But, it looks like there is an agreement of reciprocity between the U.S. and E.U. (along with other nations)... here's a link where they discuss it
Thanks for the link, it actually provides me with reassurance and does not suggest that these dodgy patents would carry across or be respected in any way outside of the issuing country. To pull the relevant quotes:
The major international agreement concerning the international recognition of patents are the 1970 Patent Cooperation Treaty and the 1883 Convention Union of Paris
The 1883 Paris agreement gives the basic rules for how the roughly ninety countries who signed the agreement will treat foreigners applying for patents........It is important to note, however, that the 1883 Agreement did not alter the rules concerning what is or is not patentable. Those laws are still up the national governments.
The Patent Cooperation Treaty is an agreement designed to reduce the cost of obtaining international patents by implementing more uniform procedures......Note, however, that each PCT nation still determines whether or not the patent should be granted according to its own laws.
IANAL and I don't know whether tannedfeet.com who you linked to are in any way accurate or trustworthy but they certainly make clear that international patent law does nothing to grant a patent in other countries than where a patent is successfully granted. My idea stands, stop coding in the States and get out of the legal IP nightmare!
I would assume that the European countries and the US have some sort of agreed-upon reciprocity for patents.. you honor ours, we'll honor yours..
I guess this is the exact question I was asking....does such an agreement exist? I cannot believe for an instant it does otherwise why would the EU be debating the possibiliiity of introducing software patents!
I am a European and were I to discover that my usage of Ogg/Vorbis OR bladeenc OR xmms was subjected to US patent law I would be out on the streets of Dublin (as I was planing a few weeks ago as talk built of the possibility of a fast decision from the EU). Software patents are absurd and the U.S. patent Office a monstrous joke. I cannot believe for an instant that any forms of reciprocal deals (besides, why have European and U.S. patents if they will honor each others) would cover an area which is unpatentable on either side.
A minor point, but in the EU most DV-cams are only equipped with output as they would be classed as a video recorder otherwise and be subject to further taxation. I still find it unbelievable that the manufacturers chose to disable input rather than face the tax, but it means you have to "hack" the camcorder (devices are readily available) to record back on.
The compression on DV is basically colorspace reduction. It is a loseless format and not an mpeg style affair. It is good enough for most things, the only problm being the area of broadcast TV where the lack of depth is quite apparent and it would really be a station dependant decision as to whether the piece was worth it. You can certainly use a DV camera for data-backup, the question is how much error correction would be required to ensure data security and what data rate would that leave?
My first job after leaving college was looking after all the computers in an office of about 20 people. All the companies central and main systems ran on an "Alpha Micro" machine which yielded one page on the internet entitled "Obsolete Hardware". Most of the software for the machine was on tape (Exabyte) but some (which I never had to use) was on videotape. One day a new TV and video arrived in the building and guess what the only videos in the building were....So as soon as we tuned in the video we were looking at a black and white spaced table of I think 16x16 blocks at a rate of at most 4 blocks a second.....a grand total of 128kb/sec!
A simple demonstartion however of how this sort of a method with a firewire camera could certainly be used....it's just a question of what data-rate you can get!
Is it not simply the U.S. Patent system that is the problem here, and if so why do people continue to let the work they love be subjected to it? I can understand how International law would probably prevent the ogg boys successfully moving to Europe to avoid legal challenges, but could U.S. Patents have any impact on a project developed in Europe (other than the lawsuits that could fly over the distribution of the technology in the U.S., but if it is in a non-US section of the software mirrors and hence never held on a U.S. subjected server.....)?
Is it simply a case that despite the shit it causes, coders just aren't willing to leave th U.S. for any length of time? If so, perhaps its time the anti-european software patents crew along with the EFF etc to setup a nice new facility that coders can ask for permission to use to develop work in a patent free environment. Post to a website telling it what you want to do and why you need to get out of the U.S. If you get enough votes/are deemed worthy enough... you get a ticket and a workplace (maybe even a subsistance grant) with individuals to help and distract you. The Free Software Reseach Laboratory
Bottom line, if Alan Cox (he does live in England doesn't he?) added mp3 technology to the kernel, could he be touched (if he sourced all code from non-US contaminated sources or wrote it himself)?
I wouldn't want to see a Red Dwarf Film anymore because of the new CG work they use! It's a sad state of affairs I know but..... the only good thing they got out of the new computer revolution was a great scene of a minaturised Starbug flying around a corrider with it's head stuck up a rat's ass.
What offends me about the CG work they are using is not it's existance or the fact that you can tell a mile away that it is CG (and therefore any suspension of disbelief is destroyed) but with the fact that they did a George Lucas and decide to go back and re-cut 15 year old TV with new effects just because someone thought it looked better now (and maybe they could sell a few more boxes). You get cheesy live action scenes cut in with crystal precise space shots.....all the charector is detroyed. Using the CG in the new episodes is ok I guess, but lets face it, very little film CG is worthwhile and does not destroy all suspension of disbelief.
The final ignomy is best served by watching the outtakes videos when you see the most amazin shots of Spacecraft pulling 360 loops as they exit the docking bay taking half the bay with them.
What's a full length Red Dwarf anyway ??? the closest I can image is a series at a time (3 hours each for the first six and I think 4 hours the rest). My own favourite full length red dwarf though is the 18 hour series 1-6 marathon....well worth a go when you've a spare day.
I bet that the Redmond boys were certain they would at least know by now whether they were appealing to Bush or Gore. I feel certain they still hope it will be Bush..... but would they be playing this case differently depending on this (Bush wins = look at the money we bring in, Gore wins = we are behaving, it is all behind us, we are sorry, breaking up is baa aa ad M'Kay)?
I have been waiting for ages for OpenGL accelerated hardware to arrive to the majority of consumer desktops....as this will fuel the vrml revolution. You only have to look at flash usage (on the better sites) to see how people are interested in creating entirely unique UI environments, even windowing environments! VRML is a simple language that allows the creation of complex scenes, but until the TNT level of OpenGL performance arrived, the scenes were rendered at a terrible level (slow, slow, slow). Once people have the performance to throw around a few thousand textuured polys at quake speeds, vrml starts to allow the redefinition of web interfaces to a new paradigm (billboards still allow the use of staticly orientated 2d surfaces).
Secondly I think the SGI releases for Linux should assist in the generation of the content that will show the average user just why the 3d model is far superior for certain content (car showrooms online for example).
I went to SW I(x1), IV(x3), V(x3), VI(x3) in the cinema but have otherwise only given (directly or indirectly to the best of my knowledge) George Lucas a percentage on less than $3 which I spent on an R2D2 watch/keyring in a discount shop. I will go to EP II and III just to see the story completed (my only visit to a cinema in the last year was from a 'present' on my birthday where a group took me to get drunk watching Scary Movie), but I still will not buy videos, DVDs or any other merchandising because the entire creation has been destroyed for greed. If he ever makes it to EP VII - IX, it will be on the strength or weakness of EP I-III that I will decide if I will bother to see it, and right now there is no chance.
My only prayer is that as with the first (production order) trilogy this trilogy may slump into a far more evocative and realistic ambiance in the second film......and considering the state of the Universe to come in EP IV it might just stay there for EP III. Something makes me think that somehow the prequels to EP IV are all going to be smiley-happy-kiddy films though, and the misery of EP V is going to look very out of place when this generation of new Star Wars fans see it.
Now don't be so cruel, it does say that they want to support Linux!
Now then Taco please get in here and answer a simple question: Why did you post this story?
Please be certain to tell us whether money came into this decision.
Could it be that Steve Jobs is going to manage to make the OSX launch as big a media event as Win95 was? Since Win9x we haven't had any real take-up by the general media for a software launch (98, NT4 and 2000 all had much lower key launches in public in your face terms). We all know that OSX is different, and we all know that Jobs is an incredibly good salesman but the question is....
I am sure the general mass media are ready to hype a software launch again (they always need more stories) but will they ignore this whole thing because only a few people have machines that can run it?
http://www.naboonline.com/episode2/storyboard.shtm l
OK Slashdot, don't go choping this on me now! http://www.naboonline.com/episode2/storyboard.shtm l right you got that, it's a shtml page, and it is still LIVE!
I think it's time to fix this space in url thing....stop waiting for/.2.0
"Horns" leaked what appears to be a very real picture board of EPII to Naboonline who said "due to the fact that we do not want to get into trouble with Lucasfilm, we have decided to not post those images".
we do remind that we never posted any storyboards on this site - just 3 snippets of characters....Other sites, however, have linked to or posted some of the images. Aldera.net was asked to remove them.
Which is why we never posted the full images. We thought that a description and 3 character snippets would not invoke any trouble. LucasFilm says to take them off, so we do
A few choice snippets of the LucasFilm letter include.
protected by the copyright and trademark laws of the United States and other nations
so it is for copyright and trademark reasons
Pursuant to the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act ("DMCA"), other federal and state copyright laws, trademark
law, and other statutes, you are hereby notified that your actions
constitute infringement of Lucasfilm's rights. You may also be in
possession of stolen property of Lucasfilm.
The good old DMCA comes in along with anything else the lawyers can think to say.....what a surprise.
We demand that you remove all of the items described above that are
accessible on or through your system or network, accessed by users through
your system or network, or located using your information location tools;
and disable access to any sites fulfilling these criteria. We further
demand that you immediately turn over any Lucasfilm property in your
possession to us and provide us with information regarding the source of the
materials. You must provide written assurance that you will comply with
this demand immediately.
Oh Yeah? You can demand but don't tell people that they must do things unless you are a court. IANAL but I thought it was as simple as that. Could this be harrassment? Also kind-of big demands to drop all links to all sites that have anything still up even if you are linking to something else or just the homepage.
It concluded with a nice "Persuant to DMCA...infringe Lucasfilm's
copyrights and other intellectual property rights...penalty of perjury". Do they have a form letter for this sh*t? And if the site was based outside DMCA zone (e.g. Europe) would they be able to ignore this?
If a tabloid newspaper published this stuff would they get away with it? I'd have thought so! What is the difference here?
There's only one problem.....See the parent post:-)
The following is broken up by each panel. While some panels seem to continue the last or repeat, it's because good storyboards include each and
every shot and camera angle.
FIRST SCENE (in chronological order)
1-Its raining. At the entry ramp of Slave-1, as young
Boba Fett hurries aboard Jango Fett turns to see...
2-Obi-Wan ready with lightsabre ignited.
3-Jango opens fire with one blaster.
4-Obi-Wan deflects the bolts.
5-As Jango continues firing, he straffes behind and
around pillars.
6-Obi-Wan shuffles while deflecting the bolts.
7-As Jango moves behind a pillar, Obi-Wan charges
forward.
8-Jango unholsters a second blaster and does a Chow
Yun Fat impersonation.
9-Obi-Wan has trouble deflecting the barrage of bolts.
10-Jango takes off (using his jetpack) over the top of
Obi-Wan who swings his lightsaber but misses.
11-As he is flying past, Jango pivotes and fires at Obi-
Wan from a high angle.
12-Obi-Wan deflects the bolts from above
13-Jango comtinues to fire now that he is flying away
from Obi-Wan
14-Jango lets loose with both guns as he flys backwards.
15-Under the barrage of two blasters, Obi-Wan struggles
to deflect every bolt.
16-Obi-Wan rolls off to the side to avoid the bolts.
17-Jango flies off behind a tower.
18- Emerging on the other side, Jango fires the rocket
that was poking from the top of his jetpack.
19-Obi-Wan avoids the explosion but is stunned
20-Jango flies higher and out of screen.
21-Obi-Wan recovers and look around for Jango (who
seems to have disappeared)
22-Obi-Wan is tense in the silence.
23-Obi-Wan senses something and turns just in time to
see...
24-Young Boba Fett in the cockpit of Slave-1 taking aim
with the ships heavy blasters
25-Slave-1 fires
26-the shots miss but.....
27-Obi-Wan drops his lightsaber
28-Jango appears from above and jumps down.
29-Obi-Wan recovers and with a yell....
30-leaps forward to kick Jango in the face
31-Jango crashes back onto the landing platform.
32-Obi-Wan lands on his feet.
33-Jango quickly recovers and charges forward.
34-In close quaters, Obi-Wan blocks Jango's attempt to
rise his blaster to fire and the pair struggle for the
weapon.
35-They grapple over the blaster.
36-Obi-Wan elbows Jango hard in the face
37-High angle shot as Obi-Wan judo flips Jango over his
back.
38-Jango hits the ground hard but recovers quickly as
Obi-Wan moves in for an attack.
39-Jango traps Obi-Wans foot
40-Jango spins Obi-Wan (in mid air) and brings him
down face first onto the ground.
41-Obi-Wan retaliates from the ground with a sweep
kick to Jango's head knocking him back.
42-Jango falls back
43-Obi-Wan get to his feet.
44-Jango gets up and takes aim with his arm mounted
blaster.
45-Obi-Wan leaps over the bolts and onto Jango's
shoulders, then flicks himself back and over, flipping
Jango onto his back. Jango rolls to his feet.
46-Obi-Wan charges with a punch
47-Jango moves in to attack, chopping at Obi-Wan's
head. Obi-Wan blocks it.
48-Jango ducks a wild punch and grabs Obi-Wan by his
waist.
49-Jango sweeps Obi-Wan off his feet and flips him over
bringing him crashing down over his bent knee.
50-Obi-Wan (momentarily stunned) is thrown by Jango.
Obi-Wan lands and skids over the wet surface.
51-Obi-Wan comes to a halt on the ground and spots
something.
52-His lightsaber.
53-Jango suddenly appears, flying towards Obi-Wan.
54-Obi-Wan gets up and reaches for his lightsaber (to
summond it).
55-Jango fires his cable
56-cable wraps around Obi-Wan's hands
57-ObiWan fails to catch his lightsaber
58-Jango takes off, still tied to Obi-Wan
59-Obi-Wan is dragged along the ground.
60-Low angle behind Obi-Wan who is still being dragged
61-High abgle next to Jango who is still flying
62-Obi-Wan rolls to one side as he is still being dragged.
63-Obi-Wan manages to roll around one of the pillars.
64-Obi-Wan jumps up and wraps the cable around the
pillar.
65-Jango crashes to the ground
66-The jetpack shoots off on its own into the side of a
building.
67-Obi-Wan (with his hands still tied) charges
68-Obi-Wan kicks jango over the side of the platform.
69-Jango slides down the side
70-Obi Wan gets pulled to the edge of the platform.
71-Almost over the complete edge, Jango activates claws
on the side of his forearms.
72-Jango digs his "claws" into the platform.
73-Obi-Wan falls over the edge and onto the slope
74-Obi-Wan slides past Jango
75-Obi-Wan falls off over the edge.
76- Still tied to Jango, Obi-Wan is hanging
77-Obi-Wan starts swinging
78-Jango is getting pulled down now.
79-jango releases the cable.
80-Obi-Wan falls
81-Distant shot as Obi-Wan falls.
82-Obi-Wan reaches for and grabs a service platform
with the tips of his fingers.
83-Obi-Wan jumps onto the platform
84-Jango enters Slave-1
85-Obi-Wan, already back on the platform, summons his
lightsaber as he runs.
86-Lightsaber returns to its owner
87-Obi-Wan catches the lightsaber
88-Slave-1 begins to take off.
89-In one move, Obi-Wan takes a seeker pod from his
belt and throws it.
90-The seeker pod sticks to the side of the ship.
91-Obi-Wan watches from the platform
92-As Slave-1 takes off into the rain.
SECOND SCENE (Warning! MAJOR SPOILERS!)
1-Overlooking a grand arena in a VIP style "box" sits
Count Dooku and Poggle the Lesser. I believe Count
Dooku is Christopher Lee's character. To his left sits a
Nemoidian. Poggle is a strangle looking creature
(definitely CGI). I'd say a cross between Sebulba and a
Gungan but extremely skinny and with apparent wings.
Jango Fett stands behind Poggle.
2-Dooku and Poggle talk and watch the arena. Unnoticed
by them, there is a flash far behind them and one of the
Lesser guards drops to the ground.
3-A hand taps Dooku's shoulder.
4-Mace Windu reveals himself with one hand and with
the other keeps Jango at bay with his lightsaber.
5-View of the Stadium as hundreds of Jedi enter from all
passageways. All ready for confrontation with their
lightsabers ignited.
6-Dooku reveals the droid army awaiting the jedi. Mace
reacts as the droids (battledroids, destroyer droids and
superdroids (which look like a cross between battledroid
and stormtrooper, very big)) emerge from the dark
passageway behind him.
7-High angle of the VIP box and droids are coming from
all entrances. Mace is surrounded. Jango backs out of
firing range.
8-The droids open fire.
9-Mace deflects the first bolts as Dooku and the other
dignitaries move to safer ground.
10-The Droids continue to fire as mace deflects the bolts
right back at them.
11-Full shot of Mace as he spins and deflects shots from
all sides.
12-A number of droids are smashed back by their own
bolts.
13-Mace continues to defend.
14-Jango brings up his flamethrower and fires at mace.
Lessers are flying away in the background.
15-Mace leaps high as flame scorches the place he was.
His cloak is on fire. The nemoidian is hit by the flame.
16-Jango blasts at Mace in the air.
17-Mace deflects all the bolts as he rolls in mid air and
down into the arena. His cloak is still on fire.
18-Mace lands in the arena. Pan to Jango looking for an
escape. Pan to Dooku leaving the area.
19-Mace throws off the smouldering cloak and looks
around the arena.
20-Wide angle as Jedi fight for their lives against the
superior number of droids.
21-two Jedi leap from another VIP box just as its blasted
by droids.
22-More shots of Jedi defending themselves from attacks
from all sides.
23-A jedi destoys a superdroid but is gunned down by a
destroyer droid.
24-Mace looks back at the VIP box he was in.
25-Droids in the VIP box shoot at Mace who defends.
Jango takes off in the distance.
26-As Mace defends from the stands, Jango lands behind
him in the arena.
27-Jango aims his cable at Mace from behind him as
Mace still defends.
28-Jango fires the cable.
29-Mace turns just in time to force push the cable..
30-around a nearby destroyer droid.
31-Mace turns away from Jango to take care of some
droids in the arena.
32-The entangled Destroyer turns and fires upon the
source of the cable...
33-Taking Jango by surprise as shots whip around him.
34-Jango detaches the cable
35-Jango flies past the destroyer (jetpack of course)
36-Jango's flight path leads him directly behind Mace
who is still battling droids. As Jango passes, Mace
swings his lightsaber over his head and hits Jango's
jetpack.
37-Jango goes into an uncontrolled dive and the
destroyer droid tracking Jango ends up firing at Mace
who deflects all the bolts.
38-Jango crashes to the ground and rolls to his feet.
39-The destroyer blasts at Mace.
40-Jango jettisons the damaged jetpack while Mace
continues with the destoyer.
41-Jango fires at Mace with both blasters.
42-Mace spins to deflect the new attack.
43-With a destroyer droid on one side and Jango Fett on
the other, Mace defends from both foe at the same time.
44-Mace leaps into the air leaving the destroyer and
Jango firing at each other.
45-Jango leaps into a sideways roll and keeps firing at
the destroyer.
46-The destroyer explodes under Jango's attack.
47-Mace lands and a battledroid fires at him. He deflects
the bolt without even looking and charges towards Jango.
48-Jango notices something as Mace charges.
49-Jango's POV of Mace charging with battles raging in
the background.
50-The Reek (four legged, tri-horned beast with a bull-
like nose ring similar to the Rancor in ROTJ)appears
from a passageways and charges through a number of
droids after Mace.
51-Shot tracking the Reek towards Mace. Jango looks
stunned in the distance.
52-Mace turns and spots the Reek as Jango scrambles to
his feet.
53-Mace's POV of The Reek charging directly at him.
54-Mace swipes at the Reek chopping off one of it's
horns. The Reeks still catches Mace with its shoulder
sending Mace sprawling.
55-Mace loses his lightsaber.
56-Mace hits the ground and rolls up onto his side.
57-Mace's ground POV of his lightsabe and Jango
running toward it.
58-Just before Jango reches the Lightsaber, one of The
Reek's feet slams down on it.
59-The Reek snarls at Mace as he gets back on his feet
and tries to force calm over the beast. It then turns to
Jango on the other side making him back off.
60-High angle os the Reek and the two foes on either
side. Mace attempting to get closer to his lightsaber and
Jango trying to get a clear shot.
61-Jango peer's under the Reek's belly looking for a shot.
62-Jango moves slowly around.
63-The Reek is still looking at Jango and Mace heads
closer to his lightsaber.
64-The Reek reacts to Mace's close proximity
65-Mace tries to calm the beast with the force.
66-The Reek calms somewhat.
67-Mace moves closer.
68-mace tries to free the lightsaber with the force.
69-Jango moves toward the Reek's hindquarters
70-Jango continues to move. Mace is obscured by the
Reek's front leg. Jango spots his discarded jetpack lying
on the ground a short distance beyond Mace.
71-Close up on the jetpack.
72-Jango shifts aim and fires at the Jetpack.
73-Mace reacts throwing himself backwards and away.
74-the Jetpack explodes as Mace dives clear.
75-Mace hits the ground in a roll and ends near a wall.
76-Startled by the explosion, The Reek rears up on it's
hind legs, freeing the lightsaber. Jango is ready to
pounce.
77-Jango dives at the lightsaber but...
78-It floats offscreen just as Jango reaches it.
79-The lightsaber returns to Mace's hand.
80-Jango looks up at the Reek as it's shadow falls over
him.
81-Jango rolls out of the way of the Reeks front legs as
they crash back down on the ground.
82-The Reeks charges at Mace trampling Jango.
83-Jango avoids being crushed by the beast's huge feet.
84-Tracking the Reek as it charges at Mace.
85-Mace leaps into the air as the Reek reaches him,
causing the Reek to smash into the wall of the arena.
86-Mace flips into the stands in the midst of a group of
droids.
87-Mace lands and attacks.
88-Jango recovers and retrieves his blaster.
89-The Reek shakes it's head, looks around and spots
Jango.
90-The Reek lumbers around and trotts towards Jango.
91-Jango raises his blaster and aims carefully.
92-The Reek begins to fully charge.
93-Jango pauses.
94-Jango's POV as Reek charges closer.
95-In the last moment, Jango fires into the beast's eys and
dives out of the way still ready with blasters if need be.
96-The Reek tumbles and crashes to the ground, dead.
97-Jango stands and whips around looking for Mace with
both blasters raised.
98-Mace leaps down from the stands and charges
forward.
99-Jango opens fire desperately but Mace deflects all the
bolts as he runs.
100-Mace takes out both blasters with blinding speed.
101-Mace lunges with his lightsaber at Jango's head and
Jango ducks but is left off balance. jango manages one
blast from his arm mounted blaster but it misses.
102-Mace spins and slices across and downward.
103-Jango's helmet bounces and rolls in the dust.
104-Jango's body falls to the dirt (safely assumed dead),
leaving Mace the victor.
For the last 3 years or so I have felt safe telling everyone that Linux has big boys behind it...like IBM and SGI both of which (IMHO) see Linux as a godsend that will help them to restore themselves to the glorious positions they probably deserve. We are starting to see more and more of their software coming to Linux and the argument of not making the community look bad is probably partly true for both (they don't want to swamp the community, they want to merge things in calmly and comfortably so that they NEVER become black sheep of the community and so the community can take in what they are giving to make the most of it). I would love to see IBM offer every piece of source they can GPL, but it would be better if they just kept bringing in whatever they can as and when it makes most sense (don't deprive the community of something it needs but don't give it anything it's not ready for either). Bottom line, if SGI and IBM give everything they have to GNU/Linux (i.e. not just the kernel), will we be missing anything in 5 years time? I don't think so.
What is Sony's aim with the PS2? To be THE platform of this generation of consoles as the PS was to the N64, Saturn generation. To achieve this aim it needs to sell lots of machines and convince the good developers to get titles out for it. If Sony could meet (as I personally am sure they would have been able to) the full demand for PS2 for Christmas then there will be a very saturated market instantly. If they cannot meet the initial demand they get publicity for this (demand outstrips supply), then they get people interested in seeing the PS2 and all the games that have been released (people buy more games because they actually have a PS2 to play them on) so that when the stocks start to come back in they will be more likely to sell more games with each unit (if I'd been waiting 2 months watching my mates playing their PS2 I'd be a lot less likely to buy it with only 1 game). End result they have a publicity boost (just to be sure everyone knows about it), followed by constant sales stream with an initial unnatural boost of games sales (where the real money is and what the developers want to see). The only downsides are that they have to wait a bit longer for some money on the hardware (the units they didn't sell before Christmas) and that their main resellers can't have the same Christmas boom but Sony wouldn't care about this because all they want is year round strong sales of games.
Every console release I have ever seen (at least of consoles people want) has always had these stories before their release. Here in Ireland we always get REALLY screwed as the UK is always short and anything around ends up there first.
Imagine Sony had all the PS2's required to satisfy the Christmas demand, there would be no mystique or charging over to your friends to see his. This is all about fueling demand for the PS2 and ensuring no-one bitches about the initial price-point. Once the Christmas rush is gone (with the stories of how Joe Schmoe payed $1500 for a PS2 for little Joey), we will still see stories of the first PS2's arriving and then a bit later about how the shortage still isn't quite over and all the time Sony will be rubbing their hands with glee as the false demand will ultimately allow them sell more devices.
Bottom Line: I don't believe for a minute that Sony could have any problems producing the numbers they would like to have, they have a lot of money and have had plenty of time to prepare themselves.
This is a joke...period. The lax attitude of the U.S. Patent system is simply making a fortune for the lawyers! The shear concept of a software patent is absurd to me, perhaps if someone comes up with an entire new OS concept and wants to patent it...OK, but to patent an idea (such as one-click shopping) which is simply an application of common techniques (draw pixels to screen, use a cookie to save people typing) it is a farce.
We all know this is going to end up with either a settlement (lawyers win) or a long trial with one company taking the spoils (lawyers and one company wins, everyone else including the consumer loses due to less choice). Please keep my legal system free of this...please, please, please.....I think I better get marching and making T-Shirts
I was surprised to read the description of why the wheel feature is missing from GNU su:
Why GNU `su' does not support the `wheel' group
===============================================
(This section is by Richard Stallman.)
Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the
rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to
seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and
keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup
and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't
know how to do that in Unix.)
However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual
`su' mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes
with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest. The "wheel
group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of
the rulers.
I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are
used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you
might find this idea strange at first.
I would have believed this would be a system administration feature with no reason for it to be ommitted from the software. I can't even (for once) really understand where RMS is coming from on this. Surely he can't believe that people who want to lock a system down in this way are going to be stopped because GNU su doesn't feature it?
I thought RMS's primary intent was to create a full featured system so that you did not have to run other software. In this case it seems he has another agenda! I am not used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do but at the end of the day whoever has control of a system has control of it and should be able to exercise that control. It seems like it is an irrelevant stand as the function can (of course, this is GPL software) be implemented regardless, but I would not think reading this would sit well with a lot of people so why make the stand. Can anyone explain to me what scenario RMS is envisioning so that I might understand?
Just to point out how bad an example this is:
in Dublin all busses have camera holders in multiple locations and on any bus that actually has the cameras installed at the time (percentage unknown to me) they can see who got on and off where and even what they did on the bus. I don't mind this and I don't mind the sequestering of this information if neccessary providing some form of due process is in place to ensure that this data is only made available where relevant to investigations (and that they can't then scan all the data they have for anything else). I think the same should apply online as real world.
Come on over and sign http://www.censorthis.net/cybercrime.html
it is a
violation of federal and state law to advertise, utilize, offer for sale,
and/or engage in services utilizing the idealab! web site and logo designs
without the express written permission of idealab!
So I guess they are getting them on utilize (what service do f*ckedcompany offer...humour)? Is this really US Law? Is it the simple case that any use of any copyright image is illegal and subject to cease and desist? Can the companies who have topics on/. place the same cease and desists?
It seems like f*ckedcompany.com is down at the moment so I can't get in to look at what they had but I really would have thought the words "Fair Use" and "Free Speach" would cover this quite easily. If not I guess F*ckedcompany is a F*ckedcompany themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the link, it actually provides me with reassurance and does not suggest that these dodgy patents would carry across or be respected in any way outside of the issuing country. To pull the relevant quotes:
IANAL and I don't know whether tannedfeet.com who you linked to are in any way accurate or trustworthy but they certainly make clear that international patent law does nothing to grant a patent in other countries than where a patent is successfully granted. My idea stands, stop coding in the States and get out of the legal IP nightmare!
I guess this is the exact question I was asking....does such an agreement exist? I cannot believe for an instant it does otherwise why would the EU be debating the possibiliiity of introducing software patents!
I am a European and were I to discover that my usage of Ogg/Vorbis OR bladeenc OR xmms was subjected to US patent law I would be out on the streets of Dublin (as I was planing a few weeks ago as talk built of the possibility of a fast decision from the EU). Software patents are absurd and the U.S. patent Office a monstrous joke. I cannot believe for an instant that any forms of reciprocal deals (besides, why have European and U.S. patents if they will honor each others) would cover an area which is unpatentable on either side.
A minor point, but in the EU most DV-cams are only equipped with output as they would be classed as a video recorder otherwise and be subject to further taxation. I still find it unbelievable that the manufacturers chose to disable input rather than face the tax, but it means you have to "hack" the camcorder (devices are readily available) to record back on.
The compression on DV is basically colorspace reduction. It is a loseless format and not an mpeg style affair. It is good enough for most things, the only problm being the area of broadcast TV where the lack of depth is quite apparent and it would really be a station dependant decision as to whether the piece was worth it. You can certainly use a DV camera for data-backup, the question is how much error correction would be required to ensure data security and what data rate would that leave?
My first job after leaving college was looking after all the computers in an office of about 20 people. All the companies central and main systems ran on an "Alpha Micro" machine which yielded one page on the internet entitled "Obsolete Hardware". Most of the software for the machine was on tape (Exabyte) but some (which I never had to use) was on videotape. One day a new TV and video arrived in the building and guess what the only videos in the building were....So as soon as we tuned in the video we were looking at a black and white spaced table of I think 16x16 blocks at a rate of at most 4 blocks a second.....a grand total of 128kb/sec!
A simple demonstartion however of how this sort of a method with a firewire camera could certainly be used....it's just a question of what data-rate you can get!
Or am I missing something?
Is it not simply the U.S. Patent system that is the problem here, and if so why do people continue to let the work they love be subjected to it? I can understand how International law would probably prevent the ogg boys successfully moving to Europe to avoid legal challenges, but could U.S. Patents have any impact on a project developed in Europe (other than the lawsuits that could fly over the distribution of the technology in the U.S., but if it is in a non-US section of the software mirrors and hence never held on a U.S. subjected server.....)?
Is it simply a case that despite the shit it causes, coders just aren't willing to leave th U.S. for any length of time? If so, perhaps its time the anti-european software patents crew along with the EFF etc to setup a nice new facility that coders can ask for permission to use to develop work in a patent free environment. Post to a website telling it what you want to do and why you need to get out of the U.S. If you get enough votes/are deemed worthy enough ... you get a ticket and a workplace (maybe even a subsistance grant) with individuals to help and distract you. The Free Software Reseach Laboratory
Bottom line, if Alan Cox (he does live in England doesn't he?) added mp3 technology to the kernel, could he be touched (if he sourced all code from non-US contaminated sources or wrote it himself)?
I wouldn't want to see a Red Dwarf Film anymore because of the new CG work they use! It's a sad state of affairs I know but..... the only good thing they got out of the new computer revolution was a great scene of a minaturised Starbug flying around a corrider with it's head stuck up a rat's ass.
What offends me about the CG work they are using is not it's existance or the fact that you can tell a mile away that it is CG (and therefore any suspension of disbelief is destroyed) but with the fact that they did a George Lucas and decide to go back and re-cut 15 year old TV with new effects just because someone thought it looked better now (and maybe they could sell a few more boxes). You get cheesy live action scenes cut in with crystal precise space shots.....all the charector is detroyed. Using the CG in the new episodes is ok I guess, but lets face it, very little film CG is worthwhile and does not destroy all suspension of disbelief.
The final ignomy is best served by watching the outtakes videos when you see the most amazin shots of Spacecraft pulling 360 loops as they exit the docking bay taking half the bay with them.
What's a full length Red Dwarf anyway ??? the closest I can image is a series at a time (3 hours each for the first six and I think 4 hours the rest). My own favourite full length red dwarf though is the 18 hour series 1-6 marathon....well worth a go when you've a spare day.
So long SmegHeads
I bet that the Redmond boys were certain they would at least know by now whether they were appealing to Bush or Gore. I feel certain they still hope it will be Bush..... but would they be playing this case differently depending on this (Bush wins = look at the money we bring in, Gore wins = we are behaving, it is all behind us, we are sorry, breaking up is baa aa ad M'Kay)?
I have been waiting for ages for OpenGL accelerated hardware to arrive to the majority of consumer desktops....as this will fuel the vrml revolution. You only have to look at flash usage (on the better sites) to see how people are interested in creating entirely unique UI environments, even windowing environments! VRML is a simple language that allows the creation of complex scenes, but until the TNT level of OpenGL performance arrived, the scenes were rendered at a terrible level (slow, slow, slow). Once people have the performance to throw around a few thousand textuured polys at quake speeds, vrml starts to allow the redefinition of web interfaces to a new paradigm (billboards still allow the use of staticly orientated 2d surfaces).
Secondly I think the SGI releases for Linux should assist in the generation of the content that will show the average user just why the 3d model is far superior for certain content (car showrooms online for example).
I went to SW I(x1), IV(x3), V(x3), VI(x3) in the cinema but have otherwise only given (directly or indirectly to the best of my knowledge) George Lucas a percentage on less than $3 which I spent on an R2D2 watch/keyring in a discount shop. I will go to EP II and III just to see the story completed (my only visit to a cinema in the last year was from a 'present' on my birthday where a group took me to get drunk watching Scary Movie), but I still will not buy videos, DVDs or any other merchandising because the entire creation has been destroyed for greed. If he ever makes it to EP VII - IX, it will be on the strength or weakness of EP I-III that I will decide if I will bother to see it, and right now there is no chance.
My only prayer is that as with the first (production order) trilogy this trilogy may slump into a far more evocative and realistic ambiance in the second film......and considering the state of the Universe to come in EP IV it might just stay there for EP III. Something makes me think that somehow the prequels to EP IV are all going to be smiley-happy-kiddy films though, and the misery of EP V is going to look very out of place when this generation of new Star Wars fans see it.
Now then Taco please get in here and answer a simple question:
Why did you post this story?
Please be certain to tell us whether money came into this decision.
And I forgot about it already !!!!
Could it be that Steve Jobs is going to manage to make the OSX launch as big a media event as Win95 was? Since Win9x we haven't had any real take-up by the general media for a software launch (98, NT4 and 2000 all had much lower key launches in public in your face terms). We all know that OSX is different, and we all know that Jobs is an incredibly good salesman but the question is....
I am sure the general mass media are ready to hype a software launch again (they always need more stories) but will they ignore this whole thing because only a few people have machines that can run it?
I wanted this exact feature myself for .law
.gnu or .oss but I think .src would be best (not in list and friendly to a lot more).
While I'm at it, someone suggested
http://www.naboonline.com/episode2/storyboard.shtm l
m l right you got that, it's a shtml page, and it is still LIVE! /.2.0
OK Slashdot, don't go choping this on me now!
http://www.naboonline.com/episode2/storyboard.sht
I think it's time to fix this space in url thing....stop waiting for
"Horns" leaked what appears to be a very real picture board of EPII to Naboonline who said "due to the fact that we do not want to get into trouble with Lucasfilm, we have decided to not post those images".
http://www.naboonline.com/new s/i ndex.shtml#9701203 is an apology from Naboonline.com to LucasFilm and includes the original letter received from LucasFilm, or more precisely David J. Anderman, Associate Director of Business Affairs, from:netenforcement@lucasfilm.com and then they subsequently state their position as
A few choice snippets of the LucasFilm letter include.
so it is for copyright and trademark reasons The good old DMCA comes in along with anything else the lawyers can think to say.....what a surprise. Oh Yeah? You can demand but don't tell people that they must do things unless you are a court. IANAL but I thought it was as simple as that. Could this be harrassment? Also kind-of big demands to drop all links to all sites that have anything still up even if you are linking to something else or just the homepage.It concluded with a nice "Persuant to DMCA...infringe Lucasfilm's copyrights and other intellectual property rights...penalty of perjury". Do they have a form letter for this sh*t? And if the site was based outside DMCA zone (e.g. Europe) would they be able to ignore this?
If a tabloid newspaper published this stuff would they get away with it? I'd have thought so! What is the difference here?
There's only one problem.....See the parent post :-)
For the last 3 years or so I have felt safe telling everyone that Linux has big boys behind it...like IBM and SGI both of which (IMHO) see Linux as a godsend that will help them to restore themselves to the glorious positions they probably deserve. We are starting to see more and more of their software coming to Linux and the argument of not making the community look bad is probably partly true for both (they don't want to swamp the community, they want to merge things in calmly and comfortably so that they NEVER become black sheep of the community and so the community can take in what they are giving to make the most of it). I would love to see IBM offer every piece of source they can GPL, but it would be better if they just kept bringing in whatever they can as and when it makes most sense (don't deprive the community of something it needs but don't give it anything it's not ready for either). Bottom line, if SGI and IBM give everything they have to GNU/Linux (i.e. not just the kernel), will we be missing anything in 5 years time? I don't think so.
What is Sony's aim with the PS2? To be THE platform of this generation of consoles as the PS was to the N64, Saturn generation. To achieve this aim it needs to sell lots of machines and convince the good developers to get titles out for it. If Sony could meet (as I personally am sure they would have been able to) the full demand for PS2 for Christmas then there will be a very saturated market instantly. If they cannot meet the initial demand they get publicity for this (demand outstrips supply), then they get people interested in seeing the PS2 and all the games that have been released (people buy more games because they actually have a PS2 to play them on) so that when the stocks start to come back in they will be more likely to sell more games with each unit (if I'd been waiting 2 months watching my mates playing their PS2 I'd be a lot less likely to buy it with only 1 game). End result they have a publicity boost (just to be sure everyone knows about it), followed by constant sales stream with an initial unnatural boost of games sales (where the real money is and what the developers want to see). The only downsides are that they have to wait a bit longer for some money on the hardware (the units they didn't sell before Christmas) and that their main resellers can't have the same Christmas boom but Sony wouldn't care about this because all they want is year round strong sales of games.
"PS2, not just for Christmas"
Every console release I have ever seen (at least of consoles people want) has always had these stories before their release. Here in Ireland we always get REALLY screwed as the UK is always short and anything around ends up there first.
Imagine Sony had all the PS2's required to satisfy the Christmas demand, there would be no mystique or charging over to your friends to see his. This is all about fueling demand for the PS2 and ensuring no-one bitches about the initial price-point. Once the Christmas rush is gone (with the stories of how Joe Schmoe payed $1500 for a PS2 for little Joey), we will still see stories of the first PS2's arriving and then a bit later about how the shortage still isn't quite over and all the time Sony will be rubbing their hands with glee as the false demand will ultimately allow them sell more devices.
Bottom Line: I don't believe for a minute that Sony could have any problems producing the numbers they would like to have, they have a lot of money and have had plenty of time to prepare themselves.
This is a joke...period. The lax attitude of the U.S. Patent system is simply making a fortune for the lawyers! The shear concept of a software patent is absurd to me, perhaps if someone comes up with an entire new OS concept and wants to patent it...OK, but to patent an idea (such as one-click shopping) which is simply an application of common techniques (draw pixels to screen, use a cookie to save people typing) it is a farce.
We all know this is going to end up with either a settlement (lawyers win) or a long trial with one company taking the spoils (lawyers and one company wins, everyone else including the consumer loses due to less choice). Please keep my legal system free of this...please, please, please.....I think I better get marching and making T-Shirts
http://targetpc.gxnetwork.com/software/linux/guide s/slackware_install/ just under "Security" (no-one uses bookmarks!) describes howto implement the wheel under linux (in fact it gives a few methods, not mentioning just chown, chgrp and chmod su then edit /etc/group).
I was surprised to read the description of why the wheel feature is missing from GNU su:
I would have believed this would be a system administration feature with no reason for it to be ommitted from the software. I can't even (for once) really understand where RMS is coming from on this. Surely he can't believe that people who want to lock a system down in this way are going to be stopped because GNU su doesn't feature it?
I thought RMS's primary intent was to create a full featured system so that you did not have to run other software. In this case it seems he has another agenda! I am not used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do but at the end of the day whoever has control of a system has control of it and should be able to exercise that control. It seems like it is an irrelevant stand as the function can (of course, this is GPL software) be implemented regardless, but I would not think reading this would sit well with a lot of people so why make the stand. Can anyone explain to me what scenario RMS is envisioning so that I might understand?
Just to point out how bad an example this is:
in Dublin all busses have camera holders in multiple locations and on any bus that actually has the cameras installed at the time (percentage unknown to me) they can see who got on and off where and even what they did on the bus. I don't mind this and I don't mind the sequestering of this information if neccessary providing some form of due process is in place to ensure that this data is only made available where relevant to investigations (and that they can't then scan all the data they have for anything else). I think the same should apply online as real world.
Come on over and sign http://www.censorthis.net/cybercrime.html
Come on over and sign people
http://www.censorthis.net/cybercrime.html .
So I guess they are getting them on utilize (what service do f*ckedcompany offer...humour)? Is this really US Law? Is it the simple case that any use of any copyright image is illegal and subject to cease and desist? Can the companies who have topics on /. place the same cease and desists?
It seems like f*ckedcompany.com is down at the moment so I can't get in to look at what they had but I really would have thought the words "Fair Use" and "Free Speach" would cover this quite easily. If not I guess F*ckedcompany is a F*ckedcompany themselves.