Did you know that there is a federal law determining the minimum width of a pickle on your McDonald's hamburger?
Damn, what kind of FUD is this? It is reasonable that the "pickle width" be controlled. If I go to a fast food chain and the hamburger is described as having a pickle, god damn I'd be pissed if it was some puny-assed thing. It's called truth in advertising, and laws like this are very common, and necessary in our economy where many different businesses exist within the same market. It stops any particular business from getting an edge over its competition by cheating the customer.
A couple common examples:
The percentage of real fruit juice in anything described as a "fruit drink", "fruit juice", etc. is controlled.
If something is described as "sodium free", "fat free", or "sugar free" there is a limit to how much actual sodium, fat, or sugar can exist in the product.
Don't construe this law, and don't try to focus on McDonalds as the sole reason for it. It's there for a good reason.
It's irrelevant what the polls state - it's what the judge believes to be the proper thing to do. We don't elect judges, and heck, we don't even elect a president (directly). In this case, it's evidently a good thing that this is true.
Wow the NetWinder... what a great idea. Runs on like 15 watts, DC powered, small, and inexpensive parts. Problem is, it's too damn expensive.
From a web hosts' standpoint, it could have been a dream come true. A perfect solution for building an inexpensive server farm to allow clients to each have their own dedicated server. Corel could have been chewing Cobalt's market to shreds (it truly amazes me that Cobalt stays in business) because they did get it right. Yet the price held it back, and commodity PC hardware is still king in the dedicated server market because it's still cheaper.
Perhaps if school vouchers existed, you might have gone to a private school and actually gotten a decent education. And sorry, you can take your atheistic beliefs elsewhere: this has nothing to do with religion.
Where's your logic? If I send my children to a private school, I still have to pay taxes as if I were sending them to a public school? It has nothing to do with constitutionality, it's just unfair. If you weren't so blinded by your hatred for Christianity, you'd see that too.
I took the time to contact my representatives, have you? Make sure they understand the issues!
Included below is the response I received from Senator Grassley (R, IA):
Thank you for taking the time to communicate with me. As your Senator, it's important for me to hear from you.
I appreciate hearing your concerns about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and ongoing litigation against software developers who had decrypted the DVD Content Scrambling System information for the Linux operating system.
As you know, the DMCA implements the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties by amending the copyright laws. The legislation was the result of intensive negotiations between the interested parties and enjoyed broad support of the constituencies it affected. The DMCA is an attempt to balance strong and effective measures to deter piracy of copyrighted works, while allowing for fair use of protected materials in the digital age.
I understand that you specifically are concerned that the DMCA criminalizes any attempt to reverse-engineer the encryption of copyright media. You should be aware that the DMCA provides for a number of specific exceptions, including an exception for reverse-engineering. The U.S. Copyright Office explains that section 1201(f) of the DMCA "permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law." Moreover, the language of the DMCA explicitly states that nothing in the law shall affect the fair use of protected works. The Senate Judiciary Committee's Report on the DMCA made clear that "the fair use doctrine is fully applicable in the digital world as in the analog world." I believe that it is apparent from the language of the DMCA and its Committee Report that devices such as VCR's and computers will not be rendered illegal by this legislation. The sole purpose behind the DMCA was to outlaw the widespread piracy of copyrighted works, and not to outlaw devices like VCR's or computers, or their legitimate use by consumers.
Copyright owners have a legitimate concern about the ease in which digital works can be copied and distributed through the internet. Because the copyright industry is one of our largest and fastest growing economic assets, it was important that Congress enact strong legislation to implement the WIPO treaties and set a high standard for other nations to follow so that the rampant piracy of U.S. Copyrighted works can be stopped. Nevertheless, Congress may consider whether modifications to the DMCA are necessary. Rest assured, I will keep your views in mind if and when the Senate reviews legislation which would amend the copyright laws.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I appreciate hearing your views and urge you to keep in touch.
Sincerely, [ Signed: Chuck ] Charles E. Grassley United States Senator
Many of the mistakes that Grassley makes are fairly evident in the letter (re: piracy and fair use); I've already sent a clarification of course.
The important part that I saw was his statement "I believe it is apparent from the language of the DMCA and its Committee Report that devices such as VCRs and computers will not be rendered illegal by this legislation." -- it's up to you to show them that they have been!
One possible problem: using your example, what happens when a competitor to Adobe duplicates the color management principle as a "plugin" and then GPL's that part of the program? They've successfully gotten around the patent.
I kinda do like the idea of a non-profit entity to act as a holding company for patents though... perhaps this would make a good task for the EFF.
The repeaters are quite cheap when compared to the expense of laying the fiber. Upgrading the max speed of fiber like this is quite awesome to see - if they can keep the rate of bandwidth increase up, the might never have to lay more fiber on their backbones again!
Sounds like what you're trying to do is open a really long xterm and have it wrap from one column to the other... or maybe you're just trying to be funny.
Anyway.
Xfree4.0 supports that xinerama stuff, so you could stack two monitors and almost do that.
It'd be far cheaper (and free up more bandwidth) if the signal from the phone simply bounced off the satellite and back to a ground station. I can't believe that a ground station would be more expensive to maintain than a satellite.
"I am aware of no works or classes of works that have, because of the implementation of technical protection measures, become unavailable to persons who desire to be lawful users"
He didn't lie. Unavailable is a relatively broad term - I may not be able to play DVD's on Linux legally, but I can still purchase a DVD player for my TV that will play the (encrypted) DVD.
While it's not explicitly stated, it's of David Carson's opinion that so long as any possibility exists to play the DVDs then the DMCA is lawful. It's your job, as a comment writer, to point out the monetary or time costs imposed by such a stance is an infringement of what the law is meant to protect.
The Linux Network Administrator's Guide by Olaf Kirch is freely copyable with a pseudo-GNU license. Since I have a book, they've at least made a little money on it.
O'Reilly has stated before that they publish their books with the license that the author chooses. Yeah, I'm sure they've thought twice about publishing freely-copyable books in this manner, but that time is passed. I'm certain that O'Reilly would publish under the FDL unless they found some serious problems with the license (some of which you describe)
The only thing I want to know is how profitable is the business of porting software to linux? I know it sounds like a bit of business secret, but I just want to know the truth as to whether there money in what you're doing. For example, how much of a return do you expect on games like Railroad Tycoon?
I'll have to agree with you. At McKessonHBOC, I've never seen any (complete) incompatibility with any emulator. I myself took a liking to Linux's X3270 emulator. IBM "Host on Demand" that comes with Netscape Communicator also worked well.
If Amazon's only way of successfully doing business is by using tricks like rediculous patents, that's wrong! The ends do not justify the means.
This is not the way that competitive advantage is supposed to work. We are a capitalist society, and fierce competition is what we believe in - I don't think the laws governing the economy were designed to develop that economy through legal wrangling like this patent, and that's what we're fighting against. Amazon can't "make it right" by saying someone else would use it against them, and they can't make it right by selectively enforcing that patent against the companies that they see are their biggest competitors.
..and we're supposed to defend this action because "someone else might have done it"? It's like giving a nuclear bomb to Iran instead of Iraq and saying "Well, Iran won't kill as many people with it!". Dammit, it's wrong!. If you've got nuclear bombs, you better not kill anyone with it, and if you've got frivolous patents like this, so too should you not be enforcing it on anyone else.
Strip away Amazon's stock price and the result is clear: Amazon's business is failing. Does that make it right to support itself through offensive patenting like this? Are alldirect.com's or borders.com's businesses thriving through this type of strategy? No! They're making money because, with true business sense, they've managed their businesses properly. Amazon innovated four years ago when they brought books to the web, and they grew exponentially for it. But they must keep innovating or they're going to sink further into their hole. They can't defend what they're doing with statements like "what would you do if you were in our shoes?". Hell, if I knew that, I'd be running my own amazon.com. Maybe they just got into a line of business whose margins are too slim. What the hell do I know! And Amazon, if you don't know any better than me, I start to wonder what in the world you're doing in business at all.
Grow up, Amazon, you're not on any moral ground here.
The thing that gets me is when someone builds a web server that runs on steroidal (expensive) hardware when just a little bit of intelligence put into the system will do the trick. So many times people miss the obvious elements:
* Use a preprocessor like PHP instead of basing everything on CGI * Don't use Apache unless you really need to. Smaller servers like thttpd or BOA will often supply everything you need, are much more lightweight and much faster * Use a web accelerator like Squid * If you *must* use CGI, see if you can't implement it with something like fast-cgi. Especially with Perl!
And of course, I'm sitting here posting on a web site that hasn't implemented any of the four. Slash's code is absolutely frightening -- all the scripts use the same humongous module (Slash.pm) which use DBI and *gulp* Date::Manip. And you wonder why the site gets slow!
Slashdot Mirror
I think you just completely agreed with him.
You're definitely stretching it pretty hard now.
Damn, what kind of FUD is this? It is reasonable that the "pickle width" be controlled. If I go to a fast food chain and the hamburger is described as having a pickle, god damn I'd be pissed if it was some puny-assed thing. It's called truth in advertising, and laws like this are very common, and necessary in our economy where many different businesses exist within the same market. It stops any particular business from getting an edge over its competition by cheating the customer.
A couple common examples:
Don't construe this law, and don't try to focus on McDonalds as the sole reason for it. It's there for a good reason.
It's irrelevant what the polls state - it's what the judge believes to be the proper thing to do. We don't elect judges, and heck, we don't even elect a president (directly). In this case, it's evidently a good thing that this is true.
Let 'em scratch their own itch. If they want it, they can design and program it themselves.
All I know is, don't let Randal Schwartz get his hands on one.
From a web hosts' standpoint, it could have been a dream come true. A perfect solution for building an inexpensive server farm to allow clients to each have their own dedicated server. Corel could have been chewing Cobalt's market to shreds (it truly amazes me that Cobalt stays in business) because they did get it right. Yet the price held it back, and commodity PC hardware is still king in the dedicated server market because it's still cheaper.
Close, Corel... pretty close.
Where's your logic? If I send my children to a private school, I still have to pay taxes as if I were sending them to a public school? It has nothing to do with constitutionality, it's just unfair. If you weren't so blinded by your hatred for Christianity, you'd see that too.
I believe you mean "Can't spell worth a damn"
Included below is the response I received from Senator Grassley (R, IA):
- Thank you for taking the time to communicate with me. As your Senator, it's important for me to hear from you.
Many of the mistakes that Grassley makes are fairly evident in the letter (re: piracy and fair use); I've already sent a clarification of course.I appreciate hearing your concerns about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and ongoing litigation against software developers who had decrypted the DVD Content Scrambling System information for the Linux operating system.
As you know, the DMCA implements the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties by amending the copyright laws. The legislation was the result of intensive negotiations between the interested parties and enjoyed broad support of the constituencies it affected. The DMCA is an attempt to balance strong and effective measures to deter piracy of copyrighted works, while allowing for fair use of protected materials in the digital age.
I understand that you specifically are concerned that the DMCA criminalizes any attempt to reverse-engineer the encryption of copyright media. You should be aware that the DMCA provides for a number of specific exceptions, including an exception for reverse-engineering. The U.S. Copyright Office explains that section 1201(f) of the DMCA "permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law." Moreover, the language of the DMCA explicitly states that nothing in the law shall affect the fair use of protected works. The Senate Judiciary Committee's Report on the DMCA made clear that "the fair use doctrine is fully applicable in the digital world as in the analog world." I believe that it is apparent from the language of the DMCA and its Committee Report that devices such as VCR's and computers will not be rendered illegal by this legislation. The sole purpose behind the DMCA was to outlaw the widespread piracy of copyrighted works, and not to outlaw devices like VCR's or computers, or their legitimate use by consumers.
Copyright owners have a legitimate concern about the ease in which digital works can be copied and distributed through the internet. Because the copyright industry is one of our largest and fastest growing economic assets, it was important that Congress enact strong legislation to implement the WIPO treaties and set a high standard for other nations to follow so that the rampant piracy of U.S. Copyrighted works can be stopped. Nevertheless, Congress may consider whether modifications to the DMCA are necessary. Rest assured, I will keep your views in mind if and when the Senate reviews legislation which would amend the copyright laws.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I appreciate hearing your views and urge you to keep in touch.
Sincerely,
[ Signed: Chuck ]
Charles E. Grassley
United States Senator
The important part that I saw was his statement "I believe it is apparent from the language of the DMCA and its Committee Report that devices such as VCRs and computers will not be rendered illegal by this legislation." -- it's up to you to show them that they have been!
Wait a minute, who exactly is Microsoft buying their OS from? Themselves?
I kinda do like the idea of a non-profit entity to act as a holding company for patents though... perhaps this would make a good task for the EFF.
The repeaters are quite cheap when compared to the expense of laying the fiber. Upgrading the max speed of fiber like this is quite awesome to see - if they can keep the rate of bandwidth increase up, the might never have to lay more fiber on their backbones again!
Anyway.
Xfree4.0 supports that xinerama stuff, so you could stack two monitors and almost do that.
It'd be far cheaper (and free up more bandwidth) if the signal from the phone simply bounced off the satellite and back to a ground station. I can't believe that a ground station would be more expensive to maintain than a satellite.
He didn't lie. Unavailable is a relatively broad term - I may not be able to play DVD's on Linux legally, but I can still purchase a DVD player for my TV that will play the (encrypted) DVD.
While it's not explicitly stated, it's of David Carson's opinion that so long as any possibility exists to play the DVDs then the DMCA is lawful. It's your job, as a comment writer, to point out the monetary or time costs imposed by such a stance is an infringement of what the law is meant to protect.
O'Reilly has stated before that they publish their books with the license that the author chooses. Yeah, I'm sure they've thought twice about publishing freely-copyable books in this manner, but that time is passed. I'm certain that O'Reilly would publish under the FDL unless they found some serious problems with the license (some of which you describe)
The only thing I want to know is how profitable is the business of porting software to linux? I know it sounds like a bit of business secret, but I just want to know the truth as to whether there money in what you're doing. For example, how much of a return do you expect on games like Railroad Tycoon?
Man, whenever I think of satellites I think of little boxy things. With 13,200 pounds, that's like sending up 5 large cars.
I'll have to agree with you. At McKessonHBOC, I've never seen any (complete) incompatibility with any emulator. I myself took a liking to Linux's X3270 emulator. IBM "Host on Demand" that comes with Netscape Communicator also worked well.
This is not the way that competitive advantage is supposed to work. We are a capitalist society, and fierce competition is what we believe in - I don't think the laws governing the economy were designed to develop that economy through legal wrangling like this patent, and that's what we're fighting against. Amazon can't "make it right" by saying someone else would use it against them, and they can't make it right by selectively enforcing that patent against the companies that they see are their biggest competitors.
Strip away Amazon's stock price and the result is clear: Amazon's business is failing. Does that make it right to support itself through offensive patenting like this? Are alldirect.com's or borders.com's businesses thriving through this type of strategy? No! They're making money because, with true business sense, they've managed their businesses properly. Amazon innovated four years ago when they brought books to the web, and they grew exponentially for it. But they must keep innovating or they're going to sink further into their hole. They can't defend what they're doing with statements like "what would you do if you were in our shoes?". Hell, if I knew that, I'd be running my own amazon.com. Maybe they just got into a line of business whose margins are too slim. What the hell do I know! And Amazon, if you don't know any better than me, I start to wonder what in the world you're doing in business at all.
Grow up, Amazon, you're not on any moral ground here.
Even if you did save 3 meg with QNX, compared to 32 meg, you'll notice that that's 1/10th. It's irrelevant.
Dork.
* Use a preprocessor like PHP instead of basing everything on CGI
* Don't use Apache unless you really need to. Smaller servers like thttpd or BOA will often supply everything you need, are much more lightweight and much faster
* Use a web accelerator like Squid
* If you *must* use CGI, see if you can't implement it with something like fast-cgi. Especially with Perl!
And of course, I'm sitting here posting on a web site that hasn't implemented any of the four. Slash's code is absolutely frightening -- all the scripts use the same humongous module (Slash.pm) which use DBI and *gulp* Date::Manip. And you wonder why the site gets slow!
And of course, it's always best to do a search for the cheapest price at places like pricescan.com
...what's your point? The discussion was Linux vs another OS, such as QNX. Yes, if you stuff it with MP3's you'll have no space regardless of OS.