Example #1: You rig an electric chair to a computer and a modem so that the next time a telemarketer calls, the chair will electrocute its occupant. A telemarketer calls. Who is guilty of murder, you or the telemarketer? Duh. You of course.
Example #2: Your Windows laptop gets a worm on it. You don't know it. You carry it to work behind the corporate firewall where it runs rampant, deletes everything and ruins the company. Are you guilty of destroying the company or is it entirely the worm author's fault? You're absolved; its entirely the worm author's fault.
Example #3: You fail to replace the batteries in your fire alarms. An arson sets your house on fire, and because the fire alarms don't go off the fire gets too big and burns down your neighbors house, too, killing your neighbor. Who's guilty of murder? The arson, of course. Are you still guilty of actionable negligence? I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you would be.
So, because the U.S. isn't exactly 100% identical to Germany, we should ignore that period in history with relation to our current situation? We suffered a terrorist attack and need a scapegoat, because the real bad guy is elusive. The whole Jew thing has already been done, so lets blame all of the Arabs for what happened. Broader governmental powers are solving the problem in an unreasonably short period of time, so we have to give the government more powers. Still not working. Well, maybe if we put all of the Arabs in certain sections of the cities it'll be easier. They still have all of there rights, well at least all of the ones we didn't take away. Oops, that's not very effective either. We just suffered another terrorist attack, because we were to busy attacking a scapegoat to get the real perpetrators. Well, the real perpetrators are still hard to catch, so lets go back to that scapegoat and punish them some more, so we feel better. After all, it's really a big conspiracy on the part of all Arabs, and they're only sub-human anyway, so why not. Tougher policies aren't working? Well, maybe if we ship them off to concentration camps, that'll help. Meh, that's too expensive. Let's just gas them all and be done with it....but you're right, there's no corrollation. We should forget the haulocaust even happened (assuming you agree that it did happen).
It's important to remember here that the studio execs are businessmen, not artists. Most of them wouldn't know a good movie if it bit them in the ass, repeatedly. If they can identify a target demographic, and then create a marketing hype around it, they have discovered that they can almost guarantee a profit, regardless of the movie's actual quality. Unfortunately (for them), they are discovering that their scheme relies on imperfect information, and as the Internet and other forms of communication freedom reduce their market to a perfect information system they are no longer going to be able to use tricks to compete. Without those tricks, there are only two ways to succeed -- laws and quality. The scary thing is that (as I already pointed out), they don't have the talent to compete on quality. So, expect to see them try to push through laws.
Of course somebody bought it. People competing over trying to buy the stock is what makes the price go up. If they'd had a hard time finding someone to buy their stock, the price would have gone down until someone was willing to pay the new price.
As P.T. Barnum said, "there's a sucker born every minute" (or was it second?)
Those modifications only revert to GPL in the context of being additions to the GPLed application. Your code still belongs to you, and you're welcome to put the code you wrote into a closed source application, too.
Well, sort of. It costs the shareholders in-as-much as the companies stock price goes down as a result of the settlement/judgement. The money itself comes from the companie's pockets, not the shareholders. The whole purpose of American corporations (and I assume most other countries, too) is to shield the owners of the company from personal liability. If I own stock in a publicly traded company, there is nothing that will result in me being personally liable to pay off a judgement from my own pocket.
They don't have to patent the inkjet cartridge. They just have to patent the business process of using the DMCA to get undue value out of a product in order to offset the cost of a loss leader.
First off, I'd like to say that I think what Estonia is doing is for the most part a good thing. However, I think they're treading on somewhat dangerous ground with their use of the term "human right" (although the article was a little vague, so I may be wrong about how they're viewing it). Rights are things that no one should be denied. Free speech is a right. Freedom of religion is a right. Freedom to not be searched by the police without a warrant is a right. Freedom to not be denied access to the internet by the government is a right. Where the use of the term "right" gets a bit dangerous, though, is when you say that someone has a right that requires action on the part of someone else to fulfill. People don't have a right to free internet access provided by the government, because limited resources may make that impossible, or at least put that at odds with other so-called rights. It's the same way that people have a free speech right, but no right to free airtime on NBC.
I hate it when people overload a word's definition in order to create a buzzword. These systems that are being described are not sentient. For something to be sentient, it has to be conscious (i.e. self aware). These aren't sentient systems. They are simply complex predictive systems. AI is a long way from developing sentience.
I think that you've made some incorrect assumptions, there (although I wouldn't put it past the TV execs to make the same assumption). I don't think it means that bored people are more likely to watch commercials. I think what it means is that those shows are more likely to be turned on as background noise while people are doing other things. I find that with my TiVo, if I'm doing something else at the same time, I'm less likely to fast forward through the commercials, because I'm not paying enough attention to notice that the commercials are on (or care). Case in point, as I'm typing this message, there are commercials playing on the TV. As soon as I hit submit, though, I'm going to fast forward through them.;-)
Wiring money costs money, and so it's only economical for large payments. If you made small pay-pal type payments via wiring, a large chunk of your money would end up going to the banks.
I wouldn't be quite so confident about that. Technically the DMCA allows for those things, too. Unfortunately, judges and juries have been too clueless to actually recognize the difference.
Alright, I normally don't feed the trolls, but this needs to be responded to.
First, I'm generally libertarian minded, anti-tax, and definitely think that the U.S. has a better system than Europe does (note: better != perfect).
That said, your statement about Vietnam vets was not just ignorant, but quite frankly disgraceful, just like the U.S.'s level of support for those vets you were referring to. Most of those homeless vets with serious mental problems have been through more shit than you can imagine. It's not remotely related to having "survival skills". They've seen and done things that went beyond what their minds could handle, and because of that they're no longer able to function in society...and because they did that at the behest of their country, their country should properly care for them now. That's not the part of what you said that was ignorant, though. The part that was ignorant was the part where you put it on the vets by saying "Poeple (sic) who join the military know what they're getting into". Not only can no one "know what they're getting into" as far as war is concerned, but most of the Vietnam vets in the U.S. were drafted and didn't have a choice (which anyone with the slightest clue about history should know).
That's all well and good if you use Windows. I work in a 100% unix environment, so I'd have to go to extra work to integrate a WinXP machine into my work. I could do it, but it'd be an inconvenience. In fact, one of the major deterents against me buying a tablet PC has been the fact that I couldn't put Linux on them. This makes them much more usable.
Just because you don't have a need for Linux doesn't mean it's just a hobby for everyone else.
Cross-platform compatibility is a compelling reason to use Jave, but I'd say that in reality the biggest reason most people use Java is for ease and rapidity of development, and that's something that many argue that.Net does as well as or better than Java (I wouldn't personally know, since I've never used.Net--something about doing all of my development in Linux;-) ).
I know you're just trying to be funny, but that's really not accurate:
1) If you fail to subscribe to the TiVo service, they don't in any way shape or form disable your box. Of course, you don't have access to the subscription information, or software updates, which are what the service pays for, and which are in my personal opinion well worth the cost of the service.
2) You've apparently never used a TiVo. Most TiVo users rarely ever watch commercials. They fast forward through them because they're watching things that have been previously recorded.
3) The TiVo doesn't have any DRM. It's on-disk data format is undocumented, but if you look online you can find software that has figured out how to extract it. There is, however, no encryption, and nothing that keeps you from duping something on your TiVo off onto a VCR tape (in fact the TiVo has some features that make that process easier).
4) From the beginning, TiVo has always reserved the right to sell aggregate data, and has always promised to protect individual data. Nothing has changed. It is also unlikely that anything will change, because individual data is next to worthless. No one cares whether or not you watch American Idol. They only care what percentage of 18-30 year olds watch American Idol. The bad PR that TiVo would receive would never be worth the value of selling individual data.
Re:now that you mention it [netcraft]
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The argument could be made that since they do own the IP (or at least claim to), they're in the clear using Linux even though no one else is. It's still pretty funny, though.
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You feel old? I remember when they were new.
Example #3: You fail to replace the batteries in your fire alarms. An arson sets your house on fire, and because the fire alarms don't go off the fire gets too big and burns down your neighbors house, too, killing your neighbor. Who's guilty of murder? The arson, of course. Are you still guilty of actionable negligence? I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you would be.
I wonder how long it will be before Verisign decides to sue the backbone carriers for some kind of unfair business practice crap.
So, because the U.S. isn't exactly 100% identical to Germany, we should ignore that period in history with relation to our current situation? We suffered a terrorist attack and need a scapegoat, because the real bad guy is elusive. The whole Jew thing has already been done, so lets blame all of the Arabs for what happened. Broader governmental powers are solving the problem in an unreasonably short period of time, so we have to give the government more powers. Still not working. Well, maybe if we put all of the Arabs in certain sections of the cities it'll be easier. They still have all of there rights, well at least all of the ones we didn't take away. Oops, that's not very effective either. We just suffered another terrorist attack, because we were to busy attacking a scapegoat to get the real perpetrators. Well, the real perpetrators are still hard to catch, so lets go back to that scapegoat and punish them some more, so we feel better. After all, it's really a big conspiracy on the part of all Arabs, and they're only sub-human anyway, so why not. Tougher policies aren't working? Well, maybe if we ship them off to concentration camps, that'll help. Meh, that's too expensive. Let's just gas them all and be done with it. ...but you're right, there's no corrollation. We should forget the haulocaust even happened (assuming you agree that it did happen).
Some of us like to use those extra CPU cycles for other things, and don't like them to be hijacked by our file manager.
No, meteorology and astronomy are somewhat related, so this should be expressed in the SI standard Volkswagen.
Yeah, but remember that they've occasionally had to change the name of a product because they missed their deadling. :-)
It's important to remember here that the studio execs are businessmen, not artists. Most of them wouldn't know a good movie if it bit them in the ass, repeatedly. If they can identify a target demographic, and then create a marketing hype around it, they have discovered that they can almost guarantee a profit, regardless of the movie's actual quality. Unfortunately (for them), they are discovering that their scheme relies on imperfect information, and as the Internet and other forms of communication freedom reduce their market to a perfect information system they are no longer going to be able to use tricks to compete. Without those tricks, there are only two ways to succeed -- laws and quality. The scary thing is that (as I already pointed out), they don't have the talent to compete on quality. So, expect to see them try to push through laws.
Of course somebody bought it. People competing over trying to buy the stock is what makes the price go up. If they'd had a hard time finding someone to buy their stock, the price would have gone down until someone was willing to pay the new price.
As P.T. Barnum said, "there's a sucker born every minute" (or was it second?)
Those modifications only revert to GPL in the context of being additions to the GPLed application. Your code still belongs to you, and you're welcome to put the code you wrote into a closed source application, too.
Well, sort of. It costs the shareholders in-as-much as the companies stock price goes down as a result of the settlement/judgement. The money itself comes from the companie's pockets, not the shareholders. The whole purpose of American corporations (and I assume most other countries, too) is to shield the owners of the company from personal liability. If I own stock in a publicly traded company, there is nothing that will result in me being personally liable to pay off a judgement from my own pocket.
They don't have to patent the inkjet cartridge. They just have to patent the business process of using the DMCA to get undue value out of a product in order to offset the cost of a loss leader.
First off, I'd like to say that I think what Estonia is doing is for the most part a good thing. However, I think they're treading on somewhat dangerous ground with their use of the term "human right" (although the article was a little vague, so I may be wrong about how they're viewing it). Rights are things that no one should be denied. Free speech is a right. Freedom of religion is a right. Freedom to not be searched by the police without a warrant is a right. Freedom to not be denied access to the internet by the government is a right. Where the use of the term "right" gets a bit dangerous, though, is when you say that someone has a right that requires action on the part of someone else to fulfill. People don't have a right to free internet access provided by the government, because limited resources may make that impossible, or at least put that at odds with other so-called rights. It's the same way that people have a free speech right, but no right to free airtime on NBC.
My all time favorite was the 5,000 degree heat gun used for stripping paint that came with the warning: "Do not use as a hair dryer"
I hate it when people overload a word's definition in order to create a buzzword. These systems that are being described are not sentient. For something to be sentient, it has to be conscious (i.e. self aware). These aren't sentient systems. They are simply complex predictive systems. AI is a long way from developing sentience.
I think that you've made some incorrect assumptions, there (although I wouldn't put it past the TV execs to make the same assumption). I don't think it means that bored people are more likely to watch commercials. I think what it means is that those shows are more likely to be turned on as background noise while people are doing other things. I find that with my TiVo, if I'm doing something else at the same time, I'm less likely to fast forward through the commercials, because I'm not paying enough attention to notice that the commercials are on (or care). Case in point, as I'm typing this message, there are commercials playing on the TV. As soon as I hit submit, though, I'm going to fast forward through them. ;-)
Wiring money costs money, and so it's only economical for large payments. If you made small pay-pal type payments via wiring, a large chunk of your money would end up going to the banks.
I just got a picture of someone sending a porn flick to cleanflick (or whatever they're called) to get the naughty stuff edited out.
The complete edited version:
Beautiful, large breasted woman: The cable's broken.
There's a knock on the door
Woman: Who could that be?
She answers the door. There is a well-muscled, oiled hunk, with a tight t-shirt and a utility belt
Repairman: Hi, I'm here to fix your cable.
Woman: How can I ever thank you?
The End. Roll credits
I wouldn't be quite so confident about that. Technically the DMCA allows for those things, too. Unfortunately, judges and juries have been too clueless to actually recognize the difference.
Not only that, but it seems that they may be trying to say that all OS's are derivative.
Alright, I normally don't feed the trolls, but this needs to be responded to.
First, I'm generally libertarian minded, anti-tax, and definitely think that the U.S. has a better system than Europe does (note: better != perfect).
That said, your statement about Vietnam vets was not just ignorant, but quite frankly disgraceful, just like the U.S.'s level of support for those vets you were referring to. Most of those homeless vets with serious mental problems have been through more shit than you can imagine. It's not remotely related to having "survival skills". They've seen and done things that went beyond what their minds could handle, and because of that they're no longer able to function in society...and because they did that at the behest of their country, their country should properly care for them now. That's not the part of what you said that was ignorant, though. The part that was ignorant was the part where you put it on the vets by saying "Poeple (sic) who join the military know what they're getting into". Not only can no one "know what they're getting into" as far as war is concerned, but most of the Vietnam vets in the U.S. were drafted and didn't have a choice (which anyone with the slightest clue about history should know).
That's all well and good if you use Windows. I work in a 100% unix environment, so I'd have to go to extra work to integrate a WinXP machine into my work. I could do it, but it'd be an inconvenience. In fact, one of the major deterents against me buying a tablet PC has been the fact that I couldn't put Linux on them. This makes them much more usable.
Just because you don't have a need for Linux doesn't mean it's just a hobby for everyone else.
Cross-platform compatibility is a compelling reason to use Jave, but I'd say that in reality the biggest reason most people use Java is for ease and rapidity of development, and that's something that many argue that .Net does as well as or better than Java (I wouldn't personally know, since I've never used .Net--something about doing all of my development in Linux ;-) ).
I know you're just trying to be funny, but that's really not accurate:
1) If you fail to subscribe to the TiVo service, they don't in any way shape or form disable your box. Of course, you don't have access to the subscription information, or software updates, which are what the service pays for, and which are in my personal opinion well worth the cost of the service.
2) You've apparently never used a TiVo. Most TiVo users rarely ever watch commercials. They fast forward through them because they're watching things that have been previously recorded.
3) The TiVo doesn't have any DRM. It's on-disk data format is undocumented, but if you look online you can find software that has figured out how to extract it. There is, however, no encryption, and nothing that keeps you from duping something on your TiVo off onto a VCR tape (in fact the TiVo has some features that make that process easier).
4) From the beginning, TiVo has always reserved the right to sell aggregate data, and has always promised to protect individual data. Nothing has changed. It is also unlikely that anything will change, because individual data is next to worthless. No one cares whether or not you watch American Idol. They only care what percentage of 18-30 year olds watch American Idol. The bad PR that TiVo would receive would never be worth the value of selling individual data.
The argument could be made that since they do own the IP (or at least claim to), they're in the clear using Linux even though no one else is. It's still pretty funny, though.