> Are we to understand you did not see the extravaganza, which was Avatar?
One movie? Is that all. There have been tons of movies recently released in 3D. The fact that people find it necessary to fixate on a particular movie doesn't say anything positive for the format.
So am I supposed to replace all of my equipment and deal with those stupid glasses over ONE movie?
You should have the right to own a Gutenberg press and it's modern equivalent. This should be explicit or implicit but it needs to be there.
I think the problem Vint is addressing here is confusing equal and free access to something with the something itself. It's not the Internet that is the subject of our liberty but the access to it. That should also be extended to public services in much the same manner that these ideas apply to public accomodations in meat space.
The usual "rights rhetoric" these days makes it sound like people should get goods and services gratis when that's not what liberty is about at all.
> It takes massive amounts of engineering and execution to get past the concept stage.
This is simply not a valid excuse for a patent.
Tivo gets a free pass on this nonsense because some people are "fans" of the product. This crap shouldn't be excused regardless who does it.
Frankly, any Tivo user should be seriously concerned about the corporate culture behind this kind of activity and what it might mean for the actual product.
> Your assesment of "easy to replicate" is unsound.
The fact that you are an ignorant layman doesn't mean the rest of us in the field don't recognize it for what it is.
It's a PC with some specialized hardware and some nice software.
It derives it's interesting attributes from the fact that it is a PC applied to the problem of being a VCR. What little extra value Tivo might have provided with some proprietary bits of hardware that helped deal with the state of tech in the 90s is long since obsolete.
Hard drives are bigger. CPUs are faster. Memory is bigger. Specialized video de/compression hardware is commonplace.
Any 10 year old PC and some pretty simple software can replicate the basic features of a PVR.
There is simply no "baby" here.
Any "first to market" advantage Tivo ever deserved is long gone already.
Recording TV to a spinny disk is painfully obvious.
This is a classic case of the sort of "use different material" kind of patent that the original patent examiner (US PTO) detested.
It's innovative but not inventive enough.
Their "hard work" can be replicated by any computer science student given a description of the device.
Patents are supposed to be for problems where disclosure of the implementation details actually contributes to the general state of the art. They're meant to encourage the disclosure of useful trade secrets, not trivial crap.
There is no justice in an unjust law being enforced.
If Tivo was quickly "harmed" by "knockoffs", then that is because their "invention" is a pretty simple concept really that's easy to replicate once you have been exposed to the idea.
Patents were never meant to enforce a monopoly on such things.
Of course going with an old school S1 style approach would make far too much sense. They could bypass this problem entirely. This would also give them a solution for Satellite cable.
While something like a DirecTivo is nice in theory, the last iteration of this idea was in many ways inferior to the standard Tivo of the time.
This is just another example of how broken the patent system has become and how good tech companies fail to innovate and instead prefer suing over bogus patents.
This kind of protection racket doesn't just punish network monopolies. It also prevents other younger, more dynamic, and more innovative companies from entering the market.
No. We think they should have applied themselves while in school and gotten themselves a half decent trade or profession. Also we think that they would do well to escape from the general anti-intellectual attitude in the US especially when it comes to math.
Not understanding numbers is as harmful as not being able to read.
It should not be any surprise to anyone that a lot of people want their phone to be a phone. That's generally why people buy phones. The other stuff is interesting and sometimes useful but ultimately not the point.
I dumped my iPhone because it failed at being a phone. "Being a pocket computer" is something that should not rank 1st but 3rd or perhaps 4th.
> But hey, if they want to focus on console only, let them! It will create an economic void in the domain of PC gaming, > which will let some new, more economically literate company enter the market and make money in their place.
Or it will hasten the end of the desktop as the default computing platform for non-technical users.
Your bargain bin fodder should quickly end up in the public domain.
This isn't about you. This is about society.
Disney screws things up for everyone. If their works are really worth the effort for them to corrupt the laws and the Congress, then let them have their extensions and leave the rest alone. It would be far less harmful in the end.
Get rid of "copyright by default. Require registration for ANY cause of action. Require renewal with some nominal fee to prevent perpetual copyright on unprofitable works.
Let a genuine cash cow be milked and leave the rest alone.
> Authors have a difficult enough time earning a living as it is. I wouldn't support taking their income away during their lifetimes.
Distorting copyright law does nothing to address this problem.
If you haven't made your billions in the first 14 years, the next 100 don't really matter. All extra copyright does is to serve to enrich a very few. Mostly it benefits publishers that tend to get the largest cut in any case.
Mostly, it just ensures that works and authors are forgotten.
> That's called "spin". You know, like dropping bombs on buildings and call it "surgical strikes".
No. It's historical context.
Technology improves. Requires fewer and fewer bombs.
So instead of the entire city getting flattened to get to a single factory, only the number of bombs equal to the number of actual targets gets dropped.
So even if they all miss their targets, you still have much fewer civilian casualties.
Tesla invented the flourescent lightbulb to begin with. He did so to avoid patent issues with Edison. Tesla also though Edison's lightbulb was rediculously wasteful (which it is really).
I first started using flourescent lights myself not because of the alleged energy savings but because of the waste heat generated by a normal bulb. I lived in the desert then and cooling a house is hard enough in the summer even if you aren't fighting against yourself.
People that think that offering Israel up as a sacrificial lamb simply don't know history. Forgetting the internal struggles between real nations that exist in the Arab world (like Egyptians and Persians), there's also this long standing conflict between Islam and everyone else.
There's a lot of history that people gloss over when the engage in "religion of peace" rhetoric.
It's easy to be xenophobic when all of your neighbors have been trying to destroy you for 50 years and the rest of the planet has been trying since last rebellion was crushed.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell a kid about code breakers and code talkers.
Old TVs were made artificially obsolete by government decree.
HDTVs were a part of a larger technology transition that forced the issue for a lot of people that might not have otherwise bothered.
> Are we to understand you did not see the extravaganza, which was Avatar?
One movie? Is that all. There have been tons of movies recently released in 3D. The fact that people find it necessary to fixate on a particular movie doesn't say anything positive for the format.
So am I supposed to replace all of my equipment and deal with those stupid glasses over ONE movie?
Sounds pretty stupid.
No wonder 3D uptake is not so hot.
3D is more often than not annoying or irrelevant.
The militia is everyone.
You should have the right to own a Gutenberg press and it's modern equivalent. This should be explicit or implicit but it needs to be there.
I think the problem Vint is addressing here is confusing equal and free access to something with the something itself. It's not the Internet that is the subject of our liberty but the access to it. That should also be extended to public services in much the same manner that these ideas apply to public accomodations in meat space.
The usual "rights rhetoric" these days makes it sound like people should get goods and services gratis when that's not what liberty is about at all.
You're entitled to liberty, not a hand out.
> Your unfounded and just plain wrong personal attacks on me
Are entirely justified based on your characterization of both Tivo and patent law in general.
I don't think you fully understand the implications of a 17 year innovation crippling monopoly.
That is a recording rule that's based off of some sort of keyword search and is not restricted to a show on a particular channel.
Something like...
select * from programs where actor='Clint Eastwood';
or
select * from programs where title like '%Galactica%';
My personal favorite is having rules split up between current seasons and old ones. Dunno if DTV or Tivo can handle that.
> It takes massive amounts of engineering and execution to get past the concept stage.
This is simply not a valid excuse for a patent.
Tivo gets a free pass on this nonsense because some people are "fans" of the product. This crap shouldn't be excused regardless who does it.
Frankly, any Tivo user should be seriously concerned about the corporate culture behind this kind of activity and what it might mean for the actual product.
> Your assesment of "easy to replicate" is unsound.
The fact that you are an ignorant layman doesn't mean the rest of us in the field don't recognize it for what it is.
It's a PC with some specialized hardware and some nice software.
It derives it's interesting attributes from the fact that it is a PC applied to the problem of being a VCR. What little extra value Tivo might have provided with some proprietary bits of hardware that helped deal with the state of tech in the 90s is long since obsolete.
Hard drives are bigger. CPUs are faster. Memory is bigger. Specialized video de/compression hardware is commonplace.
Any 10 year old PC and some pretty simple software can replicate the basic features of a PVR.
There is simply no "baby" here.
Any "first to market" advantage Tivo ever deserved is long gone already.
Recording TV to a spinny disk is painfully obvious.
This is a classic case of the sort of "use different material" kind of patent that the original patent examiner (US PTO) detested.
It's innovative but not inventive enough.
Their "hard work" can be replicated by any computer science student given a description of the device.
Patents are supposed to be for problems where disclosure of the implementation details actually contributes to the general state of the art. They're meant to encourage the disclosure of useful trade secrets, not trivial crap.
There is no justice in an unjust law being enforced.
If Tivo was quickly "harmed" by "knockoffs", then that is because their "invention" is a pretty simple concept really that's easy to replicate once you have been exposed to the idea.
Patents were never meant to enforce a monopoly on such things.
Of course going with an old school S1 style approach would make far too much sense. They could bypass this problem entirely. This would also give them a solution for Satellite cable.
While something like a DirecTivo is nice in theory, the last iteration of this idea was in many ways inferior to the standard Tivo of the time.
Perhaps what he's really saying is:
This is just another example of how broken the patent system has become and how good tech companies fail to innovate and instead prefer suing over bogus patents.
This kind of protection racket doesn't just punish network monopolies. It also prevents other younger, more dynamic, and more innovative companies from entering the market.
No. We think they should have applied themselves while in school and gotten themselves a half decent trade or profession. Also we think that they would do well to escape from the general anti-intellectual attitude in the US especially when it comes to math.
Not understanding numbers is as harmful as not being able to read.
Is this some new form of Godwin's Law?
Stalin was a gangster, probably something like a burglar.
It's the classic labor + criminal muscle sort of situation.
It should not be any surprise to anyone that a lot of people want their phone to be a phone. That's generally why people buy phones. The other stuff is interesting and sometimes useful but ultimately not the point.
I dumped my iPhone because it failed at being a phone. "Being a pocket computer" is something that should not rank 1st but 3rd or perhaps 4th.
Get the most important stuff right first.
> But hey, if they want to focus on console only, let them! It will create an economic void in the domain of PC gaming,
> which will let some new, more economically literate company enter the market and make money in their place.
Or it will hasten the end of the desktop as the default computing platform for non-technical users.
Your bargain bin fodder should quickly end up in the public domain.
This isn't about you. This is about society.
Disney screws things up for everyone. If their works are really worth the effort for them to corrupt the laws and the Congress, then let them have their extensions and leave the rest alone. It would be far less harmful in the end.
Get rid of "copyright by default. Require registration for ANY cause of action. Require renewal with some nominal fee to prevent perpetual copyright on unprofitable works.
Let a genuine cash cow be milked and leave the rest alone.
> Authors have a difficult enough time earning a living as it is. I wouldn't support taking their income away during their lifetimes.
Distorting copyright law does nothing to address this problem.
If you haven't made your billions in the first 14 years, the next 100 don't really matter. All extra copyright does is to serve to enrich a very few. Mostly it benefits publishers that tend to get the largest cut in any case.
Mostly, it just ensures that works and authors are forgotten.
> That's called "spin". You know, like dropping bombs on buildings and call it "surgical strikes".
No. It's historical context.
Technology improves. Requires fewer and fewer bombs.
So instead of the entire city getting flattened to get to a single factory, only the number of bombs equal to the number of actual targets gets dropped.
So even if they all miss their targets, you still have much fewer civilian casualties.
Brad Pitt
Mel Gibson
No. Most republicans are xenophobes. The "base" of the party are the kind of people that tell each other anti-Mormon propaganda during sunday school.
Been there. Been subjected to that.
A few Roosevelt republicans might be left but they have far too little influence (especially in primaries).
Tesla invented the flourescent lightbulb to begin with. He did so to avoid patent issues with Edison. Tesla also though Edison's lightbulb was rediculously wasteful (which it is really).
I first started using flourescent lights myself not because of the alleged energy savings but because of the waste heat generated by a normal bulb. I lived in the desert then and cooling a house is hard enough in the summer even if you aren't fighting against yourself.
People that think that offering Israel up as a sacrificial lamb simply don't know history. Forgetting the internal struggles between real nations that exist in the Arab world (like Egyptians and Persians), there's also this long standing conflict between Islam and everyone else.
There's a lot of history that people gloss over when the engage in "religion of peace" rhetoric.
It's easy to be xenophobic when all of your neighbors have been trying to destroy you for 50 years and the rest of the planet has been trying since last rebellion was crushed.