The major difference is in the serial numbers. The method you describe equals photocopying, this was in TFA also mentioned as being an issue for coupons.com's business.
However with the software trick, the user would be able to download completely new coupons with new, unique serial numbers - and this would supposedly be untraceable. He is really giving instructions to circumvent a copy protection mechanism, and it has been argued on/. before (sorry too lazy to dig for links) that a trick as simple as ROT13 would be protected under the DMCA as copy protection mechanism. I also doubt the law will specifically talk about "encryption" as only copy protection mechanism, that's just not how laws are written.
And by the way, instead of saving as pdf (or print-to-file), one could of course also just print 10 copies in one go. Now it's really been years since I've been working with Windows, but I do recall that used to be possible, just like in Linux/Gnome and OS-X.
Let's say I wanted to ask someone a question, a simple question with no real need for an immediate reply. I send an e-mail. If I were to use regular phone, I have to deal with polite conversation which I may or may not have time for. Not that I don't mind idle conversation, it's just something I don't always want to deal with.
I totally agree with the need for social talk on the phone, e-mail is often much more to-the-point, and that can take time.
But then, e-mail is also much less personal. The "human touch" is gone. And I find that to actually make a deal, this human touch is a necessity. OK dealing with China that may be stronger than with Americans, still it's a very important part of human communication that gets lost in e-mail.
In my business I find e-mail a great tool to get the first contact, followed up by a phone call or two, and a personal visit. After that it's often a lot of e-mail again because it's so damn convenient.
Chat I barely use... the disadvantages of e-mail (indirect) and telephone (synchronous communication, must answer now) combined.
You are so, so wrong. If a US company owns them, then they are subject to US law.
[...]
The point is: they ARE subject to US law via eBay owning them.
Now PLEASE don't get ridiculous. The laws of the US of A are (luckily!) not the laws of the world. Skype is Luxembourg based, so falls under Luxembourg law. That includes privacy laws. Now that e-Bay owns them, then maybe e-Bay would be held responsible under US law for activities of their subsidiary. That would be possible.
So, as another poster pointed out, in Norway it is not allowed to discriminate against nationality or country when providing your services. I don't know about Luxembourg for this. Still, now the US based company with subsidiary in Norway has an interesting problem: the subsidiary will be sued under Norwegian law for refusing the customer from Cuba, while the US company will be sued under US law for allowing their subsidiary to accept this Cuban customer.
Now, assuming this US law is the case, that would cause serious problems for so many businesses with foreign subsidiaries. There are so many little things that are legal in one system, and outright illegal in the other. This almost can not be true. But then, we're talking about the USA here.
In most places, copyright law forbids not only distribution, but also modification. Like, modifying the example code to be usable in a real world situation, and integrating it in ones web application. The license is what allows this. But in this case there is no such license.
Copyright as such does not forbid modification. Does not forbid anything other than (re)publishing or distributing the work in question. That the USA and some other countries have laws like the DMCA has nothing to do with basic copyright.
If you buy a book, no-one will forbid you to tear it to pieces, use the letters to create another book, etc. But you're not allowed to copy it. However you can sell it, in whole or in pieces (if anyone would like to buy it as such).
Re-using part of the code in a web application is a grey area: as long as the code runs on your server only, you do not redistribute it. But you do make use of other people's code. And whether that is allowed or not, will depend on the exact interpretation of copyright in your neck of the woods.
My first thought was similar, but the complaint has an interesting point: AOL offers parental controls. If those controls don't keep your child from using the computer in an illegal manner, are they defective and does this make AOL liable?
This totally depends imho on how this service has been advertised. "Parental controls", as such, doesn't say much. What is a "parental control", really? Does it limit times, who can log in, what they can do (which software to use), what they can download (file type, content type, from which source)? This all is not obvious nor can anything be considered "normal service" for such a service.
I also really doubt there will be anything in AOL's "parental controls" advertising or sales contracts or TOS that says "block children from doing illegal activities". Or even "stop children from downloading copyrighted content" - which would basically mean everything on the Internet. Including this post, of which I own the copyright, with implicit permission to Slashdot to publish it.
As another poster pointed out already, the purposefully blocking of warning messages, if that's true, would be the only thing Ms Santangelo can sue AOL and/or Kazaa for. And if true, it would be quite worrying to me and to AOL. As if so, AOL is apparently inspecting and arbitrarily refusing content, which makes it clear to me they are not a common carrier. And if so it's time for RIAA and their members to start suing AOL themselves, for at least assisting in infringements on their copyrights. Now that would be interesting.
You're referring to "common carrier" status, no? This has been discussed here before, and as far as I know this has never been clearly established in USA nor in other jurisdictions (please correct me if I'm wrong here!).
One thing I do know about "common carrier" status (postal services is a good example) is that not only are they not responsible for what they are carrying, they have the obligation to carry all messages within only technical limits - e.g. weight and size for postal services, and maybe some restrictions on items like cash and dangerous goods, and in case of the telephone system obvious frequency limitations - and they are not allowed to check the content of those messages, unless asked to do so by subpoena.
The whole "net neutrality" discussion completely bypasses this "common carrier" issue. If an ISP inspects (and shapes) traffic, they are obviously not a "common carrier" anymore. Parental controls however I don't think fall in this category, as this has been explicitly asked for (and is often paid for) by the subscriber.
Now this is all interesting and so, but what about making those chips be a bit more power efficient for starters? I mean save some remaining high-end applications, modern processing power is enough. More than enough for 99% of the applications.
It'd be nice if the CPUs would become more power efficient, that has so many advantages: lower power bills, saving the environment, longer battery life for laptops, silent computers for less need of cooling, etc. For now it seems every new incarnation of the major CPUs (Intel, AMD) is wasting only more power!
Do you have any clue how things happen in 90% of the world? You don't pay someone $100 per hour to repair for you, you do it yourself.
Remember that 90% of the world is NOT the US of A. I live in one of the most developed countries in Asia, Hong Kong, and we commonly pay people to fix things. From changing lamps (not the bulb, but the fitting) to doing the wallpaper and fixing your toilet and hinges in your kitchen door. DIY is barely heard of. And we pay roughly HK$50 per hour (about US$5). Computers I do myself of course but then that's my hobby.
About half of the world (India 1 bln, China 1 bln, and half a bln or so in the rest of Asia) lives in the Asian continent. Here repairmen make a good living, and there are many of them. Lots of equipment comes with installation: a window-type airconditioner is put in place, the washing machine is installed for you. Parts included.
Africa will work largely the same, also low wages there. Southern America similar. Maybe it's time for you to get out of your basement, and have a look at how the real world looks like. You know, outside of Northern America.
IANAL, but I do know that for trademarks it is not necessary to be EXACTLY the same, SIMILAR is enough. But it has to be argued (and agreed upon by the courts; how to prove things and so I'd really not know) that the names are so similar that the general public may be confused.
As another poster remarked, Open Office had to rename to OpenOffice.org to avoid another trademark dispute. IIRC there is in Japan a software program that is called Open Office already. How they get away with such a similar name I don't know.
Many ways to do so.
I've learnt SQL in dbase, but also about the basic theory of databases - now I'm using exactly that in MySQL. And I think switching to e.g. PostgreSQL will be relatively painless. I know what the general possibilities are, and for the details I just rtfm. Of course I'm not using them very super in-depth, but when I want to do something that I don't know how to, I rtfm, google, and find my way around by trying.
In case of word processors, you can learn about page lay-out, indexes, footnotes, etc - without necessarily binding this to a single word processor software. You have to learn what the general possibilities ARE. The most important thing is to learn about SAVE and UNDO, and for the rest a strong stimulation in searching the manual and menus, as opposed to plain spoon-feeding "press Apple-B for bold text". The same for spreadsheets: what are they useful for, what can you do with them, etc. This again can be tought completely without actually sitting at the computer, for teaching NOT sitting at the computer will in my experience work much better as the students are not distracted.
There can be tought that there is a lot of software around, and often more than one program for a specific tasl. The global differences between Unix (Linux), Windows and Apple.
Wouter.
Of course they have to advertise primarily to people that do not have a Wii yet... the people that are still watching TV apparently fall into that group.
I just RTFA, and it sais NOTHING, and that is truly NOTHING, about what is really in the pipeline. Only lines like "it's going to be better", and "we're expanding it blah blah" with a lot of marketingspeak - but really nothing on the actual product. The only concrete product mentioned, the "Zune Shuffle" or whatever, also falls short of an actual description, let alone giving me the idea that it is reliable.
Sorry folks, nothing to see here, move along. Really, there is absolutely nothing.
The only thing about this article is that it keeps the buzz going, it keeps the people talking about this device. And guessing. Just guessing. Because there is nothing really said there, everything is just a guess.
Editors, please do your job, and don't put this kind of nonsense on the front page. It doesn't belong there. I'm really interested in tech news, and also what Microsoft is doing - even though I don't buy their products, they are one of the major forces in the computer world - but this is the least informative article ever.
if courts are able to reach accurate verdicts 100% of the time, no matter the nature of the case, why is there so much unsolved crime?
That is because the court does not solve crimes. That is the task of the police force (and other investigation services). The courts only judge the evidence put forward to them by the two parties. If the police et. al can not come with sufficient evidence to solve a crime, there is nothing a court can do about it other than urging them to get more evidence.
Then still it's probably interesting for your website to cater ALSO for the FF users. I mean, how are you going to explain to your bosses (or shareholders) that due to some IE extension you just have to use that you loose out on over 16% of visitors and almost 10% of revenue? No matter what, 10% is quite a chunk, and for many businesses can be life or bankrupty.
Not to mention that those 16% refused visitors may give negative reference about your site to other potential customers.
Opera is closed source, and proprietary. They may have many happy users, but that's it.
Firefox is open source, and free software. This creates a strong and active following, if only for the fact that it's open source.
So for me it's no wonder that Firefox steels the attention from Opera. Opera may be a great browser, I never tried it, but it misses that one important thing Firefox has: the open source cult. The free advertising just because it's open source.
Anyway, good luck to Opera and all the others: competition is always a good thing. The more browsers in the 5-15% market share range and the less browsers in the >40% market share range the better.
Don't you mix up decoding and encoding? The first is a quite easy and lightweight process, the second is where one needs the horsepower, and why indeed MythTV requires a 3GHz machine. I've been playing DVDs back like 10 years ago on basic hardware, nothing fancy, and that went at low processor use.
you're mixing up communism and socialism. Communism, in the Marxist sense, has never been reached. The planned economy is a stage in Marxes theories on the way to communism, which is a utopia where everyone works for themselves, taking only what they need, giving what they can or think the group needs. Communes often come close to communism (and the words being almost the same is no coincidence).
Contact-less payments that is. In Hong Kong we have the "Octopus" payment card - particularly for small payments, such as bus fares (typically HK$3-15, or US$0.38-1.92), vending machines, parking fees, small purchases supermarkets and convenience stores, etc. etc. This is a pre-charged card, and mostly anonymous (as in: the card has a serial number, records of payments are being kept, but they are not registered to your name or anything unless you specifically ask for that). Charge-up is done at many points, such as 7-11 stores.
These cards are secure from the vendor point of view: payments are guaranteed made, and no cash needed. Nothing can be stolen from the shop (well the machine can be stolen but no value in that for a thief). From the customer's point of view, they are as secure as cash. Hence the maximum stored value of $500 (abt US$64), can't lose more than that amount.
And if the card breaks down, I've had that once over the last five years that I'm using them, you return the card, get a receipt and a new card, and a week or two later you can come back for a full refund of the remaining value of that card. So even then no money lost!
This system, Japanese developed and introduced some 10, 12 years ago, works really great and fast. Card is in my wallet, just swipe my wallet near the reader (few cm distance), and it's done. In a fraction of a second. At the MTR (metro) you see people swipe complete hand bags, or sometimes just their wrist as there are watches with an Octopus chip built in.
Of course no way secure enough to use as credit card, but that's not the purpose of the system. This is for small payments, anything under say $50. For bigger payments there is the (secure - "somthing you have and something you know") ATM card with PIN authorisation, or the insecure ("something you have" only) credit card. Or plain old cash of course.
The more money they waste on DRM, the less money they have to pay out to the people who deserve it: the artists. At least, that's what they claim where all the money goes (you and I know how true that is of course). But notwithstanding: money wasted on DRM (and the piracy-related lawsuits and so) is less money available for pay-out to their artists. And that is IN NO WAY a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
The major difference is in the serial numbers. The method you describe equals photocopying, this was in TFA also mentioned as being an issue for coupons.com's business.
However with the software trick, the user would be able to download completely new coupons with new, unique serial numbers - and this would supposedly be untraceable. He is really giving instructions to circumvent a copy protection mechanism, and it has been argued on /. before (sorry too lazy to dig for links) that a trick as simple as ROT13 would be protected under the DMCA as copy protection mechanism. I also doubt the law will specifically talk about "encryption" as only copy protection mechanism, that's just not how laws are written.
And by the way, instead of saving as pdf (or print-to-file), one could of course also just print 10 copies in one go. Now it's really been years since I've been working with Windows, but I do recall that used to be possible, just like in Linux/Gnome and OS-X.
I totally agree with the need for social talk on the phone, e-mail is often much more to-the-point, and that can take time.
But then, e-mail is also much less personal. The "human touch" is gone. And I find that to actually make a deal, this human touch is a necessity. OK dealing with China that may be stronger than with Americans, still it's a very important part of human communication that gets lost in e-mail.
In my business I find e-mail a great tool to get the first contact, followed up by a phone call or two, and a personal visit. After that it's often a lot of e-mail again because it's so damn convenient.
Chat I barely use... the disadvantages of e-mail (indirect) and telephone (synchronous communication, must answer now) combined.
Now PLEASE don't get ridiculous. The laws of the US of A are (luckily!) not the laws of the world. Skype is Luxembourg based, so falls under Luxembourg law. That includes privacy laws. Now that e-Bay owns them, then maybe e-Bay would be held responsible under US law for activities of their subsidiary. That would be possible.
So, as another poster pointed out, in Norway it is not allowed to discriminate against nationality or country when providing your services. I don't know about Luxembourg for this. Still, now the US based company with subsidiary in Norway has an interesting problem: the subsidiary will be sued under Norwegian law for refusing the customer from Cuba, while the US company will be sued under US law for allowing their subsidiary to accept this Cuban customer.
Now, assuming this US law is the case, that would cause serious problems for so many businesses with foreign subsidiaries. There are so many little things that are legal in one system, and outright illegal in the other. This almost can not be true. But then, we're talking about the USA here.
Copyright as such does not forbid modification. Does not forbid anything other than (re)publishing or distributing the work in question. That the USA and some other countries have laws like the DMCA has nothing to do with basic copyright.
If you buy a book, no-one will forbid you to tear it to pieces, use the letters to create another book, etc. But you're not allowed to copy it. However you can sell it, in whole or in pieces (if anyone would like to buy it as such).
Re-using part of the code in a web application is a grey area: as long as the code runs on your server only, you do not redistribute it. But you do make use of other people's code. And whether that is allowed or not, will depend on the exact interpretation of copyright in your neck of the woods.
This totally depends imho on how this service has been advertised. "Parental controls", as such, doesn't say much. What is a "parental control", really? Does it limit times, who can log in, what they can do (which software to use), what they can download (file type, content type, from which source)? This all is not obvious nor can anything be considered "normal service" for such a service.
I also really doubt there will be anything in AOL's "parental controls" advertising or sales contracts or TOS that says "block children from doing illegal activities". Or even "stop children from downloading copyrighted content" - which would basically mean everything on the Internet. Including this post, of which I own the copyright, with implicit permission to Slashdot to publish it.
As another poster pointed out already, the purposefully blocking of warning messages, if that's true, would be the only thing Ms Santangelo can sue AOL and/or Kazaa for. And if true, it would be quite worrying to me and to AOL. As if so, AOL is apparently inspecting and arbitrarily refusing content, which makes it clear to me they are not a common carrier. And if so it's time for RIAA and their members to start suing AOL themselves, for at least assisting in infringements on their copyrights. Now that would be interesting.
You're referring to "common carrier" status, no? This has been discussed here before, and as far as I know this has never been clearly established in USA nor in other jurisdictions (please correct me if I'm wrong here!).
One thing I do know about "common carrier" status (postal services is a good example) is that not only are they not responsible for what they are carrying, they have the obligation to carry all messages within only technical limits - e.g. weight and size for postal services, and maybe some restrictions on items like cash and dangerous goods, and in case of the telephone system obvious frequency limitations - and they are not allowed to check the content of those messages, unless asked to do so by subpoena.
The whole "net neutrality" discussion completely bypasses this "common carrier" issue. If an ISP inspects (and shapes) traffic, they are obviously not a "common carrier" anymore. Parental controls however I don't think fall in this category, as this has been explicitly asked for (and is often paid for) by the subscriber.
Now this is all interesting and so, but what about making those chips be a bit more power efficient for starters? I mean save some remaining high-end applications, modern processing power is enough. More than enough for 99% of the applications.
It'd be nice if the CPUs would become more power efficient, that has so many advantages: lower power bills, saving the environment, longer battery life for laptops, silent computers for less need of cooling, etc. For now it seems every new incarnation of the major CPUs (Intel, AMD) is wasting only more power!
Remember that 90% of the world is NOT the US of A. I live in one of the most developed countries in Asia, Hong Kong, and we commonly pay people to fix things. From changing lamps (not the bulb, but the fitting) to doing the wallpaper and fixing your toilet and hinges in your kitchen door. DIY is barely heard of. And we pay roughly HK$50 per hour (about US$5). Computers I do myself of course but then that's my hobby.
About half of the world (India 1 bln, China 1 bln, and half a bln or so in the rest of Asia) lives in the Asian continent. Here repairmen make a good living, and there are many of them. Lots of equipment comes with installation: a window-type airconditioner is put in place, the washing machine is installed for you. Parts included.
Africa will work largely the same, also low wages there. Southern America similar. Maybe it's time for you to get out of your basement, and have a look at how the real world looks like. You know, outside of Northern America.
One of the older kids learned how to do it just because he wanted to.... Now, I'll admit that it is seems a useless skill....
In the long run, possibly about as useless as writing a 386 kernel just for the fun of it.
You mean, like some crazy Finn called Linus Torvalds did, right? Yeah that was a totally useless excercise and it really didn't get him anywhere.
IANAL, but I do know that for trademarks it is not necessary to be EXACTLY the same, SIMILAR is enough. But it has to be argued (and agreed upon by the courts; how to prove things and so I'd really not know) that the names are so similar that the general public may be confused.
As another poster remarked, Open Office had to rename to OpenOffice.org to avoid another trademark dispute. IIRC there is in Japan a software program that is called Open Office already. How they get away with such a similar name I don't know.
Wouter.
Many ways to do so. I've learnt SQL in dbase, but also about the basic theory of databases - now I'm using exactly that in MySQL. And I think switching to e.g. PostgreSQL will be relatively painless. I know what the general possibilities are, and for the details I just rtfm. Of course I'm not using them very super in-depth, but when I want to do something that I don't know how to, I rtfm, google, and find my way around by trying. In case of word processors, you can learn about page lay-out, indexes, footnotes, etc - without necessarily binding this to a single word processor software. You have to learn what the general possibilities ARE. The most important thing is to learn about SAVE and UNDO, and for the rest a strong stimulation in searching the manual and menus, as opposed to plain spoon-feeding "press Apple-B for bold text". The same for spreadsheets: what are they useful for, what can you do with them, etc. This again can be tought completely without actually sitting at the computer, for teaching NOT sitting at the computer will in my experience work much better as the students are not distracted. There can be tought that there is a lot of software around, and often more than one program for a specific tasl. The global differences between Unix (Linux), Windows and Apple. Wouter.
Euhm... am I really the only one that likes my installation experiences to be SIMPLE?
That said, I'm quite experienced in installing Linux. And that is not always easy. And no, I don't enjoy doing it.
Schools should be teaching how to use computers.
They are not supposed to teach "click here, then this happens, click there, to do that" just Microsoft software.
Of course they have to advertise primarily to people that do not have a Wii yet... the people that are still watching TV apparently fall into that group.
I just RTFA, and it sais NOTHING, and that is truly NOTHING, about what is really in the pipeline. Only lines like "it's going to be better", and "we're expanding it blah blah" with a lot of marketingspeak - but really nothing on the actual product. The only concrete product mentioned, the "Zune Shuffle" or whatever, also falls short of an actual description, let alone giving me the idea that it is reliable.
Sorry folks, nothing to see here, move along. Really, there is absolutely nothing.
The only thing about this article is that it keeps the buzz going, it keeps the people talking about this device. And guessing. Just guessing. Because there is nothing really said there, everything is just a guess.
Editors, please do your job, and don't put this kind of nonsense on the front page. It doesn't belong there. I'm really interested in tech news, and also what Microsoft is doing - even though I don't buy their products, they are one of the major forces in the computer world - but this is the least informative article ever.
Ah well, let the Microsoft bashing continue.
No matter wat I'm sure it makes him more or less pathetic.
Don't worry, you will just hear the same disks more. Less variation, but then that's what the RIAA and it's member are about anyway.
That is because the court does not solve crimes. That is the task of the police force (and other investigation services). The courts only judge the evidence put forward to them by the two parties. If the police et. al can not come with sufficient evidence to solve a crime, there is nothing a court can do about it other than urging them to get more evidence.
Then still it's probably interesting for your website to cater ALSO for the FF users. I mean, how are you going to explain to your bosses (or shareholders) that due to some IE extension you just have to use that you loose out on over 16% of visitors and almost 10% of revenue? No matter what, 10% is quite a chunk, and for many businesses can be life or bankrupty.
Not to mention that those 16% refused visitors may give negative reference about your site to other potential customers.
Opera is closed source, and proprietary. They may have many happy users, but that's it.
Firefox is open source, and free software. This creates a strong and active following, if only for the fact that it's open source.
So for me it's no wonder that Firefox steels the attention from Opera. Opera may be a great browser, I never tried it, but it misses that one important thing Firefox has: the open source cult. The free advertising just because it's open source.
Anyway, good luck to Opera and all the others: competition is always a good thing. The more browsers in the 5-15% market share range and the less browsers in the >40% market share range the better.
Don't you mix up decoding and encoding? The first is a quite easy and lightweight process, the second is where one needs the horsepower, and why indeed MythTV requires a 3GHz machine. I've been playing DVDs back like 10 years ago on basic hardware, nothing fancy, and that went at low processor use.
you're mixing up communism and socialism. Communism, in the Marxist sense, has never been reached. The planned economy is a stage in Marxes theories on the way to communism, which is a utopia where everyone works for themselves, taking only what they need, giving what they can or think the group needs. Communes often come close to communism (and the words being almost the same is no coincidence).
Contact-less payments that is. In Hong Kong we have the "Octopus" payment card - particularly for small payments, such as bus fares (typically HK$3-15, or US$0.38-1.92), vending machines, parking fees, small purchases supermarkets and convenience stores, etc. etc. This is a pre-charged card, and mostly anonymous (as in: the card has a serial number, records of payments are being kept, but they are not registered to your name or anything unless you specifically ask for that). Charge-up is done at many points, such as 7-11 stores.
These cards are secure from the vendor point of view: payments are guaranteed made, and no cash needed. Nothing can be stolen from the shop (well the machine can be stolen but no value in that for a thief). From the customer's point of view, they are as secure as cash. Hence the maximum stored value of $500 (abt US$64), can't lose more than that amount.
And if the card breaks down, I've had that once over the last five years that I'm using them, you return the card, get a receipt and a new card, and a week or two later you can come back for a full refund of the remaining value of that card. So even then no money lost!
This system, Japanese developed and introduced some 10, 12 years ago, works really great and fast. Card is in my wallet, just swipe my wallet near the reader (few cm distance), and it's done. In a fraction of a second. At the MTR (metro) you see people swipe complete hand bags, or sometimes just their wrist as there are watches with an Octopus chip built in.
Of course no way secure enough to use as credit card, but that's not the purpose of the system. This is for small payments, anything under say $50. For bigger payments there is the (secure - "somthing you have and something you know") ATM card with PIN authorisation, or the insecure ("something you have" only) credit card. Or plain old cash of course.
Wouter.
The more money they waste on DRM, the less money they have to pay out to the people who deserve it: the artists. At least, that's what they claim where all the money goes (you and I know how true that is of course). But notwithstanding: money wasted on DRM (and the piracy-related lawsuits and so) is less money available for pay-out to their artists. And that is IN NO WAY a good thing.
Wouter.