If you think WIPO was a creation of public servants whose only interest was the good of society as a whole, you need to find a new and safer recreational drug.
WIPO is based on law written for by, and for large corporations and paid for by campaign contributions made to US politicians just like DMCA is. While the neocons are a good part of what's wrong with the world, when major corporate interests are involved, starting with the Hollywood content cartel, Democrats will roll over with their paws in the air just as quickly as George Bush will. (see also the vote on the new MNBA-funded bankruptcy law as well as who voted for DMCA)
If Google is your friend, try these keywords:
WIPO "domain name disputes"
Is it like UK libel law where "truth of accusation" is not a defence, the plaintiff only has to prove damage to reputation? (even if it is clearly deserved)
There are reasons why corporations and public figures who would like to suppress true and embarrassing stories try to sue in the UK. Is Canada going to be the next mecca for that sort of crap?
but the EU government appears to be the second most dysfunctionally designed representative government in the history of mankind.
I've been hearing from Europeans whose favorite products have been modified or eliminated by order of the EU government despite the distinct lack of demand for that kind of regulation for years.
How many times have the directly elected representatives voted this measure down? How many times have unelected and unaccountable EU bureaucrats ignored them?
Also note on this issue that the only people whose will is being represented is that of the US Microsoft Corporation and its associates. Is that what you pay your taxes to the EU for?
If I were a citizen of a EU member country, I'd vote NO on any increase in EU power. What you've got is not working, it needs to be thrown back with the instructions "do it over and do it right".
While I am one of the harshest critics of the US government (aka the Corporate States of America), if President Bush tried to get a bill passed and it lost twice in a row in Congress, even he'd pack it in and tell his corporate major campaign contributors "Sorry, I tried. Maybe in a year or two." Even the wingnuts who provide his primery support base would accept this for the most part.
This doesn't mean our President or Congress or court system is composed of virtuous people, the whole world knows that it isn't, it's just that our Founding Fathers did a better government design job than the anonymous group of bureaucrats you got yours from.
People have copied the US system. IMHO, nobody is ever going to try to replicate the mess that is trying to coalesce into a EU-wide government, whether the EU primary body of law is turned into a constitution or not. Government teachers worldwide are going to show the EU as a case study on how NOT to organize a government along with the Polish Parliament of a few hundred years ago where every Baron had a veto.
They're betting their political careers that SCOTUS (Supreme Court of The United States) will shitcan the bill, that way they get broadcaster contributions, make their Xtian crazies happy, and when the law is struck down, they can say "We tried, give us money so we can try again."
IMHO, the cable industry is making the same bet, and that's why they aren't already running a massive PR campaign against the not-introduced-yet bill.
If SCOTUS throws us a curve ball and affirms the law, the legislators will think they got tossed a live grenade.
Who is going to pay for Pay-per-view or premium channels with content edited for pre-teens?
There will be suddenly no reason for anybody to buy cable service above the basic level.
At that point, the cable and satellite industries will go nuclear. The CEOs are not going to be pleased to see their personal net worths cut in half because a bunch of tards voted for a very bad law. They are going to know exactly where to go for revenge, and they are going to have the full support of just about every single American to get it.
Remember the court case in Salt Lake City where the defendants proved that community standards obviously included pr0n based on the number of people renting local adult videos? If people are told that they can't watch not only adult movies, but movies made for adults as well in their private homes without being their dumbed down to kiddle standards, they are going to be looking for somebody to fuck up. I'm sure the cable industry and the Democrats who had sense enough not to vote for it will be very, very happy to provide target ID.
This is not a complex issue, it can be explained in a 30 second attack ad.
I'm inclined to hope Stevens gets what he asked for and that SCOTUS affirms it. Congress badly needs cleaning out, and the outcome of this should hit that bunch like a lead enema.
unless YOU pay someone an honorarium... part of that charge pays for the editor to fix what you write.
As for me, I write for money. Doing this means that my stuff goes throgh an editor. I write how-to pieces on Linux. I'm not interested in writing for academic journals.
As for what i do to advance humanity... alternative energy research into biofuels. What do you produce besides hot air?
As for things like nudity, I must admit that watching nekkid women turns me on, and causes me to think about things I know I shouldn't, but that's why I make it a point not to watch nekkid women.
Sounds like a confession of weak-mindedness to me.
Your co-religionists who, like their Taliban counterparts, advocate state censorship are a reason why the only reason "Christian perspectives" are taken seriouly by the informed is for purposes of opposition research.
We can have a free country, or we can have a country run by religious crazies. We can't have both.
Perhaps you should use more of the time you save through automatic grading of papers in writing yourself.
I'd like to think that a second look with your Model One Eyeballs would show you about the minor grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors shot through your post. If not, just why are we bothering to pay you to teach? It appears that you would be better replaced by a bot.
If I submitted the stuff I sell for a living in the shape your post is in, my editors would probably hounce it for rewrite.
with respect to waste streams... what about sewage?
With respect to arable land, who says it has to be arable? The following quote discusses the sewage into algae biomass oil research Mike Briggs is doing:
You can look at them for yourself at the University of New Hampshire site
here [unh.edu] This is largely based on research successfully completed at DOE in 1998 and shelved because cheap oil looked like forever back then. You can find the DOE reports from the UNH link. Biomass algae is a more efficient biodiesel source than food grains, etc. because a single-cell organism doesn't require wasting energy and nutrients on making the rest of the plant (stalks, roots, etc.) and grows in hours, not months. The difference between food grain biomass and algae biomass is the difference between 1-3 barrel / acre / year and 91-360 barrels / acre / year. (see the UNH site for detail) Biodiesel you can burn in a car / truck / plane.
Using algae biomass as a practical energy solution requires removing a couple of process bottlenecks, one being growing the algae while capturing methane generated in its growth cheaply (the DOE solusion used open raceway ponds), and getting the oil out of the algae cheaply. You won't see much about possible solutions for a while because in order to get research funding, anybody with what he thinks are the right answers is discussing them on an NDA basis with potential investors or team members. (based on comments I've seen from researchers... and because I'm looking for money myself in this area)
With respect to solar, neither of you brought up an obvious point. What happens when the sun goes down?,p.A homeowner on the grid can choose either battery backup (since you've priced this, you know this means REAL BIG batteries) or grid backup, buy power when the rates are low.
The choices are more limited with respect to supplying utility grade power:
very large-scale storage
a worldwide electrical grid
a solar power satellite network
I favor the solar power satellite solution, since JP Aerospace appears to be on the edge of success with their blimp-to-orbit space transportation solution, which promises orders-of-magnitude reductions in the price-per-kilogram for boosting payloads into orbit to less than what NASA says on their solar power satellite project site is required to make a SPS project feasible.
With respect to solar cells themselves, I am not at all certain about whether or not the real problem in getting the cost down in this application is best done through new types of solar cells or through more economical packaging of existing devices. Wafer-scale cells with arrays of cells photolithographed onto them, automated laser testing to mask out defective cells just might reduce costs quite a bit. Or not, this is not my field and I'm not really equipped to run the numbers. But I suspect an effective 100% yield on very high production volumes certainly wouldn't hurt.
The other possibility that occurs to me for reducing the cost of a solar power satellite array is to replace NASA's rigid structure setup with solar cell array modules strung on cables combined with microwave transmitters to make very large phased-array antenna systems to ship the power back without having to carry it back to a central power
nexus and separate antenna system. The central control nexus would gather the physical location of the cell arrays and instruct the array transmitters as phase-control information. Not saying this is THE answer, just suggesting that thinking outside NASA's box might be in order here.
The URLs for the NASA project, etc. are on the page in my sig.
why hasn't one of the winners filed a complaint with that guy's state Bar Association? Frivolous lawsuits and abuse of process are examples. Checking back on this guy's history should be easy enough.
Nail this guy's hide to the barn door and it'll be a while before this kind of crap lawsuit gets filed again by anybody.
With respect to start menus... odd, mine (FC2) is where Windows puts it, there's just a funny-looking hat where the word "Start" would be in Windoze... and with a little work, one could even put the word "Start" back.
Forget Crossover unless you KNOW the "power user" apps needed by a user are supported. Crossover/WINE works on a very small subset of Windows apps.
Win4Lin uses an actual copy of Windows (the version supporting W2000 should be out by now) and russ just about anything that ran on Windows to begin with. Win4Lin made it possible for me to run Linux (there is no good solution for porting Eudora mailboxes and address books) and wait for the Open Source graphics apps to grow up to the usable point.
You are right in that it's the power Windows users who are going to have trouble... plus anyone who wants to send documents outside an organization that's switched.
Little differences become big ones when an outside client or editor is the one that is complaining about them.
If there were usable raster (GIMP ain't it) and vector draw (Inkscape will get there in a couple of years) apps ready to be packaged that way, I'd be happy to plunk down $30. IMHO, GIMP will never get there given the profound lack of interest among GIMP developers in the actual needs of graphics professionals, I've heard there are other non-GIMP paint projects going and I wish them great success and progress to workable product soon, I could use one as of several months ago.
Anyone willing to fix GIMP2 or Inkscape in their current states into ready-to-go professional products will damned well have earned that $30.
With terabyte removable media, they could shift to a CD (or later formats) burn-on-demand distribution model. Put one of these drives in a jukebox, one HVD per major record label, groups of smaller labels band together to make their own distribution HVDs.
The older labels could put every album and single in their masters vaults, from Edison wax cylinders to Britney's latest whatever with room to spare for promo videos and marketing materials. A record master sitting in a vault brings in no money. Why not put everything out for sale at once?
Put these jukeboxes in every record store. People who want to buy an album brings a dummy album to the counter just as it is handled in DVD rental places. It gets scanned, paid for, and the new album is burned and the cover art is printed. The customer is handed a package with CD, jewel case, and cover artwork in it.
Encrypt each of the catalogue disks to the individual kiosks. There are other possible security measures that can be taken as well, but this is a slashdot post, not a business plan. Though a business plan could be put together around it.
The record labels bill the record stores based on the number of end user downloads to CD.
As for why not go to an all electronic format, the difference between 128K MP3 and uncompressed CD audio is audible, and the main thing that sells CDs even to downloaders these days. You want a full CD-quality track? 50 megs is a bit painful even for regular consumer broadband and unthinkable on dialup. How many albums will you download if your bandwidth is capped?
Send the HVDs out every month via snailmail. If they get lost, simply burn/send a replacement, they're of no value to anyone who steals one from the mail.
For the very highest demand artists who one can figure will go platinum, it's still more cost-effective to mass-produce CDs and ship them physically. This would allow a label to profit even from an artist selling one record to the public per decade that they haven't paid to promote in half a century.
I'd like to be able to go to a record store or online and be able to buy all the records I grew up with. Or buy CDs with full audio quality from any band that's ever recorded an album on any label anywhere.
One would think that the record labels would like to take my money for them. Apparently, control is more interesting to them than profit to stockholders is.
Anybody who has a backup problem larger than the pr0n collection you keep on your computer in mommy's basement is going to be really glad to see TB removable data storage... as opposed to 200 DVD-Rs to get the same amount of data storage. With this, WALMART will be able to replace their tape silos with a few DVD jukeboxes that'll fit in a server closet, The rest of us with smaller data storage needs will also benefit. I have about 30G to back up. It fits with compression onto 3 DVD-Rs, which I have to sit and burn. A TVD I can burn overnight unattended.
This also makes new business models for the record/movie industries possible, but I'm not about to try to explain them to you.
Go back to AOL where you can be at home with "differently abled" people like you.
That's how the Swiss do it. Members of the militia (i.e. just about every male in Switzerland) are required to keep FULL AUTO MILITARY assault rifles at home in case of a militia callup.
Feel free to argue if you like, but personally, I think it a reasonable assumption that the Swiss government knows what its own gun laws are.
How many "full-time professional IT staff" know desktop Linux well enough to put multimedia onto a Linux box without doing a lot of research?
What about "unsupported" printers?
Anyone who wants to claim that printers are no problem is invited to explain how one makes a Lexmark X6xx or x5xx series printer work on Linux... hint: yes, it can be done.
Try Plugger 5.1.3, it's a browser plugin that effectively connects multimedia players to your browser. I've gotten mixed results with it. Google for it.
If multimedia players don't work, use whatever automated installer is on mepis to install mplayer , skins , and the w32codecs . You need all 3 to get acceptable performance.
The Open Source development community hasn't solved the usability problems, particularly software and hardware installation.
Yum and apt-get are largely superior software installation solutions to anything MS has, why isn't the last step in releasing a new software package to put it on the yum / apt-get / urpmi repositories?
Why hasn't a method for using Windows installation information directly been found for scanners and printers?
IMHO, this is in part because the community is still in denial that this problem exists.
While Linux is a superior server solution, IBM's best desktop move would probably be remarketing the Mac-mini, which is a *nix environment on which even end users can install hardware and software NOW, not hopefully next year.
Putting people in reasonable fear of a lawsuit even if the accusation is in fact both true and provable is almost as good as being able to send out one's own jack-booted thugs out to kick down people's doors, given that even if one's accusations are both true and provable, one still has to pay a lawyer and substantial legal fees in order to prove that one is in fact innocent of the charge of libel on the basis that one is telling the truth, no matter how unpleasant a corporation finds this.
Slashdot Mirror
flipping burgers or are you now pushing a broom? Did you get to keep your Aeron Chair?
WIPO is based on law written for by, and for large corporations and paid for by campaign contributions made to US politicians just like DMCA is. While the neocons are a good part of what's wrong with the world, when major corporate interests are involved, starting with the Hollywood content cartel, Democrats will roll over with their paws in the air just as quickly as George Bush will. (see also the vote on the new MNBA-funded bankruptcy law as well as who voted for DMCA)
If Google is your friend, try these keywords:
WIPO "domain name disputes"
There are reasons why corporations and public figures who would like to suppress true and embarrassing stories try to sue in the UK. Is Canada going to be the next mecca for that sort of crap?
I've been hearing from Europeans whose favorite products have been modified or eliminated by order of the EU government despite the distinct lack of demand for that kind of regulation for years.
How many times have the directly elected representatives voted this measure down? How many times have unelected and unaccountable EU bureaucrats ignored them?
Also note on this issue that the only people whose will is being represented is that of the US Microsoft Corporation and its associates. Is that what you pay your taxes to the EU for?
If I were a citizen of a EU member country, I'd vote NO on any increase in EU power. What you've got is not working, it needs to be thrown back with the instructions "do it over and do it right".
While I am one of the harshest critics of the US government (aka the Corporate States of America), if President Bush tried to get a bill passed and it lost twice in a row in Congress, even he'd pack it in and tell his corporate major campaign contributors "Sorry, I tried. Maybe in a year or two." Even the wingnuts who provide his primery support base would accept this for the most part.
This doesn't mean our President or Congress or court system is composed of virtuous people, the whole world knows that it isn't, it's just that our Founding Fathers did a better government design job than the anonymous group of bureaucrats you got yours from.
People have copied the US system. IMHO, nobody is ever going to try to replicate the mess that is trying to coalesce into a EU-wide government, whether the EU primary body of law is turned into a constitution or not. Government teachers worldwide are going to show the EU as a case study on how NOT to organize a government along with the Polish Parliament of a few hundred years ago where every Baron had a veto.
If you can, I'm not all that optmistic.
Let's wish her an equally successful tenure as CEO of the World Bank.
Couldn't get there. It's almost like it had been slashdotted.
IMHO, the cable industry is making the same bet, and that's why they aren't already running a massive PR campaign against the not-introduced-yet bill.
If SCOTUS throws us a curve ball and affirms the law, the legislators will think they got tossed a live grenade.
Who is going to pay for Pay-per-view or premium channels with content edited for pre-teens?
There will be suddenly no reason for anybody to buy cable service above the basic level.
At that point, the cable and satellite industries will go nuclear. The CEOs are not going to be pleased to see their personal net worths cut in half because a bunch of tards voted for a very bad law. They are going to know exactly where to go for revenge, and they are going to have the full support of just about every single American to get it.
Remember the court case in Salt Lake City where the defendants proved that community standards obviously included pr0n based on the number of people renting local adult videos? If people are told that they can't watch not only adult movies, but movies made for adults as well in their private homes without being their dumbed down to kiddle standards, they are going to be looking for somebody to fuck up. I'm sure the cable industry and the Democrats who had sense enough not to vote for it will be very, very happy to provide target ID.
This is not a complex issue, it can be explained in a 30 second attack ad.
I'm inclined to hope Stevens gets what he asked for and that SCOTUS affirms it. Congress badly needs cleaning out, and the outcome of this should hit that bunch like a lead enema.
As for me, I write for money. Doing this means that my stuff goes throgh an editor. I write how-to pieces on Linux. I'm not interested in writing for academic journals.
As for what i do to advance humanity... alternative energy research into biofuels. What do you produce besides hot air?
Sounds like a confession of weak-mindedness to me.
Your co-religionists who, like their Taliban counterparts, advocate state censorship are a reason why the only reason "Christian perspectives" are taken seriouly by the informed is for purposes of opposition research.
We can have a free country, or we can have a country run by religious crazies. We can't have both.
I'd like to think that a second look with your Model One Eyeballs would show you about the minor grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors shot through your post. If not, just why are we bothering to pay you to teach? It appears that you would be better replaced by a bot.
If I submitted the stuff I sell for a living in the shape your post is in, my editors would probably hounce it for rewrite.
"Those who can, do, those who can't teach."
with respect to waste streams... what about sewage?
With respect to arable land, who says it has to be arable? The following quote discusses the sewage into algae biomass oil research Mike Briggs is doing:
Using algae biomass as a practical energy solution requires removing a couple of process bottlenecks, one being growing the algae while capturing methane generated in its growth cheaply (the DOE solusion used open raceway ponds), and getting the oil out of the algae cheaply. You won't see much about possible solutions for a while because in order to get research funding, anybody with what he thinks are the right answers is discussing them on an NDA basis with potential investors or team members. (based on comments I've seen from researchers... and because I'm looking for money myself in this area)
With respect to solar, neither of you brought up an obvious point. What happens when the sun goes down? ,p.A homeowner on the grid can choose either battery backup (since you've priced this, you know this means REAL BIG batteries) or grid backup, buy power when the rates are low.
The choices are more limited with respect to supplying utility grade power:
I favor the solar power satellite solution, since JP Aerospace appears to be on the edge of success with their blimp-to-orbit space transportation solution, which promises orders-of-magnitude reductions in the price-per-kilogram for boosting payloads into orbit to less than what NASA says on their solar power satellite project site is required to make a SPS project feasible.
With respect to solar cells themselves, I am not at all certain about whether or not the real problem in getting the cost down in this application is best done through new types of solar cells or through more economical packaging of existing devices. Wafer-scale cells with arrays of cells photolithographed onto them, automated laser testing to mask out defective cells just might reduce costs quite a bit. Or not, this is not my field and I'm not really equipped to run the numbers. But I suspect an effective 100% yield on very high production volumes certainly wouldn't hurt.
The other possibility that occurs to me for reducing the cost of a solar power satellite array is to replace NASA's rigid structure setup with solar cell array modules strung on cables combined with microwave transmitters to make very large phased-array antenna systems to ship the power back without having to carry it back to a central power nexus and separate antenna system. The central control nexus would gather the physical location of the cell arrays and instruct the array transmitters as phase-control information. Not saying this is THE answer, just suggesting that thinking outside NASA's box might be in order here.
The URLs for the NASA project, etc. are on the page in my sig.
Nail this guy's hide to the barn door and it'll be a while before this kind of crap lawsuit gets filed again by anybody.
Forget Crossover unless you KNOW the "power user" apps needed by a user are supported. Crossover/WINE works on a very small subset of Windows apps.
Win4Lin uses an actual copy of Windows (the version supporting W2000 should be out by now) and russ just about anything that ran on Windows to begin with. Win4Lin made it possible for me to run Linux (there is no good solution for porting Eudora mailboxes and address books) and wait for the Open Source graphics apps to grow up to the usable point.
You are right in that it's the power Windows users who are going to have trouble... plus anyone who wants to send documents outside an organization that's switched.
Little differences become big ones when an outside client or editor is the one that is complaining about them.
Anyone willing to fix GIMP2 or Inkscape in their current states into ready-to-go professional products will damned well have earned that $30.
The older labels could put every album and single in their masters vaults, from Edison wax cylinders to Britney's latest whatever with room to spare for promo videos and marketing materials. A record master sitting in a vault brings in no money. Why not put everything out for sale at once?
Put these jukeboxes in every record store. People who want to buy an album brings a dummy album to the counter just as it is handled in DVD rental places. It gets scanned, paid for, and the new album is burned and the cover art is printed. The customer is handed a package with CD, jewel case, and cover artwork in it.
Encrypt each of the catalogue disks to the individual kiosks. There are other possible security measures that can be taken as well, but this is a slashdot post, not a business plan. Though a business plan could be put together around it.
The record labels bill the record stores based on the number of end user downloads to CD.
As for why not go to an all electronic format, the difference between 128K MP3 and uncompressed CD audio is audible, and the main thing that sells CDs even to downloaders these days. You want a full CD-quality track? 50 megs is a bit painful even for regular consumer broadband and unthinkable on dialup. How many albums will you download if your bandwidth is capped?
Send the HVDs out every month via snailmail. If they get lost, simply burn/send a replacement, they're of no value to anyone who steals one from the mail.
For the very highest demand artists who one can figure will go platinum, it's still more cost-effective to mass-produce CDs and ship them physically. This would allow a label to profit even from an artist selling one record to the public per decade that they haven't paid to promote in half a century.
I'd like to be able to go to a record store or online and be able to buy all the records I grew up with. Or buy CDs with full audio quality from any band that's ever recorded an album on any label anywhere.
One would think that the record labels would like to take my money for them. Apparently, control is more interesting to them than profit to stockholders is.
Anybody who has a backup problem larger than the pr0n collection you keep on your computer in mommy's basement is going to be really glad to see TB removable data storage... as opposed to 200 DVD-Rs to get the same amount of data storage. With this, WALMART will be able to replace their tape silos with a few DVD jukeboxes that'll fit in a server closet, The rest of us with smaller data storage needs will also benefit. I have about 30G to back up. It fits with compression onto 3 DVD-Rs, which I have to sit and burn. A TVD I can burn overnight unattended.
This also makes new business models for the record/movie industries possible, but I'm not about to try to explain them to you.
Go back to AOL where you can be at home with "differently abled" people like you.
Enjoy your Listerine,
Residential Lite High-Speed Cable Access
3 Email Addresses
1 Dynamic IP Address 128 Kbps Upload* 384 Kbps Download*
$25.99/mo
AlamedaNET Basic High-Speed Cable Access
5 Email Accounts 20Mb of Web Space
1 Dynamic IP 128 Kbps Upload* 1.5 Mbps Download*
$32.50/mo
Personally, I'd be glad to pay for this, the low-end rate is what I'm buying right now.
However, if you'd rather pay more for less service from a good capitalist provider like comcast, feel free.
moving to anywhere in .cn , .tw , or the .th geographic TLDs and do the search again.
Feel free to argue if you like, but personally, I think it a reasonable assumption that the Swiss government knows what its own gun laws are.
What about "unsupported" printers?
Anyone who wants to claim that printers are no problem is invited to explain how one makes a Lexmark X6xx or x5xx series printer work on Linux... hint: yes, it can be done.
If multimedia players don't work, use whatever automated installer is on mepis to install mplayer , skins , and the w32codecs . You need all 3 to get acceptable performance.
You can run it under Linux WITHOUT using WINE, and I do.
Yum and apt-get are largely superior software installation solutions to anything MS has, why isn't the last step in releasing a new software package to put it on the yum / apt-get / urpmi repositories?
Why hasn't a method for using Windows installation information directly been found for scanners and printers?
IMHO, this is in part because the community is still in denial that this problem exists.
While Linux is a superior server solution, IBM's best desktop move would probably be remarketing the Mac-mini, which is a *nix environment on which even end users can install hardware and software NOW, not hopefully next year.
Putting people in reasonable fear of a lawsuit even if the accusation is in fact both true and provable is almost as good as being able to send out one's own jack-booted thugs out to kick down people's doors, given that even if one's accusations are both true and provable, one still has to pay a lawyer and substantial legal fees in order to prove that one is in fact innocent of the charge of libel on the basis that one is telling the truth, no matter how unpleasant a corporation finds this.
Google on "Chilling Effects".