The identical procedure was done about a year ago at Texas Children's Hospital, just a few blocks away, by a different surgical team, and was reported in the Texas Medical Center's newspaper (my wife illustrated the article). I think the origin site of the donor nerve was different, but that's not a significant difference.
Apparently, science journalism isn't keeping up with reality very well, though I've noticed that a few articles on the recent transplant have been corrected to mention the earlier procedure. I bet TCH's PR people are raising a ruckus...
My professor has said that this is required as an attempt to prevent cheating by students who want to copy other people's code, in that you could potentially sue the student that copied your work.
In the U.S., a copyright notice is *NOT* needed to bring suit, you can sue anyway (although before/when you sue, you HAVE to register the copyright with the Copyright Office)..
Since 1978, any creative work is automatically copyrighted "on creation", as soon as it's recorded (written, saved digitally, photographed, etc.) Adding a notice does do several good things for an author but it's not required.
I've seen a lot of ill-informed comments on copyright law in this thread; U.S. copyright law does NOT give the copyright owner the absolute right to lock away their works in a vault. Copyright was designed to benefit the public (it says so in the U.S. Constitution). Once a work has been published, the public has some rights to obtain a work from a public archive, especially if the author/publisher has withdrawn it from market.
As I wrote in August in the last abandonware thread: Section 108 of the copyright law says that, among other things, libraries and other publicaly available archives may (under section e of the law) make a complete copy of a work that they have determined is otherwise unavailable at a fair price and give it to a library/archive user, provided a) they do not do so for commercial advantage and b) they display a particular notice as specified by the Copyright Office in 37 CFR 201.14 (PDF, scroll down to about page 20). The full text of the section e) reads:
(e) The rights of reproduction and distribution under this section apply to the entire work, or to a substantial part of it, made from the collection of a library or archives where the user makes his or her request or from that of another library or archives, if the library or archives has first determined, on the basis of a reasonable investigation, that a copy or phonorecord of the copyrighted work cannot be obtained at a fair price, if-
(1) the copy or phonorecord becomes the property of the user, and the library or archives has had no notice that the copy or phonorecord would be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research; and
(2) the library or archives displays prominently, at the place where orders are accepted, and includes on its order form, a warning of copyright in accordance with requirements that the Register of Copyrights shall prescribe by regulation.
Important: other parts of the section and of the law influence the legal interpretation of the above (so consult a lawyer), but the important point is, "abandonware" sites CAN be legal!
Note that Oracle has EXACTLY THE SAME CLAUSE in their EULA as MS.
Which is meaningless in court when someone makes a "public policy" arguement. I'm not saying Ellison isn't a wanker and hypocrite, I'm saying that *I* don't think that a EULA clause that gags basic performance reporting can be enforced.
The last thing you want is your competitor publishing benchmarks on your software.
Only an idiot would TRUST a competitor's benchmarks (or Ellison's dog-and-pony show). The REASON such a EULA clause is likely against public policy is that it gags any independent parties that don't toe a manufacturer's line (and lets them optimize for a chosen set of benchmarks, rather than the benchmarks of everybody).
The reason for this is obvious. It's just too easy to cook database benchmarks to favor whatever you want to favor.
You're right, it's obvious. That's why no one will trust an Oracle bench of MS or an MS bench of Oracle, or a GM review of Ford or a Ford review of GM, or Pepsi survey on Coke. It's obvious. What the EULA clause does is allow a company to (try to) control the press they get and limit it to tame third parties. If the auto industry could EULA out Consumer Reports, they would. They can't and MS and Oracle shouldn't be able to gag everybody either, IMHO.
I'll bet that this is completely enforceable. ESPCIALLY when the person you are trying to enforce it on is a competitor who has the same clause in their EULA.
Again, in a "public policy" argument, that won't hold water, 'cause
everybody gets treated the same in those arguments,
it's taken as a given that a competitor who can benefit from winning such an argument is going to carry it forward in a lawsuit
"Public policy" doesn't change depending on the party to the lawsuit, and if a clause is against "public policy" it doesn't matter who's paying for (or benefiting from) the legal work that produces such a decision, in fact, it's a positive that somebody with a vested interest is making the fight, rather having the government decide what's worth fighting for or waiting for some small-fry to risk everything "on principle".
The meaty part of this story is MS's claim that Ellison's comments violate the SQL Server license agreement, which requires permission before publishing any benchmarks. A dubious term to begin with, if you ask me,...
If you ask me too. There's a general principle in contract law (and a license agreement is a form of contract), that terms of a contract that are "unconscionable" will not be enforced by a court of law. This principle is broad and poorly defined, but is totally up to the courts in their discretion to decide, which means you have to have the resources to fight it out in court. I imagine Ellison just might be able to...
Most "unconscionable" contract terms are economically unfair, often because of severe inequity between the 2 contracting parties. However another common reason for finding a contract term to be "unconscionable" is that it is "against public policy". Many states have laws that prohibit contracts that force their residents to litigate in other states or using other state's laws, calling such terms "against public policy". A more detailed discussion (written for New York State lawyers) is here.
I think a contract term that prohibits someone from disclosing "trade secrets" is certainly enforceable. For a product that has very limited distribution, a "gag" clause that attempts to prohibit the transfer of technical information to a potential competitor is probably enforcerceable in most forms. However, in this case, any and every serious competitor has a copy of the product or can easily obtain one, and the "benchmark gag" is designed to allow Microsoft to control information available to potential customers on a critical purchase point - how well the product works. If MS changed the clause to require that the benchmark conditions be fully and fairly disclosed, that would probably be enforceable.
Not quite. If you read further in the link you posted, you'll see that, based on the Appeals Court ruling that the Supreme Court just upheld, Sony's various copyright claims were dismissed by the trial court. In other words, the Supreme Couort ruling upholds the dismissal of the copyright claims, leaving only a trade secret claim and an unfair competition claim, both of which are pretty weak without some other improper activity to leverage. Sony doesn't have a snowball's chance of winning...
They actually read the laws... and they know that the DMCA prohibits reverse engineering of copyright protection technologies.
Having read the law, I'm at a loss to understand your comment. Paragraph (f) titled "reverse engineering" seems to explicitly say the opposite (when done for the purpose of functional interoperability):
(1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
2.The playstation is hardware, can't copyright that.
Sony was sueing Connectix (which isn't Bleem) about the copying of the PlayStation BIOS, which is software (well, firmware if you want to be picky). The court said that copying as part of an effort to reverse engineer is lawful fair use.
Reverse engineering was legal before and is legal now. What's ambiguous about that?
Despite Sony's squeals of anguish, this was settled law since 1993 and the Sega vs. Accolades decision. It's no suprise, and is based on the fundamental distinction between copyright law and patent law. Functionality can only be protected by patent, and only if it's novel, and for a much shorter time. Only the creative expression in a program is protectable by copyright, and only so far as to not interfere with the recreation of function. Sony was basically trying to extend copyright to protect function, and was quite properly kicked in the teeth by the courts.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision from February that explains this reasoning is here.
Any application of UCITA to books will have to contend with the decision in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908), the, which is still relevant law, having been cited by the the Supreme Court in Quality King v. Lanza (1998).
Bobbs-Merrill can in some ways be considered a "shrink-wrap" license case. In this case, the publisher Bobbs-Merrill had printed a novel, 'The Castaway' and had printed a notice in each book that it was not to be sold at retail for under $1. The Straus brothers, who owned and operated Macy's, sold the book at $0.89, despite the warning and were sued. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no contractual obligation between the 2 parties and copyright law did not grant the publisher control of the copies after they had been sold at wholesale. This finding is called the "first sale" doctrine.
Eventually, a modern "shrink-wrap"/UCITA vs. "first sale" case will reach the Supreme Court. Personally, I suspect "first sale" will win, though I'm not a lawyer...
You mean "6-bit words". Bytes have always been eight bits wide.
Wrong-o buckwheat, I know exactly what I mean.
A 1620 byte used 6 bits - four value bits, a parity bit and a flag bit. Legal byte values of the value bits were from 0-9; despite being able to represent 0-15 with those bits, the machine hardware threw an error for the bit combinations we would now use for 10-15.
Or as a 1620 history site describes it:
The basic machine had 20,000 decimal digits of ferrite core memory arranged as a 100 by 100 array of 12-bit locations, each holding two digits. Each digit was stored as four numeric bits, one flag bit and one parity bit. The numeric bits stored a decimal digit (values above nine were illegal).
... they apparently didn't test on Windows NT. I was reading their article and fiddling my display settings, and 8-bit color SUCKED! Only 9 of their "really safe" colors wee safe - RGB, CMY, white, black and the "off black". NT4, SP6, IE5...
...in particular, their intellectual property laws. "Work-for-hire" laws are not internationally uniform, so they could end up with rights to the work they've created if you're not careful...
To me, Curry's "format" idea is the easy half of the solution. The ability to set selection rules to find NEW (to me) stuff is interesting in itself, but to be a complete solution, there needs to be a feedback mechanism. For one thing, suppose Big Five Record Co. decides to co-opt this technology to "break" new acts - they could declare any odd song with a harsh guitar to be a "crossover" metal/punk/grunge/alternative, etc., deliberately blurring the lines to "push the product". There's got to be a way to "downcheck" something for not meeting format expectations. There should also be a simple way for users of creating meta-information about content: reviews, "it's a lot like..." links
IANAL, but it seems to me that this case might be referred to as precedent in the Napster case.
IANAL either, but I know a little about copyright. The data format has absolutely zero to do with the cases (either of them). Damages come in two flavors: actual and statutory (potentially plus attorneys fess, for either). Actual damages are what the copyright holder lost plus what the copyright infringer gained, while statutory damages are set by the court within a sort of fixed range per work infringed. The range moves up when a court finds that an infringement is "willful" and moves down when the court finds the infringement is "innocent". The range for statutory damages is set in 17 USC 504, paragraph c, with the "normal" range at $750 to $30,000, with the ceiling for "willful" set at $150,000 and the floor for "innocent" at $200, all per work infringed.
In the MP3.com case, Universal did not request actual damages, but elected statutory (it's either/or and the copyright owner must choose). The judge had already found "willful" infringement but apparently didn't see the need to set the punishment outside the normal range, setting it at $25,000 per CD.
For Napster, the total dollar amount of the MP3.com award isn't relevant, the benchmark is the "per work" part of the award. In other words, the precendent for Napster is $25,000 per CD. However, Napster didn't do anything to attempt to limit usage of the service and the little evidence of intent I've seen suggests that Napster intended to create an unregulated sharing service. If the appeals courts agree that they're liable, I'd expect a higher per CD damage award, on more CDs. However, I think Napster has a chance to win an "ISP" defense based on on appeal and there's also a fairly good chance of winning an appeal on the issue of "contributory infringement" - I think Judge Patel is stretching the theory of contributory infringement to get a particular result and I'm not sure appeals courts will agree that it stretches that far. There are also other legal "outs" for Napster, this brief (PDF) lists several potential good ones.
For MP3.com, the design of their service creates a very different case and any chance of winning on appeal will depend on getting court to look at the end result of the service (which is itself lawful), and not the implementation details.
Finally got to the site in question ('twas slashdotted, I guess).
First, the site has copied a number of gifs from linux.com, such as endcap.gif and stripes.gif. If these images aren't "freeware", but were created for linux.com, then the copying and ditributing of those images is a copyright violation.
More generally, layout design (or blank forms) are not copyrightable. The U.S. copyright office's circular 32 (PDF) (on forms) says: "Copyright does
not extend to names, titles, and short phrases or clauses
such as column headings or simple checklists. The format,
arrangement, or typography of a work is not protected."
However, a "trade dress" lawsuit would at least make it into court - I don't have a clue what the outcome might be because a similar web-related case hasn't happened yet, but it's only a matter of time. In "trade dress", courts have ruled that a commercial "look" that consumers associate with a source of goods or services can be protected, that another business cannot use that "look" when it can create confusion in the minds of consumers. The example case of trade dress infringment is Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc. (91-971), 505 U.S. 763 (1992). wherein the Supreme Court stated: "trade dress was protected if it either was inherently distinctive--i. e., was not merely descriptive--or had acquired a secondary meaning--i. e., had come through use to be uniquely associated with a specific source". Personally, I'd say the linux.com look was inherently distinctive. Whether the copying leads to confusion is another, critical, question...
Finally, this site appears to be a commercial site (http://www.myhobbes.com/ forwards to it), but is being hosted on the Texas A&M network (home is http://hobbes.resnet.tamu.edu/). I'm suspecting that somebody in authority in the University would be annoyed at this relationship.
Just a few changes quick changes could change the look enough to avoid the problem totally, but a little work is apparently a lot to ask of some people.
Packets are information.
All information is copyrightable.
The information is created by a product controlled by Corporation X.
Sorry, but wrong. "Information" is not copyrightable. In U.S. law , for things to be copyrightable, they must be "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression". In other words, copyright is only available to creative expression, but not to facts or non-creative compilations of facts, although copyright is available to creative compilations of facts.
For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly and definitely ruled that "white pages" phone directories (an alphabetical list of phone subscribers) in FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) are inherently not copyrightable, saying "[The copyright law] does not afford protection from copying to a collection of facts that are selected, coordinated, and arranged in a way that utterly lacks originality."
And more to the point, the packet stream from the emulator is not "fixed in any tangible medium of expression" and is therefore not copyrightable in itself. An analogy to make this point clearer: let's say a group of comics has developed a brilliant comedy sketch, it gets the audience rolling in the aisles and people flock to see it performed live. The comics never write the sketch down, and never have a performance recorded. Then another group of comics sneak into some shows, memorize the sketch, and then start performing it for profit. Under the U.S. law, there is no copyright violation here, at least until the first group of comics record the sketch (although there are probably other laws against this). Going back to packets, a stream that reproduces an already copyrighted work is copyrightable and reproducing it would be an infringement, but a stream that implements a communication protocol (e.g. a POP3 session, exluding the mail bodies) is not copyrightable.
The packets are, at least, a derivative work, copyrightable by corporation X.
I don't belive the packets meet the definition of derivative work, which is: 'A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a "derivative work".' "Based upon" is not the same as "produced by", I believe that the definition clearly implies that to be a derivative work, the original work must be recognizable in the derivative work.
So if I applied rot13 to protect my new commercial data distribution media and someone used/usr/games/rot13 and not my licenced decryption program to view it, they're in violation of the DMCA.
Yes.
Probably not. (The problem with a lot of recent laws, including the DMCA, is that nobody knows for sure until the courts decide things a time or three. A rather "chilling" system if you ask me.) Anyway, the relevant line of the DMCA (from the relevant portion is No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. Under standard legal theory of interpreting legislation, every word is supposed to be significant, and I would guess that "effectively" might be interpreted in such a way that rot13, etc. would be interpreted out of the picture. IANAL, just a guess...
As a Christian I firmly believe in the morals that once made this country the greatest in the world...
One of the reasons we have freedom of religion in this country (the U.S.) is because the last time we tried to have a "pure" religiously run Christian state, the leaders of that state ended up hanging missionaries of another Christian religion (Quakers). The leaders of Boston hung Mary Dyer for speaking about her religious beliefs on June 1, 1660 on Boston Commons, and had hung at least 2 other Quakers the previous year. This culminated a series of oppressions against Quakers that included fines, whipping, branding, and boring holes through the tongue. The oppression officially ended following orders from the British governmet. While this part of the history of Massachusetts is generally not taught, it's out there to be found. Eventually a statue of Mary Dyer was erected in Boston.
When the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, both the early American history and the European history of religious wars was in their minds, which is why we have the Bill of Rights and particularly the prohibition on the establishment of religion by the government.
Interestingly, the patent has two dates on it. Clearly marked is the date of filing, December 14, 1977. However, I am not a patent/trademark lawyer, so I don't know what the second date of September 20, 1983 signifies. Possibly a reissue date?
The first date, as you note, is the date of filing, and the second date is the date the patent was issued by the PTO. At the time, patents ran for 17 years from date of issue, which is why it's expiring this September 20th. Now, patents run for 20 years from date of filing (to encourage filers to not drag out the process).
We probably would have ended up with much the same constructs, just with different words representing things. Why? Because it's not really based on english - it's based on machine code, logic, and math. English is just what we use to represent these things (if, while, whatever function calls, etc...)
While I agree with the thesis that programming constructs are strongly driven by "machine code, logic, and math", I think most English speakers and, to a lesser extent, most speakers of Indo-European-derived languages have no idea of the range of variation in languages and therefore just how much out programming constructs reflect those languages.
For example, in machine languages, most opcodes are coded as OPERATOR OPERAND [OPERAND}. This reflects the common structure of English sentences - Subject Verb Direct-Object Indirect-Object, or more particularly the imperative form with the Subject implied and omitted. For example, in English, we say "Send the boy home!". Other languages always put the object(s) in front of the verb, and a machine language built by speakers of such a language might very well have operands preceeding operators. (And I suspect more likely to favor stack-oriented architectures).
Most all higher level languages (and mathematical notation systems) also tend to reflect the English "SVO" ordering, with PostScript and Reverse Polish Notation being notable exceptions, both driven by the functional elegance of a stack implementation.
English and the Indo-European languages are also hard at one end of the spectrum on dividing nouns from verbs in the language - for most words in isolation a native speaker of the language will have strong opinions on wether a word (in isolation) is a noun or verb, despite the fact that virtually all nouns can be used as verbs and vice-versa. In other languages, the distinction is not as strong, although still there (with debatably one or two languages that don't make the distinction). I suspect the early sharp distinction between program and data, the struggles some people have with passing functions as parameters, and some of the resistance to OOP are all rooted in this sharp distinction in English.
There are doubtless other small ways English has influenced programming language structure, though as the previous poster notes, a lot of structure is derived from mathematics and logic.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, science journalism isn't keeping up with reality very well, though I've noticed that a few articles on the recent transplant have been corrected to mention the earlier procedure. I bet TCH's PR people are raising a ruckus...
In the U.S., a copyright notice is *NOT* needed to bring suit, you can sue anyway (although before/when you sue, you HAVE to register the copyright with the Copyright Office)..
Since 1978, any creative work is automatically copyrighted "on creation", as soon as it's recorded (written, saved digitally, photographed, etc.) Adding a notice does do several good things for an author but it's not required.
As I wrote in August in the last abandonware thread:
Section 108 of the copyright law says that, among other things, libraries and other publicaly available archives may (under section e of the law) make a complete copy of a work that they have determined is otherwise unavailable at a fair price and give it to a library/archive user, provided a) they do not do so for commercial advantage and b) they display a particular notice as specified by the Copyright Office in 37 CFR 201.14 (PDF, scroll down to about page 20). The full text of the section e) reads:
Important: other parts of the section and of the law influence the legal interpretation of the above (so consult a lawyer), but the important point is, "abandonware" sites CAN be legal!
Which is meaningless in court when someone makes a "public policy" arguement. I'm not saying Ellison isn't a wanker and hypocrite, I'm saying that *I* don't think that a EULA clause that gags basic performance reporting can be enforced.
The last thing you want is your competitor publishing benchmarks on your software.
Only an idiot would TRUST a competitor's benchmarks (or Ellison's dog-and-pony show). The REASON such a EULA clause is likely against public policy is that it gags any independent parties that don't toe a manufacturer's line (and lets them optimize for a chosen set of benchmarks, rather than the benchmarks of everybody).
The reason for this is obvious. It's just too easy to cook database benchmarks to favor whatever you want to favor.
You're right, it's obvious. That's why no one will trust an Oracle bench of MS or an MS bench of Oracle, or a GM review of Ford or a Ford review of GM, or Pepsi survey on Coke. It's obvious. What the EULA clause does is allow a company to (try to) control the press they get and limit it to tame third parties. If the auto industry could EULA out Consumer Reports, they would. They can't and MS and Oracle shouldn't be able to gag everybody either, IMHO.
I'll bet that this is completely enforceable. ESPCIALLY when the person you are trying to enforce it on is a competitor who has the same clause in their EULA.
Again, in a "public policy" argument, that won't hold water, 'cause
- everybody gets treated the same in those arguments,
- it's taken as a given that a competitor who can benefit from winning such an argument is going to carry it forward in a lawsuit
"Public policy" doesn't change depending on the party to the lawsuit, and if a clause is against "public policy" it doesn't matter who's paying for (or benefiting from) the legal work that produces such a decision, in fact, it's a positive that somebody with a vested interest is making the fight, rather having the government decide what's worth fighting for or waiting for some small-fry to risk everything "on principle".If you ask me too. There's a general principle in contract law (and a license agreement is a form of contract), that terms of a contract that are "unconscionable" will not be enforced by a court of law. This principle is broad and poorly defined, but is totally up to the courts in their discretion to decide, which means you have to have the resources to fight it out in court. I imagine Ellison just might be able to...
Most "unconscionable" contract terms are economically unfair, often because of severe inequity between the 2 contracting parties. However another common reason for finding a contract term to be "unconscionable" is that it is "against public policy". Many states have laws that prohibit contracts that force their residents to litigate in other states or using other state's laws, calling such terms "against public policy". A more detailed discussion (written for New York State lawyers) is here.
I think a contract term that prohibits someone from disclosing "trade secrets" is certainly enforceable. For a product that has very limited distribution, a "gag" clause that attempts to prohibit the transfer of technical information to a potential competitor is probably enforcerceable in most forms. However, in this case, any and every serious competitor has a copy of the product or can easily obtain one, and the "benchmark gag" is designed to allow Microsoft to control information available to potential customers on a critical purchase point - how well the product works. If MS changed the clause to require that the benchmark conditions be fully and fairly disclosed, that would probably be enforceable.
Not quite. If you read further in the link you posted, you'll see that, based on the Appeals Court ruling that the Supreme Court just upheld, Sony's various copyright claims were dismissed by the trial court. In other words, the Supreme Couort ruling upholds the dismissal of the copyright claims, leaving only a trade secret claim and an unfair competition claim, both of which are pretty weak without some other improper activity to leverage. Sony doesn't have a snowball's chance of winning...
Having read the law, I'm at a loss to understand your comment. Paragraph (f) titled "reverse engineering" seems to explicitly say the opposite (when done for the purpose of functional interoperability):
Sony was sueing Connectix (which isn't Bleem) about the copying of the PlayStation BIOS, which is software (well, firmware if you want to be picky). The court said that copying as part of an effort to reverse engineer is lawful fair use.
Despite Sony's squeals of anguish, this was settled law since 1993 and the Sega vs. Accolades decision. It's no suprise, and is based on the fundamental distinction between copyright law and patent law. Functionality can only be protected by patent, and only if it's novel, and for a much shorter time. Only the creative expression in a program is protectable by copyright, and only so far as to not interfere with the recreation of function. Sony was basically trying to extend copyright to protect function, and was quite properly kicked in the teeth by the courts.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision from February that explains this reasoning is here.
Bobbs-Merrill can in some ways be considered a "shrink-wrap" license case. In this case, the publisher Bobbs-Merrill had printed a novel, 'The Castaway' and had printed a notice in each book that it was not to be sold at retail for under $1. The Straus brothers, who owned and operated Macy's, sold the book at $0.89, despite the warning and were sued. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no contractual obligation between the 2 parties and copyright law did not grant the publisher control of the copies after they had been sold at wholesale. This finding is called the "first sale" doctrine.
Eventually, a modern "shrink-wrap"/UCITA vs. "first sale" case will reach the Supreme Court. Personally, I suspect "first sale" will win, though I'm not a lawyer...
Wrong-o buckwheat, I know exactly what I mean.
A 1620 byte used 6 bits - four value bits, a parity bit and a flag bit. Legal byte values of the value bits were from 0-9; despite being able to represent 0-15 with those bits, the machine hardware threw an error for the bit combinations we would now use for 10-15.
Or as a 1620 history site describes it:
Yes. Windows NT with IE5. See below. Only RGBCMY & B&W look "safe".
I've put a 24-bit BMP screenshot of the results here (a 3.8MB file)..
Looks like color is handled very differently in NT4 and in 95/98. I'm just shocked, shocked I say, that Microsoft would be inconsistent...
...in particular, their intellectual property laws. "Work-for-hire" laws are not internationally uniform, so they could end up with rights to the work they've created if you're not careful...
To me, Curry's "format" idea is the easy half of the solution. The ability to set selection rules to find NEW (to me) stuff is interesting in itself, but to be a complete solution, there needs to be a feedback mechanism. For one thing, suppose Big Five Record Co. decides to co-opt this technology to "break" new acts - they could declare any odd song with a harsh guitar to be a "crossover" metal/punk/grunge/alternative, etc., deliberately blurring the lines to "push the product". There's got to be a way to "downcheck" something for not meeting format expectations. There should also be a simple way for users of creating meta-information about content: reviews, "it's a lot like..." links
IANAL either, but I know a little about copyright. The data format has absolutely zero to do with the cases (either of them). Damages come in two flavors: actual and statutory (potentially plus attorneys fess, for either). Actual damages are what the copyright holder lost plus what the copyright infringer gained, while statutory damages are set by the court within a sort of fixed range per work infringed. The range moves up when a court finds that an infringement is "willful" and moves down when the court finds the infringement is "innocent". The range for statutory damages is set in 17 USC 504, paragraph c, with the "normal" range at $750 to $30,000, with the ceiling for "willful" set at $150,000 and the floor for "innocent" at $200, all per work infringed.
In the MP3.com case, Universal did not request actual damages, but elected statutory (it's either/or and the copyright owner must choose). The judge had already found "willful" infringement but apparently didn't see the need to set the punishment outside the normal range, setting it at $25,000 per CD.
For Napster, the total dollar amount of the MP3.com award isn't relevant, the benchmark is the "per work" part of the award. In other words, the precendent for Napster is $25,000 per CD. However, Napster didn't do anything to attempt to limit usage of the service and the little evidence of intent I've seen suggests that Napster intended to create an unregulated sharing service. If the appeals courts agree that they're liable, I'd expect a higher per CD damage award, on more CDs. However, I think Napster has a chance to win an "ISP" defense based on on appeal and there's also a fairly good chance of winning an appeal on the issue of "contributory infringement" - I think Judge Patel is stretching the theory of contributory infringement to get a particular result and I'm not sure appeals courts will agree that it stretches that far. There are also other legal "outs" for Napster, this brief (PDF) lists several potential good ones.
For MP3.com, the design of their service creates a very different case and any chance of winning on appeal will depend on getting court to look at the end result of the service (which is itself lawful), and not the implementation details.
First, the site has copied a number of gifs from linux.com, such as endcap.gif and stripes.gif. If these images aren't "freeware", but were created for linux.com, then the copying and ditributing of those images is a copyright violation.
More generally, layout design (or blank forms) are not copyrightable. The U.S. copyright office's circular 32 (PDF) (on forms) says:
"Copyright does not extend to names, titles, and short phrases or clauses such as column headings or simple checklists. The format, arrangement, or typography of a work is not protected."
However, a "trade dress" lawsuit would at least make it into court - I don't have a clue what the outcome might be because a similar web-related case hasn't happened yet, but it's only a matter of time. In "trade dress", courts have ruled that a commercial "look" that consumers associate with a source of goods or services can be protected, that another business cannot use that "look" when it can create confusion in the minds of consumers. The example case of trade dress infringment is Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc. (91-971), 505 U.S. 763 (1992). wherein the Supreme Court stated:
"trade dress was protected if it either was inherently distinctive--i. e., was not merely descriptive--or had acquired a secondary meaning--i. e., had come through use to be uniquely associated with a specific source".
Personally, I'd say the linux.com look was inherently distinctive. Whether the copying leads to confusion is another, critical, question...
Finally, this site appears to be a commercial site (http://www.myhobbes.com/ forwards to it), but is being hosted on the Texas A&M network (home is http://hobbes.resnet.tamu.edu/). I'm suspecting that somebody in authority in the University would be annoyed at this relationship.
Just a few changes quick changes could change the look enough to avoid the problem totally, but a little work is apparently a lot to ask of some people.
In that case, Apple had also given MS a license to use some things and that sort of makes this an apples to oranges comparison.
Normally I don't do spelling flames, but in a headline... Sheesh!
All information is copyrightable.
The information is created by a product controlled by Corporation X.
Sorry, but wrong. "Information" is not copyrightable. In U.S. law , for things to be copyrightable, they must be "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression". In other words, copyright is only available to creative expression, but not to facts or non-creative compilations of facts, although copyright is available to creative compilations of facts.
For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly and definitely ruled that "white pages" phone directories (an alphabetical list of phone subscribers) in FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) are inherently not copyrightable, saying "[The copyright law] does not afford protection from copying to a collection of facts that are selected, coordinated, and arranged in a way that utterly lacks originality."
And more to the point, the packet stream from the emulator is not "fixed in any tangible medium of expression" and is therefore not copyrightable in itself. An analogy to make this point clearer: let's say a group of comics has developed a brilliant comedy sketch, it gets the audience rolling in the aisles and people flock to see it performed live. The comics never write the sketch down, and never have a performance recorded. Then another group of comics sneak into some shows, memorize the sketch, and then start performing it for profit. Under the U.S. law, there is no copyright violation here, at least until the first group of comics record the sketch (although there are probably other laws against this). Going back to packets, a stream that reproduces an already copyrighted work is copyrightable and reproducing it would be an infringement, but a stream that implements a communication protocol (e.g. a POP3 session, exluding the mail bodies) is not copyrightable.
The packets are, at least, a derivative work, copyrightable by corporation X.
I don't belive the packets meet the definition of derivative work, which is: 'A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a "derivative work".' "Based upon" is not the same as "produced by", I believe that the definition clearly implies that to be a derivative work, the original work must be recognizable in the derivative work.
Yes.
Probably not. (The problem with a lot of recent laws, including the DMCA, is that nobody knows for sure until the courts decide things a time or three. A rather "chilling" system if you ask me.) Anyway, the relevant line of the DMCA (from the relevant portion is No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. Under standard legal theory of interpreting legislation, every word is supposed to be significant, and I would guess that "effectively" might be interpreted in such a way that rot13, etc. would be interpreted out of the picture. IANAL, just a guess...
A CNET (news.com) article here says that IBM and Dell have stopped taking orders for boxes with this chip.
One of the reasons we have freedom of religion in this country (the U.S.) is because the last time we tried to have a "pure" religiously run Christian state, the leaders of that state ended up hanging missionaries of another Christian religion (Quakers). The leaders of Boston hung Mary Dyer for speaking about her religious beliefs on June 1, 1660 on Boston Commons, and had hung at least 2 other Quakers the previous year. This culminated a series of oppressions against Quakers that included fines, whipping, branding, and boring holes through the tongue. The oppression officially ended following orders from the British governmet. While this part of the history of Massachusetts is generally not taught, it's out there to be found. Eventually a statue of Mary Dyer was erected in Boston.
When the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, both the early American history and the European history of religious wars was in their minds, which is why we have the Bill of Rights and particularly the prohibition on the establishment of religion by the government.
The first date, as you note, is the date of filing, and the second date is the date the patent was issued by the PTO. At the time, patents ran for 17 years from date of issue, which is why it's expiring this September 20th. Now, patents run for 20 years from date of filing (to encourage filers to not drag out the process).
While I agree with the thesis that programming constructs are strongly driven by "machine code, logic, and math", I think most English speakers and, to a lesser extent, most speakers of Indo-European-derived languages have no idea of the range of variation in languages and therefore just how much out programming constructs reflect those languages.
For example, in machine languages, most opcodes are coded as OPERATOR OPERAND [OPERAND}. This reflects the common structure of English sentences - Subject Verb Direct-Object Indirect-Object, or more particularly the imperative form with the Subject implied and omitted. For example, in English, we say "Send the boy home!". Other languages always put the object(s) in front of the verb, and a machine language built by speakers of such a language might very well have operands preceeding operators. (And I suspect more likely to favor stack-oriented architectures).
Most all higher level languages (and mathematical notation systems) also tend to reflect the English "SVO" ordering, with PostScript and Reverse Polish Notation being notable exceptions, both driven by the functional elegance of a stack implementation.
English and the Indo-European languages are also hard at one end of the spectrum on dividing nouns from verbs in the language - for most words in isolation a native speaker of the language will have strong opinions on wether a word (in isolation) is a noun or verb, despite the fact that virtually all nouns can be used as verbs and vice-versa. In other languages, the distinction is not as strong, although still there (with debatably one or two languages that don't make the distinction). I suspect the early sharp distinction between program and data, the struggles some people have with passing functions as parameters, and some of the resistance to OOP are all rooted in this sharp distinction in English.
There are doubtless other small ways English has influenced programming language structure, though as the previous poster notes, a lot of structure is derived from mathematics and logic.