A US studio executive will never be hauled into a foreign court. EVER.
Perhaps not, even if something as heinous as the The Hague Convention is ever signed and ratified by the US and, say, iran (where many, perhaps most, US movies would be illegal). The US has a bad history when it comes to honoring treaties... just ask any Native American. Now that we are the sole superpower Junior (Bush) has us disregarding treaties once again. Clearly the only thing that can keep the US honest when it comes to international agreements and treaties is a balance of power, which was lost with the demise of the Soviet Union.
But I digress. An important point you are overlooking is that laws vary within the United States. Many hollywood executives could, and perhaps now should, be brought up on charges of violating local obscenity standards with such movies as "Eyes Wide Shut," Showtime's "Queer as Folk," and perhaps even "Faces of Death." Extend the precedents these jackasses are purchasing with our hard-earned consumer dollars to, say, Kentucky, and the legal groundwork is more than sufficient to arrest and extradite a Hollywood Moghul for violating local obscenety laws.
Obviously this sort of thing won't hold up under Federal Appeal, but it would be most amusing to give these pricks a taste of their own medicine, and let them fester in a backwoods Alabama jail for a few years while the DeCSS, and their own, appeals grind through the system.
With any luck both would be overturned at roughly the same time, and if not, then at least the suffering is more fairly distributed.
I shouldn't respond to such an obvious troll, but to set the record straight:
Nice try with www.meigsaction.net.
How come you, with all this "Consumers First", anti-corporations and other bullshi,t are AGAINST people having access to one of the best places in Chicago simply because selected few can fly their asses out of there ( most of them are CEOs anyway..)
Most users of Meigs are not CEOs (although they are an important element and the closure of Meigs will certainly mean a number of corporations move their headquarters out of Chicago, costing people like you and myself jobs in the process, Boeing notwithstanding).
The vast majority of private pilots are middle class and have given up other luxuries in order to fly (cars, big homes, etc.) and fly older used aircraft, etc. The fact that they have a skill you do not, and choose to fly a 30-year old aircraft rather than drive a six-month old car does not make them any more elite or less "people" than you or anyone else.
Meigs is critical to organ transport into downtown Chicago... its closure will mean transfer time increases an average of 20-30 minutes, as planes carrying organs will have to land at Midway or O'hare (both of which are at near capacity and subject to delays already, even with Meigs acting as a reliever), then transfer the material to helicoptor for a much longer flight downtown. This will cost numerous lives
Rescue operations for boats and other recreational traffic along the lakeshore will have to operate from staging areas in Gary, at Midway, Palwaukee, or Waukegan, all of which are much further away and will increase the time required before rescues can be mounted significantly, again costing lives.
As one who lives in the neighborhood I, and everyone else in the city, already have access to "one of the best places in Chicago"... the entire region is park, museums, etc. Indeed, we already have more park in my neighborhood that we know what to do with, and miles of beautiful shoreline to ride our bikes along, play on, and swim in. Of course, not being a fan of sports I don't use the football stadium (also located in the area), just as others don't use the airport. Shall we tear them both down and replace them with empty lots of grass which can be used roughly six months out of the year? (Don't forget Chicago's extremely harsh winters and late, soggy springs.)
I could go on, but if you've visited http://www.meigsaction.net/ you know this already, and are just trolling.
Finally, as to the rediculous false dichotomy you have presented, being pro-consumer does not equal being anti-business, nor does being pro-business equal being pro-corporatism. Corporatism does not equal capitalism any more than monopolism equals business.
Apply the same arguments to other areas of safety
on
PDF Virus Spotted
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Typical customers want their email client to open attachments for them. Typical customers want Acrobat to be able to process VBScript (according to Adobe). Unfortunately, typical customers don't want to be raped by script kiddies and haX0rz either--but they don't seem to be willing to sacrifice their features for it.
Where is the balance?
This is a remarkably easy question to answer if you substitute another area of safety people, even clueless Microsoft users, can understand.
Allow me to paraphrase:
"Typical customers want to be able to board the plane without delay. Typical customers want to be able to take as much baggage as they luck, up to and including the Steinway. Unfortunately, typical customers don't want to die horribly in a plane crash -- bugt they don't seem to be willing to sacrifice their features for it.
Where is the balance?"
Obviously, if the industry cannot police itself, and the free market doesn't yield acceptable results, government regulation is the only reasonable recourse (libertarian knee-jerk reactions aside). In the case of aircraft the FAA has stepped in, and while their are alot of regulations, as a pilot I can say the vast majority of them are reasonable and do a great deal of good.
Think the aircraft example is too dramatic? Then substitute something else, such as an automobile, a building, or even a child's toy. All of these things have features people would want if they could have them but are incompatible with safety (think seat-belts, firecodes, chilren choking, etc.). In each case the manufacturers were incapable of properly policing themselves and government ended up having to step in (safety codes, building codes, mandatory testing procedures, etc.).
Microsoft has demonstrated its incompetence to such an extreme that fissionable nuclear materials may well have been misplaced as a direct and demonstrable result of poor quality control in their software. They make no apology for this, blaming instead the victims of their own incompetence (their customers) and claiming it is what their customers want (I would beg to differ). Clearly the industry is not policing itself properly, nor, based on the market share Microsoft currently enjoys, is the free market yielding acceptable results. Similar arguments apply to Adobe, its fraudulantly incompetent copy protection for eBooks and its virus-facilitating PDF file format.
I know it is a profoundly unpopular idea (and I'm not terribly thrilled with the notion myself), but perhaps it is time for some basic standards of quality and security to be imposed through some form of regulation. The alternative seems to be more of the same, which is clearly not acceptable.
You are right, arguments about people "lining up" to go somewhere are deceptive, as different governments and countries have different immigration policies that make such actions easier or more difficult, depending.
I should point out that Switzerland is not Sweden (Sweden is known for being socialist to a large degree, Switzerland is about as capitalist as they come).
Furthermore, Switzerland, like much of Europe, and like the United States, is very protective of its borders. Anyone wishing to emigrate to Switzerland better have a huge pile of cash to buy their citizenship or marry a Swiss citizen (at which point you get to enjoy the indignity of having the Swiss police perform surprise inspections on your home to confirm that you do, in fact, live with your spouse).
I do not know what the immigration policies of Sweden are, but I suspect, given that the entire society pays for those unable to make their own ends meet that they at least require you to be able to make a comfortable living, without taking a job away frome a Swede of course.
It would be nice if countries with similar standards of living (e.g. Western Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) would open their borders and allow people to move freely from one location to another a la the European Union, but this would undermine governments' ability to coerce their citizenry into ways of life they have chosen for them... the citizens could then easilly vote with their feet en mass, which would become an important check on their government's power that is, right now, largely missing. Given the control-freaks who are attracted to high places of power I don't see this kind of individual freedom coming anytime soon.
Hasn't been a seven-member court for ages. You need five to get a majority - there are nine justices.
All that aside, seven supreme court justices were appointed by Republicans. Whatever political favors were owed were paid back in full last December, notwithstanding another poster's pathetically niave notion that merely because they were appointed by Junior's predicessors (including his own father, Bush Sr.) the result is somehow unrelated. History would appear to indicate otherwise, although calculating a monetary value for services rendered (and the cost of obtaining said services) will probably be a subject of scholarly debate among historians a couple of generations from now.
In any event, thence came my initial 7 x [value of an appointment] = what it cost Junior (or, more accurately, his party) to get the supreme court in their pocket. As to whether one could get it cheaper (e.g 5 x [value of an appointment]), the question then becomes how reliable a 5 member majority is vs. a seven member majority and what exactly does it mean, and does it take, to truly have the court in one's pocket? Seven justices clearly were quite adequate... five should be as well, as long as they are in good health, lead relatively safe lives (e.g. no high-risk hobbies), are thoroughly bought and paid for, and can then be retained (via additional bribes, extortion, blackmail, party or filial loyalty, or what have you).
It is really quite moot anyway , as Microsoft has more than enough capital to buy all nine justices regardless of price.:-)
It probably isn't the easiest thing to figure out (what is the value of an appointment to the
Supreme Court, times seven? What are the value of presidential favors past and present which led up to their short-circuiting of the electorial process? And so on...).
Probably your best bet it to ask Junior (oh, wait, we promised him there wouldn't be any math on the test... better ask the treasurer of the Republican Party and the Bush family accountant instead). That is, of course, assuming they'll give you anything approaching an honest answer... nevermind. Come to think of it, an audit of Microsoft's financials after the trial is probably your best bet after all. Of course, with a government far weeker than the corporation, whose to say you'll ever be able to get an audit?
So I don't think a cleanroom implementation would help at all.
Very true. As I have pointed out in other threads underscoring the monumental stupidity in having government granted and enforced monopolies in a free market economic system, the vast majority of patent violations are a result of rediscovery (i.e. "clean room" implementations) rather than cribbing an existing patent or even reverse engineering an existing product.
But there could be a way to work around the patents...
Like, um, developing the software outside of the United States. Most of the rest of the world hasn't yet followed the American stupidity of granting patents on software (much less "business methods" or any of the numerous other methods IP Lawyers-as-judges have come up with to create artificial scarcity in the realm of ideas, stifle creativity and technological progress and, incidentally, line their own pockets and the pockets of their profession in the process).
the next time we should discuss Adobe is when their employees are called to the stand. That's when we find out where they really stand on the issues. Right now they can't do anything - good or bad.
Bullshit.
Yes, Adobe's "retraction" and "regret" have proven to be the perfect copout for Adobe. Get the man maliciously arrested for "violating" a flagrantly unconstitutional American law for actions in Russia which were legal, even encouraged, under Russian law, then step back and say "oops, our bad, sorry, please keep buying our ebook products but now its the government's fault, yell at them instead!"
Adobe gets the chilling effect on research into their inadequate, even fraudulant, copy protection schemes and, if we listen to you, never have to suffer a single consiquence for their actions, the direct result of which have been the unjust imprisonment of a software engineer for giving a speech at a technical conference and quite possibly the destruction of the next several years of his life.
Until Adobe does something significant and concrete to make amends for their actions I will continue to hold them in the highest contempt, I will continue to boycott their products, I will continue to encourage my employer and my friends to do the same, and I will continue to speak out about it on public fora such as this one.
Adobe pulled the trigger. The very least they can do is pay reparations for the damage they have wrought.
Yes you can translate but it's like dewatermarking a copyrighted music file, it sounds and looks like shit.
Actually, de-watermarking copyrighted files has been demonstrated to work with no discernable degradation in audio quality. There may have even been a general mathematical proof presented that any watermark which does not leave a discernable trace in the watermarked file can be removed without leaving a discernable trace... I don't recall for certain if a general proof was submitted, but I do know that a paper was to be presented at a technical forum some months ago demonstrating that all of the major watermarking approaches being considered by the RIAA could be removed with no discernable degradation in the music.
The paper in question is available on the internet, although it was never formally presented at the conference due to legal threats under the DMCA from the commercial entities promoting the watermarking technology, who obviously had a vested interest in keeping this information quiet and promoting the mistaken notion that watermarking can be an effective deterrent to copyright violation (and perhaps even fair use).
It is interesting that the industry which relies most heavily on copyright, the computer software industry, learned more than a decade ago that copy protection schemes, along with watermarking schemes, were unworkable and ultimately a waste in resources and dumped the entire approach altogether. This lesson, which demonstrated itself in no uncertain terms in the large profits of software houses despite their lack of copy protection and the ease with which their copyrights can be (and likely are) violated, has apparently been lost on the entertainment industry, due perhaps in no small part to organizations like the SDMI group who prey upon the entertainment industry's niavite with respect to copy protection and watermarking for their own purposes.
I suspect ultimately the Copyright Cartels (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) will find they have been taken to cleaners far more by their own "copy protection" vendors, who have sold them a bill of goods even the DMCA's most draconian provisions can't compensate for, than by their customers' fair use practices and even outright copyright violations. Seeing this lightbulb go on in a Hollywood Mogul's eye would be an event worth paying admission to see.
I mean...the EFF can call freakin Adobe to testify that this is undeserved and leave the FBI with severe egg on the face.
As anyone reading my posts here, elsewhere, and any of the fiction I've put on line will notice, I have a particular loathing for our home-grown secret police we call the FBI.
But this is extremely unfair not just to Dmitry (who has my sympathy), but also to the FBI (who doesn't). The people getting off scott-free are the people who deserve to be eviscerated for this unjust debacle the most:
Adobe, who despite their "recantation" are happy as cats in a canary shop with the results of their actions, and the lack of PR fallout their "change of heart" (which only a completely niave fool would take seriously) has afforded them.
The Copyright Cartels (RIAA and MPAA specifically) who sponsored the legislation, bought our congresspeople and president like cheap whores (see below), and are now chortling with delight and speaking out in favor of continuing this injustice indefinitely.
The Republican controlled congress of 1998 (Sony Bono Copyright Extention Act) and 1999 (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act) for passing such an absurd and blatently unconstitutional law, and then proudly proclaiming that it is doing "exactly what was intended" after a foreign national is jailed in violation of international law for giving a speech at a technical conference.
The Democratic President (Bill Clinton) for signing such an unjust and unconstititional piece of legislation into law.
Indeed, violating one's oath to uphold the contitution in such an obscene and blatent manner should be grounds for impeachment of those who sponsored the legislation, those who voted for it, and he who signed it. But alas, the constitution is clearly little more than toilet paper within the D.C. Beltway.
The intro posted is not correct. The article says that Grid software infrastructure is being developed on the "open source model," it does not say that it incoporates Linux (although I'm sure Linux will be a major OS used with it). MS has also contributed $1 million to the effort, and hopes to tie in.NET
The intro is absolutely correct, which if you'd done any digging whatsoever *cough*google*cough* you would have found for yourself:
It will be based on Globus and Linux software which uses the internet as an underlying communication system. [Atkinson, 2001]
It really can't be stated much more clearly than that. --
Hence, if your equipment cannot create the exact duplicate of what they provided, or even if they could, I doubt any court would side with you on this.
Although IANAL, it is nevertheless obvious that Sony is very liable for damages which occur in at least some scenerios:
Consider: You buy a Sony CD burner (the consumer kind that sits in your stereo rack, not the PC kind, although I suspect it wouldn't matter if the PC brand also came bundled with software that includes audio CD copying capabilities). You buy a sony pressed, unmarked Cactus CD. Or perhaps its even marked with a small icon, but without any message warning you of the consiquences.
Two scenerios where Sony would clearly be liable for any and all damages, and quite possibly punitive penalties as well:
1) you play the original in your high-end PC player, which is connected to your high end speakers via your high-end audio card, in turn via the CDs digital port. Pop, crackle, zap... there go your speakers, perhaps even your audio card.
2) you play a copy of a Sony CD in a Sony player, made by a Sony CD burner marketed to you expressly for copying and burning CDs (perhaps even burnt onto a Sony blank for good measure). It blows your speakers, burns out your amp, whatever. Sony sold you at least one piece of equipment fraudulantly. They cannot have it both ways, either the CD Burner/Player were sold under false pretences, or the CD was sold under false pretences. Consumer fraud at the very least, criminal damage to private propterty quite possibly.
[insert rant here about how CEOs of such criminal cartels should be spending at least as much time in prison as CEOs of other well-known crime cartels] --
The CMU scheme sounds like the work of someone who has spent too much time reading Aynn Rand and too litte time noticing that most markets are rigged.
You point about rigged markets, and the possibility of tremendous abuse and defrauding of the government are very valid (and yes, Ayn Rand's view of economics and the human condition was profoundly two dimensional and myopic, but I digress). Clearly if one is bidding on one's own patent in order to drive up the government's 120% then one is engaging in fraud. People have become Prime Bitch in Cellblock A for less than that.
Nevertheless I think the notion deserves some consideration. I would couple it with my own idea (a 100% tax credit for N years to the patent holder, but no, I repeat, no monopoly privelege whatsoever), and modify the notion as follows:
1) Patents confer a 100% tax free profits on the invention if sold alone as a whole, or a pro-rated portion if incorporated into some other product, for a period of time N years. No monopoly privelege, no exclusionary rights beyond the tax credit.
2) A free market will determine the patent's sale price, when the patent holder is ready to sell, he or she may sell at whatever price the market will bear. This may be early or late in the product's cycle, and the patent holder my calculate the pricepoint wisely, or not, as anyone might, selling anything, in a free market economy.
3) The government may purchase the patent at twice the market value (selling price) if it wishes, thereby saving the tax credit burden and enriching the patent holder even further. This may only be done on the First Sale of the patent, all further transactions are at market value and the government may outbid the market as any other company might. The only reason for this clause is to discourage the government from buying up all patents initially (thereby perhaps depressing or inflating the market and certainly influencing it one way or the other in an untoward way) and to reward the initial inventor even more greatly should the government buy up the patent. The only reason the government might buy a patent is to (obviously) avoid the loss in tax revinue it represents. Once again, I reiterate, the patent confers no other privelege beyond the tax savings.
Details can be argued, hammered out, and some reasonable solution reached. What is unacceptable, and must stop, is the issuing of government sponsored monopolies remeniscent of the Royal Monopolies granted inside friends of the King under the British Monarchy with the economic damage, scientific and technological stifling that ensues. Replacing it with a tax-free burdon, then letting free markets reign, appears to be very reasonable, especially if the free market is "rigged" slightly to favor and more generously reward the initial patent holder.
If you look at the history of patent law you will find that it does a very, very poor job of "protecting the little guy." History is repleat with examples of inventors never seeing a dime on their patents because they couldn't afford the lawyers to enforce them against large companies, of others using various methods to "steal" their patents (Thomas Eddison was notorious for this, for example. See also the history of radio.), etc.
A tax credit in place of a government sponsored monopoly would make the situation neither better, nor worse, for the "garage inventor" than it is now. If the "garage inventor" sells their patent to a large company, then that company becomes entitled to the tax break rather than the individual. If anything, there is more incentive to purchase the patent legitimately rather than ignore it or try to get it overturned... possibly benefiting the smalltime inventor far more than the current system of handing out absolute monopolies, and without the terrible economic side effects.
Neither of these points is particularly valid, because they ignore the fact that the scarcity that IP protects is one of creation. It does so by insuring the creator has control over any and all production of the idea.
That is simply not true, or rather it is deceptively stated. Intellectual Property creates an artificial scarcity both of the creation and, in the case of patents (at least), in the creative process as well. Multiple peope often do come up with the same or very similar idea(s) independently, but only he or she who wins the footrace to the USPTO gets any rights, and everyone else is excluded for twenty years!
Creativity isn't scarce. What is scarce is the freedom to use it. As noted elsewhere, the vast majority of patent infringements are a result of people accidentally "rediscovering" a way to do something, not a result of plagerism or reverse engineering. Those who do creatively come up with a solution are then forbidden from using it because someone else was granted a government sponsored twenty-year monopoly on the idea.
To paraphrase, it seems as though people defending IP end up into a pattern of formulating very weak arguments whenever they talk about the need to artificially reward invention at the expense of everyone else.
I made a similar point in another discussion with respect to copyright law (and its abuses), but I think it applies to any sort of "artificial scarcity" which all IP law ultimately relies on.
You are clearly a troll (how such a rediculous post got moderated up to +4 is beyond me, but there have been enough tirades about the decline of slashdot this week, so I'll leave it at that), but such misinformation must be responded to nevertheless.
As for geeks comming up with innovative ideas, a quick, short, (and probably patented, but not by their inventors!) list:
The Internet
Usenet NEWS
The World Wide Web
Networked Computer Games
Non-Linear Video Editing
CGI Animation (seen any movies lately?)
Mutli-tasking computer operating systems
Windowing systems (used X or Windoze lately? Both came from Xerox via Apple, invented by geeks, then coopted later by industry, something a patent might well have prevented)
... and the list goes on
Patents allow someone to make money from the R&D they do. Patents also force other companies or people to develope new and better ways of "doing something" other than "just copying the other guy's stuff". This means there are LEAPS in innovation, not just a slow crawl.
What an absolute crock of shit.
It is unnecessary to have a 20-year government sponsored monopoly in order to make money from one's idea. Monopolies are antithetical to the primary means by which free markets operate, namely competition. Furthermore, no idea more advanced than the stone hammer (read: pounding something with a rock) stands alone. Every idea incorporates aspects of earlier ideas, every invention stands on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before. By locking up every new or innovative idea (much less every trivial variation of an old idea the way we do now) you slow down any advancements that might be based on that idea. Dramatically.
Most ideas, when patented, are being developed by numerous, independent people. Why? Because generally, when an idea's "time has come" (ie. it become feasable or technically possible for the first time, usually because the necessary groundwork or supporting technologies become available for the first time) a number of creative people jump on it at roughly the same time. The vast majority of patent infringements aren't a result of people cribbing from the patent applications or even reverse engineering their competitors' products, they are a result of inadvertant infringement resulting from having developed the same or similar idea completely independently.
Whoever wins the footrace to the patent office is granted a monopoly, and everyone else who had developed, or "invented" the idea concurrently is suddenly left in the unenviable position of having their invention stolen out from under them, and being forbidden to exploit their work, or their idea, under penalty of law.
This is not conducive to encouraging invention or progress. Quite the contrary.
Patents do not "allow someone to make money from the R&D they do." This is allowed regardless, by a free market in which anyone can develop an idea, build it and market it... unless someone else has been given a government sponsored monopoly on something similar, in which case they are forbidden from doing so for the next twenty years. Indeed, it is rather obvious that patents have the opposite effect... the forbid anyone from making money on the R&D they have done, unless they happen to be the one who filed with the USPTO first, or (more often) have the most money to hire IP lawyers to defend their own patent or overturn someone elses.
Another example is breat cancer, in which promising research has been scuttled because of existing patents on the genes which were discovered to have an impact, perhaps even be the cause, of the affliction. Scuttled research does not lead to LEAPS in innovation, unless, of course, you use the Microsoft definition of the word... something I think most women at risk of said disease would not find in the least amusing.
You want to reward someone for winning the footrace to the USPTO? Fine. Give them a 20 year amnesty from federal taxes for income derived from their "invention." Do not give them a monopoly and lock up the very idea (and its derivatives) for the next twenty years! To do so is antithetical to the free market, slows technological development, and cripples the very open exchange of science that is ultimately the foundation of every invention, everywhere.
supposedly the DoD has had this capability for years, including in foreign languages. The idea being that the US can intercept enemy radio communications and replace them with confusing or erroneous instructions, *in real-time, in the original radio operator's voice.
If this were ever used it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention (the idea that you could use it to give fake orders to the enemy, or impersonate leaders telling their people to surrender, etc). Not that the United States cares at all about the Geneva Convention, what with our history of detainming and even executing foreign nationals without ever letting them speak to their consulates, in direct violation of said Convention.
Nevertheless, the U.S. military (and this is indeed ironic) has been more inclined to repect the Geneva contention (at least officially) than the civilian government. Developing this sort of technologies flies in the face of that, however, which makes me suspect it is being driven more by one of the spook agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI) than the DoD... but in today's ethic-free climate, who can tell? --
They had a search warrant. The distinctin is a technical one, as they indicate that the "bug" did not transmit anything.
So what are the rules for "bugging" a person's home with an audio tap? Their home, not their telephone. Is a search warrant sufficient, or is a court ordered wiretap required? If the former, this may well stand. If the latter, then the FBI were clearly out of bounds and should have known better.
Invading one's private communications a la a keyboard wiretap is IMHO more akin to opening someone's mail or tapping their telephone, so whatever standards apply to those sorts of actions should apply to this as well. Guess we'll find out soon enough... --
Out of curiousity, where do you rank Canada in your comparison? On the one hand, we have to kiss some ass to the USA below us... but we have (had in Alberta) good access to healthcare, school, etc.
Since I haven't spent any significant time in Canada I couldn't really say, although my impression is that it has more in common with Europe WRT health care and basic social services than with the United States.
You would probably be better able to characterize Canada than I... I am merely trying to point out that the United States, contrary to very widespread myth among our population, isn't the be-all, end-all "first world" country we all like to think. Quite the contrary, we have in the last two decades become very "third world" in a number of important respects. Give us one good depression (read: loss of wealth among the middle class) and we'll be very "third world" in fact and in name, little different from any number of "banana repulbics" we so like to look down our noses at. --
When people speak of math skills for engineering careers, they are usually referring to calculus at least.
The English language is gifted with several hundred thousand unique identifiers called words, some of which are general and some of which are specific.
Math is a general term, referring to everything from gradeschool addition through post-doctoral work on quantum physics and God knows what else (I am not a mathematician... the highest level coursework I took was Differential Equations and/or Complex Calculus -- two different tracks so you be the judge).
Calculus is a more specific term, referring to derivatives, integrals, and some other more advanced concepts.
If you mean "calculus at least," then say "calculus at least." Do not say "math" and then criticize someone else for your innacurate use of language. The poster whom you so derisively answered was very correct in his sarcasm, that to say programmers don't use math (which by the way includes this amazing field known as "descreet math" and "boolean theory" which are used every day by said programmers) is absurd in the extreme.
On the other hand, to say most programmers don't use Calculus is probably a true statement (I certainly don't), so if that is what is meant, than that is what should be said. Arrogantly redefining the word "math" to some value other than its default meaning and then deride others for not being 31337 enough to understand isn't just pointless, it is downright stupid. --
Exploring has always taken a high toll in lives and it is only our lately-super-sensitive society that holds us back in this new arena of space travel.
It's not even our "super sensitive" society that is to blame. Talk to just about anyone and you'll find most agree that exploration and colonization of space will cost lives, and that that is to be expected. We are somewhat indoctrinated into blaming ourselves, or "society" in general, but for this the blame lies squarely with a two party congress that acts in its own interests and not the interests of the people (and who have the system so sewn up that we have difficulty throwing the bastards out), and the lifestyle beaurocrats that serve them (or perhaps are served by them, who can tell anymore?).
Its political and beaurocratic "cover your ass" that is to blame for the unwillingness to take risks and accept the inevitable costs of doing something profoundly difficult but extremely worthwhile like manned space flight.
While there are some who argue the money would be better spent here, I think most people agree that a strong space program would be useful, and it is their dreams which are being betrayed, not by their own "hyper-sensitivity" to risk, but by hordes of beaurocrats and politicians who would rather let the dream of spaceflight die than take even the smallest political risk. --
The US can never "qualify for 'third world' status" by definition.
I am quite aware of the etemology of "first," "second," and "third world." Yes, it dates back to the cold war when the "first world" was defined as the West, NATO in particular, the "second world" as the communist portion of the globe, and the "third world" was everyone else.
With the end of the cold war these definitions became largely defunct, so much so that the usage of the term "second world" has all but vanished from the language. In common colloquial usage the term "first world" has come to apply to those nations which are prosperous, which have a high standard of living and are generally democratic. The term "third world" has come to largely apply to those nations which are impoverished (even Russia is often referred to as a "third world" country these days, in direct contrast to the earlier, cold war meaning of the term).
You may play whatever semantic games you wish and apply obsolete definitions to the colloquial terms I used when making my point, in order to obfuscate the facts and opinions I presented, but the fact remains that, aside from our wealth, in virtually every other respect and by virtually every other measure the United States has far more in common with Mexico, Brazil, and Turkey than it does with Australia, Holland, Denmark, France, or Germany. --
They started in the mid 70's and was continuing to the early 90's and then got a bit better. There are however still abuses.
I'm not relying on foreign media, those just made me discover the whole thing. There are lots of information from independent sources in the country if you just search good enough.
That is one of the beauties of the internet, and the primary motivation I suspect for the comming "War on Copyright Infringement." In an environment where ISPs are compelled under legal and financial threat to remove any offending material at the merest assertion that it might be infringing on someone's copyright, censorship by governments and corporate intersts will go from "impossible" (remember "the internet routes around censorship" soundbite of a few years ago?) to being trivial.
Now, thanks to the DMCA, if they really want to get you (rather than merely silencing your voice on the 'net) they can arrest you on criminal charges for copyright violations (for the first time in our nation's history! Prior to the DMCA one could only be sued for copyright infringement, never arrested. There has always been a tension between copyright and freedom of speech... now there is no tension, because the DMCA, by exploiting a semantic bug in the US Constitution, has guaranteed copyright enforcement through criminal law at the absolute expense of freedom of speech. Copyright is now paramount, and any freedom of speech you might have had comes in a distant second.)
What, you say you didn't violate anyone's copyright, you merely posted information emberrassing or irritating to [insert your favorite Government or Corporation here]? When the evidence is an electronicly stored file, planting it is trivial. Indeed, manufacturing whatever evidence the Feds want to manufacture, for whatever purposes, is trivial. How on earth can you prove that that Metallica MP3 wasn't on your hard drive until after the Feds shut down your anti-FBI site, for example? It comes down to your word against their's, and unfortunately, here in the United States, people are very strongly conditioned to believe the word of a well groomed FBI agent over that of a "radical" "hacker" (well groomed or otherwise). What do you think all those Hollywood action films have been indoctrinating us with all those years?
It is interesting your government ceased its wholesale theft in the early nineties. Wasn't that about the time the internet came into widespread use and information began flowing freely as never before? Perhaps merely a coincidence, but if so, an interesting one. --
... why the interests of major worlds governments and the Copyright Cartels coincide so well. Copyright provides the perfect ammunition for laying seige to the Internet and reigning in its most troublesom aspects, namely the freedom of information and the ability of people to speak out and be heard.
I wasn't aware of their behaviour myself until the mid 90s when I got access to the internet and got some perspective from other media than the swedish state controlled. I was very uninterrested in politics before this.
And they want your bitch ass back on the couch absorbing their spoon-fed message, not ferreting out uncomfortable truths and engaging in public discourse that could upset their applecart, expose their corruption and cost them an election (or a government). [Sorry for the harsh verbiage, but I'm trying to underscore what I think the real motive behind our governments' willingness to sell out our individual freedoms and rights to a bunch of Copyright protectionists is, namely to disempower those who have been so empowered by the internet. Copyright violators aren't the real target... troublesom people who speak out and are heard on the net are, as are the tens of thousands of otherwise ignorant people they inform and enlighten.]
We Americans are indoctrinated from childhood with the mantra "ours is the best nation on earth, there is no place where one can be as free as here in America" and so forth. It is shocking and disturbing to an American the first time we are abroad for any length of time and are forced to either live in blatent denial of the world around us or to acknowledge that, in comparison to most prosperous, industrialized countries we aren't very free at all, and that (aside from cheap living space because of the size of our land) our economic lives really aren't any better than those of many people who live elsewhere and have, on top of that, access to medical care and insurance a good 40% of our working people do not.
Just as you were shocked to discover your government's ill behavior in the 70s (and I would take that coverage with a grain of salt. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but do recall the anti-communist hysteria of the west at the time and consider the "spin" put on those events might well be exaggerating the event, perhaps out of proportion with what happened), others have been shocked and roused to public action as a result of things they have learned outside of the corporate media that has been spoon feeding us these pleasant lies for so long.
The last thing these governments want is for the majority of people to have access to this information, to become interested and active in politics as a result. Their comfortable lives and bases of power are thus threatened. Is it really any wonder they tried to destroy speech on the internet through the guise of "fighting pornography" and, when the Supreme Court shot that down, have turned to the much more potent and virulant notion of "copyright infringement" instead, criminalizing what for the previous two centuries had always been a civil offense and then forming task forces within our secret police (FBI) to prosecute such cases? --
Slashdot Mirror
A US studio executive will never be hauled into a foreign court. EVER.
... just ask any Native American. Now that we are the sole superpower Junior (Bush) has us disregarding treaties once again. Clearly the only thing that can keep the US honest when it comes to international agreements and treaties is a balance of power, which was lost with the demise of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps not, even if something as heinous as the The Hague Convention is ever signed and ratified by the US and, say, iran (where many, perhaps most, US movies would be illegal). The US has a bad history when it comes to honoring treaties
But I digress. An important point you are overlooking is that laws vary within the United States. Many hollywood executives could, and perhaps now should, be brought up on charges of violating local obscenity standards with such movies as "Eyes Wide Shut," Showtime's "Queer as Folk," and perhaps even "Faces of Death." Extend the precedents these jackasses are purchasing with our hard-earned consumer dollars to, say, Kentucky, and the legal groundwork is more than sufficient to arrest and extradite a Hollywood Moghul for violating local obscenety laws.
Obviously this sort of thing won't hold up under Federal Appeal, but it would be most amusing to give these pricks a taste of their own medicine, and let them fester in a backwoods Alabama jail for a few years while the DeCSS, and their own, appeals grind through the system.
With any luck both would be overturned at roughly the same time, and if not, then at least the suffering is more fairly distributed.
Nice try with www.meigsaction.net.
How come you, with all this "Consumers First", anti-corporations and other bullshi,t are AGAINST people having access to one of the best places in Chicago simply because selected few can fly their asses out of there ( most of them are CEOs anyway..)
I could go on, but if you've visited http://www.meigsaction.net/ you know this already, and are just trolling.
Finally, as to the rediculous false dichotomy you have presented, being pro-consumer does not equal being anti-business, nor does being pro-business equal being pro-corporatism. Corporatism does not equal capitalism any more than monopolism equals business.
Where is the balance?
This is a remarkably easy question to answer if you substitute another area of safety people, even clueless Microsoft users, can understand.
Allow me to paraphrase:
Obviously, if the industry cannot police itself, and the free market doesn't yield acceptable results, government regulation is the only reasonable recourse (libertarian knee-jerk reactions aside). In the case of aircraft the FAA has stepped in, and while their are alot of regulations, as a pilot I can say the vast majority of them are reasonable and do a great deal of good.
Think the aircraft example is too dramatic? Then substitute something else, such as an automobile, a building, or even a child's toy. All of these things have features people would want if they could have them but are incompatible with safety (think seat-belts, firecodes, chilren choking, etc.). In each case the manufacturers were incapable of properly policing themselves and government ended up having to step in (safety codes, building codes, mandatory testing procedures, etc.).
Microsoft has demonstrated its incompetence to such an extreme that fissionable nuclear materials may well have been misplaced as a direct and demonstrable result of poor quality control in their software. They make no apology for this, blaming instead the victims of their own incompetence (their customers) and claiming it is what their customers want (I would beg to differ). Clearly the industry is not policing itself properly, nor, based on the market share Microsoft currently enjoys, is the free market yielding acceptable results. Similar arguments apply to Adobe, its fraudulantly incompetent copy protection for eBooks and its virus-facilitating PDF file format.
I know it is a profoundly unpopular idea (and I'm not terribly thrilled with the notion myself), but perhaps it is time for some basic standards of quality and security to be imposed through some form of regulation. The alternative seems to be more of the same, which is clearly not acceptable.
You are right, arguments about people "lining up" to go somewhere are deceptive, as different governments and countries have different immigration policies that make such actions easier or more difficult, depending.
... the citizens could then easilly vote with their feet en mass, which would become an important check on their government's power that is, right now, largely missing. Given the control-freaks who are attracted to high places of power I don't see this kind of individual freedom coming anytime soon.
I should point out that Switzerland is not Sweden (Sweden is known for being socialist to a large degree, Switzerland is about as capitalist as they come).
Furthermore, Switzerland, like much of Europe, and like the United States, is very protective of its borders. Anyone wishing to emigrate to Switzerland better have a huge pile of cash to buy their citizenship or marry a Swiss citizen (at which point you get to enjoy the indignity of having the Swiss police perform surprise inspections on your home to confirm that you do, in fact, live with your spouse).
I do not know what the immigration policies of Sweden are, but I suspect, given that the entire society pays for those unable to make their own ends meet that they at least require you to be able to make a comfortable living, without taking a job away frome a Swede of course.
It would be nice if countries with similar standards of living (e.g. Western Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) would open their borders and allow people to move freely from one location to another a la the European Union, but this would undermine governments' ability to coerce their citizenry into ways of life they have chosen for them
Hasn't been a seven-member court for ages. You need five to get a majority - there are nine justices.
... five should be as well, as long as they are in good health, lead relatively safe lives (e.g. no high-risk hobbies), are thoroughly bought and paid for, and can then be retained (via additional bribes, extortion, blackmail, party or filial loyalty, or what have you).
:-)
All that aside, seven supreme court justices were appointed by Republicans. Whatever political favors were owed were paid back in full last December, notwithstanding another poster's pathetically niave notion that merely because they were appointed by Junior's predicessors (including his own father, Bush Sr.) the result is somehow unrelated. History would appear to indicate otherwise, although calculating a monetary value for services rendered (and the cost of obtaining said services) will probably be a subject of scholarly debate among historians a couple of generations from now.
In any event, thence came my initial 7 x [value of an appointment] = what it cost Junior (or, more accurately, his party) to get the supreme court in their pocket. As to whether one could get it cheaper (e.g 5 x [value of an appointment]), the question then becomes how reliable a 5 member majority is vs. a seven member majority and what exactly does it mean, and does it take, to truly have the court in one's pocket? Seven justices clearly were quite adequate
It is really quite moot anyway , as Microsoft has more than enough capital to buy all nine justices regardless of price.
I wonder how much ...the Supreme Court costs.
...).
... better ask the treasurer of the Republican Party and the Bush family accountant instead). That is, of course, assuming they'll give you anything approaching an honest answer ... nevermind. Come to think of it, an audit of Microsoft's financials after the trial is probably your best bet after all. Of course, with a government far weeker than the corporation, whose to say you'll ever be able to get an audit?
It probably isn't the easiest thing to figure out (what is the value of an appointment to the
Supreme Court, times seven? What are the value of presidential favors past and present which led up to their short-circuiting of the electorial process? And so on
Probably your best bet it to ask Junior (oh, wait, we promised him there wouldn't be any math on the test
So I don't think a cleanroom implementation would help at all.
Very true. As I have pointed out in other threads underscoring the monumental stupidity in having government granted and enforced monopolies in a free market economic system, the vast majority of patent violations are a result of rediscovery (i.e. "clean room" implementations) rather than cribbing an existing patent or even reverse engineering an existing product.
But there could be a way to work around the patents...
Like, um, developing the software outside of the United States. Most of the rest of the world hasn't yet followed the American stupidity of granting patents on software (much less "business methods" or any of the numerous other methods IP Lawyers-as-judges have come up with to create artificial scarcity in the realm of ideas, stifle creativity and technological progress and, incidentally, line their own pockets and the pockets of their profession in the process).
the next time we should discuss Adobe is when their employees are called to the stand. That's when we find out where they really stand on the issues. Right now they can't do anything - good or bad.
Bullshit.
Yes, Adobe's "retraction" and "regret" have proven to be the perfect copout for Adobe. Get the man maliciously arrested for "violating" a flagrantly unconstitutional American law for actions in Russia which were legal, even encouraged, under Russian law, then step back and say "oops, our bad, sorry, please keep buying our ebook products but now its the government's fault, yell at them instead!"
Adobe gets the chilling effect on research into their inadequate, even fraudulant, copy protection schemes and, if we listen to you, never have to suffer a single consiquence for their actions, the direct result of which have been the unjust imprisonment of a software engineer for giving a speech at a technical conference and quite possibly the destruction of the next several years of his life.
Until Adobe does something significant and concrete to make amends for their actions I will continue to hold them in the highest contempt, I will continue to boycott their products, I will continue to encourage my employer and my friends to do the same, and I will continue to speak out about it on public fora such as this one.
Adobe pulled the trigger. The very least they can do is pay reparations for the damage they have wrought.
Yes you can translate but it's like dewatermarking a copyrighted music file, it sounds and looks like shit.
... I don't recall for certain if a general proof was submitted, but I do know that a paper was to be presented at a technical forum some months ago demonstrating that all of the major watermarking approaches being considered by the RIAA could be removed with no discernable degradation in the music.
Actually, de-watermarking copyrighted files has been demonstrated to work with no discernable degradation in audio quality. There may have even been a general mathematical proof presented that any watermark which does not leave a discernable trace in the watermarked file can be removed without leaving a discernable trace
The paper in question is available on the internet, although it was never formally presented at the conference due to legal threats under the DMCA from the commercial entities promoting the watermarking technology, who obviously had a vested interest in keeping this information quiet and promoting the mistaken notion that watermarking can be an effective deterrent to copyright violation (and perhaps even fair use).
It is interesting that the industry which relies most heavily on copyright, the computer software industry, learned more than a decade ago that copy protection schemes, along with watermarking schemes, were unworkable and ultimately a waste in resources and dumped the entire approach altogether. This lesson, which demonstrated itself in no uncertain terms in the large profits of software houses despite their lack of copy protection and the ease with which their copyrights can be (and likely are) violated, has apparently been lost on the entertainment industry, due perhaps in no small part to organizations like the SDMI group who prey upon the entertainment industry's niavite with respect to copy protection and watermarking for their own purposes.
I suspect ultimately the Copyright Cartels (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) will find they have been taken to cleaners far more by their own "copy protection" vendors, who have sold them a bill of goods even the DMCA's most draconian provisions can't compensate for, than by their customers' fair use practices and even outright copyright violations. Seeing this lightbulb go on in a Hollywood Mogul's eye would be an event worth paying admission to see.
As anyone reading my posts here, elsewhere, and any of the fiction I've put on line will notice, I have a particular loathing for our home-grown secret police we call the FBI.
But this is extremely unfair not just to Dmitry (who has my sympathy), but also to the FBI (who doesn't). The people getting off scott-free are the people who deserve to be eviscerated for this unjust debacle the most:
Indeed, violating one's oath to uphold the contitution in such an obscene and blatent manner should be grounds for impeachment of those who sponsored the legislation, those who voted for it, and he who signed it. But alas, the constitution is clearly little more than toilet paper within the D.C. Beltway.
The intro is absolutely correct, which if you'd done any digging whatsoever *cough*google*cough* you would have found for yourself:
It really can't be stated much more clearly than that.
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Hence, if your equipment cannot create the exact duplicate of what they provided, or even if they could, I doubt any court would side with you on this.
... there go your speakers, perhaps even your audio card.
Although IANAL, it is nevertheless obvious that Sony is very liable for damages which occur in at least some scenerios:
Consider: You buy a Sony CD burner (the consumer kind that sits in your stereo rack, not the PC kind, although I suspect it wouldn't matter if the PC brand also came bundled with software that includes audio CD copying capabilities). You buy a sony pressed, unmarked Cactus CD. Or perhaps its even marked with a small icon, but without any message warning you of the consiquences.
Two scenerios where Sony would clearly be liable for any and all damages, and quite possibly punitive penalties as well:
1) you play the original in your high-end PC player, which is connected to your high end speakers via your high-end audio card, in turn via the CDs digital port. Pop, crackle, zap
2) you play a copy of a Sony CD in a Sony player, made by a Sony CD burner marketed to you expressly for copying and burning CDs (perhaps even burnt onto a Sony blank for good measure). It blows your speakers, burns out your amp, whatever. Sony sold you at least one piece of equipment fraudulantly. They cannot have it both ways, either the CD Burner/Player were sold under false pretences, or the CD was sold under false pretences. Consumer fraud at the very least, criminal damage to private propterty quite possibly.
[insert rant here about how CEOs of such criminal cartels should be spending at least as much time in prison as CEOs of other well-known crime cartels]
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The CMU scheme sounds like the work of someone who has spent too much time reading Aynn Rand and too litte time noticing that most markets are rigged.
You point about rigged markets, and the possibility of tremendous abuse and defrauding of the government are very valid (and yes, Ayn Rand's view of economics and the human condition was profoundly two dimensional and myopic, but I digress). Clearly if one is bidding on one's own patent in order to drive up the government's 120% then one is engaging in fraud. People have become Prime Bitch in Cellblock A for less than that.
Nevertheless I think the notion deserves some consideration. I would couple it with my own idea (a 100% tax credit for N years to the patent holder, but no, I repeat, no monopoly privelege whatsoever), and modify the notion as follows:
1) Patents confer a 100% tax free profits on the invention if sold alone as a whole, or a pro-rated portion if incorporated into some other product, for a period of time N years. No monopoly privelege, no exclusionary rights beyond the tax credit.
2) A free market will determine the patent's sale price, when the patent holder is ready to sell, he or she may sell at whatever price the market will bear. This may be early or late in the product's cycle, and the patent holder my calculate the pricepoint wisely, or not, as anyone might, selling anything, in a free market economy.
3) The government may purchase the patent at twice the market value (selling price) if it wishes, thereby saving the tax credit burden and enriching the patent holder even further. This may only be done on the First Sale of the patent, all further transactions are at market value and the government may outbid the market as any other company might. The only reason for this clause is to discourage the government from buying up all patents initially (thereby perhaps depressing or inflating the market and certainly influencing it one way or the other in an untoward way) and to reward the initial inventor even more greatly should the government buy up the patent. The only reason the government might buy a patent is to (obviously) avoid the loss in tax revinue it represents. Once again, I reiterate, the patent confers no other privelege beyond the tax savings.
Details can be argued, hammered out, and some reasonable solution reached. What is unacceptable, and must stop, is the issuing of government sponsored monopolies remeniscent of the Royal Monopolies granted inside friends of the King under the British Monarchy with the economic damage, scientific and technological stifling that ensues. Replacing it with a tax-free burdon, then letting free markets reign, appears to be very reasonable, especially if the free market is "rigged" slightly to favor and more generously reward the initial patent holder.
If you look at the history of patent law you will find that it does a very, very poor job of "protecting the little guy." History is repleat with examples of inventors never seeing a dime on their patents because they couldn't afford the lawyers to enforce them against large companies, of others using various methods to "steal" their patents (Thomas Eddison was notorious for this, for example. See also the history of radio.), etc.
... possibly benefiting the smalltime inventor far more than the current system of handing out absolute monopolies, and without the terrible economic side effects.
A tax credit in place of a government sponsored monopoly would make the situation neither better, nor worse, for the "garage inventor" than it is now. If the "garage inventor" sells their patent to a large company, then that company becomes entitled to the tax break rather than the individual. If anything, there is more incentive to purchase the patent legitimately rather than ignore it or try to get it overturned
Neither of these points is particularly valid, because they ignore the fact that the scarcity that IP protects is one of creation. It does so by insuring the creator has control over any and all production of the idea.
That is simply not true, or rather it is deceptively stated. Intellectual Property creates an artificial scarcity both of the creation and, in the case of patents (at least), in the creative process as well. Multiple peope often do come up with the same or very similar idea(s) independently, but only he or she who wins the footrace to the USPTO gets any rights, and everyone else is excluded for twenty years!
Creativity isn't scarce. What is scarce is the freedom to use it. As noted elsewhere, the vast majority of patent infringements are a result of people accidentally "rediscovering" a way to do something, not a result of plagerism or reverse engineering. Those who do creatively come up with a solution are then forbidden from using it because someone else was granted a government sponsored twenty-year monopoly on the idea.
To paraphrase, it seems as though people defending IP end up into a pattern of formulating very weak arguments whenever they talk about the need to artificially reward invention at the expense of everyone else.
You are absolutely correct.
I made a similar point in another discussion with respect to copyright law (and its abuses), but I think it applies to any sort of "artificial scarcity" which all IP law ultimately relies on.
Until a "geek" comes up with a new and great idea
... unless someone else has been given a government sponsored monopoly on something similar, in which case they are forbidden from doing so for the next twenty years. Indeed, it is rather obvious that patents have the opposite effect ... the forbid anyone from making money on the R&D they have done, unless they happen to be the one who filed with the USPTO first, or (more often) have the most money to hire IP lawyers to defend their own patent or overturn someone elses.
... something I think most women at risk of said disease would not find in the least amusing.
You are clearly a troll (how such a rediculous post got moderated up to +4 is beyond me, but there have been enough tirades about the decline of slashdot this week, so I'll leave it at that), but such misinformation must be responded to nevertheless.
As for geeks comming up with innovative ideas, a quick, short, (and probably patented, but not by their inventors!) list:
The Internet
Usenet NEWS
The World Wide Web
Networked Computer Games
Non-Linear Video Editing
CGI Animation (seen any movies lately?)
Mutli-tasking computer operating systems
Windowing systems (used X or Windoze lately? Both came from Xerox via Apple, invented by geeks, then coopted later by industry, something a patent might well have prevented)
... and the list goes on
Patents allow someone to make money from the R&D they do. Patents also force other companies or people to develope new and better ways of "doing something" other than "just copying the other guy's stuff". This means there are LEAPS in innovation, not just a slow crawl.
What an absolute crock of shit.
It is unnecessary to have a 20-year government sponsored monopoly in order to make money from one's idea. Monopolies are antithetical to the primary means by which free markets operate, namely competition. Furthermore, no idea more advanced than the stone hammer (read: pounding something with a rock) stands alone. Every idea incorporates aspects of earlier ideas, every invention stands on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before. By locking up every new or innovative idea (much less every trivial variation of an old idea the way we do now) you slow down any advancements that might be based on that idea. Dramatically.
Most ideas, when patented, are being developed by numerous, independent people. Why? Because generally, when an idea's "time has come" (ie. it become feasable or technically possible for the first time, usually because the necessary groundwork or supporting technologies become available for the first time) a number of creative people jump on it at roughly the same time. The vast majority of patent infringements aren't a result of people cribbing from the patent applications or even reverse engineering their competitors' products, they are a result of inadvertant infringement resulting from having developed the same or similar idea completely independently.
Whoever wins the footrace to the patent office is granted a monopoly, and everyone else who had developed, or "invented" the idea concurrently is suddenly left in the unenviable position of having their invention stolen out from under them, and being forbidden to exploit their work, or their idea, under penalty of law.
This is not conducive to encouraging invention or progress. Quite the contrary.
Patents do not "allow someone to make money from the R&D they do." This is allowed regardless, by a free market in which anyone can develop an idea, build it and market it
Another example is breat cancer, in which promising research has been scuttled because of existing patents on the genes which were discovered to have an impact, perhaps even be the cause, of the affliction. Scuttled research does not lead to LEAPS in innovation, unless, of course, you use the Microsoft definition of the word
You want to reward someone for winning the footrace to the USPTO? Fine. Give them a 20 year amnesty from federal taxes for income derived from their "invention." Do not give them a monopoly and lock up the very idea (and its derivatives) for the next twenty years! To do so is antithetical to the free market, slows technological development, and cripples the very open exchange of science that is ultimately the foundation of every invention, everywhere.
supposedly the DoD has had this capability for years, including in foreign languages. The idea being that the US can intercept enemy radio communications and replace them with confusing or erroneous instructions, *in real-time, in the original radio operator's voice.
... but in today's ethic-free climate, who can tell?
If this were ever used it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention (the idea that you could use it to give fake orders to the enemy, or impersonate leaders telling their people to surrender, etc). Not that the United States cares at all about the Geneva Convention, what with our history of detainming and even executing foreign nationals without ever letting them speak to their consulates, in direct violation of said Convention.
Nevertheless, the U.S. military (and this is indeed ironic) has been more inclined to repect the Geneva contention (at least officially) than the civilian government. Developing this sort of technologies flies in the face of that, however, which makes me suspect it is being driven more by one of the spook agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI) than the DoD
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They had a search warrant. The distinctin is a technical one, as they indicate that the "bug" did not transmit anything.
...
So what are the rules for "bugging" a person's home with an audio tap? Their home, not their telephone. Is a search warrant sufficient, or is a court ordered wiretap required? If the former, this may well stand. If the latter, then the FBI were clearly out of bounds and should have known better.
Invading one's private communications a la a keyboard wiretap is IMHO more akin to opening someone's mail or tapping their telephone, so whatever standards apply to those sorts of actions should apply to this as well. Guess we'll find out soon enough
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Out of curiousity, where do you rank Canada in your comparison? On the one hand, we have to kiss some ass to the USA below us... but we have (had in Alberta) good access to healthcare, school, etc.
... I am merely trying to point out that the United States, contrary to very widespread myth among our population, isn't the be-all, end-all "first world" country we all like to think. Quite the contrary, we have in the last two decades become very "third world" in a number of important respects. Give us one good depression (read: loss of wealth among the middle class) and we'll be very "third world" in fact and in name, little different from any number of "banana repulbics" we so like to look down our noses at.
Since I haven't spent any significant time in Canada I couldn't really say, although my impression is that it has more in common with Europe WRT health care and basic social services than with the United States.
You would probably be better able to characterize Canada than I
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When people speak of math skills for engineering careers, they are usually referring to calculus at least.
... the highest level coursework I took was Differential Equations and/or Complex Calculus -- two different tracks so you be the judge).
The English language is gifted with several hundred thousand unique identifiers called words, some of which are general and some of which are specific.
Math is a general term, referring to everything from gradeschool addition through post-doctoral work on quantum physics and God knows what else (I am not a mathematician
Calculus is a more specific term, referring to derivatives, integrals, and some other more advanced concepts.
If you mean "calculus at least," then say "calculus at least." Do not say "math" and then criticize someone else for your innacurate use of language. The poster whom you so derisively answered was very correct in his sarcasm, that to say programmers don't use math (which by the way includes this amazing field known as "descreet math" and "boolean theory" which are used every day by said programmers) is absurd in the extreme.
On the other hand, to say most programmers don't use Calculus is probably a true statement (I certainly don't), so if that is what is meant, than that is what should be said. Arrogantly redefining the word "math" to some value other than its default meaning and then deride others for not being 31337 enough to understand isn't just pointless, it is downright stupid.
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Exploring has always taken a high toll in lives and it is only our lately-super-sensitive society that holds us back in this new arena of space travel.
It's not even our "super sensitive" society that is to blame. Talk to just about anyone and you'll find most agree that exploration and colonization of space will cost lives, and that that is to be expected. We are somewhat indoctrinated into blaming ourselves, or "society" in general, but for this the blame lies squarely with a two party congress that acts in its own interests and not the interests of the people (and who have the system so sewn up that we have difficulty throwing the bastards out), and the lifestyle beaurocrats that serve them (or perhaps are served by them, who can tell anymore?).
Its political and beaurocratic "cover your ass" that is to blame for the unwillingness to take risks and accept the inevitable costs of doing something profoundly difficult but extremely worthwhile like manned space flight.
While there are some who argue the money would be better spent here, I think most people agree that a strong space program would be useful, and it is their dreams which are being betrayed, not by their own "hyper-sensitivity" to risk, but by hordes of beaurocrats and politicians who would rather let the dream of spaceflight die than take even the smallest political risk.
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The US can never "qualify for 'third world' status" by definition.
I am quite aware of the etemology of "first," "second," and "third world." Yes, it dates back to the cold war when the "first world" was defined as the West, NATO in particular, the "second world" as the communist portion of the globe, and the "third world" was everyone else.
With the end of the cold war these definitions became largely defunct, so much so that the usage of the term "second world" has all but vanished from the language. In common colloquial usage the term "first world" has come to apply to those nations which are prosperous, which have a high standard of living and are generally democratic. The term "third world" has come to largely apply to those nations which are impoverished (even Russia is often referred to as a "third world" country these days, in direct contrast to the earlier, cold war meaning of the term).
You may play whatever semantic games you wish and apply obsolete definitions to the colloquial terms I used when making my point, in order to obfuscate the facts and opinions I presented, but the fact remains that, aside from our wealth, in virtually every other respect and by virtually every other measure the United States has far more in common with Mexico, Brazil, and Turkey than it does with Australia, Holland, Denmark, France, or Germany.
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They started in the mid 70's and was continuing to the early 90's and then got a bit better. There are however still abuses.
... now there is no tension, because the DMCA, by exploiting a semantic bug in the US Constitution, has guaranteed copyright enforcement through criminal law at the absolute expense of freedom of speech. Copyright is now paramount, and any freedom of speech you might have had comes in a distant second.)
I'm not relying on foreign media, those just made me discover the whole thing. There are lots of information from independent sources in the country if you just search good enough.
That is one of the beauties of the internet, and the primary motivation I suspect for the comming "War on Copyright Infringement." In an environment where ISPs are compelled under legal and financial threat to remove any offending material at the merest assertion that it might be infringing on someone's copyright, censorship by governments and corporate intersts will go from "impossible" (remember "the internet routes around censorship" soundbite of a few years ago?) to being trivial.
Now, thanks to the DMCA, if they really want to get you (rather than merely silencing your voice on the 'net) they can arrest you on criminal charges for copyright violations (for the first time in our nation's history! Prior to the DMCA one could only be sued for copyright infringement, never arrested. There has always been a tension between copyright and freedom of speech
What, you say you didn't violate anyone's copyright, you merely posted information emberrassing or irritating to [insert your favorite Government or Corporation here]? When the evidence is an electronicly stored file, planting it is trivial. Indeed, manufacturing whatever evidence the Feds want to manufacture, for whatever purposes, is trivial. How on earth can you prove that that Metallica MP3 wasn't on your hard drive until after the Feds shut down your anti-FBI site, for example? It comes down to your word against their's, and unfortunately, here in the United States, people are very strongly conditioned to believe the word of a well groomed FBI agent over that of a "radical" "hacker" (well groomed or otherwise). What do you think all those Hollywood action films have been indoctrinating us with all those years?
It is interesting your government ceased its wholesale theft in the early nineties. Wasn't that about the time the internet came into widespread use and information began flowing freely as never before? Perhaps merely a coincidence, but if so, an interesting one.
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And they want your bitch ass back on the couch absorbing their spoon-fed message, not ferreting out uncomfortable truths and engaging in public discourse that could upset their applecart, expose their corruption and cost them an election (or a government). [Sorry for the harsh verbiage, but I'm trying to underscore what I think the real motive behind our governments' willingness to sell out our individual freedoms and rights to a bunch of Copyright protectionists is, namely to disempower those who have been so empowered by the internet. Copyright violators aren't the real target
We Americans are indoctrinated from childhood with the mantra "ours is the best nation on earth, there is no place where one can be as free as here in America" and so forth. It is shocking and disturbing to an American the first time we are abroad for any length of time and are forced to either live in blatent denial of the world around us or to acknowledge that, in comparison to most prosperous, industrialized countries we aren't very free at all, and that (aside from cheap living space because of the size of our land) our economic lives really aren't any better than those of many people who live elsewhere and have, on top of that, access to medical care and insurance a good 40% of our working people do not.
Just as you were shocked to discover your government's ill behavior in the 70s (and I would take that coverage with a grain of salt. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but do recall the anti-communist hysteria of the west at the time and consider the "spin" put on those events might well be exaggerating the event, perhaps out of proportion with what happened), others have been shocked and roused to public action as a result of things they have learned outside of the corporate media that has been spoon feeding us these pleasant lies for so long.
The last thing these governments want is for the majority of people to have access to this information, to become interested and active in politics as a result. Their comfortable lives and bases of power are thus threatened. Is it really any wonder they tried to destroy speech on the internet through the guise of "fighting pornography" and, when the Supreme Court shot that down, have turned to the much more potent and virulant notion of "copyright infringement" instead, criminalizing what for the previous two centuries had always been a civil offense and then forming task forces within our secret police (FBI) to prosecute such cases?
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