Total Recall is the only movie that captures the essence of Philip K. Dick, and it does that DESPITE the fact that Arnold is mis-cast as the protagonist. (Dick's protagonists are usually working-class stiffs, not Austrian body-builders). Nevertheless, the cartoonish world of Total Recall is the closest thing to a real PKD experience on screen, IMO.
I use 2k at work and every time explorer crashes (which is at least once or twice a month, usually more) it hangs on a site and then pops up a pretty-looking dialog box about an error occurring and offers to send the log file to Microsoft (as if it doesn't just go straight to the big Recycle Bin in Redmond). Then it quits and I lose all my explorer windows. If that's not a big deal for you, then fine. I think it sucks.
1. Did you actually type anything sensitive into a kinko's machine? If so, I hope it was in order to access the us.gov's ICBM systems. Otherwise, shame on you.
2. There is no "N. 7th" in Manhattan. It's either 7th Avenue, or it's E./W. 7th Street.
Every time I log into iTMS, I want to like it, but the majority of what I see are crappy records by artists that have been irrelevant for the past twenty years. I mean, sure, they have a few new Top-40 artists and Clear Channel-wh0re artists, but they are also pushing junk like Grace Jones and Marc Anthony way too hard.
I haven't read the article yet (I know), but it sounds like MS is just offering a standard third-party indemnity. If that is the case, I would hardly reward them for doing what (a) is no actual skin off their back, and (b) is industry standard.
You have hit the nail on the head. As the owner of an $800 Clarion head unit, I can confirm that even the most expensive car stereos are pure crap. Mine even has those fucking dolphins, which I hate vehemently. As a bonus, my wonderful Clarion has no internal amp. Wheee! Oh, and I get the privilege of navigating nineteen steps into the on-screen menu just to change the bass levels. Oh yeah--the fancy LCD display can display up to 8 colors!
Well, if we assume that the value of your car is its fair market value according to Kelley's Blue Book, and if I crash into your car, one of two things (or both) could follow:
1) You could sue me in a civil action for damages to your car. (Let's leave insurance out of the equation for the sake of this example.)
2) The criminal authorities could prosecute me for attempted vehicular manslaughter or any number of other criminal moving violations. My liability for some of these crimes would be determined by the degree of negligence (in other words, my culpability) in causing the accident. If I was being a total fool, driving recklessly and endangering the roadways, the criminal authorities are going to press charges against me. On the other hand, if our accident was minor, and we were both driving well, but just tapped bumpers or were victims of a poorly designed roadway, the criminal authorities are not going to show much interest in the accident.
So, in the IP space, if you think I am robbing you of potential value of your IP, you can sue in a civil forum. You will have to prove the amount of your damages, though, which goes to your question of how the value of IP is measured. That's between your lawyers and the jury/judge, though.
On the other hand, if I am intentionally robbing you of the value of your IP, and you (or someone else) brings it to the attention of the criminal authorities, and the criminal authorities decide that my theft of the value of your IP is threat to the public's interest in innovation and development of IP for the benefit of the general public (i.e., robbing the IP system of its essential purpose, even if on a relatively small scale), then the authorities will press criminal charges. Remember, though, that the authorities need to demonstrate a much higher standard of "knowingly" (or whatever the statutory standard is) infringing your stuff, than you would have to prove in your civil trial.
Not sure if that answers your question, but that's my understanding of how these things work.
You need to understand that the starting point of the entire IP legal regime (a starting point that derives from Constitutional principles) is that the IP laws should stimulate innovation in order to ultimately benefit the general public. In this sense, the exclusivity granted to patent holders and copyright owners and trademark/trade secret owners by law, is supposed to provide an incentive for people to pursue innovation. If the system is working correctly, the innovator will undertake the innovative project in order to realize its commercial value (a value that is temporary, since most (if not all) IP rights expire with time). To the extent that the public benefits during the period while the innovator has exclusive rights, great. But the real benefit to the public comes when the original author's IP rights expire and the innovation is released into the public domain. If you keep this in mind, you will see the general public's vested interest in maintaining the appropriate value for IP. Since there is a public interest at stake, the consequences of violating that public interest are criminal (just the same as the public's interest in maintaining speed limits, or building safety codes, etc.)
Now, please be aware that I am not arguing that the current IP legal regime in the USA is doing a good job of balancing the public's interests with those of the IP authors. The key variables are how long the author gets exclusive rights and which rights are exclusive. I suspect that getting the right balance is an ever-evolving process, and one that requires the public's participation to maintain properly, as with any other public policy issue. But, in the meantime, since there is a public policy in keeping the value of IP innovation, the consequences of depriving that value is criminal--at least where the deprivation is intentional.
(These might be a little out of order, so mix-and-match.)
1. Intellectual property is property because it has a commercial value in the marketplace.
2. Infringement deprives the IP-owner of that value.
3. The IP laws are designed to stimulate innovative thinking and implementation of new ideas, technologies, etc. by creating incentives for IP authors. Ultimately, stimulation of IP creation is supposed to benefit the general public (e.g., new life-saving drugs discovered via the promise of the patent system's exclusivity protections).
4. If infringers are permitted to deprive IP of its value, the incentives to create new IP will be diminished.
5. Intentional infringement (or whatever the standard is for criminal infringement) is a particularly egregious deprivation of the value of the IP.
6. Intentional infringement (unlike unintentional infringement) is easy to prevent--just don't do it--so more severe punishment is not unfair to the infringer.
7. Criminal punishment should apply where the wrongdoing adversely affects the general public's interests. Criminal authorities represent the public's interests.
What I consider critical improvements, you consider "proprietary/design flaws compared to just Unix".
Laws enacted without public knowledge?
on
Gates and Security
·
· Score: 1
Please provide proof for your claim that the cited laws (and others to which you allude) were passed without public knowledge. I seem to recall a fuckload of discussion right here on this website about those same laws. Also, the fact that the public can't be bothered to learn about new laws is not Congress' fault, BTW.
Janet Reno has no authority to order TV studios to do anything. If they complied, they did it voluntarily, on her advice. It would be different if Congress passed a law that gave the Justice Department (or, more likely, another agency) the authority to regulate television content. You say she "effectively ordered" them to comply, which is the same as saying that she asked them to do it and she was very persuasive. Or are you implying that she blackmailed them, or used other illegal means of coercion?
A machine sold in 1997 is supposed to have a graphics card that drives an OS released in 2000? I don't expect my Dual 800 G4 to run OS XI (or whatever Apple's next next-generation OS will be called).
How hard is it to go to expansis.com and buy a kickass european market phone (that even ships with a US power adapter)? It's easy. I love the fact that I can buy the best phones and use them so easily, and even get support for these phones from T-Mobile's help desk.
I'm on T-Mobile in NYC. I bought a Sony Ericsson p800 (the best PDA/phone on the market today, BTW) and put my SIM into it and it works...no problem. T-Mobile even helped me configure the WAP and GPRS service. You do realize that you can buy almost any GSM phone and use it, right?
First of all, an 8600 is hardly one year old. I had a new 9500 in 1997. Second, if you think that OS X slow on a dual 1 Ghz, I can't help you. My experience is that any performance issues in the GUI are more than compensated by Quartz Extreme, and other CPU-heavy processes are, as I said, plenty fast.
...I didn't follow the case too closely. Still, you get the idea. It's sort of like how Larry Ellison is now arguing that the market for Peoplesoft, JDE and Oracle is larger than just ERM apps, or whatever.
You're bitching about an 8600? What year is this?! Have you traveled through some timewarp to deliver this pathetic attack on 5+ year old macs? Where were you when 8600's were even slightly relevant on the market? Get with it! Try using my dual 800 g4 and tell me it isn't plenty fast.
From a public policy/competition perspective, the consumer has more options for desktop/laptop PCs than just PPC. You can effectively do the same work on a Mac and a Wintel or *nix PC (with some notable exceptions, of course). Antitrust authorities are likely (very likely) to treat the entire desktop PC market as a single zone of competition, and not limit it to PPC devices.
Slashdot Mirror
...Microsoft gets a devoted user base trained in the quirks of MS software, even when the Gates Foundation makes the donation.
Total Recall is the only movie that captures the essence of Philip K. Dick, and it does that DESPITE the fact that Arnold is mis-cast as the protagonist. (Dick's protagonists are usually working-class stiffs, not Austrian body-builders). Nevertheless, the cartoonish world of Total Recall is the closest thing to a real PKD experience on screen, IMO.
See here. Might help.
I use 2k at work and every time explorer crashes (which is at least once or twice a month, usually more) it hangs on a site and then pops up a pretty-looking dialog box about an error occurring and offers to send the log file to Microsoft (as if it doesn't just go straight to the big Recycle Bin in Redmond). Then it quits and I lose all my explorer windows. If that's not a big deal for you, then fine. I think it sucks.
Huh?
1. Did you actually type anything sensitive into a kinko's machine? If so, I hope it was in order to access the us.gov's ICBM systems. Otherwise, shame on you.
2. There is no "N. 7th" in Manhattan. It's either 7th Avenue, or it's E./W. 7th Street.
They extended the notice period before their draconian audits by fifteen calendar days, and you consider THAT meaningful progress?
So, if I spit in your face every morning for ten years, and then stop one day, are you going to thank me?
Every time I log into iTMS, I want to like it, but the majority of what I see are crappy records by artists that have been irrelevant for the past twenty years. I mean, sure, they have a few new Top-40 artists and Clear Channel-wh0re artists, but they are also pushing junk like Grace Jones and Marc Anthony way too hard.
I haven't read the article yet (I know), but it sounds like MS is just offering a standard third-party indemnity. If that is the case, I would hardly reward them for doing what (a) is no actual skin off their back, and (b) is industry standard.
You have hit the nail on the head. As the owner of an $800 Clarion head unit, I can confirm that even the most expensive car stereos are pure crap. Mine even has those fucking dolphins, which I hate vehemently. As a bonus, my wonderful Clarion has no internal amp. Wheee! Oh, and I get the privilege of navigating nineteen steps into the on-screen menu just to change the bass levels. Oh yeah--the fancy LCD display can display up to 8 colors!
Well, if we assume that the value of your car is its fair market value according to Kelley's Blue Book, and if I crash into your car, one of two things (or both) could follow:
1) You could sue me in a civil action for damages to your car. (Let's leave insurance out of the equation for the sake of this example.)
2) The criminal authorities could prosecute me for attempted vehicular manslaughter or any number of other criminal moving violations. My liability for some of these crimes would be determined by the degree of negligence (in other words, my culpability) in causing the accident. If I was being a total fool, driving recklessly and endangering the roadways, the criminal authorities are going to press charges against me. On the other hand, if our accident was minor, and we were both driving well, but just tapped bumpers or were victims of a poorly designed roadway, the criminal authorities are not going to show much interest in the accident.
So, in the IP space, if you think I am robbing you of potential value of your IP, you can sue in a civil forum. You will have to prove the amount of your damages, though, which goes to your question of how the value of IP is measured. That's between your lawyers and the jury/judge, though.
On the other hand, if I am intentionally robbing you of the value of your IP, and you (or someone else) brings it to the attention of the criminal authorities, and the criminal authorities decide that my theft of the value of your IP is threat to the public's interest in innovation and development of IP for the benefit of the general public (i.e., robbing the IP system of its essential purpose, even if on a relatively small scale), then the authorities will press criminal charges. Remember, though, that the authorities need to demonstrate a much higher standard of "knowingly" (or whatever the statutory standard is) infringing your stuff, than you would have to prove in your civil trial.
Not sure if that answers your question, but that's my understanding of how these things work.
...but in this case, the Constitution specifically states that the public has an interest in the development and stimulation of intellectual property.
You need to understand that the starting point of the entire IP legal regime (a starting point that derives from Constitutional principles) is that the IP laws should stimulate innovation in order to ultimately benefit the general public. In this sense, the exclusivity granted to patent holders and copyright owners and trademark/trade secret owners by law, is supposed to provide an incentive for people to pursue innovation. If the system is working correctly, the innovator will undertake the innovative project in order to realize its commercial value (a value that is temporary, since most (if not all) IP rights expire with time). To the extent that the public benefits during the period while the innovator has exclusive rights, great. But the real benefit to the public comes when the original author's IP rights expire and the innovation is released into the public domain. If you keep this in mind, you will see the general public's vested interest in maintaining the appropriate value for IP. Since there is a public interest at stake, the consequences of violating that public interest are criminal (just the same as the public's interest in maintaining speed limits, or building safety codes, etc.)
Now, please be aware that I am not arguing that the current IP legal regime in the USA is doing a good job of balancing the public's interests with those of the IP authors. The key variables are how long the author gets exclusive rights and which rights are exclusive. I suspect that getting the right balance is an ever-evolving process, and one that requires the public's participation to maintain properly, as with any other public policy issue. But, in the meantime, since there is a public policy in keeping the value of IP innovation, the consequences of depriving that value is criminal--at least where the deprivation is intentional.
(These might be a little out of order, so mix-and-match.)
1. Intellectual property is property because it has a commercial value in the marketplace.
2. Infringement deprives the IP-owner of that value.
3. The IP laws are designed to stimulate innovative thinking and implementation of new ideas, technologies, etc. by creating incentives for IP authors. Ultimately, stimulation of IP creation is supposed to benefit the general public (e.g., new life-saving drugs discovered via the promise of the patent system's exclusivity protections).
4. If infringers are permitted to deprive IP of its value, the incentives to create new IP will be diminished.
5. Intentional infringement (or whatever the standard is for criminal infringement) is a particularly egregious deprivation of the value of the IP.
6. Intentional infringement (unlike unintentional infringement) is easy to prevent--just don't do it--so more severe punishment is not unfair to the infringer.
7. Criminal punishment should apply where the wrongdoing adversely affects the general public's interests. Criminal authorities represent the public's interests.
What I consider critical improvements, you consider "proprietary/design flaws compared to just Unix".
Please provide proof for your claim that the cited laws (and others to which you allude) were passed without public knowledge. I seem to recall a fuckload of discussion right here on this website about those same laws. Also, the fact that the public can't be bothered to learn about new laws is not Congress' fault, BTW.
Janet Reno has no authority to order TV studios to do anything. If they complied, they did it voluntarily, on her advice. It would be different if Congress passed a law that gave the Justice Department (or, more likely, another agency) the authority to regulate television content. You say she "effectively ordered" them to comply, which is the same as saying that she asked them to do it and she was very persuasive. Or are you implying that she blackmailed them, or used other illegal means of coercion?
A machine sold in 1997 is supposed to have a graphics card that drives an OS released in 2000? I don't expect my Dual 800 G4 to run OS XI (or whatever Apple's next next-generation OS will be called).
How hard is it to go to expansis.com and buy a kickass european market phone (that even ships with a US power adapter)? It's easy. I love the fact that I can buy the best phones and use them so easily, and even get support for these phones from T-Mobile's help desk.
I'm on T-Mobile in NYC. I bought a Sony Ericsson p800 (the best PDA/phone on the market today, BTW) and put my SIM into it and it works...no problem. T-Mobile even helped me configure the WAP and GPRS service. You do realize that you can buy almost any GSM phone and use it, right?
That's a graphics card problem. Yours sucks. No biggie on Apple, really.
First of all, an 8600 is hardly one year old. I had a new 9500 in 1997. Second, if you think that OS X slow on a dual 1 Ghz, I can't help you. My experience is that any performance issues in the GUI are more than compensated by Quartz Extreme, and other CPU-heavy processes are, as I said, plenty fast.
...I didn't follow the case too closely. Still, you get the idea. It's sort of like how Larry Ellison is now arguing that the market for Peoplesoft, JDE and Oracle is larger than just ERM apps, or whatever.
You're bitching about an 8600? What year is this?! Have you traveled through some timewarp to deliver this pathetic attack on 5+ year old macs? Where were you when 8600's were even slightly relevant on the market? Get with it! Try using my dual 800 g4 and tell me it isn't plenty fast.
From a public policy/competition perspective, the consumer has more options for desktop/laptop PCs than just PPC. You can effectively do the same work on a Mac and a Wintel or *nix PC (with some notable exceptions, of course). Antitrust authorities are likely (very likely) to treat the entire desktop PC market as a single zone of competition, and not limit it to PPC devices.