The Science Channel (a Discovery property), has "Theme sequences" of similar programming at similar times. One of the themes is Marine Science. On Friday Evening or Sunday afternoon, you can get Undersea earthquakes, sharks, and all the underwater footage you want. Admittedly not as good as a full-time sharks channel, but when it's not Shark-week, at least you can get something. The Saturday afternoon Astronomy/Astrobiology sequence is pretty cool too.
My only gripe with digital cable is that the box Time Warner gave me doesn't have an A/D audio converter, so I get great digital sound on digital-only channels, but the analog channels don't output over the coax cable, and I have to switch inputs on my receiver, which is a pain in the ass. I've never had much complaint about the reception, though...it's crystal clear, even on the Analog channels (esp. on the analog channels...occasionally, but not too often, I get pixelation on digital channels).
As for channel surfing, I'm hooked on the digital channel guide to browse what's on, while I'm still watching a program.
Most people with HDTV sets don't have HDTV, they just get better DVD quality. A lot of people get Digital Cable (heavily compressed NTSC/480i signal) and are convinced that their expensive set is important.
I have an HDTV set, and I receive HDTV channels from my Digital Cable provider. They give me all the local OTA HD channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOS, WB), an HDTV Demo channel looping some beautifully-produced PBS programming, and the HDTV-version of HBO (which I also subscribe to). If I subscribed to Showtime, I'd also get SHO-HD. Furthermore, my Digital Cable provider (Time Warner), does not charge extra for these channels. They are included with the digital cable package, and can be used by anyone with the necessary hardware (Analong component video outputs are right on the cable box).
So, apparently, I'm getting a similar HDTV experience to your own, but from a single service provider, and without the hassle of setting a big antenna on top of my apartment building. Unfortunately, I don't have an attic in my apartment, and since it's concrete-block construction, including the walls between units, indoor antennas can't pick up a lot of signal anyway.
Also, although I'm in an apartment, I live in a rather suburban area dominated by single-family homes. I doubt I'm the only person in my area with this setup.
Nope. The woman (in my opinion a self-righteous, nosy old biddy hungry for her 15 minutes) eavesdropped on these guys conversation and heard the following snippet, which could be construed as threatening:
''Do you think we have enough to bring it down?'' ``If we don't have enough, I have contacts. We can get enough to bring it down.''
What was going on, of course, was that one of the three, who didn't have a car, was considering buying one back home, and they were discussing their options to transport it back down to Miami, where they were attending school.
The plan calls for a small variety of frames to be built. Most of the articles have bandied about a small/compact, midsize, and large chassis, on which various body designs can be bolted on. So you'll be able to get a nice big road-hog to pimp around in if you need it, or you can opt for the smaller model.
What I want to know, is how are the chop-shops gonna streeeeetch these things for limos?
I've looked up this practice, and it appears to be the same practice that is mentioned on the FIJA site as an argument in favor of fully-informed Juries (or at least the argument that fully-informed Juries are bad for defendants because bigoted juries might return unfavorable verdicts). That is, if a jury returns a horrible verdict to the detriment of the defendent, the judge still is empowered to show leniency to the defendent. I can't find any mention of this ever being used in any way than on the defendant's behalf. If you can cite a case to the contrary, I'd be very interested to see it.
Both of the above statements are wrong. The Jury does not have the power to have a law re-examined or repealed by issuing a verdict. However, the Jury DOES have the power, and the right, to find a defendent "Not Guilty" for any reason. Judges and Attorneys don't really like this, and Judges will usually try to dismiss Jurors if they express disagreement with the law as written before the trial, but once the Jury issues a Not Guilty verdict, they're pretty much stuck with it.
This actually happens, too. The most famous case in which the Jury blatantly refused to apply the law was the trial of William Penn for sedition in London in 1670. The Magna Carta reserved the right of conviction to Juries only, and a few brave men withstood imprisonment and starvation in the face of an angry judge trying to force them to change their verdict. The jurors, however, would not relinquish their right under Common Law to decide the verdict, and would not find a man guilty for peacefully holding a religious assembly, Conventicle Act or not.
William Penn later came to America, and founded Pennsylvania. He advocated the idea that a panel of Juror-peers would be the final arbiter of the law, and this was encoded into the U.S. Constitution and Law in this country. The institution of the Jury as the final check/balance on the Government has been eroded over time in this country, but there are efforts to bring it back. The Fully-Informed Jury Association is one organization which seeks to educate Jurors of their rights, responsibilities, and powers, as well as restore their political function. Common Sense Justice is an organization in South Dakota with a FIJA amendment on the state election ballot this fall. Read up on Fully-Informed Juries, and if you are called to serve as a Juror, take your rights and responsibilities seriously.
I used to have the pac-man board game. It was really cool, but my kid brother and I used to throw the marbles at each other and we ended up losing most of them.
At any rate, fair-use shouldn't even apply to creating a personal backup of a copyrighted work, because copyright law applies to distribution of work, not to the actual act of copying.
Woops. I re-read the relevent sections of the law, and I realize that this statement is in error.
However, I do maintain that Section 107 grants a lot of leeway in interpreting whether a use is fair. Thus, a completely non-commercial archival copy which causes no effect in the original market for the work, could easily be considered fair, even if it is a copy of the work in toto.
The law currently protects copyright holders to an excessive degree.
That's a judgment call that you are not qualified to make.
As (supposedly), sovereign, voting citizens of the United States, That is a judgement call which we are most certainly qualified and entitled to make. Our decision may not carry the immediate legal weight that a judge's decision might, but we are well within our rights and qualifications to interpret the law, and participate in the democratic process toward furthering our collective self-government. It's part of the citizenship package here, and should have been covered in your high-school civics class.
First of all, making "archival backups" (i.e., copies) is not covered by fair use. Title 17 clearly spells out the criteria for a use of copyrighted material to be considered fair, and one of those criteria involves the portion of the material used as a fraction of the whole. In other words, if you use ten seconds of a song, you're much more likely to be engaging in fair use than if you use a minute. Using the whole thing is right out. So making bit-for-bit copies of copyrighted media may or may not be legal, depending on the circumstances, but it is definitely not covered by the definition of fair use.
Title 17 specifies several criteria for use of copyrighted material to be considered fair, and also states that any number of those criteria might make the use fair, but they all need not apply, and give judges considerable leeway in interpreting the use as fair or not. So, if the market impact of the use is none, and there is no commercial transaction involved, a judge might well allow copying of an entire work.
At any rate, fair-use shouldn't even apply to creating a personal backup of a copyrighted work, because copyright law applies to distribution of work, not to the actual act of copying. There is even specific wording in the law which allows for the creation of archival copies (in the case of software), as long as the copies are not distributed, and are destroyed or provided with the originals, to a purchaser, if the ownership is ever transferred. Personally, I think it's silly that this applies ONLY to software, but I think that a lot of things written into laws are stupid.
No, you're not using your imagination too much, and I think that actually, this feature of the game really drives home the evils and social difficulty which is brought about by conquest. Civ3 demonstrates how hard it is to conquer people militarily, and encourages players to explore other routes to cultural advancement. I've always preferred technological victories in the Civ franchise than the bloody total-conquest finale, myself. The Cultural supremacy option in Civ3 is interesting as well. I feel a lot better about myself and my wiliness if I can win by means other than simply shooting all who oppose me.
Which doesn't mean I don't vigorously defend my borders or retaliate when other nations attack my people, of course...
Uh, that's not really the case these days. Sure diamonds are still a bit inflated due to their cultural status (which was and is largely manufactured by coordinated advertising and marketing efforts), but the article being referenced here was written in 1982. That's twenty years ago. In 1980, the price of a 1 carat diamond was over $60,000 (in 1980 dollars)! By 82, that rock had already shed 2/3 of its value. These days, a 1 carat diamond fetches around $5-6000 retail (if it's a really high-quality gem), but realistically you can get a 1-carat I/I1 clarity solitare ring on Ebay for well under $1000. Beautiful SI clarity in the.5 carat range, with additional smaller rocks as side-mounts are in that affordable price-range as well. If you adjust for inflation, the market depreciation for these rocks is truly staggering (something like a 97-98% loss).
The diamond market crash is old news. It's done. The fact is, even given the strong output of mining, there is still a lot of labor involved in producing diamond jewelry. It's estimated that you have to move 250 tons of diamond-bearing earth to retrieve 1 carat of polished, gem-quality rock. Then the stone has to be polished, cut, polished, examined, appraised, stored, marketed, shipped, stored again, appraised again, marketed again and sold at retail. That results in quite a bit of markup, but there is a wide enough demand for diamond jewelry to fuel this business and allow these companies to make a profit, and while it's quite a tidy sum, it's nothing like the rediculous markups they used to achieve.
Furthermore, contrary to your initial argument, the resale value does drop significantly when you walk out of the store with it. It always has. You've never been able to recapture the retail value of diamond jewelry by reselling it. Most jewelery retailers won't even talk to you about buying back used diamonds, leaving you to choose between exchanges which will offer slightly less than wholesale to you, pawn shops which won't even offer that, or newer secondary markets, like ebay, where you can probably capture something slightly higher than wholesale for it.
There's some really sweet white-box laptop deals available from http://www.discountlaptops.com, including some tasty Sager notebooks. A friend of mine at work just got one, and it's really nice...I'd have no qualms about getting one if I didn't already have an office-issued Latitude (and I might just pick one up for my next home PC anyway). All of the computers at that site are available with no OS by default. I'm not sure if/when that will change, but it's definitely a nice option for you now.
As for Linux interoperability, Linux-laptop.net had a few writeups about getting Linux running on some older Sager models, but nothing on the latest product line. I'd be very interested to know if anyone's tried this, how well it worked, and how much driver-tweaking and hair-pulling was involved in the process.
I think the logic is probably something like, if they preinstall a modern Free OS like Linux, they'd have to face a wave of customers (slashdotters, likely) who would (reasonably) expect them to back up such an offering with support as well.
On the other hand, who still has software for DOS? Who'd use it? Hell, does it even run on the hardware (although I hear the FreeDOS team is actually working out a 32-bit DOS with some fairly modern features, so who knows what will come of this).
The point is, no one in their right mind is probably going to call tech support complaining they can't get Evolution to connect to their Exchange Server, or why doesn't this modem work? It's basically a bone to throw at big customers site-licensed for Windows who want to buy bare-pc's and run their custom scripted installs for the standard software suite anyway (You know, I work for a site-licensed corp, and I've ordered Dells, and I didn't even know bare systems were an option until this whole story broke...their web-site isn't very forthcoming about this kind of thing, and probably will continue to not be)
The fifty year NASA plan, composed August, 2000, by D.V. Smitherman (which, by the way is available for download at the Highlift site) begins with several assumptions that this plan bypasses. Among them are that the cable will be tethered to the top of a very tall tower (Smitherman at one point suggests a tower 3000 km tall!), and the elevator cars will ride up the cable along maglev rails, which will provide power for ascending cars, and collect power from descending cars, along with solar power plants along the cable.
This plan seems to have abandoned the tower idea, simplified the transport mechanism by using mechanical means, and turned to a new power source. Of course, this plan doesn't provide the capacity that the fifty-year Smitherman plan does, but it does set up a very good first step and infrastructure to accelerate the construction of a second-generation elevator capable of meeting or exceeding the specs of the previous concept. As much is pretty much stated on the Summary page at Highlift.
What you're not calculating is the dispersion effect. 80 Sniper bullets contain a lot of kinetic energy, sure, but all that energy is divided up around several thousand tiny little pieces of shrapnel, the size of a cornflake or smaller...
It may or may not have legal merit. The issue is up for discussion. Anyone is free to make an interpretation of the law, but the only interpretation that really matters (i.e. is legally binding) is that of a judge presiding over a court of law.
Really? Would you be so kind as to point out to me exactly where the AHRA [virtualrecordings.com] states that, please?
I mistakenly attributed the wrong law here, for which I apologize. However, the Congressional Act from which this law originated notwithstanding, the wording of U.S.C. Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 117 is clear:
it is not an infringement...to make...another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided...that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only... (omissions made for space do not change the meaning of the quoted passage)
So, the fact that you can copy this copyrighted information (the law addresses software specifically) is pretty explicity spelled out. Reading further, 117 also allows for the leasing of software you own, as long as you transfer all of your rights in the program (as defined by your license agreement with the manufacturer), and no others as part of the lease.
Now of course, the law becomes very grey, because although every U.S. Citizen has the right to make such archival copies, very few of us actually have the means, especially with regards to software distributed on non-general purpose media (proprietary video-game cartridges). It is a very difficult burden on the average consumer to be expected to purchase a ROM read/write device in order to exercise his/her rights under S.117, and a judge could very well rule that the end workaround of downloading a ROM for play on an emulator of a game which the consumer in question owned a legitimate copy is not, in effect, a violation of Title 17, although the letter of the law had been broken, because the consumer had no other way to exercise his/her rights. Of course, if the act of downloading ROMs is not illegal, that says nothing about the legality of serving them, which is where the entire system begins to look like a farce, and keeps this whole cottage industry firmly in the grey market. However, CC's tactic of leasing or loaning the games in question seems to fall within the scope of Section 117, except for the fact that an ephemeral copy is made during the transmission of the lease over the Internet.
I would now argue that it is not inconceivable for a judge to apply some of the rules regarding "ephimeral copies" in Section 112 in this context, even though that section more or less applies only to audio broadcasts. The reason I think this could possibly apply is that while the law is written to allow for Internet music broadcasts, given a reasonably strong protection scheme on the works being "shared", it is arguably a fair way for consumers to exercise their rights under the First Sale doctrine to share items they have I would imagine it would take a very clever lawyer and a lot of case-history research to come up with enough precedents to convince the hypothetical judge to rule in this way, but depending on the court hearing the case, it could happen. A lot of these laws are fairly new and not very well tested, so there is a lot of legal uncertainty here.
You are correct in assuming that the code within the game consoles (generally the ROMs don't need to be reverse engineered to create an emulator, rather the consoles themselves do, at which point if the emulator is doing its job right the ROM images should execute with no further modifications), is protected by copyright, but copyright provides no protection for computer code which is reverse-engineered. In most cases the product of reverse-engineering will not be exactly the same as the original copyrighted code, but will in effect be another work (which can then be copyrighted) which merely expresses the same idea (in this case a set of algorithms) which was encompassed in the original. Any patent protection on the mechanisms involved would be subject to the wording of the patent, and in many (maybe even most) cases, the protection can be worked around by reimplementing the same functionality in different ways.
Before you go making forcefully declarative statements about Copyright Law, maybe you should actually read it.
While I agree with your assessment that 24 hour trial periods are not legal, the other activities you decree against the law are under no such prohibition. For instance, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 specifically allows consumers to make backup copies of any digital media they purchase for the purposes of archival and protection against media damage.
I also don't see what possible legal arguments can be constructed against "Borrowing". U.S. Courts have consistently held up the "First Sale" doctrine for copyrighted works. When you purchase copyrighted work on any media, you are legally free to dispose of that particular copy of the media in any way you choose, save distributing multiple copies. You can give it away, loan it out, rent it, lease it, or sell it to a third party. Studios, and later game companies tried to sue video rental chains for renting movies and games when that practice first started, and the rental outlets won. This is really not much different, although a savvy IP lawyer might argue that the vaguaries of "ephemeral copies" made in internet transmissions make this a totally different ball-game. It is uncertain, sure, but hardly the cut-and-dry sort of case you're claiming.
Another question I have is how is emulation on shaky ground due to reverse engineering? Reverse-engineering has been held to be perfectly legal in hundreds of court-cases, at nearly all levels of the judiciary. Even video-game emulators have been held to be a legally permissible product of reverse-engineering technology for compatibility purposes, in the case Sony vs. Connectix Software. Case law is firmly on the side of reverse-engineers in this regard (unless of course patents are infringed upon, in which case there is no need for reverse-engineering anyway, since the patent definition is a publicly available spec of the technology in question).
You seem to have a strong emotional feeling on this issue. I don't care to argue the philosophical or moral issues involved in freedom of information, or the balance of the right to share knowledge against the benefit of providing knowledge generators with a socially useful reward for their activities, because your tone indicates you are not capable of conducting such an argument in a rational and civil manner.
I will, however, happily correct your glaringly false statements about the law regarding these issues, as it has nothing of the black-and-white clarity you seem to think it has.
Blockbuster was able to fight off Nintendo and Sega back in the late 80s/early 90s because they had a lot of revenues to hire good attorneys with. As cool as this operation appears to be, I don't get the impression from looking at their site that they are extremely well-funded, and as such, despite the overwhelming favor of legal precedent a competent trial lawyer could bring to bear in their case, The flashier, more connected legal goons Nintendo could easily throw at these guys will likely argue that the fact these guys are operating on the internet makes it all different, and they should be shut down. I wish CC luck, as they are already on Nintendo's radar. However, the only legal correspondence from the company was in July, 2001, so they may actually be giving them a pass.
Now, if they start doing the same sort of distribution with other systems, especially more modern ones (playstation, PS2, Gamecube, or heaven-forbid XBox), they might find themselves in significantly hotter water. In that case I'd recommend the strategy of getting big, fast, charging a good monthly membership fee for content use, and building a revenue base to hire a good legal team.
Well, they are both contributing input to Motorola on this development, but the article states nothing of any alliance between the two companies, or even any intent to introduce cross-platform networking compatibility to their systems. From the vagueness of the technical descriptions in the article this might end up being a feature in the next-gen consoles, but whether that means you'll be able to play Quake 4 on your PS3 versus your buddy across the street on his Nintendo is not at all clear yet.
Only $500/seat? Good lord how I wish our versioning software was that cheap. Right now I'm writing a Purchase Request for 4 more Rational ClearCase licenses...
When the license + 1 year support for each is all added up, we'll be cutting a check to the tune of about $16,000
I've asked the CM people before why we're not using something cheap (free) like CVS (as the sysadmin, I don't get to make the decisions, I just get to make it work once the stuff is purchased), and they casually said "Hell, I don't know, that's just what we're stuck with."
I guess "Hell, I don't know, that's just what we're stuck with" is an appropriate attitude when you've got oodles and oodles of taxpayer dollars to spend...
Slashdot Mirror
Link please? That sounds like an interesting read.
The Science Channel (a Discovery property), has "Theme sequences" of similar programming at similar times. One of the themes is Marine Science. On Friday Evening or Sunday afternoon, you can get Undersea earthquakes, sharks, and all the underwater footage you want. Admittedly not as good as a full-time sharks channel, but when it's not Shark-week, at least you can get something. The Saturday afternoon Astronomy/Astrobiology sequence is pretty cool too.
My only gripe with digital cable is that the box Time Warner gave me doesn't have an A/D audio converter, so I get great digital sound on digital-only channels, but the analog channels don't output over the coax cable, and I have to switch inputs on my receiver, which is a pain in the ass. I've never had much complaint about the reception, though...it's crystal clear, even on the Analog channels (esp. on the analog channels...occasionally, but not too often, I get pixelation on digital channels).
As for channel surfing, I'm hooked on the digital channel guide to browse what's on, while I'm still watching a program.
Most people with HDTV sets don't have HDTV, they just get better DVD quality. A lot of people get Digital Cable (heavily compressed NTSC/480i signal) and are convinced that their expensive set is important.
I have an HDTV set, and I receive HDTV channels from my Digital Cable provider. They give me all the local OTA HD channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOS, WB), an HDTV Demo channel looping some beautifully-produced PBS programming, and the HDTV-version of HBO (which I also subscribe to). If I subscribed to Showtime, I'd also get SHO-HD. Furthermore, my Digital Cable provider (Time Warner), does not charge extra for these channels. They are included with the digital cable package, and can be used by anyone with the necessary hardware (Analong component video outputs are right on the cable box).
So, apparently, I'm getting a similar HDTV experience to your own, but from a single service provider, and without the hassle of setting a big antenna on top of my apartment building. Unfortunately, I don't have an attic in my apartment, and since it's concrete-block construction, including the walls between units, indoor antennas can't pick up a lot of signal anyway.
Also, although I'm in an apartment, I live in a rather suburban area dominated by single-family homes. I doubt I'm the only person in my area with this setup.
Nope. The woman (in my opinion a self-righteous, nosy old biddy hungry for her 15 minutes) eavesdropped on these guys conversation and heard the following snippet, which could be construed as threatening:
''Do you think we have enough to bring it down?''
``If we don't have enough, I have contacts. We can get enough to bring it down.''
What was going on, of course, was that one of the three, who didn't have a car, was considering buying one back home, and they were discussing their options to transport it back down to Miami, where they were attending school.
And of course, every movie studio is going to be clamoring for the rights to produce a film romanticizing the fight *against* strong copyright laws...
Damn, and I wasted all my mod points earlier this morning...it's been so long since a FP was really funny...April 1, IIRC
The plan calls for a small variety of frames to be built. Most of the articles have bandied about a small/compact, midsize, and large chassis, on which various body designs can be bolted on. So you'll be able to get a nice big road-hog to pimp around in if you need it, or you can opt for the smaller model.
What I want to know, is how are the chop-shops gonna streeeeetch these things for limos?
The same would appear to go for Hungry Hungry Hippos...but Hasbro is still marketing that.
I've looked up this practice, and it appears to be the same practice that is mentioned on the FIJA site as an argument in favor of fully-informed Juries (or at least the argument that fully-informed Juries are bad for defendants because bigoted juries might return unfavorable verdicts). That is, if a jury returns a horrible verdict to the detriment of the defendent, the judge still is empowered to show leniency to the defendent. I can't find any mention of this ever being used in any way than on the defendant's behalf. If you can cite a case to the contrary, I'd be very interested to see it.
Both of the above statements are wrong. The Jury does not have the power to have a law re-examined or repealed by issuing a verdict. However, the Jury DOES have the power, and the right, to find a defendent "Not Guilty" for any reason. Judges and Attorneys don't really like this, and Judges will usually try to dismiss Jurors if they express disagreement with the law as written before the trial, but once the Jury issues a Not Guilty verdict, they're pretty much stuck with it.
This actually happens, too. The most famous case in which the Jury blatantly refused to apply the law was the trial of William Penn for sedition in London in 1670. The Magna Carta reserved the right of conviction to Juries only, and a few brave men withstood imprisonment and starvation in the face of an angry judge trying to force them to change their verdict. The jurors, however, would not relinquish their right under Common Law to decide the verdict, and would not find a man guilty for peacefully holding a religious assembly, Conventicle Act or not.
William Penn later came to America, and founded Pennsylvania. He advocated the idea that a panel of Juror-peers would be the final arbiter of the law, and this was encoded into the U.S. Constitution and Law in this country. The institution of the Jury as the final check/balance on the Government has been eroded over time in this country, but there are efforts to bring it back. The Fully-Informed Jury Association is one organization which seeks to educate Jurors of their rights, responsibilities, and powers, as well as restore their political function. Common Sense Justice is an organization in South Dakota with a FIJA amendment on the state election ballot this fall. Read up on Fully-Informed Juries, and if you are called to serve as a Juror, take your rights and responsibilities seriously.
I used to have the pac-man board game. It was really cool, but my kid brother and I used to throw the marbles at each other and we ended up losing most of them.
At any rate, fair-use shouldn't even apply to creating a personal backup of a copyrighted work, because copyright law applies to distribution of work, not to the actual act of copying.
Woops. I re-read the relevent sections of the law, and I realize that this statement is in error.
However, I do maintain that Section 107 grants a lot of leeway in interpreting whether a use is fair. Thus, a completely non-commercial archival copy which causes no effect in the original market for the work, could easily be considered fair, even if it is a copy of the work in toto.
The law currently protects copyright holders to an excessive degree.
That's a judgment call that you are not qualified to make.
As (supposedly), sovereign, voting citizens of the United States, That is a judgement call which we are most certainly qualified and entitled to make. Our decision may not carry the immediate legal weight that a judge's decision might, but we are well within our rights and qualifications to interpret the law, and participate in the democratic process toward furthering our collective self-government. It's part of the citizenship package here, and should have been covered in your high-school civics class.
First of all, making "archival backups" (i.e., copies) is not covered by fair use. Title 17 clearly spells out the criteria for a use of copyrighted material to be considered fair, and one of those criteria involves the portion of the material used as a fraction of the whole. In other words, if you use ten seconds of a song, you're much more likely to be engaging in fair use than if you use a minute. Using the whole thing is right out. So making bit-for-bit copies of copyrighted media may or may not be legal, depending on the circumstances, but it is definitely not covered by the definition of fair use.
Title 17 specifies several criteria for use of copyrighted material to be considered fair, and also states that any number of those criteria might make the use fair, but they all need not apply, and give judges considerable leeway in interpreting the use as fair or not. So, if the market impact of the use is none, and there is no commercial transaction involved, a judge might well allow copying of an entire work.
At any rate, fair-use shouldn't even apply to creating a personal backup of a copyrighted work, because copyright law applies to distribution of work, not to the actual act of copying. There is even specific wording in the law which allows for the creation of archival copies (in the case of software), as long as the copies are not distributed, and are destroyed or provided with the originals, to a purchaser, if the ownership is ever transferred. Personally, I think it's silly that this applies ONLY to software, but I think that a lot of things written into laws are stupid.
No, you're not using your imagination too much, and I think that actually, this feature of the game really drives home the evils and social difficulty which is brought about by conquest. Civ3 demonstrates how hard it is to conquer people militarily, and encourages players to explore other routes to cultural advancement. I've always preferred technological victories in the Civ franchise than the bloody total-conquest finale, myself. The Cultural supremacy option in Civ3 is interesting as well. I feel a lot better about myself and my wiliness if I can win by means other than simply shooting all who oppose me.
Which doesn't mean I don't vigorously defend my borders or retaliate when other nations attack my people, of course...
Uh, that's not really the case these days. Sure diamonds are still a bit inflated due to their cultural status (which was and is largely manufactured by coordinated advertising and marketing efforts), but the article being referenced here was written in 1982. That's twenty years ago. In 1980, the price of a 1 carat diamond was over $60,000 (in 1980 dollars)! By 82, that rock had already shed 2/3 of its value. These days, a 1 carat diamond fetches around $5-6000 retail (if it's a really high-quality gem), but realistically you can get a 1-carat I/I1 clarity solitare ring on Ebay for well under $1000. Beautiful SI clarity in the .5 carat range, with additional smaller rocks as side-mounts are in that affordable price-range as well. If you adjust for inflation, the market depreciation for these rocks is truly staggering (something like a 97-98% loss).
The diamond market crash is old news. It's done. The fact is, even given the strong output of mining, there is still a lot of labor involved in producing diamond jewelry. It's estimated that you have to move 250 tons of diamond-bearing earth to retrieve 1 carat of polished, gem-quality rock. Then the stone has to be polished, cut, polished, examined, appraised, stored, marketed, shipped, stored again, appraised again, marketed again and sold at retail. That results in quite a bit of markup, but there is a wide enough demand for diamond jewelry to fuel this business and allow these companies to make a profit, and while it's quite a tidy sum, it's nothing like the rediculous markups they used to achieve.
Furthermore, contrary to your initial argument, the resale value does drop significantly when you walk out of the store with it. It always has. You've never been able to recapture the retail value of diamond jewelry by reselling it. Most jewelery retailers won't even talk to you about buying back used diamonds, leaving you to choose between exchanges which will offer slightly less than wholesale to you, pawn shops which won't even offer that, or newer secondary markets, like ebay, where you can probably capture something slightly higher than wholesale for it.
There's some really sweet white-box laptop deals available from http://www.discountlaptops.com, including some tasty Sager notebooks. A friend of mine at work just got one, and it's really nice...I'd have no qualms about getting one if I didn't already have an office-issued Latitude (and I might just pick one up for my next home PC anyway). All of the computers at that site are available with no OS by default. I'm not sure if/when that will change, but it's definitely a nice option for you now.
As for Linux interoperability, Linux-laptop.net had a few writeups about getting Linux running on some older Sager models, but nothing on the latest product line. I'd be very interested to know if anyone's tried this, how well it worked, and how much driver-tweaking and hair-pulling was involved in the process.
I think the logic is probably something like, if they preinstall a modern Free OS like Linux, they'd have to face a wave of customers (slashdotters, likely) who would (reasonably) expect them to back up such an offering with support as well.
On the other hand, who still has software for DOS? Who'd use it? Hell, does it even run on the hardware (although I hear the FreeDOS team is actually working out a 32-bit DOS with some fairly modern features, so who knows what will come of this).
The point is, no one in their right mind is probably going to call tech support complaining they can't get Evolution to connect to their Exchange Server, or why doesn't this modem work? It's basically a bone to throw at big customers site-licensed for Windows who want to buy bare-pc's and run their custom scripted installs for the standard software suite anyway (You know, I work for a site-licensed corp, and I've ordered Dells, and I didn't even know bare systems were an option until this whole story broke...their web-site isn't very forthcoming about this kind of thing, and probably will continue to not be)
The fifty year NASA plan, composed August, 2000, by D.V. Smitherman (which, by the way is available for download at the Highlift site) begins with several assumptions that this plan bypasses. Among them are that the cable will be tethered to the top of a very tall tower (Smitherman at one point suggests a tower 3000 km tall!), and the elevator cars will ride up the cable along maglev rails, which will provide power for ascending cars, and collect power from descending cars, along with solar power plants along the cable.
This plan seems to have abandoned the tower idea, simplified the transport mechanism by using mechanical means, and turned to a new power source. Of course, this plan doesn't provide the capacity that the fifty-year Smitherman plan does, but it does set up a very good first step and infrastructure to accelerate the construction of a second-generation elevator capable of meeting or exceeding the specs of the previous concept. As much is pretty much stated on the Summary page at Highlift.
What you're not calculating is the dispersion effect. 80 Sniper bullets contain a lot of kinetic energy, sure, but all that energy is divided up around several thousand tiny little pieces of shrapnel, the size of a cornflake or smaller...
It may or may not have legal merit. The issue is up for discussion. Anyone is free to make an interpretation of the law, but the only interpretation that really matters (i.e. is legally binding) is that of a judge presiding over a court of law.
Really? Would you be so kind as to point out to me exactly where the AHRA [virtualrecordings.com] states that, please?
I mistakenly attributed the wrong law here, for which I apologize. However, the Congressional Act from which this law originated notwithstanding, the wording of U.S.C. Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 117 is clear:
it is not an infringement...to make...another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided...that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only...
(omissions made for space do not change the meaning of the quoted passage)
So, the fact that you can copy this copyrighted information (the law addresses software specifically) is pretty explicity spelled out. Reading further, 117 also allows for the leasing of software you own, as long as you transfer all of your rights in the program (as defined by your license agreement with the manufacturer), and no others as part of the lease.
Now of course, the law becomes very grey, because although every U.S. Citizen has the right to make such archival copies, very few of us actually have the means, especially with regards to software distributed on non-general purpose media (proprietary video-game cartridges). It is a very difficult burden on the average consumer to be expected to purchase a ROM read/write device in order to exercise his/her rights under S.117, and a judge could very well rule that the end workaround of downloading a ROM for play on an emulator of a game which the consumer in question owned a legitimate copy is not, in effect, a violation of Title 17, although the letter of the law had been broken, because the consumer had no other way to exercise his/her rights. Of course, if the act of downloading ROMs is not illegal, that says nothing about the legality of serving them, which is where the entire system begins to look like a farce, and keeps this whole cottage industry firmly in the grey market. However, CC's tactic of leasing or loaning the games in question seems to fall within the scope of Section 117, except for the fact that an ephemeral copy is made during the transmission of the lease over the Internet.
I would now argue that it is not inconceivable for a judge to apply some of the rules regarding "ephimeral copies" in Section 112 in this context, even though that section more or less applies only to audio broadcasts. The reason I think this could possibly apply is that while the law is written to allow for Internet music broadcasts, given a reasonably strong protection scheme on the works being "shared", it is arguably a fair way for consumers to exercise their rights under the First Sale doctrine to share items they have I would imagine it would take a very clever lawyer and a lot of case-history research to come up with enough precedents to convince the hypothetical judge to rule in this way, but depending on the court hearing the case, it could happen. A lot of these laws are fairly new and not very well tested, so there is a lot of legal uncertainty here.
You are correct in assuming that the code within the game consoles (generally the ROMs don't need to be reverse engineered to create an emulator, rather the consoles themselves do, at which point if the emulator is doing its job right the ROM images should execute with no further modifications), is protected by copyright, but copyright provides no protection for computer code which is reverse-engineered. In most cases the product of reverse-engineering will not be exactly the same as the original copyrighted code, but will in effect be another work (which can then be copyrighted) which merely expresses the same idea (in this case a set of algorithms) which was encompassed in the original. Any patent protection on the mechanisms involved would be subject to the wording of the patent, and in many (maybe even most) cases, the protection can be worked around by reimplementing the same functionality in different ways.
Before you go making forcefully declarative statements about Copyright Law, maybe you should actually read it.
While I agree with your assessment that 24 hour trial periods are not legal, the other activities you decree against the law are under no such prohibition. For instance, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 specifically allows consumers to make backup copies of any digital media they purchase for the purposes of archival and protection against media damage.
I also don't see what possible legal arguments can be constructed against "Borrowing". U.S. Courts have consistently held up the "First Sale" doctrine for copyrighted works. When you purchase copyrighted work on any media, you are legally free to dispose of that particular copy of the media in any way you choose, save distributing multiple copies. You can give it away, loan it out, rent it, lease it, or sell it to a third party. Studios, and later game companies tried to sue video rental chains for renting movies and games when that practice first started, and the rental outlets won. This is really not much different, although a savvy IP lawyer might argue that the vaguaries of "ephemeral copies" made in internet transmissions make this a totally different ball-game. It is uncertain, sure, but hardly the cut-and-dry sort of case you're claiming.
Another question I have is how is emulation on shaky ground due to reverse engineering? Reverse-engineering has been held to be perfectly legal in hundreds of court-cases, at nearly all levels of the judiciary. Even video-game emulators have been held to be a legally permissible product of reverse-engineering technology for compatibility purposes, in the case Sony vs. Connectix Software. Case law is firmly on the side of reverse-engineers in this regard (unless of course patents are infringed upon, in which case there is no need for reverse-engineering anyway, since the patent definition is a publicly available spec of the technology in question).
You seem to have a strong emotional feeling on this issue. I don't care to argue the philosophical or moral issues involved in freedom of information, or the balance of the right to share knowledge against the benefit of providing knowledge generators with a socially useful reward for their activities, because your tone indicates you are not capable of conducting such an argument in a rational and civil manner.
I will, however, happily correct your glaringly false statements about the law regarding these issues, as it has nothing of the black-and-white clarity you seem to think it has.
Blockbuster was able to fight off Nintendo and Sega back in the late 80s/early 90s because they had a lot of revenues to hire good attorneys with. As cool as this operation appears to be, I don't get the impression from looking at their site that they are extremely well-funded, and as such, despite the overwhelming favor of legal precedent a competent trial lawyer could bring to bear in their case, The flashier, more connected legal goons Nintendo could easily throw at these guys will likely argue that the fact these guys are operating on the internet makes it all different, and they should be shut down. I wish CC luck, as they are already on Nintendo's radar. However, the only legal correspondence from the company was in July, 2001, so they may actually be giving them a pass.
Now, if they start doing the same sort of distribution with other systems, especially more modern ones (playstation, PS2, Gamecube, or heaven-forbid XBox), they might find themselves in significantly hotter water. In that case I'd recommend the strategy of getting big, fast, charging a good monthly membership fee for content use, and building a revenue base to hire a good legal team.
Well, they are both contributing input to Motorola on this development, but the article states nothing of any alliance between the two companies, or even any intent to introduce cross-platform networking compatibility to their systems. From the vagueness of the technical descriptions in the article this might end up being a feature in the next-gen consoles, but whether that means you'll be able to play Quake 4 on your PS3 versus your buddy across the street on his Nintendo is not at all clear yet.
Only $500/seat? Good lord how I wish our versioning software was that cheap. Right now I'm writing a Purchase Request for 4 more Rational ClearCase licenses...
When the license + 1 year support for each is all added up, we'll be cutting a check to the tune of about $16,000
I've asked the CM people before why we're not using something cheap (free) like CVS (as the sysadmin, I don't get to make the decisions, I just get to make it work once the stuff is purchased), and they casually said "Hell, I don't know, that's just what we're stuck with."
I guess "Hell, I don't know, that's just what we're stuck with" is an appropriate attitude when you've got oodles and oodles of taxpayer dollars to spend...
I know, I know. I'm going to hell.