Sure, it would restrict their options, but if the law is interpreted as you suggest that this would likely lead to attempts to notify the customer. Also, restricting liberty can be interpreted to being different to restricting speeds and so on - cutting down speeds and notifying the customer to fix their computer is most certainly annoying (and has it's own problems), but could fall within a legal solution to the dilemma - force the customer to fix the infected PC if they want their speed back.
Just a disclaimer, I don't personally believe in the solution that I offered. I'm just saying that there doesn't necessarily have to be a conflict.
is that the idiocy of one country will force people to care about what happens to their own - that Thailand will be a warning about where the UK et. al. are headed.
Ah, I forgot about coles/woolworths*. But still, I'd rather have someone who deals with the problem half the time than nobody to hold them accountable at all.
*For the non-australian reader, these are the two large grocer chains in Australia. They have a very bad track record (a good summary of what goes on can be found here ) in terms of playing fair.
the government interfering in private companies is ALWAYS bad.
I'd have to disagree there. I have no problem with the ACCC slamming businesses who try to screw over the general public. It's good to have someone policing the corporations. Prevents another company doing what Microsoft used to do (although, if someone was to point out Telstra then I would have to concede the point)
Sounds more like Comcast washing their hands of any involvement. Yes, TOS are considered legally binding documents, but do you really think that it would hold in court?
The Catholic Church has not made a formal ruling on the existence of extraterrestrials. However, writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father José Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, said in 2008 that intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.
Patents and copyright, when applied correctly with sane laws, do this, and help advancement by giving people incentive to create. The objection that most* people have on here is when they are used to prevent people from creating because someone is interested in keeping a monopoly and screwing the market, as we see all too commonly.
*Not counting the people that just want everything for free - I mean the people that actually have a reasoned argument and stand on the issue
It is shortsighted to find the "tolerant", "pragmatic" projects better. It is not just puristic zealots against "I just want it to work". The availability of free software increases the options users have.
Agreed. However, I'd say that both camps are equally important. As you said, it is shortsighted to simply jump to the easy solution. Without the puristic philosophy, open source as it is would cease to exist, and would simply be a few programs built by hobbyists as opposed to a serious alternative to MS/Apple products.
On the other hand, the pragmatic solutions such as Ubuntu bring open source out of the realm of programmers and computer hobbyists and takes it to the masses. If it weren't for projects willing to compromise on software licensing, then open source will always be behind the ball on proprietary software - for example, how many people who are "iffy" about linux refuse to touch it if they couldn't use flash?
Projects such as WildFox, assuming that it goes ahead, help to keep FOSS a real option for most people. If we want people to take *nix et. al. seriously, then we need the pragmatic ideology just as much as we need puristic one.
How do you find any program on windows? Goggling until you find what you want, then downloading it. Similar could be said for *nix. Of course, if you know the name of the program, then all you have to do is type in a terminal (assuming Ubuntu) sudo apt-get install . Or, one of the package managers such as Synaptic does all the work for you. Of course, failing that I can see your point - I've never been able to work out how to compile from source code (mainly because I've never had the need to sit down and work it out), but there are guides on the web, and support forums with a "No-RTFM comments" policy.
Well said.
Avatar - there's another work getting into crap over supposed plagarism. I'm kind of wondering how long it'll take one of the supposed authors of the "copied" works to try and stake a claim.
Agreed. I'm an amateur playwright, trying to write a musical at the moment. As I write, I hear how the songs sound in my head. Some time later, I'll be humming a tune from it to myself and then suddenly say "crap, that bit sounds one heck of a lot like this song that was sung in the 70's/80's. Damn. Now I have to go back and change it to avoid any crap I might get into on the off-chance this might get published and become successful in the future".
Think I'm willing to risk it? There was recently an idiotic court ruling in my country. I'm not taking any chances.
Agreed. Do people who commit mail fraud get banned from using the postal service?
As terrible as the crime is, this was WAY too overzealous.
This needs a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense tag.
Fingerprints and photos =/= Genetic Data
Although to answer your question, not much. Although, if illiteracy is as bad as it suggests in TFA, then the purpose is probably to overcome this to some degree - if people can't write their name, then recording their fingerprint and their photo will reduce errors. There's a few reasons listed in TFA:
But Ashish Bose, a retired professor of Indian and Asian population studies at Delhi University, warned of mistakes creeping in despite the best efforts.
"Uneducated people in villages never know their ages correctly. It is never a '51' it always 50 or 55. But overall we conduct a good census -- no doubt about it and the vast majority of people are keen to participate," he said.
S. Parasuraman, a demography professor at the Tata Institute of the Social Sciences in Mumbai, said the new population registry will provide a valuable database.
"In a disaster for instance, one will be able to pinpoint how many people were living at a place before and after the catastrophe struck. It will be a compilation of useful information enabling proper governance," he said.
Data collected for the National Population Register will in turn facilitate the issue of the 16-digit Unique Identity Numbers to all Indian residents.
This will serve as a one-stop proof for all Indians to establish their identity, eliminating the current need to produce multiple personal documents.
Now, putting aside the inherent "creepiness" of fingerprint scanning, it makes sense. It's the Indian poverty version of a driver's license as an ID.
I support patents and copyright. They are necessary to get innovations out into the world. The point I was trying to make is that no matter how well intentioned the system is, it screws up because people exploit it; this sort of thing can be counterproductive. If a corporation (read: bastard) decides to sit on a patent and make people pay through the nose to use it, rather than actually do something with it, it's a terrible waste. Now, when we're talking about genes that cause breast cancer, something that could be built off to cause a cure, then it's doubly offensive.
Before you start telling us how it is on Earth, you might actually want to come visit first. Its a real shame you can't be rational.
Perhaps if you were to provide some sort of link, I might be rational. I know, hypocritical coming from the guy who didn't, but I wasn't outright calling someone wrong. I was just saying that while it sounds good in theory, it doesn't work in the real world.
That might work in your perfect world. But you're forgetting something:
This.
Is.
Earth.
And does anybody want to see this sort of thing in the hands of a patent troll? I'd rather not that risk.
Also, this isn't an invention - they can't "reveal how it works", in your words. If that was the case, they'd be patenting breast cancer instead of the genes that cause it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, it would restrict their options, but if the law is interpreted as you suggest that this would likely lead to attempts to notify the customer. Also, restricting liberty can be interpreted to being different to restricting speeds and so on - cutting down speeds and notifying the customer to fix their computer is most certainly annoying (and has it's own problems), but could fall within a legal solution to the dilemma - force the customer to fix the infected PC if they want their speed back.
Just a disclaimer, I don't personally believe in the solution that I offered. I'm just saying that there doesn't necessarily have to be a conflict.
which has the same chord changes as a million other songs going back thousands of years.
I figured that that this offers a concrete demonstration of what you mean
is that the idiocy of one country will force people to care about what happens to their own - that Thailand will be a warning about where the UK et. al. are headed.
Ah, I forgot about coles/woolworths*. But still, I'd rather have someone who deals with the problem half the time than nobody to hold them accountable at all.
*For the non-australian reader, these are the two large grocer chains in Australia. They have a very bad track record (a good summary of what goes on can be found here ) in terms of playing fair.
the government interfering in private companies is ALWAYS bad.
I'd have to disagree there. I have no problem with the ACCC slamming businesses who try to screw over the general public. It's good to have someone policing the corporations. Prevents another company doing what Microsoft used to do (although, if someone was to point out Telstra then I would have to concede the point)
Why? Because it's politicians that have no idea how the internet works who want this. Remember, Conroy said a few years back that it was possible to filter torrents . We have idiots in charge.
Sounds more like Comcast washing their hands of any involvement. Yes, TOS are considered legally binding documents, but do you really think that it would hold in court?
(especially important to the religious crowd)
Not neccesarily. From the wiki page on extraterrestrial life:
The Catholic Church has not made a formal ruling on the existence of extraterrestrials. However, writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father José Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, said in 2008 that intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.
Ah, dammit, sorry about the formatting.
There's a facebook group about that add - http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-wouldnt-steal-a-car-But-id-download-one-if-i-could/183252739422'>"I wouldn't steal a car, but I'd download one if I could."
Patents and copyright, when applied correctly with sane laws, do this, and help advancement by giving people incentive to create. The objection that most* people have on here is when they are used to prevent people from creating because someone is interested in keeping a monopoly and screwing the market, as we see all too commonly.
*Not counting the people that just want everything for free - I mean the people that actually have a reasoned argument and stand on the issue
It is shortsighted to find the "tolerant", "pragmatic" projects better. It is not just puristic zealots against "I just want it to work". The availability of free software increases the options users have.
Agreed. However, I'd say that both camps are equally important. As you said, it is shortsighted to simply jump to the easy solution. Without the puristic philosophy, open source as it is would cease to exist, and would simply be a few programs built by hobbyists as opposed to a serious alternative to MS/Apple products.
On the other hand, the pragmatic solutions such as Ubuntu bring open source out of the realm of programmers and computer hobbyists and takes it to the masses. If it weren't for projects willing to compromise on software licensing, then open source will always be behind the ball on proprietary software - for example, how many people who are "iffy" about linux refuse to touch it if they couldn't use flash?
Projects such as WildFox, assuming that it goes ahead, help to keep FOSS a real option for most people. If we want people to take *nix et. al. seriously, then we need the pragmatic ideology just as much as we need puristic one.
http://xkcd.com/90/
You mean, they check to make sure their screen is turned on before calling support?
How do you find any program on windows? Goggling until you find what you want, then downloading it. Similar could be said for *nix. Of course, if you know the name of the program, then all you have to do is type in a terminal (assuming Ubuntu) sudo apt-get install . Or, one of the package managers such as Synaptic does all the work for you.
Of course, failing that I can see your point - I've never been able to work out how to compile from source code (mainly because I've never had the need to sit down and work it out), but there are guides on the web, and support forums with a "No-RTFM comments" policy.
This is like suing a car manufacturer because somebody got run over by a car they created.
Well, you might get sued, but any competent judge...
There's your problem. How often have we seen this not happen?
Well said.
Avatar - there's another work getting into crap over supposed plagarism. I'm kind of wondering how long it'll take one of the supposed authors of the "copied" works to try and stake a claim.
Agreed. I'm an amateur playwright, trying to write a musical at the moment. As I write, I hear how the songs sound in my head. Some time later, I'll be humming a tune from it to myself and then suddenly say "crap, that bit sounds one heck of a lot like this song that was sung in the 70's/80's. Damn. Now I have to go back and change it to avoid any crap I might get into on the off-chance this might get published and become successful in the future".
Think I'm willing to risk it? There was recently an idiotic court ruling in my country. I'm not taking any chances.
A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable.
It has been reported that 14 years is closer to optimal.
Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.
And of course these speaches on copyright make a good primer on what to expect when the copyright law is percieved to be unfair.
Hey, a starving man will be happy to gulp down a half-eaten crust. Sure, it's not perfect but at least it's sort of reasonable.
Enough said. I feel sorry for the family if this spreads.
Agreed. Do people who commit mail fraud get banned from using the postal service?
As terrible as the crime is, this was WAY too overzealous.
This needs a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense tag.
Although to answer your question, not much. Although, if illiteracy is as bad as it suggests in TFA, then the purpose is probably to overcome this to some degree - if people can't write their name, then recording their fingerprint and their photo will reduce errors. There's a few reasons listed in TFA:
But Ashish Bose, a retired professor of Indian and Asian population studies at Delhi University, warned of mistakes creeping in despite the best efforts. "Uneducated people in villages never know their ages correctly. It is never a '51' it always 50 or 55. But overall we conduct a good census -- no doubt about it and the vast majority of people are keen to participate," he said. S. Parasuraman, a demography professor at the Tata Institute of the Social Sciences in Mumbai, said the new population registry will provide a valuable database. "In a disaster for instance, one will be able to pinpoint how many people were living at a place before and after the catastrophe struck. It will be a compilation of useful information enabling proper governance," he said. Data collected for the National Population Register will in turn facilitate the issue of the 16-digit Unique Identity Numbers to all Indian residents. This will serve as a one-stop proof for all Indians to establish their identity, eliminating the current need to produce multiple personal documents.
Now, putting aside the inherent "creepiness" of fingerprint scanning, it makes sense. It's the Indian poverty version of a driver's license as an ID.
Before you start telling us how it is on Earth, you might actually want to come visit first. Its a real shame you can't be rational.
Perhaps if you were to provide some sort of link, I might be rational. I know, hypocritical coming from the guy who didn't, but I wasn't outright calling someone wrong. I was just saying that while it sounds good in theory, it doesn't work in the real world.
That might work in your perfect world. But you're forgetting something:
This.
Is.
Earth.
And does anybody want to see this sort of thing in the hands of a patent troll? I'd rather not that risk.
Also, this isn't an invention - they can't "reveal how it works", in your words. If that was the case, they'd be patenting breast cancer instead of the genes that cause it.