"Now, Linux and Windows busily try to clone what Mac has done for two decades"
I think you were trying to say: Now, Linux and Windows busily try to clone what the Commodore Amiga did two decades ago. The Mac was an ugly little black and white bleep affair in the early days. Even the PC managed to get 16 colours on a screen. In those days, if you wanted a faster Mac, you had to run a Mac emulator on an Amiga. The only reason you would even want to go from 4096 colours to 2, and from 3 channel stereo sound to whatever bleeps the Mac could produce was because of the better productivity software in some areas.
I remember SCSI scanners from back then, which would connect to any modern computer of the day (provided they had a SCSI port).
I even seem to remember hand-scanners for the C64.
If the Mac was responsible for an imaging revolution, that must have been later. Adobe Photoshop was initially developed as a specialized tool to edit scanned images and was released in 1990.
When the Commodore Amiga was launched in 1985, Andy Warhol made a painting of Debby Harry by feeding a video still into the Amiga and painting over it, so there were alternative technologies of getting real life images into microcomputers.
"And of course, the picture is loading about as fast as it would have when the web was first invented."
When the web was invented (only once, AFAIK), and pictures were shown inline in graphical web browsers, almost everybody was connected to the internet through their universities, where they had reasonably fast connections. I remember from those early days how I was swearing at the joker who had filled his page with 2MB worth of inline images, because even on my 75kbps connection it took ages to load.
Of course, in the mid-nineties AOL got connected to the internet and the Netscape Navigator was introduced, so that unusable websites became the norm rather than the exception.
[How stupid is it to demand information should be free, then pay someone else to get it?]
Not stupid at all. You pay for the distribution and other assorted services, not for the information.
For the record, this is not much different from what you do when you buy a CD from the record store. For the first hundred thousands of copies of any given CD, 100% goes to the intermediaries. (At first sight, this may seem to be a peculiarity of the US system, but the same appears to be true for Germany and the UK.)
"Whether or not they are operating legally in Russia is irrelevant to you, assuming that you are not in Russia. They may or may not have a licence to distribute music in the Russian market, but you are not in the Russian market, so they have no licence to distribute to you, so you were participating in copyright violation."
"No, in the US, copyright as a civil action is a strict liability offense. It doesn't matter what your intent or mental state was. You could have thought in good faith, and reasonably, that you were not infringing, and it doesn't matter. It might matter in determining just how large the damages you pay are, but you still end up liable for it."
How relevant is that though? Everybody infringes on copyrights.
"The bottom line is, I hate spam, too, but sometimes people are far too trigger happy to report legitimate business inquiries as spam."
Running my own business, I can certainly sympathize. One thing strikes me as odd, though: when your wife phoned these prospective partners in order to find out if and to whom she should send an e-mail, did she get no indication whatsoever that they would report her for spamming?
Ah, the OP is living in the US? I did not get that from his question. Seems rather rude to me, asking people to help you and then not give them the information they need to help you.
"Bah! The parent is NOT insightful. If the professor wrote a book about the subject they are teaching, it would be absurd to use a different book. In fact, such books are generally developed from the course notes that the professor developed for teaching that very course."
Ah well, such are the whims of the modding gods. The past few days I got modded troll over a very factual post, now I get modded insightful over an emotional one.
My reaction was based on the "respectful", which IMO tried to appeal to respect for authority. Although the fact that other teachers use a book may give you insight as to the usefulness of that book, that alone is not enough. As you yourself point out, such a book is the one a specific professor feels is the best. There is no reason to assume that therefore that book indeed is the best.
"I would select a textbook that covers some serious language instead of Javascript."
What is a serious language?
Anyway, it seems to me that if you teach correct coding practices, it doesn't matter really which language you use for instruction. In which case you might as well use a language that students are actually going to use after the course is over.
IRT.org is a great resource if you already know JavaScript. If not, it'll teach you many wrong things. For instance, some of their examples presume that everybody is using JavaScript, and that everybody is either using Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
"Look at what other respected professors use (at other universities) and evaluate those options."
It is not uncommon for "respected" professors to push the books they themselves wrote onto unsuspecting students. It's a handy way to supplement their income.
"But the Parliament is upset, because the Concil version, while almost identical text, is exactly opposite in effect (they essentially scratched out the "not" the Parliament had decided to add to "software can be patented")."
The council is made up of ministers of the respective nations. How they vote may depend on the sort of mandate these ministers have. Although Dutch ministers do not have to ask Dutch parliament what to do, in this case they did. Dutch parliament said: "We want whatever the European Parliament is having", and then the minister went ahead and voted the exact opposite.
There are some very shady things going on here. I can imagine the executive branch having a different opinion than the legislative branch, but lying to parliament?!!
The word investor is perhaps a bit misleading, lending an air of impartiality to the person who's investing. An investor is an owner. As such, he has the last word as to what a company does or does not.
"We need to make the patent office follow the law as it stands."
I thought so too, but from what I understand, the EPO is outside the law. (There is even a story going around how the CEO of the EPO physically assaulted on of his co-workers, and nothing could be done against it--that's how much the EPO is outside the law.)
"The city of Los Angeles is considering using Open Source software". How is this news? I don't know how things are in the US, but in civilized countries, democratically elected governments do not just carry a pile of cash in a wheelbarrow to the first monopolist they can find, but rather consider all the alternatives.
There is no such thing as intellectual property law. The things we are discussing here have nothing to do with property. So accusing somebody of lacking an understanding of your so-called "intellectual property law" is misleading and unfair.
Copyrights do not protect expressions, and patents do not protect ideas. Instead, they protect the interests of publishers and large manufacturers respectively. I don't know how this went with patents/manufacturers, but in the case of copyrights, the basic idea has been from the start to protect the interests of the publishers. This is witnessed by the fact that a law that was initially designed to stem the immoral dealings of (some) publishers was more or less dictated by those same publishers.
It's as if the Maffia helped draft the anti-racketeering laws.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair Use is a legal defense that you use _after_ the infringement.
"Now, Linux and Windows busily try to clone what Mac has done for two decades"
I think you were trying to say: Now, Linux and Windows busily try to clone what the Commodore Amiga did two decades ago. The Mac was an ugly little black and white bleep affair in the early days. Even the PC managed to get 16 colours on a screen. In those days, if you wanted a faster Mac, you had to run a Mac emulator on an Amiga. The only reason you would even want to go from 4096 colours to 2, and from 3 channel stereo sound to whatever bleeps the Mac could produce was because of the better productivity software in some areas.
I remember SCSI scanners from back then, which would connect to any modern computer of the day (provided they had a SCSI port).
I even seem to remember hand-scanners for the C64.
If the Mac was responsible for an imaging revolution, that must have been later. Adobe Photoshop was initially developed as a specialized tool to edit scanned images and was released in 1990.
When the Commodore Amiga was launched in 1985, Andy Warhol made a painting of Debby Harry by feeding a video still into the Amiga and painting over it, so there were alternative technologies of getting real life images into microcomputers.
"And of course, the picture is loading about as fast as it would have when the web was first invented."
When the web was invented (only once, AFAIK), and pictures were shown inline in graphical web browsers, almost everybody was connected to the internet through their universities, where they had reasonably fast connections. I remember from those early days how I was swearing at the joker who had filled his page with 2MB worth of inline images, because even on my 75kbps connection it took ages to load.
Of course, in the mid-nineties AOL got connected to the internet and the Netscape Navigator was introduced, so that unusable websites became the norm rather than the exception.
[How stupid is it to demand information should be free, then pay someone else to get it?]
Not stupid at all. You pay for the distribution and other assorted services, not for the information.
For the record, this is not much different from what you do when you buy a CD from the record store. For the first hundred thousands of copies of any given CD, 100% goes to the intermediaries. (At first sight, this may seem to be a peculiarity of the US system, but the same appears to be true for Germany and the UK.)
Calling something a "legal loophole" is exhibiting an extreme disregard for the law.
"You will now knowingly conspire to participate in criminal activity with them?"
What criminal activity? Has anybody been convicted?
"Whether or not they are operating legally in Russia is irrelevant to you, assuming that you are not in Russia. They may or may not have a licence to distribute music in the Russian market, but you are not in the Russian market, so they have no licence to distribute to you, so you were participating in copyright violation."
Which copyright law did you get that from?
"No, in the US, copyright as a civil action is a strict liability offense. It doesn't matter what your intent or mental state was. You could have thought in good faith, and reasonably, that you were not infringing, and it doesn't matter. It might matter in determining just how large the damages you pay are, but you still end up liable for it."
How relevant is that though? Everybody infringes on copyrights.
"What does this mean for any of us American citizens that...ahem...may have used Allofmp3s services?
Will there be a price to pay for us?"
Assuming that your supplier did indeed break a law: as long as you acted in good faith, you should be in the clear.
However, I think it is quite a stretch to assume Allofmp3.com broke the law.
(IANAL. This is not legal advice.)
"The bottom line is, I hate spam, too, but sometimes people are far too trigger happy to report legitimate business inquiries as spam."
Running my own business, I can certainly sympathize. One thing strikes me as odd, though: when your wife phoned these prospective partners in order to find out if and to whom she should send an e-mail, did she get no indication whatsoever that they would report her for spamming?
Ah, the OP is living in the US? I did not get that from his question. Seems rather rude to me, asking people to help you and then not give them the information they need to help you.
HetNet's cheapest ADSL is 13 euro a month. No idea why you pay so much for broadband.
"Bah! The parent is NOT insightful. If the professor wrote a book about the subject they are teaching, it would be absurd to use a different book. In fact, such books are generally developed from the course notes that the professor developed for teaching that very course."
Ah well, such are the whims of the modding gods. The past few days I got modded troll over a very factual post, now I get modded insightful over an emotional one.
My reaction was based on the "respectful", which IMO tried to appeal to respect for authority. Although the fact that other teachers use a book may give you insight as to the usefulness of that book, that alone is not enough. As you yourself point out, such a book is the one a specific professor feels is the best. There is no reason to assume that therefore that book indeed is the best.
"I would select a textbook that covers some serious language instead of Javascript."
What is a serious language?
Anyway, it seems to me that if you teach correct coding practices, it doesn't matter really which language you use for instruction. In which case you might as well use a language that students are actually going to use after the course is over.
"irt.org"
IRT.org is a great resource if you already know JavaScript. If not, it'll teach you many wrong things. For instance, some of their examples presume that everybody is using JavaScript, and that everybody is either using Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
"Look at what other respected professors use (at other universities) and evaluate those options."
It is not uncommon for "respected" professors to push the books they themselves wrote onto unsuspecting students. It's a handy way to supplement their income.
"But the Parliament is upset, because the Concil version, while almost identical text, is exactly opposite in effect (they essentially scratched out the "not" the Parliament had decided to add to "software can be patented")."
The council is made up of ministers of the respective nations. How they vote may depend on the sort of mandate these ministers have. Although Dutch ministers do not have to ask Dutch parliament what to do, in this case they did. Dutch parliament said: "We want whatever the European Parliament is having", and then the minister went ahead and voted the exact opposite.
There are some very shady things going on here. I can imagine the executive branch having a different opinion than the legislative branch, but lying to parliament?!!
"Why should an investor be liable for a company?"
The word investor is perhaps a bit misleading, lending an air of impartiality to the person who's investing. An investor is an owner. As such, he has the last word as to what a company does or does not.
"We need to make the patent office follow the law as it stands."
I thought so too, but from what I understand, the EPO is outside the law. (There is even a story going around how the CEO of the EPO physically assaulted on of his co-workers, and nothing could be done against it--that's how much the EPO is outside the law.)
So how could the EPO be made to follow the law?
"The city of Los Angeles is considering using Open Source software". How is this news? I don't know how things are in the US, but in civilized countries, democratically elected governments do not just carry a pile of cash in a wheelbarrow to the first monopolist they can find, but rather consider all the alternatives.
"Let's give them back Manhattan."
I heard somewhere we already own it (or large chunks of it).
There is no such thing as intellectual property law. The things we are discussing here have nothing to do with property. So accusing somebody of lacking an understanding of your so-called "intellectual property law" is misleading and unfair.
Copyrights do not protect expressions, and patents do not protect ideas. Instead, they protect the interests of publishers and large manufacturers respectively. I don't know how this went with patents/manufacturers, but in the case of copyrights, the basic idea has been from the start to protect the interests of the publishers. This is witnessed by the fact that a law that was initially designed to stem the immoral dealings of (some) publishers was more or less dictated by those same publishers.
It's as if the Maffia helped draft the anti-racketeering laws.
I liked the "9.5 Weeks" ad better.
I pitty the Canadians for all the right-wing refuse they are getting from us.