who never learned to read trying to figure out the plot of a book by trying to recognize patterns of letters.
Okay, why do we care? Because finding the genes (note my use of the plural there) that influence certain traits is the first step toward understanding the overall processes that create them. Obviously this is most critical in the area of genetic disease, although it's interesting for everything else too. We've known for decades that most traits, including diseases, aren't controlled by a single "magic gene." What statistical geneticists try to do is find locations on the genome which have a strong relationship to the trait of interest. And we know perfectly well that there will be a whole bunch of these locations for most traits, and that some of them may represent genes and some may represent something else. The purpose is basically to give the wet-lab biologists something to zero in on.
Second, two of the examples you chose -- blood type and eye color -- are really terrible ones for your argument, because genetically speaking they're very simple traits (two or three loci each, IIRC) and, at least in the case of blood type, we know exactly where they are in the genome. Eye color I'm not sure about, and skin color is a little more complicated, but not a whole lot more so.
Please do not confuse the pop-sci "scientists seek gene for X" writeups with what really goes on in the world of genetic research. It has exactly as much to do with real science as TV portrayals of hackers have to do with real computing.
ahahaha... John Cramer is obviously a crackpot. But he is not alone. There are a bunch of crackpots like him in the physics community. David Deutsch (of quantum computing fame) and the little con artist in the wheelchair immediately come to mind. The fact remains that nothing can move in spacetime, by definition. It is all explained at the link below:
We're going to find out that our "civil liberties" are going to start costing lives.
Civil liberties have never cost nearly as much lives as the lack thereof. Could, say, 9/11 have happened in the USSR? Probably not, but I don't think that would have been much comfort to the folks in the gulag.
Because of politics and PC thoughts
Oh, yes, damn those PC thoughts! Dumb politics like "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."
it's about politics and rules that were set back before the country was so fucked up.
The rules you're complaining about were set by people who had recently won their independence from the world's largest and most ruthless empire, in a country that was barely sure of its own continued existence, under constant threat of being wiped out by warring imperial powers and/or or thrown back into the sea by local powers, and beset by constant internal violence. The idea that Constitutional rules were created in a naive world where things were less fucked up than they are today is absurd. Americans are safer today than they have ever been, and the only real threat to their continued well-being is their propensity to imagine themselves under some unique threat from outside.
Imagine the absurdity of Ron Rivest being granted a patent on the hardware version of RSA, but not the software version. Both are the same truly innovative system, yet there are those that argue that the software version is somehow less worthy of protection.
Because one is a mathematical expression, and the other is a physical device. Why is this difficult to understand?
I find it funny that they are saying the material will be provided in a manner consistent with copyright law when the article also mentions there is a lawsuit pending regarding the appropriate use of copyrighted material.
It's pretty simple, really: Google and the participating universities are right, and the AAP and the Authors Guild are wrong. Next question?
(I will note for the record that while I'm not a member of the AG, I am a member of SFWA, which has worked hand-in-hand with the AG on a number of occasions; I have made Real Money(tm) off my writing, and I am 100% in favor of digital access to as much written work as possible. So there.)
It's very common to refer to "University of X" schools as just "X" when it's clear from the context. I agree that in the case of California, it's a little confusing since UCLA, Berkeley (which of course is a city, not a university...), and UCSD are all major schools. In most states, though, there's only one main campus.
Agreed. The use of quotation marks in the submission really makes it sound like those words were used in the article itself.
This may be a bit too much pop-psych, but I can't help but wonder if the desire to trivialize awesome natural events like this, Beavis-and-Butthead-style, comes from fear. A volcano with a 200-mile-high plume is not really the sort of thing the human mind handles very easily. I mean, we know what it is, and we can look at the pretty pictures on our screen and ooh and aah, but the caveman inside our heads is trembling at the wrath of the gods. Calling it "puking" makes it laughable, and therefore much less terrifying.
Over that same period, the RAM, processor cycles, and HD space sitting on my desk all increased by a factor of about 2000. So I'd say a five-fold increase in kernel size isn't too bad -- and a hell of a lot better than most software has done.
WTF are you talking about? I agree with the argument completely, and my gambling is limited to buying a $1 lottery ticket every few months for the hell of it. And I guarantee you there are a hell of a lot more people like me than there are professional gamblers, or gambling junkies.
You may disagree with the argument -- and you're welcome to articulate why, if you're capable -- but saying "only gamblers who can't make a living any other way make that argument" is absurd.
The Democrats have been getting steadily more libertarian as the Republicans get steadily more authoritarian. I'm hoping that at some point the libertarians who still call themselves Republicans will see which way the wind is blowing and either (a) desert en masse to the Democratic Party, thus speeding up the change, (b) desert en masse to the Libertarian Party, thus turning the Republican Party into a shadow, or (c) take control of the Republican Party from the raving nutcases who are currently running it. But I've been waiting a long time.
Oh, I didn't miss the story about the Supreme Court ruling. But maybe you missed this story?;)
Seriously, there may be hints that things are going to change... but I'll believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, the patent insanity continues and shows no real signs of slowing down.
I'm not sure it's laywer-driven, really. Lawyers certainly benefit, of course, but corporate lawyers are basically just doing the bidding of their executive masters. At least in theory, law is a profession, and has a certain ethical code. Business has none.
Make innovative inventions and do not patent them. That's how you boycott the USPTO. At least until the "first to patent wins" system comes into play.
Realistically, that's how it works now -- if you come up with a useful new algorithm, say, and Microsoft or Adobe or Oracle or someone else with much deeper pockets than yours patents it, do you think your prior art is going to stand up against their army of lawyers? Non-obviousness as a standard for rejecting a patent is already quite dead; prior art is going away fast.
This in addition to the middle-eastern quagmire really makes me wonder, wtf reality does this administration live in? Not fighting a war on multiple fronts as well as some tactical subtlety in relations was basic knowledge, I thought.
What are you talking about? We have always been at war with Eurasia and Eastasia. Eurasia and Eastasia have always been allied against Oceania.
why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp. If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get. I bought a mac, but I'm 98% in the windows. I only use mac to test web based apps in safari. For people like me or for gamers, I don't see why you would ever use paralells emulation. The speed cost is just too high.
For you, Boot Camp makes sense. Me, I'm in the opposite situation -- I do almost all my work in OS X, but write apps which occasionally have to be tested with Windows. So Parallels is the perfect solution. I'm not really concerned about squeezing every ounce of speed out of Windows because I don't spend much time in it; I just want to drop into it every few days to make sure that what I'm doing works, preferably without having to reboot my machine.
Good point, except that like I said, this was a clean room, not a storefront, and in fact I had to persuade them to let me look inside -- normally they'd just take the disk from the customer, take it in back, and say, "Come pick it up in a couple of days" -- and there were people actively working on these disks. If this was a prop setup to impress people with how 1337 they were, they put a hell of a lot of effort into it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to see a judge applying some common sense to these RIAA fishing expeditions. You know what would be nicer? If the universities showed some spine. Something along the lines of: "Our students pay $x thousand per year to attend our institution. They entrust us with their future, their physical well-being, and every single piece of personal information they have. We have an obligation not to allow every scum-sucker who wants a piece of them to abuse that unique relationship." (As a public institution, UNM could also add something like, "The citizens of the great state of New Mexico do not allocate a substantial portion of their money to us so that ..." etc.) Honestly, if universities didn't knuckle under as easily as they do, most of these cases would probably never make it to court -- or if they did, it would be the RIAA vs. universities instead of individual students, which would at least be something closer to a fair fight.
Certain things are dishonest, or offensive.
... and to call it on its actions when it doesn't. Those who find this offensive are the enemies of liberty. Tell me, how do you feel about the following?
..."
Indeed. And your line, "To do so is a disservice to those who fought to protect the freedoms you call into question," is both.
It is both entirely honest and an act of true patriotism to ask whether the government is in fact protecting the freedoms it is established to defend
"... to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it
You are posting on the internet questioning your own government. You have the freedom to do so.
Don't for a second compare your government to China.
To do so is a disservice to those who fought to protect the freedoms you call into question.
I fought to protect those freedoms too, and I don't have a single problem with what the GP said. Playing that card ("You can't say X about our government, that means you don't support the troops!") is contemptible, and if you are a veteran, you are the one doing a disservice -- to yourself, and other veterans -- by suggesting that people should muzzle themselves because, you know, some vet's feelings might get hurt.
Grow up. We dealt with people shooting at us, we can deal with political hyperbole.
GMAFB. I grew up in Colorado, was stationed in North Dakota, and now live in Minnesota. The whole time, I drove, in order: a Corolla, a Storm, a Prelude, a Jetta, and now another Corolla. And the only times I've ever been unable to get where I was going because of snow was when it was so bad that the people in the 4x4's weren't going anywhere either, although a lot of them thought they could ... It was particularly amusing driving between the town of Minot (ND), where I lived, and the base -- the ditch on either side of that stretch of highway was just littered with SUV's and pickup trucks, while I went along just fine in my little Geo. It's not the vehicle, it's the driver.
I don't think it's blowing things out of proportion to say "this could be a problem." Look, I'm not saying Ancestry.com should be prohibited from doing what they're doing; I'm not even saying you shouldn't send them a sample if you're interested in genealogical research and think you might get something out of it. But it is a situation which deserves careful monitoring. The fact of the matter is, innocent people do get investigated, charged, and even convicted on the flimsiest of evidence, particularly when dealing with politically charged crimes.
Here's the worry, I think: law enforcement agencies could take a crime scene sample, run it against the entire Ancestry.com database, and decide that whoever comes up with the closest match must have done it. And in the current climate, they might well make it stick, even if the crime involves ... [gasp] pedophilia ... or [shock] terrorism ... or [falls over dead from the horror of it] record piracy.
Another option would have been Comcast, but the Comcast lady told me that cable internet doesn't work with Macs (which I know is a lie because I've had Roadrunner in the past). She said if I can't install Comcast's software on Windows XP I can't have internet.
The appropriate response at that point would have been, "Get your supervisor on the line."
Whenever I read something like this, I get a reminder how poor is biologists' comprehension of Computer Science, Information Theory, and languages.
Whenever I read a post like this, I get a reminder how poor is most techies' comprehension of biology, and more specifically, what biologists do.
Third, why this obsession with zeroing in on a magic gene that causes X? Do they think the language of DNA is context free? Defects could indeed be expected to have no context, but for the rest-- which genes determine a person's blood type? Eye color? Skin color? Going about that task by trying to find the magic gene for something like that is like a person who never learned to read trying to figure out the plot of a book by trying to recognize patterns of letters.
Okay, why do we care? Because finding the genes (note my use of the plural there) that influence certain traits is the first step toward understanding the overall processes that create them. Obviously this is most critical in the area of genetic disease, although it's interesting for everything else too. We've known for decades that most traits, including diseases, aren't controlled by a single "magic gene." What statistical geneticists try to do is find locations on the genome which have a strong relationship to the trait of interest. And we know perfectly well that there will be a whole bunch of these locations for most traits, and that some of them may represent genes and some may represent something else. The purpose is basically to give the wet-lab biologists something to zero in on.
Second, two of the examples you chose -- blood type and eye color -- are really terrible ones for your argument, because genetically speaking they're very simple traits (two or three loci each, IIRC) and, at least in the case of blood type, we know exactly where they are in the genome. Eye color I'm not sure about, and skin color is a little more complicated, but not a whole lot more so.
Please do not confuse the pop-sci "scientists seek gene for X" writeups with what really goes on in the world of genetic research. It has exactly as much to do with real science as TV portrayals of hackers have to do with real computing.
ahahaha... John Cramer is obviously a crackpot. But he is not alone. There are a bunch of crackpots like him in the physics community. David Deutsch (of quantum computing fame) and the little con artist in the wheelchair immediately come to mind. The fact remains that nothing can move in spacetime, by definition. It is all explained at the link below:
Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics
Man, if I were going to sit down and create a Web site to meet every single point on the Crank Physics Detection Guide, that's the site I'd build.
We're going to find out that our "civil liberties" are going to start costing lives.
..."
Civil liberties have never cost nearly as much lives as the lack thereof. Could, say, 9/11 have happened in the USSR? Probably not, but I don't think that would have been much comfort to the folks in the gulag.
Because of politics and PC thoughts
Oh, yes, damn those PC thoughts! Dumb politics like "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
it's about politics and rules that were set back before the country was so fucked up.
The rules you're complaining about were set by people who had recently won their independence from the world's largest and most ruthless empire, in a country that was barely sure of its own continued existence, under constant threat of being wiped out by warring imperial powers and/or or thrown back into the sea by local powers, and beset by constant internal violence. The idea that Constitutional rules were created in a naive world where things were less fucked up than they are today is absurd. Americans are safer today than they have ever been, and the only real threat to their continued well-being is their propensity to imagine themselves under some unique threat from outside.
Imagine the absurdity of Ron Rivest being granted a patent on the hardware version of RSA, but not the software version. Both are the same truly innovative system, yet there are those that argue that the software version is somehow less worthy of protection.
Because one is a mathematical expression, and the other is a physical device. Why is this difficult to understand?
I find it funny that they are saying the material will be provided in a manner consistent with copyright law when the article also mentions there is a lawsuit pending regarding the appropriate use of copyrighted material.
It's pretty simple, really: Google and the participating universities are right, and the AAP and the Authors Guild are wrong. Next question?
(I will note for the record that while I'm not a member of the AG, I am a member of SFWA, which has worked hand-in-hand with the AG on a number of occasions; I have made Real Money(tm) off my writing, and I am 100% in favor of digital access to as much written work as possible. So there.)
It's very common to refer to "University of X" schools as just "X" when it's clear from the context. I agree that in the case of California, it's a little confusing since UCLA, Berkeley (which of course is a city, not a university ...), and UCSD are all major schools. In most states, though, there's only one main campus.
Agreed. The use of quotation marks in the submission really makes it sound like those words were used in the article itself.
This may be a bit too much pop-psych, but I can't help but wonder if the desire to trivialize awesome natural events like this, Beavis-and-Butthead-style, comes from fear. A volcano with a 200-mile-high plume is not really the sort of thing the human mind handles very easily. I mean, we know what it is, and we can look at the pretty pictures on our screen and ooh and aah, but the caveman inside our heads is trembling at the wrath of the gods. Calling it "puking" makes it laughable, and therefore much less terrifying.
Over that same period, the RAM, processor cycles, and HD space sitting on my desk all increased by a factor of about 2000. So I'd say a five-fold increase in kernel size isn't too bad -- and a hell of a lot better than most software has done.
WTF are you talking about? I agree with the argument completely, and my gambling is limited to buying a $1 lottery ticket every few months for the hell of it. And I guarantee you there are a hell of a lot more people like me than there are professional gamblers, or gambling junkies.
You may disagree with the argument -- and you're welcome to articulate why, if you're capable -- but saying "only gamblers who can't make a living any other way make that argument" is absurd.
Frank is a twink that likes to suck cock.
And yet somehow, he still manages to be more of a man than you.
The Democrats have been getting steadily more libertarian as the Republicans get steadily more authoritarian. I'm hoping that at some point the libertarians who still call themselves Republicans will see which way the wind is blowing and either (a) desert en masse to the Democratic Party, thus speeding up the change, (b) desert en masse to the Libertarian Party, thus turning the Republican Party into a shadow, or (c) take control of the Republican Party from the raving nutcases who are currently running it. But I've been waiting a long time.
What you weren't on board with protesting at veterans funerals?
When did Frank protest at anyone's funeral, veteran or otherwise?
Oh, I didn't miss the story about the Supreme Court ruling. But maybe you missed this story? ;)
... but I'll believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, the patent insanity continues and shows no real signs of slowing down.
Seriously, there may be hints that things are going to change
I'm not sure it's laywer-driven, really. Lawyers certainly benefit, of course, but corporate lawyers are basically just doing the bidding of their executive masters. At least in theory, law is a profession, and has a certain ethical code. Business has none.
Make innovative inventions and do not patent them. That's how you boycott the USPTO. At least until the "first to patent wins" system comes into play.
Realistically, that's how it works now -- if you come up with a useful new algorithm, say, and Microsoft or Adobe or Oracle or someone else with much deeper pockets than yours patents it, do you think your prior art is going to stand up against their army of lawyers? Non-obviousness as a standard for rejecting a patent is already quite dead; prior art is going away fast.
This in addition to the middle-eastern quagmire really makes me wonder, wtf reality does this administration live in?
Not fighting a war on multiple fronts as well as some tactical subtlety in relations was basic knowledge, I thought.
What are you talking about? We have always been at war with Eurasia and Eastasia. Eurasia and Eastasia have always been allied against Oceania.
why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp. If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get. I bought a mac, but I'm 98% in the windows. I only use mac to test web based apps in safari. For people like me or for gamers, I don't see why you would ever use paralells emulation. The speed cost is just too high.
For you, Boot Camp makes sense. Me, I'm in the opposite situation -- I do almost all my work in OS X, but write apps which occasionally have to be tested with Windows. So Parallels is the perfect solution. I'm not really concerned about squeezing every ounce of speed out of Windows because I don't spend much time in it; I just want to drop into it every few days to make sure that what I'm doing works, preferably without having to reboot my machine.
Good point, except that like I said, this was a clean room, not a storefront, and in fact I had to persuade them to let me look inside -- normally they'd just take the disk from the customer, take it in back, and say, "Come pick it up in a couple of days" -- and there were people actively working on these disks. If this was a prop setup to impress people with how 1337 they were, they put a hell of a lot of effort into it.