Well that is hardly useful considering my computer at home is a white box, and my laptop from work was a Sony that originally shipped with ME.
On our network we have a large number of name brand PC's that shipped with 2K, and are slowly being upgraded to XP-pro. Said CD is not going to help much there, either. (And yes, we do have a license agreement that permits us to. We damnwell pay enough for it.)
How unclear is patent law? The patent is published. The rules governing patents are published. The enforcment of patents has been the same since day 1 in this country, and it benefits the small-time entrepreneur every bit as much the megacorp.
Defamation is defamation. Free speech is free speech. The boundary between the two has been an ongoing debate since before the founding of this country. Take out "megacorps" and insert "Nobility" or "Celebrity" and you have the same cases going back for centures.
Trade marks are another item that are government registered and widely published. And like free speech, debate over common usage versus the trade mark owner goes back to the beginning of case law.
As far as trade secrets go, a trade secret can be between 2 people, or 2 million. The size of the distribution doesn't matter. What the law cares about is a) do you own the material and b) did you attempt to limit the distribution of it. Don't bitch at me, that is what case law dictates.
And as far as monetary damage goes, if someone takes your product and starts minting a cheap copies, that hurts your bottom line. This is Econ 101. This is why there are Patent and Trademark laws on the books. This is why there is a civil court system. That is why we have Copyrights.
One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, was, after all, a retired printer.
You laugh, but IP is a major part of an ongoing tiff between the US and China. It hasn't blown out into armed conflict, but it has been on the verge of setting off a trade war on several occasions.
I too went years without the evil glowing box. At least three. In that time we didn't even own a TV. (My playstation was jury rigged into our ATI all-in-wonder card.)
But then we had a kid. When your wife it stuck at home, it only takes a few weeks for her to realize that there is only so much going on on the net in a given day.
Now, we did get satellite, and with it a DVR package. Fast forwarding through commercials, and being able to stockpile shows for days when I'm sick at home have eliminated my 2 major complaints about the tube.
The stockpiling is important. Most of my favorite cable channels... ok who am I kidding... the only 2 channels I watch tend to run the interesting stuff in marathons, with a long dry season in between. While I only average a few hours of TV a week, having 8 episodes of Star Trek, and another 6 "Tales of the Gun" are really handy for being home with the flu.
And having 5 or 6 hours of "Sesame Street" and "Jay Jay the Jet Plane" canned and ready to play is a life saver when you have a toddler. It means you can play their favorite video without it drilling your mind to the point you can recite the dialog by heart.
And to be fair, she is evenly split between wanting TV, mom and dad time, and bringing a book over demanding we read it to her. If anything, she prefers the books.
I wouldn't fret it too much. The same folks who brought you "free cable" and "free satellite" are probably going to also provide a little box that takes raw signal in, flips the "evil bit", and sends a pure pirateable stream to your DVR.
For the record, the constitution predates the concept of a corporation by about 100 years. And frankly lawsuits don't involve throwing people in jail, death, or bodily modification. We may think being broke is the end of the world, but it's not.
And you missed an important point in my allegory of the bull. You have to step past several clearly marked, if flimsy, points of law. And you have to do it in a way that attracts the big dumb animal's attention. You can't exactly be caught being innocent.
In that respect our legal system is there to seperate the wrongdoers from the innocent. This guy is guilty as sin. Of what, and to what extent, is anyone's guess. But passing around trade secrets and copyrighted material over p2p networks is hard to argue the lack of guilt.
One can bitch about a $780 speeding ticket and points on his/her license as excessive, but at the end of the day he/she was still exceeding the posted speed limit.
That's like asking how anyone can defend themselves against a charging bull after ignoring the "No Trespassing" and "Danger Bull" signs while hopping over a barbed wire fence and wearing a red jacket.
Well there are "free" services, but who knows what you are going to get if you grab a file named "Perry Mason." It could be anything from "Mickey Mouse" to "Ginger Lynn".
But murder and rape have been punished for a loooooong time, and there are no indications that these activities will ever cease.
I just spent the morning as a witness to a burglary. While you are sitting there waiting for the preliminary hearing, you have to sit through all of the other preliminary hearings going on.
One thing is apparent to me, having gone through the process. Most crime today is committed by stupid people. Really stupid people.
What I didn't see is one, not one, case where a person of sound mind committed a crime for personal gain. Not one.
Say what you will about making an example of people. It's the assurance that you will be caught, and you will be tried that make sure the average Joe doesn't engage in it.
You reinforce the image that you are working on stuff so valuable you are willing to go to court over it.
Profit.
Perhaps you have never worked in a technology company. You walk out the door with a prototype, and it shows up out on the street, you are going to get sued. Unless you work for the company. Then you are fired, then sued.
Embezzel the company for a few hundred thousand dollars, steal laptops, get caught buying hookers and drugs with company money, they let you go quietly. They often don't press charges.
But you compromise, or come close to compromising, the crown jewels, they have to tear into you. It's like defending trademarks. The only property they own is what they are willing to defend.
As someone who goes by "Evil Twin Skippy", I can say that a lot of care went into the selection of my Pseudo. Namely, I forgot what my password was for "Yoda" and it points to an email account that doesn't exist anymore.
And people wonder why I insist on controlling the machines and domains that handle my email...
Hey, look at it this way, in 10 years who is going to remember what Odo was? It'll be like J.R.R. Tolkien characters were before they made all the movies.
Ford said the idea was to represent what an average system administrator may do, as opposed to a "wizard" who could take extra steps to provide plenty of security on a Linux setup, for instance.
Um, no. Your average system administrator earns about $62k has at least 2 years experience, and generally a bachelors degree in a related field. At least according to most industry figures.
The job title also entails tweaking system configurations for security, evaluating patches, etc. etc.
When Ford, or Daimler Benz goes out to design a car, they know where every bolt, nut, rivet, weld, and cup holder are. That information is fed into a finite element analysis model that breaks the car down into ever finer blocks of deformable material.
They than take that model and bash it against a series of controlled obstructions.
Even then, those simulations are just used to rule out certain design changes. All final designes are bolted to a hydrolic ram, filled with test dummies, and shot into a wall or another vehicle.
And again.
And again.
Yes, the automaker DOES have a model of the car. Yes, that model could be fed into another FEA. But in order to produce any meaningful result you would have to have equally good data about all the occupants in the car. Where everything on the road was, and at which time in the "event."
And did I mention that the simulation is only as good as the least accurate measurement? At best. And most of the data you would have needed is gone as soon as rescue crews arrive and attempt to move the vehicles out of the way of traffic?
Advanced Adaptation Substitue. It is almost, but not entirely, unlike any of the other adaptations of the story.
The hardest part I had was convincing the computer that I really wanted something that was printed using chared bits of coal smeared on mashed up, dried out bits of tree, held together by cow skin.
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On our network we have a large number of name brand PC's that shipped with 2K, and are slowly being upgraded to XP-pro. Said CD is not going to help much there, either. (And yes, we do have a license agreement that permits us to. We damnwell pay enough for it.)
As soon as 3dsmax and photoshop ship for linux, I'll be on linux. So what is keeping you off the Mac?
Combine the two ideas. Especially since, unlike other Depolymerization processes, this one actually likes extra water.
And cities also produce tons of trash on a daily basis. Disposing of both is a problem, to the point that many State's largest export is garbage.
And don't forget all that paperwork that is currently shredded and burnt.
Defamation is defamation. Free speech is free speech. The boundary between the two has been an ongoing debate since before the founding of this country. Take out "megacorps" and insert "Nobility" or "Celebrity" and you have the same cases going back for centures.
Trade marks are another item that are government registered and widely published. And like free speech, debate over common usage versus the trade mark owner goes back to the beginning of case law.
As far as trade secrets go, a trade secret can be between 2 people, or 2 million. The size of the distribution doesn't matter. What the law cares about is a) do you own the material and b) did you attempt to limit the distribution of it. Don't bitch at me, that is what case law dictates.
And as far as monetary damage goes, if someone takes your product and starts minting a cheap copies, that hurts your bottom line. This is Econ 101. This is why there are Patent and Trademark laws on the books. This is why there is a civil court system. That is why we have Copyrights.
One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, was, after all, a retired printer.
You laugh, but IP is a major part of an ongoing tiff between the US and China. It hasn't blown out into armed conflict, but it has been on the verge of setting off a trade war on several occasions.
But then we had a kid. When your wife it stuck at home, it only takes a few weeks for her to realize that there is only so much going on on the net in a given day.
Now, we did get satellite, and with it a DVR package. Fast forwarding through commercials, and being able to stockpile shows for days when I'm sick at home have eliminated my 2 major complaints about the tube.
The stockpiling is important. Most of my favorite cable channels... ok who am I kidding... the only 2 channels I watch tend to run the interesting stuff in marathons, with a long dry season in between. While I only average a few hours of TV a week, having 8 episodes of Star Trek, and another 6 "Tales of the Gun" are really handy for being home with the flu.
And having 5 or 6 hours of "Sesame Street" and "Jay Jay the Jet Plane" canned and ready to play is a life saver when you have a toddler. It means you can play their favorite video without it drilling your mind to the point you can recite the dialog by heart.
And to be fair, she is evenly split between wanting TV, mom and dad time, and bringing a book over demanding we read it to her. If anything, she prefers the books.
Last I checked there IS a big public taboo over shop lifting.
And you missed an important point in my allegory of the bull. You have to step past several clearly marked, if flimsy, points of law. And you have to do it in a way that attracts the big dumb animal's attention. You can't exactly be caught being innocent.
In that respect our legal system is there to seperate the wrongdoers from the innocent. This guy is guilty as sin. Of what, and to what extent, is anyone's guess. But passing around trade secrets and copyrighted material over p2p networks is hard to argue the lack of guilt.
One can bitch about a $780 speeding ticket and points on his/her license as excessive, but at the end of the day he/she was still exceeding the posted speed limit.
That's like asking how anyone can defend themselves against a charging bull after ignoring the "No Trespassing" and "Danger Bull" signs while hopping over a barbed wire fence and wearing a red jacket.
Well there are "free" services, but who knows what you are going to get if you grab a file named "Perry Mason." It could be anything from "Mickey Mouse" to "Ginger Lynn".
I just spent the morning as a witness to a burglary. While you are sitting there waiting for the preliminary hearing, you have to sit through all of the other preliminary hearings going on.
One thing is apparent to me, having gone through the process. Most crime today is committed by stupid people. Really stupid people.
What I didn't see is one, not one, case where a person of sound mind committed a crime for personal gain. Not one.
Say what you will about making an example of people. It's the assurance that you will be caught, and you will be tried that make sure the average Joe doesn't engage in it.
Perhaps you have never worked in a technology company. You walk out the door with a prototype, and it shows up out on the street, you are going to get sued. Unless you work for the company. Then you are fired, then sued.
Embezzel the company for a few hundred thousand dollars, steal laptops, get caught buying hookers and drugs with company money, they let you go quietly. They often don't press charges.
But you compromise, or come close to compromising, the crown jewels, they have to tear into you. It's like defending trademarks. The only property they own is what they are willing to defend.
And people wonder why I insist on controlling the machines and domains that handle my email...
Hey, look at it this way, in 10 years who is going to remember what Odo was? It'll be like J.R.R. Tolkien characters were before they made all the movies.
Man, and I drive around a 2000 Ford focus. I must be compensating for something.
Um, no. Your average system administrator earns about $62k has at least 2 years experience, and generally a bachelors degree in a related field. At least according to most industry figures.
The job title also entails tweaking system configurations for security, evaluating patches, etc. etc.
You must be new here.
When Ford, or Daimler Benz goes out to design a car, they know where every bolt, nut, rivet, weld, and cup holder are. That information is fed into a finite element analysis model that breaks the car down into ever finer blocks of deformable material.
They than take that model and bash it against a series of controlled obstructions.
Even then, those simulations are just used to rule out certain design changes. All final designes are bolted to a hydrolic ram, filled with test dummies, and shot into a wall or another vehicle.
And again.
And again.
Yes, the automaker DOES have a model of the car. Yes, that model could be fed into another FEA. But in order to produce any meaningful result you would have to have equally good data about all the occupants in the car. Where everything on the road was, and at which time in the "event."
And did I mention that the simulation is only as good as the least accurate measurement? At best. And most of the data you would have needed is gone as soon as rescue crews arrive and attempt to move the vehicles out of the way of traffic?
Wohooo! I love my building's new I2 link. I'm throwing the file on mldonkey as we speak.
The hardest part I had was convincing the computer that I really wanted something that was printed using chared bits of coal smeared on mashed up, dried out bits of tree, held together by cow skin.
Hopefully it will stop processing in time...