These pie menus are really irritating... I guess it could be useful and would reduce the distance the mouse would have to travel, but I can't imagine why anyone would actually use these.
That being said, yay for Mozilla. A browser that actually runs without a 50 MB footprint and supports actual standards. That and you can get all kinds of silly do-dads on them like pie menus. (Yeah, I just glanced at pie menus briefly so maybe I've missed some really useful part of pie menus.
On the other hand, mouse gestures could be really useful, assuming you didn't accidentally use them when you didn't want to.
hopefully they weren't careful about how they set up their corporation. If they're all incorporated, the lawsuit will first look to the company's coffers, then the bank accounts of the incorporated partners, then to their homes and cars and such. With a little luck, the people running this nonsense will be broken and never again a harm to society.
perhaps you missed the other reply to my other message, but my understanding is that it's technically a "milliard," but that 1000 million is also used.
As far as the junk faxes, it's not free speech. Free speech is speaking in public. Junk faxes are an invasion of privacy. As important as is your right to yell anything at the top of your lungs, more important is my right to tell you to get out of my house. It's not crippling free speech, it's protecting privacy. If I don't want to listen, I still have to pay to have a sheet of your "free speech" in my home, and I want a law protecting me from that.
As far as the mail, I have the right to refuse your mail and force you to take it back at your cost. Therefore, no law is necessary because where I pick up my mail (the mailbox) is a public place and I don't suffer any damage from it.
I'm not sure fines are punitive enough to stop spammers... perhaps castration would be more appropriate.
Seriously, I don't think the spammers realize/care how much actual damage they do, and whatever penalties are in place don't seem deterrant enough. The same goes for email spammers and phone solicitors. In theory, if I tell a phone solicitor to take me off their list, they have to or face a fine, but the fine is 500 dollars. What company would even bother for a 500 dollar fine. The majority of people wouldn't bother pursuing the 500 dollar fine, so it doesn't really accumulate for the company, and a puny fee like that is hardly noticeable.
Fines for spamming (of all types) need to be increased, with the possibility of jail time. The same goes for product recalls, but that's another topic.
in Britain and generally everywhere except for the USA, one billion == 1 000 000 000 000, the number called a trillion in the USA. In the USA, a billion is 1 000 000 000.
Basically, both a billion and a trillion are correct, and you are ignorant for suggesting that the person who said billion is in error.
It's about time... Know what else bugs me? those recorded messages that the autodialers spew onto your answering machine or into your ear if you're unfortunate enough to pick it up. That's gotta be illegal (you can't tell them to stop because it's not a person). Is there any way to stop that?
it's foolish to worry about. If there's hardware encryption, it's gonna stick better than software encryption from microsoft. Microsoft has a big (but non-monopolistic, of course) market share, but not enough to oust a standard my cisco, in my (uninformed) opinion.
At the risk of being modded offtopic, I'd like to suggest that it's not just Slashdot. Everywhere, people who are generally thought of as "intelligent" would have no clue what was wrong with the post. Grammar is not taught in schools today. How do I know? I just got got out of high school a year ago, and my AP English teacher told me it was unnecessary to teach grammar. Immediately thereafter, she passed out a sheet with several sentences. She told the class (who were all "bright" and probably averaged at least a 1250 SAT score) that there was an error in each sentence. We went through the sentences one sentence at a time and she asked my peers to raise their hands when they found an error. There were several sentences where students were willing to hazard a guess. Of course they tried to correct portions of the sentence that were perfectly good. I was the sole member of a class of 20 of my schools best and brightest high school seniors -- from a school that regularly boasts the best State Proficiency Test scores in the state of Ohio. I could understand if Hemos simply made an error, but I would guess that none of the editors would even know the difference between your corrected post and the published post.
Coincidentally and unfortunately, the post is written so horribly that I don't think it could be made both correct and coherant without being completely rewritten.
Just because somebody gets a patent doesn't mean the patent will stand in court. It is not uncommon for the patent office to grant a patent that is overturned it court: the patent office has too little funding to check every patent thoroughly. They do a quick scan for prior art and a general estimation as to whether the "invention" is "useful," and then grant the patent. This is probably not the best way to work it, but it's the way it works. Eventually we'll see a court case about this and the judge will declare the licence requirement invalid for whatever reason, then the case will be appealed. Hopefully the case will get to the supreme court so we can have some intelligent people make policy about this. Fortunately, we still have the Supreme Court, which fortunately still values the Constitution.
Impressive... You got four anonymous cowards to flame you. I'm all about keeping the second amondment, and unless you're being funny (which i'll assume you're not) I'd have to disagree with you there.
Though outlawing dvd writers is very much like outlawing guns, there's no constitutional protection against it. One would have to apply some common sense protection (perhaps we should write letters to our congressmen about how we think xerox copiers should be illegal because they facilitate the piracy of books)
sadly, you are mistaken. You buy the plastic. Ask an IP lawyer if you think I'm wrong. The only right to the content is through fair use. You do have the right to make backups, etc, but that doesn't mean you bought the content of the disc.
I'm afraid you're mistaken. When you buy a CD, you don't buy the intellectual property. You buy a piece of plastic. You have no right to the intellectual property contained thereon. The courts have made concessions in fair use, but the point is that in general, by copying the CD, you are in effect stealing the intellectual property of the copyright holder. The same applies to a book or a computer program.
It IS stealing, whether or not you think it SHOULD be stealing. Your analogy is irrelevant. It would be more like if I stole the plans for a honda civic and built one in my back yard and then sold it as a sivik.
Yeah, I hear ya. I buy more CDs because of the MP3s I download, and just like you, only because I want something more substancial. I think, however, that we are vastly outnumbered.
I don't think the filesharing of mp3s should be stopped. I think there should be more incentive to buy a CD, e.g. a lower price and higher percentage to the artist, but that's not likely to happen. Instead they'll make laws against all kinds of technology and activity that can be perfectly legal.
True, they haven't proven it, but I can say confidently that most people I know in my age group buy significantly fewer CDs if they don't stop buying them altogether once they get that juicy college T3 for kazaa.
I suppose in the betamax wars (yes, before I was born), widespread may have been only widespread if you were Jack Valenti, but the fact is that it IS widespread NOW. You cannot tell me that if you remember the betamax wars that you've lived in a college dorm since kazaa was introduced. I know people with tens of thousands of stolen songs and I know maybe 2 or 3 who haven't illegally downloaded music. I have. I'm not saying that the MPAA has any good solution or that there is any good solution; I'm simply explaining why the MPAA is making stupid laws.
Coincidentally, listen.com is NOT competing. Approximately 40 million people have stolen music with a filesharing program. Listen.com, oddly enough, doesn't advertise the number of users to whom it provides service, but I'd hazard a guess of less-than-40-million. Even the record companies wouldn't sneeze at 40 million times 10 bucks a month.
They do not prevent crime, but they do provide some disincentive to it... One may not have any particular moral issue with a certain law, but yet obey it because he doesn't want to be punished. People who break laws are those who don't care about the sentence or think they can get out of punishment (generally because they think they won't get caught).
speaking of Prohibition (yes I know I'm taking it out of context), To the best of my recollection, alcohol is legal again. Why? Oh sure some of it had to do with the public interest in ending Prohibition, but more had to do with the fact that they simply couldn't stop it. What did they do instead? Tax it. Fair enough.
perhaps "certain" would be a better word than "special," but my point remains the same. It's illegal to copy anything that's copyrighted and give it to your friend. It's illegal to copy something and give it to everybody in the universe
The problem with digital technology is that there is no degradation of quality and that makes the potential for abuse staggering. That is why the industries are overenforcing copyright laws and making silly new laws to try to protect their intellectual property. If people didn't abuse their ability to copy IP, there wouldn't be any laws against it, but if you provide people with a situation where there's very little stopping them from committing a crime and no immediate consequences, the vast majority will not care that it's immoral or illegal and the rest will simply forget because everybody else is doing it. The problem is not a legislative one, it's a moral one: "Thou shalt not steal." Not that hard and you don't have to be religious to see the social benefit of it. (I'm not religious, but I try to avoid theft and murder and adultery and the like)
fair use is one of those special circumstances. Another is when you have written permission. I think educational institutions have some extra leeway, too.
hehe... It only became a problem when my psych 101 prof included material from the text in the exams but not in the lecture... oops, guess I didn't bother to read the book so I missed half the material... that and he made the tests hard to guess without knowing anything about the subject. Kind of a shame, since Dr. Maas is an excellent lecturer and his class ought to have been a breeze for me.
From the article, about mandatory inclusion of copy protection in devices: Such protections, proponents say, would give Hollywood an incentive to offer more entertainment in digital format, thereby spurring consumers' adoption of such technologies as high-definition TV and broadband services.
First of all, the only two things "hollywood" doesn't offer in digital format are some movies and HDTV. HDTV will be mandated (or so the FCC claims) in 2007. I'd say that's enough incentive. Movies aren't always offered in digital format because the projectors are redonkulously expensive and therefore most projectors are analog. Copying of movie reels is virtually nonexistant and would be very very easy to track if it were a common practice (they advertise 3 screens, they only bought 2 reels.... you can even have a bot check the listings online).
Perhaps I missed something, but it seems to me that requiring copyright protection in devices is (in addition to expensive and futile) not an incentive for new material.
Slashdot Mirror
These pie menus are really irritating... I guess it could be useful and would reduce the distance the mouse would have to travel, but I can't imagine why anyone would actually use these.
That being said, yay for Mozilla. A browser that actually runs without a 50 MB footprint and supports actual standards. That and you can get all kinds of silly do-dads on them like pie menus. (Yeah, I just glanced at pie menus briefly so maybe I've missed some really useful part of pie menus.
On the other hand, mouse gestures could be really useful, assuming you didn't accidentally use them when you didn't want to.
hopefully they weren't careful about how they set up their corporation. If they're all incorporated, the lawsuit will first look to the company's coffers, then the bank accounts of the incorporated partners, then to their homes and cars and such. With a little luck, the people running this nonsense will be broken and never again a harm to society.
At least that's my understanding of the law.
perhaps you missed the other reply to my other message, but my understanding is that it's technically a "milliard," but that 1000 million is also used.
As far as the junk faxes, it's not free speech. Free speech is speaking in public. Junk faxes are an invasion of privacy. As important as is your right to yell anything at the top of your lungs, more important is my right to tell you to get out of my house. It's not crippling free speech, it's protecting privacy. If I don't want to listen, I still have to pay to have a sheet of your "free speech" in my home, and I want a law protecting me from that.
As far as the mail, I have the right to refuse your mail and force you to take it back at your cost. Therefore, no law is necessary because where I pick up my mail (the mailbox) is a public place and I don't suffer any damage from it.
1 000 million :-)
actually it's a milliard, but I think they just use 1000 million instead. I'm from the USA so I'm a little rusty with my English idioms.
I'm not sure fines are punitive enough to stop spammers... perhaps castration would be more appropriate.
Seriously, I don't think the spammers realize/care how much actual damage they do, and whatever penalties are in place don't seem deterrant enough. The same goes for email spammers and phone solicitors. In theory, if I tell a phone solicitor to take me off their list, they have to or face a fine, but the fine is 500 dollars. What company would even bother for a 500 dollar fine. The majority of people wouldn't bother pursuing the 500 dollar fine, so it doesn't really accumulate for the company, and a puny fee like that is hardly noticeable.
Fines for spamming (of all types) need to be increased, with the possibility of jail time. The same goes for product recalls, but that's another topic.
in Britain and generally everywhere except for the USA, one billion == 1 000 000 000 000, the number called a trillion in the USA. In the USA, a billion is 1 000 000 000.
Basically, both a billion and a trillion are correct, and you are ignorant for suggesting that the person who said billion is in error.
It's about time... Know what else bugs me? those recorded messages that the autodialers spew onto your answering machine or into your ear if you're unfortunate enough to pick it up. That's gotta be illegal (you can't tell them to stop because it's not a person). Is there any way to stop that?
it's foolish to worry about. If there's hardware encryption, it's gonna stick better than software encryption from microsoft. Microsoft has a big (but non-monopolistic, of course) market share, but not enough to oust a standard my cisco, in my (uninformed) opinion.
At the risk of being modded offtopic, I'd like to suggest that it's not just Slashdot. Everywhere, people who are generally thought of as "intelligent" would have no clue what was wrong with the post. Grammar is not taught in schools today. How do I know? I just got got out of high school a year ago, and my AP English teacher told me it was unnecessary to teach grammar. Immediately thereafter, she passed out a sheet with several sentences. She told the class (who were all "bright" and probably averaged at least a 1250 SAT score) that there was an error in each sentence. We went through the sentences one sentence at a time and she asked my peers to raise their hands when they found an error. There were several sentences where students were willing to hazard a guess. Of course they tried to correct portions of the sentence that were perfectly good. I was the sole member of a class of 20 of my schools best and brightest high school seniors -- from a school that regularly boasts the best State Proficiency Test scores in the state of Ohio. I could understand if Hemos simply made an error, but I would guess that none of the editors would even know the difference between your corrected post and the published post.
Coincidentally and unfortunately, the post is written so horribly that I don't think it could be made both correct and coherant without being completely rewritten.
Just because somebody gets a patent doesn't mean the patent will stand in court. It is not uncommon for the patent office to grant a patent that is overturned it court: the patent office has too little funding to check every patent thoroughly. They do a quick scan for prior art and a general estimation as to whether the "invention" is "useful," and then grant the patent. This is probably not the best way to work it, but it's the way it works. Eventually we'll see a court case about this and the judge will declare the licence requirement invalid for whatever reason, then the case will be appealed. Hopefully the case will get to the supreme court so we can have some intelligent people make policy about this. Fortunately, we still have the Supreme Court, which fortunately still values the Constitution.
Impressive... You got four anonymous cowards to flame you. I'm all about keeping the second amondment, and unless you're being funny (which i'll assume you're not) I'd have to disagree with you there.
Though outlawing dvd writers is very much like outlawing guns, there's no constitutional protection against it. One would have to apply some common sense protection (perhaps we should write letters to our congressmen about how we think xerox copiers should be illegal because they facilitate the piracy of books)
sadly, you are mistaken. You buy the plastic. Ask an IP lawyer if you think I'm wrong. The only right to the content is through fair use. You do have the right to make backups, etc, but that doesn't mean you bought the content of the disc.
OK. I see that you make good and correct points, but I don't see how you're disagreeing with me...?
I'm afraid you're mistaken. When you buy a CD, you don't buy the intellectual property. You buy a piece of plastic. You have no right to the intellectual property contained thereon. The courts have made concessions in fair use, but the point is that in general, by copying the CD, you are in effect stealing the intellectual property of the copyright holder. The same applies to a book or a computer program.
It IS stealing, whether or not you think it SHOULD be stealing. Your analogy is irrelevant. It would be more like if I stole the plans for a honda civic and built one in my back yard and then sold it as a sivik.
Yeah, I hear ya. I buy more CDs because of the MP3s I download, and just like you, only because I want something more substancial. I think, however, that we are vastly outnumbered.
I don't think the filesharing of mp3s should be stopped. I think there should be more incentive to buy a CD, e.g. a lower price and higher percentage to the artist, but that's not likely to happen. Instead they'll make laws against all kinds of technology and activity that can be perfectly legal.
True, they haven't proven it, but I can say confidently that most people I know in my age group buy significantly fewer CDs if they don't stop buying them altogether once they get that juicy college T3 for kazaa.
Now that is a perfectly good use of digital media that needs to be protected. MC Hawking's crib is at mchawking.com, by the way
I suppose in the betamax wars (yes, before I was born), widespread may have been only widespread if you were Jack Valenti, but the fact is that it IS widespread NOW. You cannot tell me that if you remember the betamax wars that you've lived in a college dorm since kazaa was introduced. I know people with tens of thousands of stolen songs and I know maybe 2 or 3 who haven't illegally downloaded music. I have. I'm not saying that the MPAA has any good solution or that there is any good solution; I'm simply explaining why the MPAA is making stupid laws.
Coincidentally, listen.com is NOT competing. Approximately 40 million people have stolen music with a filesharing program. Listen.com, oddly enough, doesn't advertise the number of users to whom it provides service, but I'd hazard a guess of less-than-40-million. Even the record companies wouldn't sneeze at 40 million times 10 bucks a month.
They do not prevent crime, but they do provide some disincentive to it... One may not have any particular moral issue with a certain law, but yet obey it because he doesn't want to be punished. People who break laws are those who don't care about the sentence or think they can get out of punishment (generally because they think they won't get caught).
speaking of Prohibition (yes I know I'm taking it out of context), To the best of my recollection, alcohol is legal again. Why? Oh sure some of it had to do with the public interest in ending Prohibition, but more had to do with the fact that they simply couldn't stop it. What did they do instead? Tax it. Fair enough.
perhaps "certain" would be a better word than "special," but my point remains the same. It's illegal to copy anything that's copyrighted and give it to your friend. It's illegal to copy something and give it to everybody in the universe
The problem with digital technology is that there is no degradation of quality and that makes the potential for abuse staggering. That is why the industries are overenforcing copyright laws and making silly new laws to try to protect their intellectual property. If people didn't abuse their ability to copy IP, there wouldn't be any laws against it, but if you provide people with a situation where there's very little stopping them from committing a crime and no immediate consequences, the vast majority will not care that it's immoral or illegal and the rest will simply forget because everybody else is doing it. The problem is not a legislative one, it's a moral one: "Thou shalt not steal." Not that hard and you don't have to be religious to see the social benefit of it. (I'm not religious, but I try to avoid theft and murder and adultery and the like)
fair use is one of those special circumstances. Another is when you have written permission. I think educational institutions have some extra leeway, too.
hehe... It only became a problem when my psych 101 prof included material from the text in the exams but not in the lecture... oops, guess I didn't bother to read the book so I missed half the material... that and he made the tests hard to guess without knowing anything about the subject. Kind of a shame, since Dr. Maas is an excellent lecturer and his class ought to have been a breeze for me.
From the article, about mandatory inclusion of copy protection in devices: Such protections, proponents say, would give Hollywood an incentive to offer more entertainment in digital format, thereby spurring consumers' adoption of such technologies as high-definition TV and broadband services.
First of all, the only two things "hollywood" doesn't offer in digital format are some movies and HDTV. HDTV will be mandated (or so the FCC claims) in 2007. I'd say that's enough incentive. Movies aren't always offered in digital format because the projectors are redonkulously expensive and therefore most projectors are analog. Copying of movie reels is virtually nonexistant and would be very very easy to track if it were a common practice (they advertise 3 screens, they only bought 2 reels.... you can even have a bot check the listings online).
Perhaps I missed something, but it seems to me that requiring copyright protection in devices is (in addition to expensive and futile) not an incentive for new material.