Secondly, the Directive provides that rightholders either
voluntarily or by way of agreements with other parties [...]
There it says it. If you interpret "by way of agreements" to mean "legally forced", I guess you're free to do that, but "agreement" normally means that both parties agree, and not one party forcing another.
The arguments they present are frankly fucking stupid. Here is an excerpt:
Legal protection of anti-copying devices and exceptions
This has been amongst the most political and controversial topics of the whole debate. The problem has been how to ensure that an exception e.g.
an act of reproduction or copying for illustration for teaching can be made use of where a copyrightholder also has in place an anti-copying device
e.g. a digital tracker designed to prevent piracy. Failure to address this would have meant that the exceptions could have been meaningless in some
cases. Here too there has been a balanced compromise.
And here is their argument why there has been a balanced compromise:
Secondly, the Directive provides that rightholders either voluntarily or by way of agreements with other parties have to provide those who would
benefit from a particular exception e.g. schools, libraries in the case of teaching, with the means to do so.
Oh yes, how intelligent. The provision for fair use will be granted voluntarily by the copyright holders. I.e. it is no different from not having a fair use provision at all.
I can see why they have produced these law changes though. From the beginning of the document:
Adoption of the Directive fulfils one of the priority objectives set by the Lisbon
European Council as part of the process to preparing the transition to a competitive, dynamic and knowledge-based economy in the EU.
This goal does not justify removing fair use though, and it certainly does not justify lying about some non-existent compromise. I think they are afraid of being left behind by the US, and have overreacted. Hopefully all this will be revoked as soon as people realize the impact it will have on society (which will probably take 10 years or so, bleh). If anyone knows of any strong opposing forces inside the commision or something similar, please post some links to give us some hope...
You fucking linux faggots have latched onto that term, and talk about it like it happens 10 times a day.
NT used to lock up once a day for me when I was compiling and playing mp3s at the same time. It seems to be better now that I have more memory, but come on. My office neighbor used to celebrate when there was a day his NT workstation didn't lock up.
This looks quite nice if the mentioned issues can be sorted out (i.e. handwriting recognition, slowness), and if the price will stay the same. Does anyone know about battery life though?
I also want to add Hubble to the counterexamples. First they designed and manufactered everything according to the normal processes, and that resulted in an incorrectly shaped lens. To resolve this, they published the problem, and asked if anyone could come up with a solution. They then went through all the proposals, and found one which worked. This was a very open source type of approach, which worked where a meticulous check by the "in-house coders" failed.
For those interested, it was the testing instrument of the lens which failed, so the lens was polished correctly according to the specifications of the instrument. So one could say that the testing procedure was flawed, and not the quality of the testing itself. I guess this is a difference, that when you do something "in-house", it's difficult to get fundamental criticism, i.e. out-of-the-box criticism. In open source contexts, you almost always have someone pointing out fundamental flaws, because they are not afraid of criticizing "the boss".
I haven't read the article (I don't have an account), but I read part of it which someone posted. What they seem to have done is build a machine (a set of pipes and sensors essentially), which can determine this problem. This machine is not a Turing machine, and thus most (if not all) theorems about time complexity or whatever don't apply. This reminds me of a piece in Cryptonomicon where someone was building a machine specifically for solving differential equations, and then Turing comes along and builds a machine which can solve any algorithmic problem. Are we now going back to building porblem-specific machines, i.e. the Dark Ages?
Open source zealots touch up their screenshots too.
What you just mention is not "touching up". Touching up means that the pixels are manipulated after the screenshot has been taken. What they do is take the screenshot when there are no bad things happening. This is like in a car commercial, do they ever show scenes when cars crash? No, they don't. And this is perfectly legal (because there are no untruths). If they would show the cars flying through the air doing loops, that would be illegal, because the cars could not perform that in reality. This is what Microsoft has done, add things to the screenshot which do not exist in reality (the lens flare, and maybe even the character). In some countries at least this is illegal and is called "misleading marketing".
surely if i take a zip of MSWindows2000 (ok, one *big* bloated zip) and converted it into one massive long number, and then stuck it on a web page (ok, one *big* bloated webpage) it is still illegal?!?
Why? You're distributing a number. This is why copyright (and intellectual property) law doesn't make sense with digital data. If you make that illegal, then you have assigned ownership of the distribution of a number to a person. So what happens is that you get holes in the number space, where intellectual property exists. And since there exists a lot of intellectual property, you will have a lot of holes, it will be especially dense for small (i.e. around 1kb) numbers. It is also not consistent, what happens when two pieces of intellectual property can be represented by the same number (using different encodings)?
[...] this won't hold up. It's still decss, just encoded and padded out to a prime.
Why won't it hold up? Is it illegal to distribute numbers when they happen to represent copyrighted/illegal data? The fact that you take this for granted makes me uneasy. I'm also sure it's possible to find a research project/paper which has used a number which represents copyrighted/illegal data (maybe this number). Do you mean that that researcher has now committed a crime? Please explain the moral and legal reasoning behind your statement.
One thing that I've never really understood is why Judaism has anything to do with race or genetics. As far as I can see, Judaism is a religion, i.e. a set of beliefs and rules followers are supposed to believe in and follow. So I guess Goddard had just as much right to criticize that organized religion as most people did in the Scientology post a few days ago. I'm not saying there is any similarity between them, but they're both religions. So you're wrong in accusing Goddard of racism.
If I've misunderstood something, please educate me, but if Judaism is a genetic property, how can you convert to it?
1GHz Thunderbirds seem to be around $165, while 650MHz Thunderbirds are ~$65, so that would make SMP even more cost-effective. It's a bit difficult to compare to combos, since there aren't any combos for SMP Thunderbirds (or any motherboards at all yet). I look forward to buying an SMP Athlon system, but for now they don't exist.
Yes it is. Since cost is not directly proportional to speed, you can buy two processors at greater than half the speed of one. If we assume adding a processor speeds up your application by 50% (a bad case), we can buy two 666MHz PIIIs at $115 each (from pricewatch), instead of one 1GHz PIII at $240, and get equivalent performance (666+333=1000). Then you also have some money left for a more expensive motherboard. 50% is low though, depending on application you should be able to get it to 75-80%. If you also add overclocking into the picture, you can save a lot of money (I have two Celeron 300A running at 450MHz each, this would be equivalent to something like a PIII at 800MHz, which didn't even exist when I bought them).
Well, I would assume that by putting a work on the web, a company/individual implicitly grants permission to people to download for viewing.
I've wondered about this, and can't the same argument be applied to broadcasting (radio/tv)? If a song is broadcast from a radio station, everyone can theoretically record the song. So why am I not entitled to it? It seems strange that just because I missed recording at a particular time, I will now have to buy the CD. I could create a theoretical system for requesting people to record songs from the radio/tv for me across the world, but I think you get the idea. Also, I think it's quite clear that basically every song which can be bought on a CD has been broadcast at least once somewhere in the world to the public.
The U.N. can't even manage itself or the myriad tiny problems around the world, what makes you think they'd be any more effective at managing the Internet?
The reason the UN has problems making decisions is because 5 countries have veto votes, and these countries are diametrically opposed on basically every issue. It's like giving Bill Gates, RMS, Eminem, Dalai Lama and Ronald Reagan the right to veto every decision made by Congress. Do you think anything would be accomplished? Note that this is not the same as the veto the US president has, since he is democratically elected. The permanent members of the security council are not democratically elected.
Socialist systems have no competition to spur them to improve.
Well, you have the democratic mechanism, although it's terribly slow. I guess both systems are based on the assumption that consumers/voters are well informed, and if they aren't, the systems don't work well. If people would have known what the DMCA said, I guess they would have made a deal out of it, and if people would know about CPRM, they wouldn't buy hardware which implements it. One big difference though is that a capitalist system adapts to the people with the most money, while a socialist system adapts to the majority.
Since both democracy and capitalism depend so much on informed decisions, I guess explains why powerful entities are so good at dealing with the media. Luckily the Internet, and sites like this, can be a way to eliminate that problem (I assume the CPRM committee was directly influenced by the media discussion, maybe even Andre's interview here).
Well, "socialist" shouldn't be a slur either, for exactly the same reason. For goods and services such as health care, education, law enforcement, rail transportation, road networks etc., socialism is the best system. I don't think even Americans would want their children to go to Microsoft Junior High, or be arrested by an RIAA police officer, or something like that.
Yep, just replace Microsoft with GPL, and you get the same FUD that the linux crowd claims that Microsoft uses against it. When Linux crowd spews just much FUD as anyone else, how can they expect to claim any moral high ground?
Well, the difference is that with the GPL you get the source code, with Microsoft you don't. If you have the source code you can make your own modifications, and distribute them to the other users of the software. This way, the vendor can never force a protocol down your throat, because you can just change it and give the modified copy to all your friends/colleagues.
So the conclusion is that this part: "add a minor bit of technology, so that nobody else can use it, then release that secret wrinkle so that only GPL software can communicate with other GPL software."
does not hold for the GPL, since you can just change it back, or look at the code and extract the spec.
In fact probably >80% of the worlds population are not American.
No offense, but come on! The US has something like 250-300 million people. The world has a bit over 6 billion people. The US only makes up a bit less than 5% of the population of the world, and this is decreasing. China alone has more than 4 times as many people as the US. I guess the US is not too keen on having world democracy anytime soon eh?
You see, when a human encounters a new phenomenon in the world, she normally tries to associate some previously explained phenomenon with it. This is known as "understanding". Maybe you are missing this capability, which I guess would explain your post.
The problems in Russia are not from deregulation, but from holes in law and lack of its enforcement, plus corruption.
And this is of course different from the problems when Russia (USSR) was communist. I think the problem is that you don't want to admit that capitalism hasn't worked in Russia either.
Because of the lure of getting insanely rich. Not everyone falls for that though. It's like pornography, it's probably the major traffic on the internet, but I don't think a lot of people would want to live with a porn star. So I guess the conclusion is that the US is like a porno movie for entrepeneurs.
Slashdot Mirror
The arguments they present are frankly fucking stupid. Here is an excerpt:
And here is their argument why there has been a balanced compromise:Oh yes, how intelligent. The provision for fair use will be granted voluntarily by the copyright holders. I.e. it is no different from not having a fair use provision at all.
I can see why they have produced these law changes though. From the beginning of the document:
This goal does not justify removing fair use though, and it certainly does not justify lying about some non-existent compromise. I think they are afraid of being left behind by the US, and have overreacted. Hopefully all this will be revoked as soon as people realize the impact it will have on society (which will probably take 10 years or so, bleh). If anyone knows of any strong opposing forces inside the commision or something similar, please post some links to give us some hope...
This looks quite nice if the mentioned issues can be sorted out (i.e. handwriting recognition, slowness), and if the price will stay the same. Does anyone know about battery life though?
For those interested, it was the testing instrument of the lens which failed, so the lens was polished correctly according to the specifications of the instrument. So one could say that the testing procedure was flawed, and not the quality of the testing itself. I guess this is a difference, that when you do something "in-house", it's difficult to get fundamental criticism, i.e. out-of-the-box criticism. In open source contexts, you almost always have someone pointing out fundamental flaws, because they are not afraid of criticizing "the boss".
I haven't read the article (I don't have an account), but I read part of it which someone posted. What they seem to have done is build a machine (a set of pipes and sensors essentially), which can determine this problem. This machine is not a Turing machine, and thus most (if not all) theorems about time complexity or whatever don't apply. This reminds me of a piece in Cryptonomicon where someone was building a machine specifically for solving differential equations, and then Turing comes along and builds a machine which can solve any algorithmic problem. Are we now going back to building porblem-specific machines, i.e. the Dark Ages?
Uh, why is this a troll? Come on, moderation downwards is for abuses, not for controversial or strange viewpoints.
One thing that I've never really understood is why Judaism has anything to do with race or genetics. As far as I can see, Judaism is a religion, i.e. a set of beliefs and rules followers are supposed to believe in and follow. So I guess Goddard had just as much right to criticize that organized religion as most people did in the Scientology post a few days ago. I'm not saying there is any similarity between them, but they're both religions. So you're wrong in accusing Goddard of racism.
If I've misunderstood something, please educate me, but if Judaism is a genetic property, how can you convert to it?
1GHz Thunderbirds seem to be around $165, while 650MHz Thunderbirds are ~$65, so that would make SMP even more cost-effective. It's a bit difficult to compare to combos, since there aren't any combos for SMP Thunderbirds (or any motherboards at all yet). I look forward to buying an SMP Athlon system, but for now they don't exist.
Yes it is. Since cost is not directly proportional to speed, you can buy two processors at greater than half the speed of one. If we assume adding a processor speeds up your application by 50% (a bad case), we can buy two 666MHz PIIIs at $115 each (from pricewatch), instead of one 1GHz PIII at $240, and get equivalent performance (666+333=1000). Then you also have some money left for a more expensive motherboard. 50% is low though, depending on application you should be able to get it to 75-80%. If you also add overclocking into the picture, you can save a lot of money (I have two Celeron 300A running at 450MHz each, this would be equivalent to something like a PIII at 800MHz, which didn't even exist when I bought them).
I've wondered about this, and can't the same argument be applied to broadcasting (radio/tv)? If a song is broadcast from a radio station, everyone can theoretically record the song. So why am I not entitled to it? It seems strange that just because I missed recording at a particular time, I will now have to buy the CD. I could create a theoretical system for requesting people to record songs from the radio/tv for me across the world, but I think you get the idea. Also, I think it's quite clear that basically every song which can be bought on a CD has been broadcast at least once somewhere in the world to the public.
The reason the UN has problems making decisions is because 5 countries have veto votes, and these countries are diametrically opposed on basically every issue. It's like giving Bill Gates, RMS, Eminem, Dalai Lama and Ronald Reagan the right to veto every decision made by Congress. Do you think anything would be accomplished? Note that this is not the same as the veto the US president has, since he is democratically elected. The permanent members of the security council are not democratically elected.
Well, you have the democratic mechanism, although it's terribly slow. I guess both systems are based on the assumption that consumers/voters are well informed, and if they aren't, the systems don't work well. If people would have known what the DMCA said, I guess they would have made a deal out of it, and if people would know about CPRM, they wouldn't buy hardware which implements it. One big difference though is that a capitalist system adapts to the people with the most money, while a socialist system adapts to the majority.
Since both democracy and capitalism depend so much on informed decisions, I guess explains why powerful entities are so good at dealing with the media. Luckily the Internet, and sites like this, can be a way to eliminate that problem (I assume the CPRM committee was directly influenced by the media discussion, maybe even Andre's interview here).
Well, "socialist" shouldn't be a slur either, for exactly the same reason. For goods and services such as health care, education, law enforcement, rail transportation, road networks etc., socialism is the best system. I don't think even Americans would want their children to go to Microsoft Junior High, or be arrested by an RIAA police officer, or something like that.
Well, the difference is that with the GPL you get the source code, with Microsoft you don't. If you have the source code you can make your own modifications, and distribute them to the other users of the software. This way, the vendor can never force a protocol down your throat, because you can just change it and give the modified copy to all your friends/colleagues.
So the conclusion is that this part: "add a minor bit of technology, so that nobody else can use it, then release that secret wrinkle so that only GPL software can communicate with other GPL software." does not hold for the GPL, since you can just change it back, or look at the code and extract the spec.
No offense, but come on! The US has something like 250-300 million people. The world has a bit over 6 billion people. The US only makes up a bit less than 5% of the population of the world, and this is decreasing. China alone has more than 4 times as many people as the US. I guess the US is not too keen on having world democracy anytime soon eh?
This is what is known as a "fork" in Free Software/Open Source terminology.
You see, when a human encounters a new phenomenon in the world, she normally tries to associate some previously explained phenomenon with it. This is known as "understanding". Maybe you are missing this capability, which I guess would explain your post.
And this is of course different from the problems when Russia (USSR) was communist. I think the problem is that you don't want to admit that capitalism hasn't worked in Russia either.
Because of the lure of getting insanely rich. Not everyone falls for that though. It's like pornography, it's probably the major traffic on the internet, but I don't think a lot of people would want to live with a porn star. So I guess the conclusion is that the US is like a porno movie for entrepeneurs.