I just can't come to grips with the fact that people will actually order stuff like this off the net. It would be no different than taking random drugs you bought off the street corner. It just seems insane to me.
I'm also curious if any countries take steps to actively stamp these out? It seems like it should be fairly simple to figure out where these are based. I can only assume they are based in counties with no extradition laws?
But it does go against their right to free speech. I'm totally confused by the second court appeal that said it was not covered under the Right to Privacy? What does that have to even do with this? This is obviously a free speech issue. The original decision IMO was the right one. These 'obscenity' laws are not constitutional. You may not like what people have to say, but they still have the right to say it. These harm no one (it's acting, not real life). Yeah they are tasteless, and unacceptable to the vast majority of citizens, but if they don't like it they don't have to look. I can protect my own sensibilities, thank you very much.
It appears this affects IE6. I didn't find any substantive evidence for IE7 or IE8. I don't think this is some sort of plot. Even my own company is still hanging on to IE6 for dear life (god knows why). If it's true that it affects only IE6, I don't see this as a premeditated act. If it was, why wouldn't they affect 7 and 8?
Is there any evidence that this happens on IE7 or IE8?
This is terrible news. They will kill LAN parties unless someone happens to have a T1 at home. The typical user broadband connection would crawl with more than a handful of people all going through the same link.
The claim that it will prevent piracy is stupidity at it's best, which is something I didn't expect from Blizzard. I have zero interest playing with the prepubescent crowd that traffics BNet. I also seriously doubt they can improve it to the point where it's lag free like a local LAN either. It's physically impossible to approach that level of performance with a remote server. I won't be holding my breath.
Last but not least, this pretty much screws folks with poor ping times (so long Australia).
1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The first factor is about whether the use in question helps fulfill the intention of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public, or whether it aims to only "supersede the objects" of the original for reasons of personal profit.
Clearly this does not apply in this case
For the second case: social usefulness of freely available information can weigh against the appropriateness of copyright for certain fixations
Again, does something so common weigh against the need for a copyright? Yes, I think it does.
The third factor assesses the quantity or percentage of the original copyrighted work that has been imported into the new work. In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole
This one is undoubtedly an exact copy of the original work yet this one alone is not binding as other precedents as well as the other fair use rules are looked at as a whole. (see Sony vs. Universal Studios)
The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work. The court not only investigates whether the defendant's specific use of the work has significantly harmed the copyright owner's market, but also whether such uses in general, if widespread, would harm the potential market of the original.
Would the widespread use of Happy Birthday as it happens today hamper the copyright owners ability to exploit his or her original work? Obviously not.
No I didn't miss it. Unless you are performing something or using the performance to gain profit (much like televising copyrighted DVD's in a local video link) to either profit directly or indirectly then they would have a very difficult case to prove. If others in a restaurant for instance, could even hear you singing it, and it could be proven that it was a 'performance' intended to attract customers or enhance profit, then you wouldn't have much of a case.
I suppose it could be argued that a restaurant accepts 'birthday parties', and under this RIAA ruling, they could be said to be culpable just by hosting the 'B-Day party', but the restaurant would not be directly contributing to the 'Happy Birthday' song, and of course wouldn't know that it was going to be sung.
From snopes: (excuse any typing errors..I had to transcribe this)
"Does this mean that everyone who warbles "Happy Birthday to You" to family members at birthday parties is engaging in copyright infringement if they fail to obtain permission from or pay royalties to the song's publishers? No. Royalties are due, of course, for commercial uses of the song, such as playing or singing it for profit, using it in movies, television programs, and stage shows, or incorporating it into musical products such as watches and greeting cards; as well, royalties are due for public performance, defined by copyright law as performances which occur "at a place open to the public, or at any place where a substantial number of person outside of a normal circle of a family and it's social acquaintances is gathered." So, crooning "Happy Birthday to You" to family members and friends at home is fine, but performing a copyrighted work in a public setting such as a restaurant or a sports area technically requires a license from ASCAP or the Harry Fox Agency (although such infringements are rarely prosecuted).
Note it specifies "substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of family and it's social acquaintances is gathered". It is not illegal to sing it in public. Delivering it as some sort of 'show' or entertainment in a restaurant however would be although I doubt anyone would consider Happy Birthday a performance art.
Snopes also indicates it's perfectly legal to sing happy birthday to friends without infringing. It's only if you do a commercial version, or for profit scenarios that you would be in violation of copyright.
Actually Windows 7 doesn't either in the UK. Web browsers were also not considered key components back then so it wasn't at all unusual to have an OS without it. You also forget that browser software is free now as it was then. I don't consider it a value.
What key functionality does Windows 7 have that 95 does not? And by key functionality, I mean end user features that are 'new'. Not tweaks on existing features. By that, I mean 64 bit for example. Although it could be said that Win7 can address much more memory, the typical end user probably won't need it (the demands of the OS itself not withstanding).
I'll get you started. NTFS was very much needed with the advent of large media files, virtual disks, etc. I would count this as a 'new' feature that an end user sees benefit from. I don't consider it to be worth twice the cost of the original OS.
There is a reason that XP continues to thrive. The cost to upgrade isn't worth it. There are no sufficiently tempting new features in Vista or Windows 7 (other than relief from Vista) that requires a typical end user, or even an enterprise to upgrade. Given the choice they would remain on XP. Microsoft is forcing the issue by expiring support which will bring the business classes in line but they have little or no leverage against the home user.
I suspect that's why they are 'giving away' the Windows 7 RC candidate for 9 months 'free'. Get people using the new OS and hope they will think the cost of a new Windows 7 key will outweigh their hesitance to spend that kind of cash for features that most of them don't care about. When faced with reinstalling XP/Vista, I suspect many non-technical users will probably opt to buy a key rather than reformat.
It's probably related to the fact that you could pick up Windows 95 for about 90 bucks. There was no 'home', or 'home premium', or whatever. There was just a full version for 90 bucks. To get the 'full' version of the newest flavor of Windows 7, we must shell out almost 4 times the cost. This in just a little over 10 years. It's a bit ridiculous when you look at the rate of inflation. The product offers new features, but so do many software products on the market, yet they tend to retain the same costs.
If I'm paying so much more for an OS, I expect much more value.
Why is the above post flamebait? Granted the wording in the last bit could have been a bit more..erm..politically correct and on-topic, but I found it actually interesting. I wasn't aware that someone else had proposed a similar theory, although I wish the above poster had included a link for handy reference.
I'm sorry but if you are implying that in this specific case, that money doesn't play a part then you are deluding yourself (sorry, I couldn't think of a nicer way to phrase this. I don't mean to sound like an ass). This is entirely about the costs to industry to go 'green'.
Agreed, as long as they do agree that determining costs should not fuzzy the actual root cause. Find root cause first and then determine possible actions taking costs into account.
The man states they aren't taking into account the global temperatures for the last 10 (11?) years. Any sensible person would tell you that 10 years doesn't even register on an earthly historical scale.
Of course even this scale is infinitesimal in the larger scale but we don't have solid data. That doesn't mean we can discount what we do have.
The trends are pretty clear. There are all sorts of small 'drops' in global temperature over 5-10 years, yet the actual trend is to spike sharply upwards, especially in the last 20-30 years. I'm not a scientist, but even I can see a trend here. You'd have to be blind to miss it.
I didn't suggest he is not a scientist. Please see my original post. I suggested that simply having a physics and an economics degree didn't qualify him as a climatologist.
A physics degree does not give him an innate understanding of every system (eco or otherwise). He might understand the basic mechanics but it does not mean he will know all of the moving pieces that make up the final answer. He will probably not even know what questions to ask to ensure he has all aspects of it covered. If a physicist was so competent in all areas, we would have only physics degrees.
They are supposed to be evaluating hard data. Wouldn't an economy degree also bring monetary costs into the question? Economy aside, I'm more interested in the hard data, not what it will cost to resolve it. That is a question for later once they agree on a root cause.
economy - the system of production and distribution and consumption
economy - the efficient use of resources; "economy of effort"
economy - an act of economizing; reduction in cost
This is not news. The guy had a physics degree, and an economics degree. Neither which fully qualifies him to report on Global Warming. Perhaps if he had an ecological degree to go along with the physics degree I'd give him more weight. As it is, I suspect he was speaking more from his economics degree.
Facebook's way would be a disaster. I can find something on google in about 5 seconds flat. Facebook is just a design disaster. When it comes to relevant news and info from my family members, I'll keep that in mind when I'm looking for the latest deals from Microsoft by being the 1000th person to 'forward this e-mail', or the latest "You might be a redneck" chain letter. My family rates right above low grade moron when it comes to anything technical.
I'm really hoping this swing back towards more regulation will put a stop to these kinds of abuses. They are obviously far out of line with real world costs and every provider is in collusion. The same goes for text messaging 'costs', which cost magnitudes less than a phone call to transmit.
How does the current law handle out of state sales that are ordered via snail mail? This should be no different to my way of thinking. Amazon has to 'live' somewhere and that state benefits from it (as it should). Just because a state can't attract a company to live in their state doesn't mean that all others outside of that state should be penalized for choosing some other state besides NC. Sucks to be small business owners there, but the is no different that "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
If they don't like the local law, you don't do business there.
Either I missed it or the article didn't specify, but it seems like hearing would be processed in a central part of the brain (either left or right), and not each ear individually handled by one side of the brain and vice versa. This doesn't make much sense to me.
Exactly. 7 years of old information to go through. Not what I would call effective. When you want to track open 'questions', it's not useful. I'm not talking about genera how-to. I'm talking about something specific to getting problems resolved. A forum's "new post to the top" just isn't useful for that, nor does it track when an question is resolved and can be ignored or when an question is still open and someone needs help.
Slashdot Mirror
I just can't come to grips with the fact that people will actually order stuff like this off the net. It would be no different than taking random drugs you bought off the street corner. It just seems insane to me.
I'm also curious if any countries take steps to actively stamp these out? It seems like it should be fairly simple to figure out where these are based. I can only assume they are based in counties with no extradition laws?
But it does go against their right to free speech. I'm totally confused by the second court appeal that said it was not covered under the Right to Privacy? What does that have to even do with this? This is obviously a free speech issue. The original decision IMO was the right one. These 'obscenity' laws are not constitutional. You may not like what people have to say, but they still have the right to say it. These harm no one (it's acting, not real life). Yeah they are tasteless, and unacceptable to the vast majority of citizens, but if they don't like it they don't have to look. I can protect my own sensibilities, thank you very much.
It appears this affects IE6. I didn't find any substantive evidence for IE7 or IE8. I don't think this is some sort of plot. Even my own company is still hanging on to IE6 for dear life (god knows why). If it's true that it affects only IE6, I don't see this as a premeditated act. If it was, why wouldn't they affect 7 and 8?
Is there any evidence that this happens on IE7 or IE8?
This is terrible news. They will kill LAN parties unless someone happens to have a T1 at home. The typical user broadband connection would crawl with more than a handful of people all going through the same link.
The claim that it will prevent piracy is stupidity at it's best, which is something I didn't expect from Blizzard. I have zero interest playing with the prepubescent crowd that traffics BNet. I also seriously doubt they can improve it to the point where it's lag free like a local LAN either. It's physically impossible to approach that level of performance with a remote server. I won't be holding my breath.
Last but not least, this pretty much screws folks with poor ping times (so long Australia).
Really? QOS and Piracy? Who's running that place?
You are also forgetting fair use, which applies as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The first factor is about whether the use in question helps fulfill the intention of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public, or whether it aims to only "supersede the objects" of the original for reasons of personal profit.
Clearly this does not apply in this case
For the second case: social usefulness of freely available information can weigh against the appropriateness of copyright for certain fixations
Again, does something so common weigh against the need for a copyright? Yes, I think it does.
The third factor assesses the quantity or percentage of the original copyrighted work that has been imported into the new work. In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole
This one is undoubtedly an exact copy of the original work yet this one alone is not binding as other precedents as well as the other fair use rules are looked at as a whole. (see Sony vs. Universal Studios)
The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work. The court not only investigates whether the defendant's specific use of the work has significantly harmed the copyright owner's market, but also whether such uses in general, if widespread, would harm the potential market of the original.
Would the widespread use of Happy Birthday as it happens today hamper the copyright owners ability to exploit his or her original work? Obviously not.
No I didn't miss it. Unless you are performing something or using the performance to gain profit (much like televising copyrighted DVD's in a local video link) to either profit directly or indirectly then they would have a very difficult case to prove. If others in a restaurant for instance, could even hear you singing it, and it could be proven that it was a 'performance' intended to attract customers or enhance profit, then you wouldn't have much of a case.
I suppose it could be argued that a restaurant accepts 'birthday parties', and under this RIAA ruling, they could be said to be culpable just by hosting the 'B-Day party', but the restaurant would not be directly contributing to the 'Happy Birthday' song, and of course wouldn't know that it was going to be sung.
From snopes: (excuse any typing errors..I had to transcribe this)
"Does this mean that everyone who warbles "Happy Birthday to You" to family members at birthday parties is engaging in copyright infringement if they fail to obtain permission from or pay royalties to the song's publishers? No. Royalties are due, of course, for commercial uses of the song, such as playing or singing it for profit, using it in movies, television programs, and stage shows, or incorporating it into musical products such as watches and greeting cards; as well, royalties are due for public performance, defined by copyright law as performances which occur "at a place open to the public, or at any place where a substantial number of person outside of a normal circle of a family and it's social acquaintances is gathered." So, crooning "Happy Birthday to You" to family members and friends at home is fine, but performing a copyrighted work in a public setting such as a restaurant or a sports area technically requires a license from ASCAP or the Harry Fox Agency (although such infringements are rarely prosecuted).
Note it specifies "substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of family and it's social acquaintances is gathered". It is not illegal to sing it in public. Delivering it as some sort of 'show' or entertainment in a restaurant however would be although I doubt anyone would consider Happy Birthday a performance art.
Snopes also indicates it's perfectly legal to sing happy birthday to friends without infringing. It's only if you do a commercial version, or for profit scenarios that you would be in violation of copyright.
Actually Windows 7 doesn't either in the UK. Web browsers were also not considered key components back then so it wasn't at all unusual to have an OS without it. You also forget that browser software is free now as it was then. I don't consider it a value.
What key functionality does Windows 7 have that 95 does not? And by key functionality, I mean end user features that are 'new'. Not tweaks on existing features. By that, I mean 64 bit for example. Although it could be said that Win7 can address much more memory, the typical end user probably won't need it (the demands of the OS itself not withstanding).
I'll get you started. NTFS was very much needed with the advent of large media files, virtual disks, etc. I would count this as a 'new' feature that an end user sees benefit from. I don't consider it to be worth twice the cost of the original OS.
There is a reason that XP continues to thrive. The cost to upgrade isn't worth it. There are no sufficiently tempting new features in Vista or Windows 7 (other than relief from Vista) that requires a typical end user, or even an enterprise to upgrade. Given the choice they would remain on XP. Microsoft is forcing the issue by expiring support which will bring the business classes in line but they have little or no leverage against the home user.
I suspect that's why they are 'giving away' the Windows 7 RC candidate for 9 months 'free'. Get people using the new OS and hope they will think the cost of a new Windows 7 key will outweigh their hesitance to spend that kind of cash for features that most of them don't care about. When faced with reinstalling XP/Vista, I suspect many non-technical users will probably opt to buy a key rather than reformat.
It's probably related to the fact that you could pick up Windows 95 for about 90 bucks. There was no 'home', or 'home premium', or whatever. There was just a full version for 90 bucks. To get the 'full' version of the newest flavor of Windows 7, we must shell out almost 4 times the cost. This in just a little over 10 years. It's a bit ridiculous when you look at the rate of inflation. The product offers new features, but so do many software products on the market, yet they tend to retain the same costs.
If I'm paying so much more for an OS, I expect much more value.
Why is the above post flamebait? Granted the wording in the last bit could have been a bit more..erm..politically correct and on-topic, but I found it actually interesting. I wasn't aware that someone else had proposed a similar theory, although I wish the above poster had included a link for handy reference.
They do realize you can just buy a 2 person earbud right?
http://www.amazon.com/Macally-PodDuo-Headphone-Splitter-iPod/dp/B00065XSWG
Those are handy on a plane or on a long car drive.
I'm sorry but if you are implying that in this specific case, that money doesn't play a part then you are deluding yourself (sorry, I couldn't think of a nicer way to phrase this. I don't mean to sound like an ass). This is entirely about the costs to industry to go 'green'.
Agreed, as long as they do agree that determining costs should not fuzzy the actual root cause. Find root cause first and then determine possible actions taking costs into account.
The man states they aren't taking into account the global temperatures for the last 10 (11?) years. Any sensible person would tell you that 10 years doesn't even register on an earthly historical scale.
Of course even this scale is infinitesimal in the larger scale but we don't have solid data. That doesn't mean we can discount what we do have.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
The trends are pretty clear. There are all sorts of small 'drops' in global temperature over 5-10 years, yet the actual trend is to spike sharply upwards, especially in the last 20-30 years. I'm not a scientist, but even I can see a trend here. You'd have to be blind to miss it.
I didn't suggest he is not a scientist. Please see my original post. I suggested that simply having a physics and an economics degree didn't qualify him as a climatologist.
A physics degree does not give him an innate understanding of every system (eco or otherwise). He might understand the basic mechanics but it does not mean he will know all of the moving pieces that make up the final answer. He will probably not even know what questions to ask to ensure he has all aspects of it covered. If a physicist was so competent in all areas, we would have only physics degrees.
They are supposed to be evaluating hard data. Wouldn't an economy degree also bring monetary costs into the question? Economy aside, I'm more interested in the hard data, not what it will cost to resolve it. That is a question for later once they agree on a root cause.
economy - the system of production and distribution and consumption
economy - the efficient use of resources; "economy of effort"
economy - an act of economizing; reduction in cost
Troll? Really? Questioning this guys credentials is considered a troll?
Al Gore isn't setting EPA policy.
This is not news. The guy had a physics degree, and an economics degree. Neither which fully qualifies him to report on Global Warming. Perhaps if he had an ecological degree to go along with the physics degree I'd give him more weight. As it is, I suspect he was speaking more from his economics degree.
Facebook's way would be a disaster. I can find something on google in about 5 seconds flat. Facebook is just a design disaster. When it comes to relevant news and info from my family members, I'll keep that in mind when I'm looking for the latest deals from Microsoft by being the 1000th person to 'forward this e-mail', or the latest "You might be a redneck" chain letter. My family rates right above low grade moron when it comes to anything technical.
Thanks but no thanks...
I'm really hoping this swing back towards more regulation will put a stop to these kinds of abuses. They are obviously far out of line with real world costs and every provider is in collusion. The same goes for text messaging 'costs', which cost magnitudes less than a phone call to transmit.
How does the current law handle out of state sales that are ordered via snail mail? This should be no different to my way of thinking. Amazon has to 'live' somewhere and that state benefits from it (as it should). Just because a state can't attract a company to live in their state doesn't mean that all others outside of that state should be penalized for choosing some other state besides NC. Sucks to be small business owners there, but the is no different that "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
If they don't like the local law, you don't do business there.
Either I missed it or the article didn't specify, but it seems like hearing would be processed in a central part of the brain (either left or right), and not each ear individually handled by one side of the brain and vice versa. This doesn't make much sense to me.
Exactly. 7 years of old information to go through. Not what I would call effective. When you want to track open 'questions', it's not useful. I'm not talking about genera how-to. I'm talking about something specific to getting problems resolved. A forum's "new post to the top" just isn't useful for that, nor does it track when an question is resolved and can be ignored or when an question is still open and someone needs help.