I thought there were some "takebacks" in 1997... Lots of Spanish films, music, etc. were "recopyrighted".
You're referring to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act. That act restored copyright to some works whose copyrights had not expired but which had fallen into PD due to some other technicality, mostly by not being first published in the United States. It was implemented as part of the Uruguay round of WTO/WIPO treaties.
Like the Bono Act, the URAA is under a constitutional challenge, in Golan v. Ashcroft.
Could someone explain how trademark could be used to control an article of expired copyright
If and when the Bono Act is overturned: "Of course, you can sell copies of 'Steamboat Willie' and 'Plane Crazy', but you won't be able to print Mickey's name or likeness anywhere on the box."
Disney would stand to lose $$$$$$$ if Mickey Mouse were released from copyright
The Bono Act wasn't designed to preserve the monopoly on Mickey Mouse as much as it was designed to preserve the monopoly on nu-skool Winnie-the-Pooh (a relatively recent Disney creation) and old-skool Winnie the Pooh (to which Disney bought the rights from the Milne family). Disney makes much more annually from sales of Pooh merchandise than from sales of Mickey merchandise.
Why can't we have a sliding scale, where if a corporation wants to hold onto copyright longer than the default, they pay some nontrivial amount of money every few years past the default time in order to renew.
Others have proposed similar plans on both Slashdot and Kuro5hin. An interesting plan would make the renewal fees increase exponentially for every subsequent re-extension.
Correct.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll has fallen into the public domain in the United States and is available through Project Gutenberg. Even if the Bono Act had been in effect since the time of its publication, the copyright would have expired in 1969 (1898 death of Carroll + 70 + end of the year) under the author rule or 1961 (1865 first publication + 95 + end of the year) under the work-for-hire/pre-1978 rule. But in the USA, copyright term extensions do not re-copyright works whose copyrights have already expired; thus, all works first published on or before December 31, 1922, are in the public domain in the USA.
The EU is a different matter; copyright law was revised to fit the terms in effect in Germany (life plus 70); works that had been in PD for quite some time fell under copyright once again. In addition, some European countries have granted extensions for works published before World War I, for works published before World War II, and for works published by authors who died in World War I or World War II.
After all, if there's no incentive for people to create things, nothing good will be created.
On the other hand, if there's no raw materials for people to create things, nothing good will be created. You can already start to see this happening in fields such as songwriting, where some songwriters are having trouble getting around the theoretical limit on the number of distinct melodies in the Western musical scale, which is fewer than 50,000.
And fund enforcement of a patent that should never have been granted. If you want to preserve balance in the Force, you have to give to EFF every time you give to a company that employs "evil" practices with respect to statutory monopolies. That's why I don't buy more than $65 a year from Disney, Time Warner, Universal, or the other bignine copyright companies, and that's also why I don't buy from Amazon or use Unisys products.
file-ownership is determined upon installation of a modern Microsoft operating system.
More specifically, upon installation of Microsoft Windows XP, the user agrees to an End User License Agreement. One reading of the Windows Media Player EULA implies that Microsoft reserves the right to leave a backdoor in the NTFS permissions that reveals significant portions of the contents of your hard disk.
Not to mention "My Computer", "My Documents", etc.
If you read through all the things listed maybe you would realise some people _can't_ install microsoft's patches because of there EULA requirements.
Let's see...
Unpatched windows: Bugbear.
Patched windows: No bugbear, but all your file are belong to Microsoft.
LindowsOS: Different enough from the Win9x and WinNT lines that it may not catch the same viruses. Definitely comes with a mailer that's not susceptible to the iframe bug.
So, after a failed KDE trial, I decided to try WindowMaker. I had a little bit of an introduction to WindowMaker in my previously mentioned CRUX install. In CRUX, none of the menu items worked, so it was pretty pointless. I figured RedHat would get it right. When WindowMaker started, it looked exactly like the CRUX install. The menus were full of applications that simply didn't work (not found errors). I don't understand why someone would include a bunch of programs in the menus when the programs themselves aren't even installed.
However, I did look around and I did find programs I was sure were installed. For instance, The GIMP. It worked in GNOME so I knew it was installed... Still got the error, though. The only menu item that worked in WindowMaker was VIM, but why do I need WindowMaker to run a text application? Back to GNOME (this time using 'switchdesk gnome' since there was no menu option for it).
So the majority of the costs are based on the server admin's cost, which averages $71,xxx a year...my question is, where are this jobs as linux admins for $71k/ year?
An employee's gross pay is typically less than half of what it costs to employ him or her. An employer needs to buy office space, power, lighting, air circulation, health benefits, not to mention the employer's share of the taxes (in the USA, payroll tax and Social Insecurity matching payments).
Windows 98 came out in 1998... RH 8.0 came out TODAY... So try to be a little fair in your Linux/Windows comparisons from now on.
Microsoft still issues bug fixes for Windows 98. Does Red Hat still issue bug fixes for Red Hat 6.x, which came out around the time of Windows 98?
What Linux desktop operating system will 1. run in GUI mode on hardware that a school system owns (which may include 5-6 year old PCs), 2. not be easily broken into (remember Red Hat Linux's old nickname "Root Hat"), and 3. be easy to install and configure?
most boxes you buy nowadays come with at least 128 or even 256 MB
Most school systems don't have enough money to purchase "boxes you buy nowadays".
One can't seriously expect to run bells-and-whistle software on hardware that was simply not designed to run effectively with it.
Are there any popular Linux or BSD distributions that 1. are easy to install and configure and 2. have an easy-to-find, easy-to-use, non-bells-and-whistles GUI?
How are tabbed windows not a multiple document interface?
Sometimes the capitalized expansion of an acronym refers to something more specific than the lowercase version does. For instance, many Americans are libertarians without belonging to the Libertarian Party. Tabbed windows, in the style of CrazyBrowser, Mozilla, or Opera, are a multiple document interface (lowercase), but they are not Multiple Document Interface (capitals). A typical workstation distribution of the GNU/Linux system has a graphics device interface, but its not GDI. It also has windows (managed by metacity, sawfish, blackbox, etc), but it's not Windows.
Create an ActiveX gecko to use instead of MSHTML.DLL
As you said, the IE engine is an ActiveX control. Here's a Gecko ActiveX control, and it even comes with a program that patches programs that embed IE so that they embed Gecko instead.
But ActiveX will get you nowhere on the other (non-Windows) platforms tnat Moz supports. Therefore, an ActiveX based Gecko browser for Windows should really be a separate project.
Today, I discovered a new (to me) form of troll: the Last Post troll. As most of us should already know, Slashdot locks all discussions that are more than 14 days old. A Last Poster takes advantage of this: (s)he comes into a discussion that's about to end and writes either some inane top-level comment ("LA5T POST!!!1!1") or a flamebait/troll reply to an existing comment.
Not that I'm necessarily implying that the parent comment was such a troll.
Could it not be made a (contractual) requirement that in order for a patented 'process' to be included in a standard that a royalty-free non-revokable licence be issued (at the time of inclusion in the standard) covering any implentation of the standard?
Is it possible to write a contract that binds all possible assignees of a patent?
It's actually 720 vs. 704, and that's because 704 is a nice round multiple of 32, such that quarter-screen MPEG 1 movies can be stored with 352 pixels, a multiple of the 16-pixel block that MPEG uses for chroma data. In addition, 704 is a multiple of 64, such that thumbnail MPEG 1 movies can be stored with 176 pixels, again a multiple of 16.
Mix tapes... for a party (though this is debatable) is permitted under copyright law.
As you said, debatable. For a party outside a close circle of friends and family, public performance fees come into play; read BMI's web site for more information.
We all know that disagreeing opinions means paid shilling.
I had a suspicion. I didn't come out and assume that you were; instead, I asked a question: "Are you employed by the record industry?"
All these posters saying that it's okay to make copies of CDs, books, movies, or Watcom C++ 5.0 in Canada as long as they're only for use by all their friends have no idea what they're talking about.
That's because the exemption applies only to personal use copies of sound recordings, and not to books, movies, or compilers.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought there were some "takebacks" in 1997 ... Lots of Spanish films, music, etc. were "recopyrighted".
You're referring to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act. That act restored copyright to some works whose copyrights had not expired but which had fallen into PD due to some other technicality, mostly by not being first published in the United States. It was implemented as part of the Uruguay round of WTO/WIPO treaties.
Like the Bono Act, the URAA is under a constitutional challenge, in Golan v. Ashcroft.
Could someone explain how trademark could be used to control an article of expired copyright
If and when the Bono Act is overturned: "Of course, you can sell copies of 'Steamboat Willie' and 'Plane Crazy', but you won't be able to print Mickey's name or likeness anywhere on the box."
Disney would stand to lose $$$$$$$ if Mickey Mouse were released from copyright
The Bono Act wasn't designed to preserve the monopoly on Mickey Mouse as much as it was designed to preserve the monopoly on nu-skool Winnie-the-Pooh (a relatively recent Disney creation) and old-skool Winnie the Pooh (to which Disney bought the rights from the Milne family). Disney makes much more annually from sales of Pooh merchandise than from sales of Mickey merchandise.
Why can't we have a sliding scale, where if a corporation wants to hold onto copyright longer than the default, they pay some nontrivial amount of money every few years past the default time in order to renew.
Others have proposed similar plans on both Slashdot and Kuro5hin. An interesting plan would make the renewal fees increase exponentially for every subsequent re-extension.
FREE THE BEAR!
they will never take Alice In Wonderland!
Correct. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll has fallen into the public domain in the United States and is available through Project Gutenberg. Even if the Bono Act had been in effect since the time of its publication, the copyright would have expired in 1969 (1898 death of Carroll + 70 + end of the year) under the author rule or 1961 (1865 first publication + 95 + end of the year) under the work-for-hire/pre-1978 rule. But in the USA, copyright term extensions do not re-copyright works whose copyrights have already expired; thus, all works first published on or before December 31, 1922, are in the public domain in the USA.
The EU is a different matter; copyright law was revised to fit the terms in effect in Germany (life plus 70); works that had been in PD for quite some time fell under copyright once again. In addition, some European countries have granted extensions for works published before World War I, for works published before World War II, and for works published by authors who died in World War I or World War II.
After all, if there's no incentive for people to create things, nothing good will be created.
On the other hand, if there's no raw materials for people to create things, nothing good will be created. You can already start to see this happening in fields such as songwriting, where some songwriters are having trouble getting around the theoretical limit on the number of distinct melodies in the Western musical scale, which is fewer than 50,000.
Get it from Amazon for [$3.99 cheaper]
And fund enforcement of a patent that should never have been granted. If you want to preserve balance in the Force, you have to give to EFF every time you give to a company that employs "evil" practices with respect to statutory monopolies. That's why I don't buy more than $65 a year from Disney, Time Warner, Universal, or the other big nine copyright companies, and that's also why I don't buy from Amazon or use Unisys products.
I probably do as much preaching about Linux as he does about God - maybe we should get it declared a religion and get tax-free status
There is already a so-called Church of Emacs. You don't want to dance with the devil.
file-ownership is determined upon installation of a modern Microsoft operating system.
More specifically, upon installation of Microsoft Windows XP, the user agrees to an End User License Agreement. One reading of the Windows Media Player EULA implies that Microsoft reserves the right to leave a backdoor in the NTFS permissions that reveals significant portions of the contents of your hard disk.
Not to mention "My Computer", "My Documents", etc.
If you read through all the things listed maybe you would realise some people _can't_ install microsoft's patches because of there EULA requirements.
Let's see...
Unpatched windows: Bugbear.
Patched windows: No bugbear, but all your file are belong to Microsoft.
LindowsOS: Different enough from the Win9x and WinNT lines that it may not catch the same viruses. Definitely comes with a mailer that's not susceptible to the iframe bug.
Fourth option. Fifth option. Sixth option. Seventh option.
Choose the one most appealing to you.
Win98 -> Win98SE -> WinME Sounds like they have been charging for patches all along
Windows 98 Service Pack 1 included all Win98se changes that weren't new features.
"myshiti"
The joke is old.
according to the package list, windowmaker is included in the distribution.
That's all well and good, but according to one of the articles that the story linked to, the menus included with Red Hat Linux 8's Window Maker package are completely broken:
So the majority of the costs are based on the server admin's cost, which averages $71,xxx a year...my question is, where are this jobs as linux admins for $71k/ year?
An employee's gross pay is typically less than half of what it costs to employ him or her. An employer needs to buy office space, power, lighting, air circulation, health benefits, not to mention the employer's share of the taxes (in the USA, payroll tax and Social Insecurity matching payments).
Windows 98 came out in 1998 ... RH 8.0 came out TODAY ... So try to be a little fair in your Linux/Windows comparisons from now on.
Microsoft still issues bug fixes for Windows 98. Does Red Hat still issue bug fixes for Red Hat 6.x, which came out around the time of Windows 98?
What Linux desktop operating system will 1. run in GUI mode on hardware that a school system owns (which may include 5-6 year old PCs), 2. not be easily broken into (remember Red Hat Linux's old nickname "Root Hat"), and 3. be easy to install and configure?
>>There's really no equivalent to Apache or XFree86 in the open source world.
>What about Apache or XFree86?
Grandparent meant[1] that there isn't any other mature web server or other mature set of low-level GUI software.
Except there is: AOLserver, the web server software that AOL Anywhere runs, is under the Mozilla Public License 1.1.
[1] Meant != said. Some people in a hurry have no time to be pedantic because they have a life.
most boxes you buy nowadays come with at least 128 or even 256 MB
Most school systems don't have enough money to purchase "boxes you buy nowadays".
One can't seriously expect to run bells-and-whistle software on hardware that was simply not designed to run effectively with it.
Are there any popular Linux or BSD distributions that 1. are easy to install and configure and 2. have an easy-to-find, easy-to-use, non-bells-and-whistles GUI?
the guy is trying to run X and KDE on a system that only has 64 megs of ram.
Why does Red Hat Linux have to require a lot of RAM? Some of its competing products (namely Windows 98se and Windows 2000) are happy with 64 MB.
How are tabbed windows not a multiple document interface?
Sometimes the capitalized expansion of an acronym refers to something more specific than the lowercase version does. For instance, many Americans are libertarians without belonging to the Libertarian Party. Tabbed windows, in the style of CrazyBrowser, Mozilla, or Opera, are a multiple document interface (lowercase), but they are not Multiple Document Interface (capitals). A typical workstation distribution of the GNU/Linux system has a graphics device interface, but its not GDI. It also has windows (managed by metacity, sawfish, blackbox, etc), but it's not Windows.
Create an ActiveX gecko to use instead of MSHTML.DLL
As you said, the IE engine is an ActiveX control. Here's a Gecko ActiveX control, and it even comes with a program that patches programs that embed IE so that they embed Gecko instead.
But ActiveX will get you nowhere on the other (non-Windows) platforms tnat Moz supports. Therefore, an ActiveX based Gecko browser for Windows should really be a separate project.
Today, I discovered a new (to me) form of troll: the Last Post troll. As most of us should already know, Slashdot locks all discussions that are more than 14 days old. A Last Poster takes advantage of this: (s)he comes into a discussion that's about to end and writes either some inane top-level comment ("LA5T POST!!!1!1") or a flamebait/troll reply to an existing comment.
Not that I'm necessarily implying that the parent comment was such a troll.
Anyway:
Last post suckaz!
Could it not be made a (contractual) requirement that in order for a patented 'process' to be included in a standard that a royalty-free non-revokable licence be issued (at the time of inclusion in the standard) covering any implentation of the standard?
Is it possible to write a contract that binds all possible assignees of a patent?
So as long as the patent is royalty free then there should be no problem.
Unless the patent gets sold to somebody who terminates the royalty-free license (Forgent anyone?)
like why the 720 vs. 702 discrepancy
It's actually 720 vs. 704, and that's because 704 is a nice round multiple of 32, such that quarter-screen MPEG 1 movies can be stored with 352 pixels, a multiple of the 16-pixel block that MPEG uses for chroma data. In addition, 704 is a multiple of 64, such that thumbnail MPEG 1 movies can be stored with 176 pixels, again a multiple of 16.
I even tried Google but no luck
ntsc scanlines
Mix tapes ... for a party (though this is debatable) is permitted under copyright law.
As you said, debatable. For a party outside a close circle of friends and family, public performance fees come into play; read BMI's web site for more information.
We all know that disagreeing opinions means paid shilling.
I had a suspicion. I didn't come out and assume that you were; instead, I asked a question: "Are you employed by the record industry?"
All these posters saying that it's okay to make copies of CDs, books, movies, or Watcom C++ 5.0 in Canada as long as they're only for use by all their friends have no idea what they're talking about.
That's because the exemption applies only to personal use copies of sound recordings, and not to books, movies, or compilers.