No, you misunderstand. Formal tests and approval are essential. This wasn't what prevented Penicillin as much as the fact that it wasn't patented. The failure to patent it actually slowed down its acceptance.
In fact, I totally agree with you. Given the time taken for Drugs to be approved, and the fact that there are no arguments to reduce this significantly, the drug industry requires a guarenteed return. Patants may or may not be the best way to acheive this, but they do their job.
Incidentally, I'm not familiar with Phen-fen. What happened there?
The idea is that if you know that you will be rewarded for spending several years producing a cure for a terrible disease, people are more likely to spend the time developing.
The drugs industry does still produce a lot of new products, and doesn't find the patent laws highly restrictive. The problem is that the cost of getting from a theory that something should work to a legal drug is very expensive. It has to go through several development stages, then several testing stages. This requires a lot of people to help in trials. It costs billions to get that far, and so far the company hasn't managed to sell a single product.
If the drug is not patented, as soon as a drug is released, competitors can start producing immediately and undercut the company that did the work easily.
An example was penicillin (so I've heard). That was not patented. It took a long time for the research to find out if it was actually useful, since nobody was willing to spend the money needed for tests. In the meantime, a lot of people who might have been saved died.
I'd rather see all licences declared void including the GPL than all licences declared valid, including the GPL. Especially if UCITA relied on this fact. Obviously, (IMO) the best case would be the agreement that all licences that do not allow you to refuse to accept the terms, and restrict yourself under copyright asre valid, those that do not are not.
However if you can download and make your own cd in less than an hour, why drive to the store to buy it?
I don't see what you mean here. If you can download and make a CD in less than an hour, they could obviously do the same for the same price. All the creative effort was by other people writing the code.
They can (and do) still charge for technical support. They can do that even without supplying a physical medium.
No license on that piece of software. Can't use it in any lawful way though (except as a coaster)
Well, if it was yours, you could legally install it and play around with it, and create a custom eversion for your own use. You just couldn't give it to anyone else. Likewise, if you found a book you could quite cheerfully make copies for your own use, quote from it (Where neccesary for a report or a review), cut it to pieces.
What's to stop me from distributing it, selling it, bundling it into my apps?
Copyright.
The original author is entitled to royalties for 70 years after he dies. Quite a lot of software is released without a licence, especially computer games. Still not legal to copy and redistribute.
O.K, so what happens if the FSF goto court and the GPL is officially declared a load of unenforcable rubbish?
It will suggest that all EULA's are unenforceable. Not necessarily of course. It all depends on other cases, and important aspects of precedent such as the colour of the packaging. Still, it will effectively weaken all EULA's.
You are nowhere near paranoid enough. On one hand, there's the obvious uselessness of these things for effective spying, on the other there's the extreme inventiveness of companies like doubleclick for coming up with ways of "Gathering market information"
I just get the feeling that these might be used to find out what people actually look at, and use that information for targetted advertising. People might even be willing volunteer for this for a 1 cent per minute fee.
Personally, I'd like to see contact lens versions of this. No idea is that would be possible (Focal depth of the eye and all that...), but it would be so cool to have flickering pupils:)
Given a hand, a pencil, an eraser, and an infinitely long piece of paper, a brain can easily emulate a Turing machine. Does that make it a Universal Turing machine? (I think emulation is the only criterion). Even without the paper and pencil, it can emulate such a machine, apart from the poor storage capability.
I wasn't approving of piracy. Just correcting the asserion that piracy is theft. Whether piracy is wrong is another matter. Likewise, in your other example, the 250 people are not stealing from the organisers. It still costs them the same amount to organise. Of course, if you aren't willing to pay for a ticket you should have no right to enter.
I have produced a profitable item. If you can find a way to undercut my home made fudge by 50% I'd be delighted. I could use the same technique myself, and match your price. I would retain my competitive advantage by having an established customer base. It would take you some time to duplicate my recipe. By that time, I would have had plenty of chance to recoup my development costs. I would of course be rather upset if you stole the actual fudge from me.
Piracy of course is different from this. In my fudge example, I'm charging you for the actual finished product. Not the data contained in the fudge. If I produced a piece of software, I would be upset if you copied it directly. I wouldn't consider it theft, but I would consider it wrong.
No, that would be a direct copy of information on a tangible medium. However, you would be perfectly entitled to look at the code, and work out what algorithms were used in which places. You would also be entitled to produce a piece of software that does exactly the same as long as you use none of the original code.
Copyright doesn't apply to everything. I can make a device that duplicates the function of my table, my cup, my radio. Why can't I do this with a console?
Surely you can't trademark a 4 letter acronym. PETA could stand for too many things.
Anyway, the obvious response is to create pita.org, or petta or pate. It will need a bit of imagination on the part of the creators, but it can be done.
Slashdot Mirror
Great for Transputers (Although those don't seem to be so popular these days)
Its terse.
No, you misunderstand. Formal tests and approval are essential. This wasn't what prevented Penicillin as much as the fact that it wasn't patented. The failure to patent it actually slowed down its acceptance.
In fact, I totally agree with you. Given the time taken for Drugs to be approved, and the fact that there are no arguments to reduce this significantly, the drug industry requires a guarenteed return. Patants may or may not be the best way to acheive this, but they do their job.
Incidentally, I'm not familiar with Phen-fen. What happened there?
Wouldn't that mean that the drugs would still have to go through the same set of tests though?
Surely it would be years before you can have the new drug approved for use on Humans.
3) GPL is NOT upheld. Then what? Does RMS have a contingency plan?
This would probably result in the FSF claiming breach of copyright, and suing based on that. This would probably be a totally different case though.
The idea is that if you know that you will be rewarded for spending several years producing a cure for a terrible disease, people are more likely to spend the time developing.
The drugs industry does still produce a lot of new products, and doesn't find the patent laws highly restrictive. The problem is that the cost of getting from a theory that something should work to a legal drug is very expensive. It has to go through several development stages, then several testing stages. This requires a lot of people to help in trials. It costs billions to get that far, and so far the company hasn't managed to sell a single product.
If the drug is not patented, as soon as a drug is released, competitors can start producing immediately and undercut the company that did the work easily.
An example was penicillin (so I've heard). That was not patented. It took a long time for the research to find out if it was actually useful, since nobody was willing to spend the money needed for tests. In the meantime, a lot of people who might have been saved died.
I'd rather see all licences declared void including the GPL than all licences declared valid, including the GPL. Especially if UCITA relied on this fact. Obviously, (IMO) the best case would be the agreement that all licences that do not allow you to refuse to accept the terms, and restrict yourself under copyright asre valid, those that do not are not.
I'm sure others disagree.
However if you can download and make your own cd in less than an hour, why drive to the store to buy it?
I don't see what you mean here. If you can download and make a CD in less than an hour, they could obviously do the same for the same price. All the creative effort was by other people writing the code.
They can (and do) still charge for technical support. They can do that even without supplying a physical medium.
No license on that piece of software. Can't use it in any lawful way though (except as a coaster)
Well, if it was yours, you could legally install it and play around with it, and create a custom eversion for your own use. You just couldn't give it to anyone else. Likewise, if you found a book you could quite cheerfully make copies for your own use, quote from it (Where neccesary for a report or a review), cut it to pieces.
What's to stop me from distributing it, selling it, bundling it into my apps?
Copyright.
The original author is entitled to royalties for 70 years after he dies. Quite a lot of software is released without a licence, especially computer games. Still not legal to copy and redistribute.
O.K, so what happens if the FSF goto court and the GPL is officially declared a load of unenforcable rubbish?
It will suggest that all EULA's are unenforceable. Not necessarily of course. It all depends on other cases, and important aspects of precedent such as the colour of the packaging. Still, it will effectively weaken all EULA's.
If I'd designed Civilization, you'd have had an extra population type called "lawyer"
Not quite the same, but apparently there's a lawyer unit in Civ: Call To Power. Quite a useful unit too by all accounts.
You are nowhere near paranoid enough. On one hand, there's the obvious uselessness of these things for effective spying, on the other there's the extreme inventiveness of companies like doubleclick for coming up with ways of "Gathering market information"
I just get the feeling that these might be used to find out what people actually look at, and use that information for targetted advertising. People might even be willing volunteer for this for a 1 cent per minute fee.
Everything can boot from a CDROM now.
My old 486 couldn't even if it had a CD-ROM drive. I can install a lot of OSes over the network, but I need a floppy to get started.
Personally, I'd like to see contact lens versions of this. No idea is that would be possible (Focal depth of the eye and all that...), but it would be so cool to have flickering pupils:)
After all, the film was highly regarded for its scientific accuracy and convincing portrayal of how the US would deal with such a situation.
I get the imprssion that the judge finds the whole case tedious and an overreaction. Chances are, whoever wins isn't really going get a major vistory.
he's a *cough*"good hacker"*cough* --
Hacking cough?
A good piss take I think. The poster is normally a lot more coherent.
If we did all think and act the same, then Open source would be no better than proprietry.
Working out whether we do all think the same is left as an excercise for the reader.
Given a hand, a pencil, an eraser, and an infinitely long piece of paper, a brain can easily emulate a Turing machine. Does that make it a Universal Turing machine? (I think emulation is the only criterion). Even without the paper and pencil, it can emulate such a machine, apart from the poor storage capability.
I wasn't approving of piracy. Just correcting the asserion that piracy is theft. Whether piracy is wrong is another matter. Likewise, in your other example, the 250 people are not stealing from the organisers. It still costs them the same amount to organise. Of course, if you aren't willing to pay for a ticket you should have no right to enter.
I have produced a profitable item. If you can find a way to undercut my home made fudge by 50% I'd be delighted. I could use the same technique myself, and match your price. I would retain my competitive advantage by having an established customer base. It would take you some time to duplicate my recipe. By that time, I would have had plenty of chance to recoup my development costs. I would of course be rather upset if you stole the actual fudge from me.
Piracy of course is different from this. In my fudge example, I'm charging you for the actual finished product. Not the data contained in the fudge. If I produced a piece of software, I would be upset if you copied it directly. I wouldn't consider it theft, but I would consider it wrong.
No, that would be a direct copy of information on a tangible medium. However, you would be perfectly entitled to look at the code, and work out what algorithms were used in which places. You would also be entitled to produce a piece of software that does exactly the same as long as you use none of the original code.
Copyright doesn't apply to everything. I can make a device that duplicates the function of my table, my cup, my radio. Why can't I do this with a console?
Theft is theft. Accept it.
And Piracy isn't theft, since you aren't actually depriving the original owner of the property.
Asking Censorware to remove their site from the database. Its not like any subdomains are likely to contain anything too dodgy.
They've done some dispicable things in the past, but I'm sure they don't want it to be too unreliable.
Considering the number of uses for the word Beaver though (ounty, rodent.....) why did they choose this as a word suitable for censorship?
Surely you can't trademark a 4 letter acronym. PETA could stand for too many things.
Anyway, the obvious response is to create pita.org, or petta or pate. It will need a bit of imagination on the part of the creators, but it can be done.