I don't call into doubt that the rights of the copyright holder *should* trump the non-defense of similarly copyrighted material. However, we all know that judges can and will be misguided by certain arguements that may appear to be pleading and will win out over established court facts *cough*decss*cough*. So if MS did try to take someone to court on copyrighted documents, and Lawyer Cochran was able to plead "they don't actively defend them" to the judge, MS might lose what should be an obvious case. Heck, the Napster cases are trying a similar approach, but using the "too agressively defending" copyright stance, when the law simply states that copyright holders can defend, but doesn't specify how much or how little.
Yes, this is probably not a strong reason, but given that there's little reason to begin with for MS's decision, speculation is all that we can do.
What's the process by which you come up with and create your songs, at least prior to getting to the recording studio? Certainly with a wide enough berth of unusual topics that your songs cover, there's probably numerous ways that this works, but is there some common occurence that causes these songs to be written, such as a theme you want to do, or a melody that needs to be written?
What possible incentive is there other than the fact that they would be able to change their bulletins without notice? This just seems wrong...
Certainly not a comfirmed answer, but I think it comes down to similar issues as with trademarks [*]: if you don't defend it, you can lose it. Microsoft in the past has been caught with it's pants down with people distributing MS documents without approval (the whole MS-Kerboros thing) -- also remember that we're still waiting for the results of what happened in that MS breakin -- someone could be sitting on core.NET code. They might be moving to a case where you cannot republish *any* MS document, even one as simple as a bug report whose info is in the public domain, without MS permission, so that in a court trial, they will have a stronger defense against a copyright violator. If they continued to allow BugTraq to distribute without restrictions, a defendant in such a case could state that "BugTraq does this, with info freely available on MS's site, why can't I with the MS-Net spec, freely available on MS's site?"
[*] Yes, I know that you don't have to actively defend copyrights -- you could let something slip by for years, and then sue as long as your copyright is still valid.
What I think that BugTraq should do is encourage a system where would-be bug trackers report their info not only to MS, but also to BugTraq (so that we have an independent report of the symptom). BugTraq would not report on the bug until enough time has been given for MS to respond to it, at which point they release that info anyway. If MS does respond, they still provide the link as they are now doing, but also provide the bugtracker's version of the sympton. This will NOT allow MS to change the story of how the bug was found or manifested as to make them look like security professionals, without having a conflicting report between the original bugtracker and MS's version, but still leave them room to update info on how to fix and repair bugs.
Actually, I'd rather see a good transparent X server under WinXX that basically can run X clients using the Explorer as the window manager - that is, I don't need one large window as the X root where all my other X-clients must reside.
I had a friend that ran into a similar sitauation about 3 years ago. His domain (not mentioned to avoid/. on his poor modem based connection) had a name for his self-founded, unregistered company, which I'll call MyNet Co. A group that was a registered company with the same name with one additional word (like MyNet Photography Co) in a similar area contacted him and asked for a simple request: just make sure that on the front page of his site to indicate that he was not afflicated with MyNet, and to provide a link to their site. My friend readily agreed, and everything went along smoothly since then.
This case sounds very similar. Sure, NeoMail.com and NeoMail.org would be owned by separate registrants, but their purpose is sufficiently different that trademark-wise, they would be quite different. (IIRC, there's 17 different classes that one can register a trademark is, as to allow "Bob's Autos" and "Bob's Groceries" to exist in the same geographical regions. Of course, some companies have made sure that their trademark goes over all of these classes *cough*ms*cough* as to prevent dilution).
If you haven't been watching scifi for more than a year *cough*mst3k*cough*, the 'I am SciFi' ads were a series of celebrities from all walks of life (not just sci-fi) that would be involved in a brief bit of sci-fi-ish like situation. Examples: Everclear in an elevator with a 'living' guitar, the Williams tennis sisters playing an extreme match, some supermodel having to pose everytime someone clicked on an image to dl from the web, etc. Cute bits, but got old fast.
IIRC, the Opera 4.x series was only HTML3.2/CSS1 compatible, though there were HTML4 and CSS2 features implemented but they refused to claim 100% adherence (unlike other browsers that say they are, but only support 50 to 90% of the spec). I remember the Opera people saying, when Opera 4 was announced, that Opera 5 would be the version with HTML4/CSS2 compatibility, regardless of the 4.x version number.
The only thing that would make opera perfect is the ability to run it outside the MDI interface on all platforms.
Another good ad-sponsered program is GameSpy Arcade: ads are located at the bottom of windows, and are generally targeted ads from Gamespy, but somehow they've managed to make the various skins appealling that your eyes are drawn away from the ad to the 'content' of the window, although you know it's still there.
One thing that's been lost to the annuls of ancient history (at least, for most americans), is the fact that before Pokemon hit it big in the states (namely, before WB got the sole rights), there was an incident in Japan where the strobing lights on one Pokemon episode caused many a seizure (around 100+ cases, IIRC). This raised a big scare in the US, but most people didn't recall the name of the show, just that it was "japanese kids animation" and people were watchdogging for other shows that may of had the same problem. Now, it's the biggest hit of the nation, and people probably couldn't remember that we used to "protect the children" from shows like these.
save for some of the thicker ORA books, most are less than $35 (last I checked but it's been awhile); "Learn in 24 hrs!" on the other hand can easily run $40 or more. When you include content per $ into the comparison, ORA books win hands down. One thing that helps keep ORA books down in cost is the lack of a book CD, which nearly every other computer press pushes out, and most times the CD is useless.
I read this, and someone else (but lost the link, fast turnover at that other site), that suggested that not only the CDs that will be asked for will be a random choice from those that you have on their site, but that when they ask you to insert them will be a random timeframe as to prevent traders to say "oops, time to go to friends' place and pick up the ones I borrowed before mp3.com nags me". Regardless of a predictable or random pattern, this makes my.mp3.com useless in the aspect of having your music available no matter where you are, since you might need to pop a CD into the program at any time.
I know it's been talked about before, but it seems odd to try to write books that are aimed at moving feature sets, such as perl, HTML, etc, without some mechanism for the user to get the next version or three at a free or reduced cost. (Mind you, O'Reilly books are generally inexpensive, but this is true for all publishers). Certainly has having used the 1st edition of Camel, I know that perl has changed a lot in 5 or so years, and much of that first book, while not depriciated, doesn't fully cover what I need to know nowadays for perl hacking. I've been hestitent to buy the more recent editions because I see the same problem happening in another 2 or 3 years. As this review points out, some of the features on Unicode and threading could be wrong when 5.6.1 is released, making those pages of the book useless.
While electronic books can easily fix this problem, that's not the solution when you need to look at paper copies, whether at the terminal or on the toilet. Maybe there should be some way to 'register' the books, such that when the n+1(th) edition comes out, you can get it for a substanially less cost, because your initial purchase of the nth edition helped to make the n+1(th) edition possible. Or one could send in the cover of the nth edition and a S&H charge to get a copy of the new book. Or something along these lines.
If any computer book publishing company could do this, I would expect ORA to be the first to try such, given their helpfulness in the past and present. But with many standard 'things' moving so fast (XML, HTML, Perl, Python, etc), we need a some book upgrade mechanism in place ASAP.
Even if it's not aimed at 'residental businesses', if I had an apartment building with 24 units, I'd be willing to get this, wire up some cat5 from the basement to at least 2 ports in each unit, and then make sure to advertize these apartments as "net-ready with an average 4Mbps connection", only adding $50 above the normal rent tag. Of course, one would have to work out AUP issues with the provider to benefit the renter, but if you're paying $1000/mnth, the provider better be willing to make some concessions on AUPs.
I suspect that in the next 2 years, "net-ready" apartments are going to be in high demand, just as adding cat5 wiring to a new house, even if you don't plan to use it, is a huge added benefit.
Warning: the first HOUR is mostly comprised of narrative and various zooms and pans on matte paintings. And most of that is not from the book dune but probably on notes and later books written by Herbert.
Given what I've heard Gore say, and reading on others, the current problems are 25% Gore's fault, 75% Dems. Gore was at least willing to take a full manual recount of all of FL and accept the results as found, but Bush declined. Interestingly enough, Bush lawyers are aiming to fight for a full FL recount if Gore wins in various count cases.
In any case, I don't think Gore is the 'loser' here, though we think that now. This is a big stab at any party politics, and I don't think in 4 years, if it does turn out that a Bush & Rep. Congress was able to do a good job, that a Rep candidate is going to have a good shot just on party affliation alone. But chances are, the next 4 years will be ineffectual, the only person with real power in the gov't being Alan Greenspan.
I thought that the Guild navigators could only survive in those tanks because of the effects of that much spice on their bodies; it's not totally descriptive in Dune, but I think in God Emporer, where the Empire, the Bene Gessert, and the Guild are conspiring to dethroan Leto II, there's a strong description of the navigator and tank there.
In the Lynch version (I've seen both the 6hr and condensed version), the voice-overs draggggggged the plot along. In general, this is what makes Dune a very hard book to convert to a movie -- much of the plot is in the character's thoughts as they combine ideas and realize certain elements along with self-agony and conflict. The three ways to do it are to 1) either vocalize the thoughts, which you then fall into the standard "explain the very large death device to Bond before he has a chance to escape" problem. 2) use voice-overs, which can work, but I think Lynch's version didn't do this the best way, or 3) ignore them all together, which of course would make Dune unfollowable. What the miniseries is trying to do is a combination of 1 and 3, dropping the thoughts that otherwise are repeatitous or easily demonstrated by actions, or vocalizing the ones that are more necessary (IIRC, Paul never *said* "Fear is the mind-killer...", it was always a private thought, at least up to the point we are at in the miniseries). I truly don't think that the mini-series is doing that bad a job; what gets me more is the production quality -- an average episode of B5 seemed better produced than this, and that was 5 seaons of episodes. Don't get me wrong: this is not bad, just rather lacking where it could be better (though I thought the 'thropters were pretty damn cool!)
And even IF this was a final decision on the SC case (in otherwords, overturned the FL SC decision), Bush is not necessarily the winning, because there is still the pending lawsuit in FL about the recounting of the ballots in the two counties where the ballots are now in custody of the court until a court-mandated recount is issued.
However, I do expect that Gore will concede in the next few days if he gets another blow from the courts. He'll fight the FL SC case that is coming back, but if that doesn't sufficiently strengthen his case, he'll concede. The sooner that he does, the better his chances are in 4 years, but the more he fights it, he'll ruin any Democrat's position by that point.
While I didn't think it was deemed worth posting as a story, there was a piece on NPR Weds (11/28) on The Changing Face of America, talking with the band Jim's Big Ego, which distributes their music mostly through mp3.com, and some of their decision thought process when trying to decide between a big contract or full control of their music.
This particular device looks too good be to be true, and given other details posted already, it seems dubious.
But on a serious note, I am also looking around for a DVD player, making sure to get maximum features without undue MPAA influences. Price isn't that much an issue here, though I was aiming for something in the $200-400 range. I know that most of the APEX players out there are the most friendly in terms of regions, Macrovision, etc. I also want to make sure that it works with my current analog system as well as my "future" home digital theater system with surround sound, etc. Are there any serious suggestions on what systems I should look at? (As an example, there's an Apex one, 3 DVD changer, at CC for $199, but I can't recall the model number).
Having yet to see the specific page in question, I think it's not that it could be conjectured that it could be done, but that it actually *has* been done. Yes, given that you can make 'wires' and 'logic gates' from Life, and that a turing machine should simply be a combination of wires and gates, then the conclusion was obvious.
Now, I think the bigger issue here is the reading along the tape: at some point you either move the 'head' that reads it, or the tape itself, neither which you can directly build from wires and gates. And given the way life works, the latter is probably near impossible since you don't know what's on the tape and therefore cannot accurately move it, meaning that the head is moving along the tape. Which means that the collection of atoms that make up the head have to read the tape, take the date out of the head to a storage area, then recreate itself some 'bytes' from it's original position, all while maintaining the connection to the storage area AND maintaining the integrity of the tape.
Most likely, sending the data can be done using flyers, so that there need not be a length of surviving atoms between the mutable head and the medium. (Flyers have 4 phases , so they can at least store a 1 or 0 depending how that flyer is sent off). Moving the head is a bit tricker and once the site is not/.'ed, I'll check it out.
I remember reading about an ambicious company in UK, I think, that was trying to get the ".1" TLD or some short text equivalent (.phone, perhaps), such that they could then implement a phone number-to-IP system for when web-enabled devices are on line. For example, a phone of 1-630-555-1234 would have been at the IP 4.3.2.1.5.5.5.0.3.6.phone. Sure, it's not necessarily easy to remember such, but as they claimed, their DNS would have easily routed such a request faster than other methods (such as a phone-to-uniqId-to-ip system).
This has been held up by several recent suits, including one against mail order and internet sellers of cigarettes in the state of NY. NY passed a law that banned the sales of cigarettes from mail order and internet companies because they could not control the age of the purchaser. Federal courts rules that the NY law overstepped the interstate Commerce clause and the law was nullified.
Why such similar stategies aren't used to burn UCITA, I'll never know...
There's no true reason; it is easier to remember a TLA than a long TLD, introduction of long TLDs may lead corporates to try to register a TLD of their company name, and I believe the speed of DNS resolving is faster, but it depends on how the DNS server software is written.
PDF is a standard: the specs are published and freely available to obtain, but they are not open, in the sense that no one may freely modify the specs, only Adobe has the power to do such. The same situation with Java; the code and API's all there, but only Sun has the power to change the specs.
(And when I mean modify the specs, I mean that there's a process in place where changes to the specs can be freely submitted, discussed, and decided by an open group such as IEEE for inclusion or not.)
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Yes, this is probably not a strong reason, but given that there's little reason to begin with for MS's decision, speculation is all that we can do.
Certainly not a comfirmed answer, but I think it comes down to similar issues as with trademarks [*]: if you don't defend it, you can lose it. Microsoft in the past has been caught with it's pants down with people distributing MS documents without approval (the whole MS-Kerboros thing) -- also remember that we're still waiting for the results of what happened in that MS breakin -- someone could be sitting on core .NET code. They might be moving to a case where you cannot republish *any* MS document, even one as simple as a bug report whose info is in the public domain, without MS permission, so that in a court trial, they will have a stronger defense against a copyright violator. If they continued to allow BugTraq to distribute without restrictions, a defendant in such a case could state that "BugTraq does this, with info freely available on MS's site, why can't I with the MS-Net spec, freely available on MS's site?"
[*] Yes, I know that you don't have to actively defend copyrights -- you could let something slip by for years, and then sue as long as your copyright is still valid.
What I think that BugTraq should do is encourage a system where would-be bug trackers report their info not only to MS, but also to BugTraq (so that we have an independent report of the symptom). BugTraq would not report on the bug until enough time has been given for MS to respond to it, at which point they release that info anyway. If MS does respond, they still provide the link as they are now doing, but also provide the bugtracker's version of the sympton. This will NOT allow MS to change the story of how the bug was found or manifested as to make them look like security professionals, without having a conflicting report between the original bugtracker and MS's version, but still leave them room to update info on how to fix and repair bugs.
This case sounds very similar. Sure, NeoMail.com and NeoMail.org would be owned by separate registrants, but their purpose is sufficiently different that trademark-wise, they would be quite different. (IIRC, there's 17 different classes that one can register a trademark is, as to allow "Bob's Autos" and "Bob's Groceries" to exist in the same geographical regions. Of course, some companies have made sure that their trademark goes over all of these classes *cough*ms*cough* as to prevent dilution).
The only thing that would make opera perfect is the ability to run it outside the MDI interface on all platforms.
While electronic books can easily fix this problem, that's not the solution when you need to look at paper copies, whether at the terminal or on the toilet. Maybe there should be some way to 'register' the books, such that when the n+1(th) edition comes out, you can get it for a substanially less cost, because your initial purchase of the nth edition helped to make the n+1(th) edition possible. Or one could send in the cover of the nth edition and a S&H charge to get a copy of the new book. Or something along these lines.
If any computer book publishing company could do this, I would expect ORA to be the first to try such, given their helpfulness in the past and present. But with many standard 'things' moving so fast (XML, HTML, Perl, Python, etc), we need a some book upgrade mechanism in place ASAP.
I suspect that in the next 2 years, "net-ready" apartments are going to be in high demand, just as adding cat5 wiring to a new house, even if you don't plan to use it, is a huge added benefit.
Warning: the first HOUR is mostly comprised of narrative and various zooms and pans on matte paintings. And most of that is not from the book dune but probably on notes and later books written by Herbert.
In any case, I don't think Gore is the 'loser' here, though we think that now. This is a big stab at any party politics, and I don't think in 4 years, if it does turn out that a Bush & Rep. Congress was able to do a good job, that a Rep candidate is going to have a good shot just on party affliation alone. But chances are, the next 4 years will be ineffectual, the only person with real power in the gov't being Alan Greenspan.
However, I do expect that Gore will concede in the next few days if he gets another blow from the courts. He'll fight the FL SC case that is coming back, but if that doesn't sufficiently strengthen his case, he'll concede. The sooner that he does, the better his chances are in 4 years, but the more he fights it, he'll ruin any Democrat's position by that point.
While I didn't think it was deemed worth posting as a story, there was a piece on NPR Weds (11/28) on The Changing Face of America, talking with the band Jim's Big Ego, which distributes their music mostly through mp3.com, and some of their decision thought process when trying to decide between a big contract or full control of their music.
But on a serious note, I am also looking around for a DVD player, making sure to get maximum features without undue MPAA influences. Price isn't that much an issue here, though I was aiming for something in the $200-400 range. I know that most of the APEX players out there are the most friendly in terms of regions, Macrovision, etc. I also want to make sure that it works with my current analog system as well as my "future" home digital theater system with surround sound, etc. Are there any serious suggestions on what systems I should look at? (As an example, there's an Apex one, 3 DVD changer, at CC for $199, but I can't recall the model number).
Now, I think the bigger issue here is the reading along the tape: at some point you either move the 'head' that reads it, or the tape itself, neither which you can directly build from wires and gates. And given the way life works, the latter is probably near impossible since you don't know what's on the tape and therefore cannot accurately move it, meaning that the head is moving along the tape. Which means that the collection of atoms that make up the head have to read the tape, take the date out of the head to a storage area, then recreate itself some 'bytes' from it's original position, all while maintaining the connection to the storage area AND maintaining the integrity of the tape.
Most likely, sending the data can be done using flyers, so that there need not be a length of surviving atoms between the mutable head and the medium. (Flyers have 4 phases , so they can at least store a 1 or 0 depending how that flyer is sent off). Moving the head is a bit tricker and once the site is not /.'ed, I'll check it out.
Why such similar stategies aren't used to burn UCITA, I'll never know...
(And when I mean modify the specs, I mean that there's a process in place where changes to the specs can be freely submitted, discussed, and decided by an open group such as IEEE for inclusion or not.)