Yes - if you use google, you might find an answer to your problem and so actually have no excuse not to do something about it. Complaining on slashdot needs no follow-up action.
Bandwidth costs would be easily offset against further sales
That is also quite a bold statement, given that you have no data for the likely number of repeat (no-cost) downloads. If the number is high enough, then no number of extra sales will cover it.
(Note that I'm not saying that that's *likely*, just that it's *possible*)
Any civilisation sufficiently advanced to have created a ship that can travel intergalactic distances in meaningful time periods (eg a few years, rather than billions) is likely to have also invented weaponery quite capable of reducing the Earth to smoking rubble.
Those NASCAR cars are a great example of this concept
Those NASCAR cars are:
1) built for speed, not durability 2) are not designed or required to survive in a combat situation 3) are our tech, and cannot be compared to as yet unknown alien tech
Heaven forbid the chaos that would ensue if there were a peer reviewed, moderated system like Slashdot to replace our sacred institutions.
Actually, I tend to find slashdot very much like a lot of the criticisms that are levelled at the traditional journals - posts that toe the party line are pushed to the fore, while others are suppressed. Now, it's true that there is more than one party here, and so you see pro and con posts on most subjects, but there is a very, very heavy bias in certain areas.
I fail to see how that's different to the traditional journals, other than that we do it for free.
(Oh, and yes, some publishers making a good living might lose their monopoly gravy train in the process.)
Well, had you bothered to research the subject a little rather than apparently basing your comment on a single line written by the story submittor, you'd realise that the Royal Society uses the money it receives from publishing journals to fund other projects. They're not on a "monopoly gravy train", they're genuinely involved in the furtherence of science.
You call "reasonable" (I'm not making this up!) trying to force all society to use specially-designed hard-disks that will check whether the data they are writing is copyrighted?
Do you have a source for that? Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary proof and all that...
("All society"? *Most* of society doesn't even have access to a PC; I realise that you're upset about this, but a little less hyperbole wouldn't hurt...)
Incidentally, none of those things are even in the same league as attempting to get permission to use (supposedly) anti-terror legislation to spy on members of the public, if you ask me.
Commercial piracy needs pressing plants, needs sales outlets and you can track these places down and shut them down.
That really depends on your definition of "commercial". To me it means "for money on an organised basis", with an undercurrent of "by a registered company", but that's not necessarily a requirement. By my definition, for example, someone running off copies of CDs and DVDs on their home PC and selling them at work, to friends and family, or even on eBay, etc, is involved in commercial copyright infringement. Commerce is taking place - goods are changing hands for money. No pressing plants required, very much harder to chase down (unless the guy does use something like eBay as an outlet, or a friend or colleague rats them out).
Come on guys, we get slashvertisements like this so often it's only fair to give them their own topic. You don't even have to make it hidable (although is that fixed yet anyway?), but I think you owe it to all of us to at least be honest about it. Pretending like this just insults our intelligence.
Just another example of clueless bullies hiding behind the DMCA
They're not clueless, they're going after copyright violators. Now, I happen to be of the opinion that if some commercial work is out of print for more than some reasonable amount of time then it passes into the public domain. (There should perhaps be some proviso about ability to publish due to financial constraints or similar, but I'm easy on that).
However, I do not believe that there is any such provision in copyright law. Therefore, abandoned or not, if the copyright on those games has not lapsed then HoTU is infringing copyright, and the "clueless bullies" are well within their rights to go after them.
The proposed solution to this is to assume that there must be extra unobserved (hence dark) mass providing extra gravitational energy, and thus extra orbital velocity, to the more outlying stars.
Just to expand on this a little, as people may not know the physics behind this...
The stars in question are gravitationally atrracted to the centre of the galaxy, just like the Earth is gravitationally atrracted to the Sun. Just like the Earth, they must either circle the gravitational source, or "fall" towards it. In order to remain in their orbit (rather than moving inwards or outwards) their centripetal acceleration must be equal to the acceleration they feel from the gravitational pull of the galaxy. (Centripetal acceleration is the acceleration required to keep them moving in a circle)
If the gravitational pull is too strong, they'll be pulled in towards the galactic centre; if it's too weak, they'll fly off into space.
Measuring their orbital speed allows us to calculate their centripetal acceleration, and thus the acceleration they feel due to the gravitational pull of the galaxy. This in turn allows us to calculate the mass that is producing the gravitational field that they are in:
v**2/r = GM/r**2
Where v**2 is the speed of the star, squared; r is the radius of the orbit of the star; G is the gravitational constant; and M is the mass of the galaxy producing the gravitational force.
This gives us an estimate of the mass of the galaxy of rv**2/G.
The problem is that working through the numbers gives us a mass that's significantly higher than we can account for from what we see. So, that leaves us with three choices:
1) our understanding of dynamics is flawed (and so v**2/r is wrong) 2) our understanding of gravity is flawed (and so GM/r**2 is wrong) 3) there's stuff out there that we can't (currently) detect by other means
1) would be pretty fundamental (that's some very basic physics indeed), as would 2). That only really leaves 3) as an attractive proposition (imho).
The article compares the cost of the parts with the retail cost of the unit, but MS don't get the retail cost of the unit, they get the wholesale cost of the unit. Therefore (the reasoning goes), their losses are higher than that because of the retail markup.
The dose makes the poison. Too much of anything is bad for you; too little of some things is bad for you. Strike the right balance and you'll be fine.
Well, right up until old age gets you; let's face it, if there's secret way to become immortal we haven't found it yet. We're all going to die of something, might as well have a little fun in the meantime.
Given that the majority of them see absolutely nothing wrong in copyright infringement, the choice comes down to "free and 99% compatible" or "free and 100% compatible". In fact, what it really comes down to for them is "free but not the real thing so probably not as good - yeah, in fact, it can't be as good" and "free and the real thing".
Most of them probably don't realise that OpenOffice exists. Those that do almost certainly just don't care.
It's good for consumers, too. XP certified software has to conform to a number of standards, one of which is the ability to run as a non-privileged user account. The more this becomes the norm, the better off the whole internet will be, as people stop inadvertently zombifying their machines (or at least, do so much less often).
I don't think not wanting to hit continue anyway is a valid reason for returning your new adapter.
In theory, the drivers not being certified to work with your OS may kill any support contract you have in place with the OS vendor (in this case, MS). I'd call that a valid reason to return the product myself.
Some companies would not be buyable; most individuals would be buyable for the right sum of money. Don't forget that companies are run by collections of individuals - some of them are going to be as principled as you imagine your panel of experts to be.
If Sony waved a couple of million dollars under your nose to claim that their rootkit wasn't malware, would you really turn it down? You can retire on that - hell, invested properly, your kids can retire on it. All just for saying "Hey, you know what, this DRM isn't so bad after all..."
If you genuinely would turn it down, then I applaud your ability to stand by your principles; I really don't think I'd be able to myself.
They already have - witness the three way search engine war between Google, MSN and Yahoo! Okay, so no blood is being spilt, but it's definitely a fight.
The right to copy something (ie: copyright) can be Licensed to another party (say, an End User), who would have to accept the Agreement in order to receive the copyright license.
But the question of whether or not a given clause in the licence is enforcable falls within the scope of contract law, not copyright law. They are hiding behind contract law by including that clause, and then saying "as you broke the agreement, you have no licence, and so are violating copyright law".
With EULAs like thisthat give the rest of us who still support copyright (at least in principle) a bad name.
I hope Sunbelt have the courage and money to stand up to this in court. EULAs that attempt to impose restrictions such as this on end users are morally wrong and need to be declared unenforcable. I have no problem with the usual "no warranty, no guarantee, you're not allowed to copy this and give it to your friends, etc" sort of stuff, but this is bullshit.
average solar radiative power incident at the Earth's surface is 1370W/m^2 radius of the Earth r is 6400km Assuming the Earth presents essentially a flat disc to the Sun, that gives a total area of pi.r^2=1.3E8m That gives a total incident power of 1.8E11W 1TW = 1E12W, therefore we have approximately one fifth of a terawatt hitting the Earth's surface. That's a shitload of power, but nowhere near the quoted value.
Even using half the surface area of the Earth rather than the area of the disc it presents only doubles the estimate.
None of that allows for the niggling suspicion that that figure of 1370W may be at Earth's orbital distance, rather than actually incident upon the surface; it's been a long time since I did any Physics though, and I can't be arsed to work it out or look it up.
If everyone just goes online and downloads the new version every week...
Then they'll be able to make calls for as long as it takes the Verso guys to download the new version and update their blocking software. Alternatively, if they get really clever, they may be able to block it based on general characteristics rather than anything specific, and so maintain the block across changes.
Besides which, if there are too many version changes, soon enough the install base will become fragmented enough that it's next to useless anyway.
I think we need to go back to contracts not being accepted or signed unless done so on paper with a pen.
As others have pointed out, that has never been the case. For centuries before the common folk could read or write, they were entering into contracts with one another based on a word and a handshake. Even now, verbal contracts are binding if you can prove they were formed.
I can't find a link, but iirc the entertainment arm is essentially carrying the electronics arm at the moment in terms of profitability.
Oh, and it's been a long, long time since I automatically considered Sony-made electronics kit to be high quality. The last few Walkmans I had especially fell apart within about 6 months... (Meanwhile, my iRiver is still going strong 18 months of daily use later)
Not in the corporate environment - the IT department will simply challenge you to explain why you're using so much more bandwidth than anyone else. If you can't, you either stop or face disciplinary action. At my company that sort of thing could possibly be grounds for sumamry dismissal; ymmv.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes - if you use google, you might find an answer to your problem and so actually have no excuse not to do something about it. Complaining on slashdot needs no follow-up action.
Bandwidth costs would be easily offset against further sales
That is also quite a bold statement, given that you have no data for the likely number of repeat (no-cost) downloads. If the number is high enough, then no number of extra sales will cover it.
(Note that I'm not saying that that's *likely*, just that it's *possible*)
Any civilisation sufficiently advanced to have created a ship that can travel intergalactic distances in meaningful time periods (eg a few years, rather than billions) is likely to have also invented weaponery quite capable of reducing the Earth to smoking rubble.
Those NASCAR cars are a great example of this concept
Those NASCAR cars are:
1) built for speed, not durability
2) are not designed or required to survive in a combat situation
3) are our tech, and cannot be compared to as yet unknown alien tech
Heaven forbid the chaos that would ensue if there were a peer reviewed, moderated system like Slashdot to replace our sacred institutions.
Actually, I tend to find slashdot very much like a lot of the criticisms that are levelled at the traditional journals - posts that toe the party line are pushed to the fore, while others are suppressed. Now, it's true that there is more than one party here, and so you see pro and con posts on most subjects, but there is a very, very heavy bias in certain areas.
I fail to see how that's different to the traditional journals, other than that we do it for free.
(Oh, and yes, some publishers making a good living might lose their monopoly gravy train in the process.)
Well, had you bothered to research the subject a little rather than apparently basing your comment on a single line written by the story submittor, you'd realise that the Royal Society uses the money it receives from publishing journals to fund other projects. They're not on a "monopoly gravy train", they're genuinely involved in the furtherence of science.
What's wrong with that? They're being paid for, right?
You should be celebrating - it's money out of MS's hands and into those of the supporters of open source.
You call "reasonable" (I'm not making this up!) trying to force all society to use specially-designed hard-disks that will check whether the data they are writing is copyrighted?
Do you have a source for that? Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary proof and all that...
("All society"? *Most* of society doesn't even have access to a PC; I realise that you're upset about this, but a little less hyperbole wouldn't hurt...)
Incidentally, none of those things are even in the same league as attempting to get permission to use (supposedly) anti-terror legislation to spy on members of the public, if you ask me.
Commercial piracy needs pressing plants, needs sales outlets and you can track these places down and shut them down.
That really depends on your definition of "commercial". To me it means "for money on an organised basis", with an undercurrent of "by a registered company", but that's not necessarily a requirement. By my definition, for example, someone running off copies of CDs and DVDs on their home PC and selling them at work, to friends and family, or even on eBay, etc, is involved in commercial copyright infringement. Commerce is taking place - goods are changing hands for money. No pressing plants required, very much harder to chase down (unless the guy does use something like eBay as an outlet, or a friend or colleague rats them out).
Come on guys, we get slashvertisements like this so often it's only fair to give them their own topic. You don't even have to make it hidable (although is that fixed yet anyway?), but I think you owe it to all of us to at least be honest about it. Pretending like this just insults our intelligence.
Just another example of clueless bullies hiding behind the DMCA
They're not clueless, they're going after copyright violators. Now, I happen to be of the opinion that if some commercial work is out of print for more than some reasonable amount of time then it passes into the public domain. (There should perhaps be some proviso about ability to publish due to financial constraints or similar, but I'm easy on that).
However, I do not believe that there is any such provision in copyright law. Therefore, abandoned or not, if the copyright on those games has not lapsed then HoTU is infringing copyright, and the "clueless bullies" are well within their rights to go after them.
The proposed solution to this is to assume that there must be extra unobserved (hence dark) mass providing extra gravitational energy, and thus extra orbital velocity, to the more outlying stars.
Just to expand on this a little, as people may not know the physics behind this...
The stars in question are gravitationally atrracted to the centre of the galaxy, just like the Earth is gravitationally atrracted to the Sun. Just like the Earth, they must either circle the gravitational source, or "fall" towards it. In order to remain in their orbit (rather than moving inwards or outwards) their centripetal acceleration must be equal to the acceleration they feel from the gravitational pull of the galaxy. (Centripetal acceleration is the acceleration required to keep them moving in a circle)
If the gravitational pull is too strong, they'll be pulled in towards the galactic centre; if it's too weak, they'll fly off into space.
Measuring their orbital speed allows us to calculate their centripetal acceleration, and thus the acceleration they feel due to the gravitational pull of the galaxy. This in turn allows us to calculate the mass that is producing the gravitational field that they are in:
v**2/r = GM/r**2
Where v**2 is the speed of the star, squared; r is the radius of the orbit of the star; G is the gravitational constant; and M is the mass of the galaxy producing the gravitational force.
This gives us an estimate of the mass of the galaxy of rv**2/G.
The problem is that working through the numbers gives us a mass that's significantly higher than we can account for from what we see. So, that leaves us with three choices:
1) our understanding of dynamics is flawed (and so v**2/r is wrong)
2) our understanding of gravity is flawed (and so GM/r**2 is wrong)
3) there's stuff out there that we can't (currently) detect by other means
1) would be pretty fundamental (that's some very basic physics indeed), as would 2). That only really leaves 3) as an attractive proposition (imho).
The article compares the cost of the parts with the retail cost of the unit, but MS don't get the retail cost of the unit, they get the wholesale cost of the unit. Therefore (the reasoning goes), their losses are higher than that because of the retail markup.
The dose makes the poison. Too much of anything is bad for you; too little of some things is bad for you. Strike the right balance and you'll be fine.
Well, right up until old age gets you; let's face it, if there's secret way to become immortal we haven't found it yet. We're all going to die of something, might as well have a little fun in the meantime.
Given that the majority of them see absolutely nothing wrong in copyright infringement, the choice comes down to "free and 99% compatible" or "free and 100% compatible". In fact, what it really comes down to for them is "free but not the real thing so probably not as good - yeah, in fact, it can't be as good" and "free and the real thing".
Most of them probably don't realise that OpenOffice exists. Those that do almost certainly just don't care.
But the slashdot moderation process creates effective censorship
No it doesn't, you can always adjust your display preferences and read absolutely everything.
It's good for consumers, too. XP certified software has to conform to a number of standards, one of which is the ability to run as a non-privileged user account. The more this becomes the norm, the better off the whole internet will be, as people stop inadvertently zombifying their machines (or at least, do so much less often).
I don't think not wanting to hit continue anyway is a valid reason for returning your new adapter.
In theory, the drivers not being certified to work with your OS may kill any support contract you have in place with the OS vendor (in this case, MS). I'd call that a valid reason to return the product myself.
Some companies would not be buyable; most individuals would be buyable for the right sum of money. Don't forget that companies are run by collections of individuals - some of them are going to be as principled as you imagine your panel of experts to be.
If Sony waved a couple of million dollars under your nose to claim that their rootkit wasn't malware, would you really turn it down? You can retire on that - hell, invested properly, your kids can retire on it. All just for saying "Hey, you know what, this DRM isn't so bad after all..."
If you genuinely would turn it down, then I applaud your ability to stand by your principles; I really don't think I'd be able to myself.
They already have - witness the three way search engine war between Google, MSN and Yahoo! Okay, so no blood is being spilt, but it's definitely a fight.
The right to copy something (ie: copyright) can be Licensed to another party (say, an End User), who would have to accept the Agreement in order to receive the copyright license.
But the question of whether or not a given clause in the licence is enforcable falls within the scope of contract law, not copyright law. They are hiding behind contract law by including that clause, and then saying "as you broke the agreement, you have no licence, and so are violating copyright law".
With EULAs like thisthat give the rest of us who still support copyright (at least in principle) a bad name.
I hope Sunbelt have the courage and money to stand up to this in court. EULAs that attempt to impose restrictions such as this on end users are morally wrong and need to be declared unenforcable. I have no problem with the usual "no warranty, no guarantee, you're not allowed to copy this and give it to your friends, etc" sort of stuff, but this is bullshit.
I'll do it:
average solar radiative power incident at the Earth's surface is 1370W/m^2
radius of the Earth r is 6400km
Assuming the Earth presents essentially a flat disc to the Sun, that gives a total area of pi.r^2=1.3E8m
That gives a total incident power of 1.8E11W
1TW = 1E12W, therefore we have approximately one fifth of a terawatt hitting the Earth's surface. That's a shitload of power, but nowhere near the quoted value.
Even using half the surface area of the Earth rather than the area of the disc it presents only doubles the estimate.
None of that allows for the niggling suspicion that that figure of 1370W may be at Earth's orbital distance, rather than actually incident upon the surface; it's been a long time since I did any Physics though, and I can't be arsed to work it out or look it up.
If everyone just goes online and downloads the new version every week...
Then they'll be able to make calls for as long as it takes the Verso guys to download the new version and update their blocking software. Alternatively, if they get really clever, they may be able to block it based on general characteristics rather than anything specific, and so maintain the block across changes.
Besides which, if there are too many version changes, soon enough the install base will become fragmented enough that it's next to useless anyway.
I think we need to go back to contracts not being accepted or signed unless done so on paper with a pen.
As others have pointed out, that has never been the case. For centuries before the common folk could read or write, they were entering into contracts with one another based on a word and a handshake. Even now, verbal contracts are binding if you can prove they were formed.
I can't find a link, but iirc the entertainment arm is essentially carrying the electronics arm at the moment in terms of profitability.
Oh, and it's been a long, long time since I automatically considered Sony-made electronics kit to be high quality. The last few Walkmans I had especially fell apart within about 6 months... (Meanwhile, my iRiver is still going strong 18 months of daily use later)
Not in the corporate environment - the IT department will simply challenge you to explain why you're using so much more bandwidth than anyone else. If you can't, you either stop or face disciplinary action. At my company that sort of thing could possibly be grounds for sumamry dismissal; ymmv.