It bothers me that people keep modding your posts up as interesting and insightful. Not because I disagree with them, although I do. But because apparently for a significant number of people, you're teaching them something new, interesting, insightful. Which leads me to think, what the hell have people been thinking about while we've been at war for these past seven years? I realize this is an international site but certainly anybody who calls themselves an American, and arguably anyone who is a citizen of the world, should have already given very careful thought to the issues that you are raising. Agree or disagree is fine (ok, disagree is better:)), but to think that they are novel or fresh, that's rather frightening. Do we now only think of our personal liberties when our uncensored internet is being jeopardized?
I suppose it would be unfair for me to not state why I disagree. Basically: YouTube is not part of the military. Therefore its rights are protected by the US constitution. In particular, it is entitled to freedom of speech, which is nothing if not the right to support a point of view that diverges from our government's policies, even its wartime policies. If anything, YouTube, in its fourth estate role, is a better citizen by allowing counterpropaganda to be shown. We must have the right as American citizens to hear the "enemy" point of view, to give us information so that we may decide that perhaps the enemy are right and our elected/appointed officials are our real enemies. If we can't hear, or read or see their point of view, how can we be informed voters? Aside from freedom of speech, the principle of separation of church and state at its foundation is an idea that each person should be allowed to interpret truth for himself, to not be subject to the official government version of what is true.
You are correct that in the past we have often lost freedoms during war under the guise of security. But I believe the vast majority of these calls for security have been in fact tyranny draped in the flag.
Misleading. TASER is a brand name for a manufacturer of electroshock weaponry (or more euphemistically "Electronic Control Devices") The company's literature always refers to them as TASER devices, TASER products, TASER ECDs, or TASER [model name] -- in other words, the name is never pluralized/lowercased like "tasers," in the way that you do in your post. However, in common usage you can tase people with tasers, either through propoelled wire electrodes or through direct contact ("drive stun") mode. TASER devices can usually either be used in either mode. They aren't two different devices, they're the same ECD, just with or without the "TASER cartridge" inserted. Of course this is easy to verify.
Then why is it that "Africian Americans" refer to "European Americans" as "white"?
The short answer to that question is that Europeans made up the term "white" to describe themselves, and non-Europeans have gone along with it.
I think what irritates people the most about the term "Africian American" is not that it is not particularly accurate, but that it conveys some special social standing that is not equally applied to all other racial groups.
It suggests that, irrelevant of their personal experiences and lifestyle, knowledge of minor details of their genetic heritage gives major knowledge of their culture, traditions, customs and beliefs.
Well, yes, and no. I see "African American" or ANY similar term, "French", "Gypsy", "Arab," as a way to say that the people so described have a certain commonality of culture, tradition, custom or belief which sets them apart from others of ostensibly similar genetic heritage. AA's are to some identifiable extent different from other blacks. French people are to some extent different from other Europeans, Arabs different from other Middle Easterners. Not necessarily genetically, but culturally. Of course we accept that not all French eat baguettes, not all Arabs are Muslim, but even so, by and large, we can link a certain population through cultural affinity. If you move to France, your kids, despite their total lack of French racial heritage, will start adopting French customs. Barack Obama, e.g., despite his total lack of "African American" heritage (and I'm aware of the irony), attends an African American church and speaks in AA cadences. He has adopted an AA culture, not the Kenyan or mainstream American cultures of his parents.
Knowing your racial heritage does not tell me anything about you, and to assume that it does is simply ridiculous.
I think you're overstating your case. Advertisers make a living on the exact premise that knowing someone's racial heritage in the US and other places is likely to tell you a great deal about their cultural habits. I'm not enamored of his overall politics, but Thomas Sowell has written a highly regarded book on this very subject.
While I'm a big fan of McWhorter's books on linguistics, I find myself usually disagreeing with his opinions on race, which I do here as well. That is a nice find, however - a well thought-out counterargument.
Your link misses the entire point of the term "African American," which is not a fancy P.C. word for "black people," but a term used to identify people in a specific cultural group, with certain overall traditions, customs, and apparently gaming habits. It's come into commonplace usage because it's a unique phrase which sets that group off from other cultural, ethnic and racial groups in America. Exactly like Pennsylvania Dutch, who are called "Pennsylvania Dutch" even though they aren't really Dutch and don't all live in Pennsylvania. And, check it: someone might actually be from the Netherlands and move to Pennsylvania, oh no, what do we call them?
Regarding black Americans and the notion of "well, let's just call them black Americans." True, you could do exactly that. But how is it more accurate? I'd venture to say that there are extremely few black people who are truly "black" skinned, and lots who are on the pale side of brown. They're just called "black" by convention, even if it's not 100% precise. Furthermore, America doesn't equal the USA, it's two continents. We call USA-ians "Americans" also by convention. There's no escaping it, we're stuck using a non-precise moniker one way or another. "African American" is just one more, and happens to be the one that people generally find less offensive when compared with Negro, Afro-American and nigger. It leads one to wonder, is the constant self-righteous outrage over the term "African American" based on logic (I've argued here, no) or based upon an anger that the blacks among us have the gall to object to being called whatever the hell we feel like calling them?
To answer the parent post's question directly, obviously black people in Denmark aren't African-Americans, just like Russians aren't Poles, even if they wind up in the same country. But if by chance a black person from Denmark moves to the US and gets called African-American, it's not going to cause the universe to self-destruct. Real world categories are heuristic, not absolute.
As for the pic of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who cares? Oops, maybe some ijit misidentified him as African American. What does that prove? I accidentally called my Scottish friend Irish one day, According to Genius Maddox, I guess my dumb mistake means that Scotland and Ireland don't make any sense.
Now, on to people of color. No argument from me: that's nauseatingly P.C.
They would never go for mandatory licensing, so this 'fix' will never happen.
True, but I wasn't talking about mandatory licensing. Simply the *ability* for companies to codify "FRAND" into the patent app if they wish, so that someone can't come along later on and attempt to weasel their way out of the contract, leaving an entire industry on the hook, as we see happening here. I'm not saying "FRAND" should be required in those cases where the patent developer has no intention of offering it. Except possibly for "open standards" (see below).
no patents at all on open standards
I think we're basically in agreement here, but just to clarify: Say Alice invents a technology which, as things turn out, winds up being of importance to an entire industry. Now Bob and a bunch of other investors decide they want to use Alice's technology. Does Bob's consortium then get to make up an "open standard" which conveniently tramples on Alice's patent, leaving her uncompensated? I would be against that. I think at the very least, there still needs to be a hearing at which time Alice can attempt to contravene the "open standard" designation. That's really all I'm saying. There should be a reasonable window for the original patent holder(s) to exercise an absolute right to disallow an infringing open standard, but if he, she or they fail to act during that window, the patent should thenceforth be unenforceable with respect to that standard. I agree that the best course at that point would be for the open standard to be entirely without encumbrances, but if that is too much, then at least FRAND should be built into it, as a matter of public policy and not merely contract law (as another poster suggested).
I agree. What makes this troll particularly disgusting (for the benefit of the non-RTFA'ers) is that it is based upon patents originally owned by AT&T which had agreed to license the patents to all for Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents got bought up by this troll company which is now refusing to honor those terms. If this is allowed to stand, then no company can ever rely on FRAND as a business assurance. Any patented process could get sold to an IP management company and be fair game for extortion.
I propose two short-term fixes.
First, FRAND terms should be able to be added to the patent itself, either originally or through some amendment process. That way, if it gets bought or sold, the IP holding compnay has to adhere to the original terms.
Second, companies that are developing open standards should be allowed some kind of superpatent, where (presumably for higher fees) there is a public hearing at which the final standard is vetted, and challengers are given sufficient time to come forward with their own patents which may encumber upon the proposed open standard, and they can negotiate whatever terms are in their best interest, without restriction. Afterwards, though, if the superpatent is granted, no more challenges will be entertained. Anyone who finds a prior patent in their closet or falling out of their portfolio five or ten years hence will be out of luck.
I don't know that it will achieve its intended purpose, but nevertheless, as a concept, that is shockingly genius in its elegance and simplicity. Damn you Canon, for not waiting for me to come up with it first.
It strikes me that the patent system is much like Slashdot in that only one person gets to shout "First Patent!" whilst everyone else with the same idea is downmodded to oblivion.
So the movie makers, musicians, writers, software developers and game designers should all go do a basic course in plumbing and carpentry?
Are those the only options? Is it any wonder that some people don't give a shit about IP "owners" who disdainfully think that the rest of society is comprised of troglodytes?
Plumbers would like to fix someone's leaky faucet and get paid a royalty for the next 70 years but they can't. Carpenters would like it if they got a small percentage from everyone who sat on a chair they made, but oddly it doesn't work that way. They have to go to work the next day, and so, must charge an accurate up front materials and labor cost. The real question should be: Is what movie makers, musicians, writers, software developers and game designers do worth enough to society that they can get paid a salary or for labor like everyone else? Or can they only make a living by extorting payments out of consumers, in cahoots with our lawmakers, in such a bold and shameless fashion that would make a mob protection racket blush?
I don't know any of the science in this area, but since everywhere I've been in the world, across languages and cultures, parents seem to speak "baby talk" to their kids, I would guess that it has some purpose, evolutionarily speaking. I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I'm just saying don't be so sure it is a superior method. Also, I'd venture a guess that at some point, your little ones will more or less know English and that will be that. And eventually other kids will catch up to their level, and maybe surpass them.
My GF's nephew grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and was basically fluent at 4. But now, at age 13, he seems to have mostly forgotten it in favor of his dominant language, English. Same thing happened with a GF I had when I was much younger. Kids have a tremendous ability to learn things. But also to utterly forget them.
In the US, anybody can be sued, and probably will be sued if their actions may in any way have contributed to someone's death. Good Samaritan laws only mean that after they've gone through the expense and humiliation of defending themselves, if a jury finds that they acted in good faith, they can't be held liable. N.B., outside of North America, Good Samaritan laws usually denote an affirmative responsibility to assist someone in need in an emergency situation (as well as the pursuant lack of liability therefrom).
What we need is a system where the number that you provide is keyed to a specific retailer for a specific transaction of a specific monetary amount at a specific moment in time. So that even if(when) someone gets your number in the clear, they can't use it for anything else. Even that same retailer won't be able to double bill you or charge you more than you agreed to pay. It'll mean that we'll have to use "smart cards" (or fobs or bracelets) but who cares? There's no reason, even, why you can't use a single password-protected smart card to authenticate multiple sources of credit.
If trademarking stuff makes it go away, maybe we can get him to trademark "e-law", "weblaw", "nanolaw", "IANAL", "I-for-one-law" and "attorney-at-law." Especially attorney-at-law.
True. Watermarking, whether through an ID3 fingerprint or something involving PhD level cryptography, is only going to deter the casual pirate in any case. Anyone else can use a stolen credit card and a zombie or hijacked wifi connection to eliminate IP tracing.
I think RL watermarking is considerably more complicated than you're considering. Think of watermark as an alteration embedded in a number.
162341369871938126341.
Someone else gets a similar but not-identical number:
762441365871928129341.
Just based on those two numbers, can you reconstruct the "original" number? Can you even identify which digits have been altered by the watermark? You can do a diff, but so what. Take the leading digit. Which was altered? The 1, the 7, or both? It could be that any non-2 digit in that location serves as a partial identifier. Multiply partial identifiers by the full length of an mp3 file, and you'll see it could become intractibly difficult to locate and eradicate the full watermark without knowing the protocol. In any event you're overthinking this. If you have access to two accounts, presumably one real and one fake/fraudulent, then why not just download it once under the fake one? Then you can give a rat's ass if it gets out into the wild.
Better yet, why not just p2p the damn thing from the outset?
And to remind everybody yet again, APPLE IS ALREADY DOING THIS and has sold billionz of watermarked files. Nobody's gotten prosecuted yet to my knowledge.
The only danger I see coming out of this is when, down the road, after CDs have bitten the dust, all digital media will be available by digitally fingerprinted downloads only. Which could mean, if you're carrying around an media player with any songs released after 2010, and they DON'T have your personal digital fingerprint on them, the presumption will be that you stole them. By that time of course, stripping your fingerprint off the files will be as illegal as filing off your car's VIN (vehicle identification number). The same will go for any commercial software we buy, which in addition to fingerprinting, will be constantly communicating its/our authenticity to some central server and upgraded and downgraded outside of our control. Welcome to Steam, punk!
First, click-thru contract be damned, they still have to convince a judge in court that you should be held responsible.
Second, even if you're deemed in breach of contract and have to compensate them for their actual losses or some agreed upon penalty, I don't see how you could be liable for the statutory infringment if they can't establish that you engaged in tortious behavior or didn't contribute through negligence.
The record companies already know that watermarking isn't going to deter a determined filesharer. Watermarks can be easily reverse-engineered and stripped, making the file safe for you to "save" without fear of it being stolen, and honestly, who's gonna bother to hack into a computer to "steal" mp3's when the stuff is available for free at every filesharing site in existence?
Not to mention, there's deniability at every stage. My credit card was stolen, my PC was hacked, my iPod was stolen, someone registered using my name, a friend reverse-transcribed my watermark onto an mp3 as a joke, etc. Nobody's going to prosecute on the strength of watermarks alone, although they may be used as proof in conjunction with other stuff. I.e., what if some "pirate" has a cache of stolen credit cards PLUS a hard drive full of mp3s with various people's watermarks? That can be used as evidence to show ID theft. Etc.
And of course, iTunes have already been using watermarks since forever. But, being Apple, somehow that's OK and superior to normal watermarking, I'm sure.
Since when do movies play forever? HD-DVDs are easily scratched. OK, it has nothing to do with the issue we're discussing but if you carelessly damage your media it won't play anymore, and even if you don't, we don't expect it to outlast the heat death of the universe. So I misspoke when I said forever.
Aside from that, I think the rest of your points are excellent, and it remains to be seen how this will play out. You're absoutely right about SVCD being a simple add-on to current tech. However, I recall my first $200+ Panasonic not being able to support anything but vanilla DVD-Video and Red Book CDs, no mp3, no VCD, no mpeg, no +R/-R/+RW/-RW anything. This contrasts greatly with the current crop of $50 machines that will play almost anything written on a 12cm disc, with the notable exception of free formats like mkv, ogg, srt. My feeling is that if HD-DVD is virtually abandoned, the cheap manufacturers will be able to license the DRM cheaply and add it to their future $50 systems as a selling point, much in the same way that licensed divx and wma capability is built into many of the cheap $50 DVD players today. Even without any more movies being pressed, there's no reason why writable HD-DVD discs themselves won't persist as a cheap media storage format (cheaper than BR discs), and you'll want to be able to play back what you record on them.
Nobody will use it inside or outside of the country. That may be the case, but the relevant issue is whether China will mandate its inclusion into next gen players. And if so, once the firmware is there, it's only a matter of time, IMO until it is made fully HD-DVD compatible. The issue for the OP is if that compatibility is in time to allow him to keep playing his current discs. At least, until they get irreparably scratched.
I doubt it means much otherwise. What it means is that there's a good chance the OP's precious HD-DVDs will remain conveniently playable even after his original machine bites the dust. Which might mitigate his frustration over casting his lot with the "losing" side.
Regarding your other point, yes, I do like Shaolin Kung Fu movies. But aside from that, Chinese manufacturers are already members of the BRDA, so I wouldn't expect them to be excluded.
This experience has left me utterly disgusted. If you can get so emotionally worked up over a $200 purchase, why did you spend so much in the first place?
Look at it this way. You got ten movies that will play forever, you got a very good upscaling DVD player, and you got an opportunity to buy a bunch of films in the very near future at fire sale prices.
Also, don't expect HD-DVD to entirely die out so quickly. Toshiba will still be making players and recorders for a good while longer -- the standard may even manage to live on as a drop-in replacement for DVD+Rs. Furthermore, HD-DVD is supposedly compatible with China's new CH-DVD standard. After cheap upscaling DVD players start to flood the market with HD-DVD compatibility mode, you won't have to worry about your collection being unplayable in the future. Don't minimize China's influence here, after all, old Chinese (S)VCD's are still playable on every new $30 player, some 10 years after they were obsoleted by DVDs.
I suspect that some of the reason the small off-brand manufacturers devices are so useful is because they don't bother with such insignificant details as licensing (and the requisite fees). So they don't have to disable features the content "owners" don't want you to have. Really, they're hardware versions of allofmp3.com
And let's be fair. The iPod got huge by being useful to a hell of a lot of people, namely the vast majority that wants a round-edged managed experience. If the $20 player was useful to the masses, it would be #1 on the market. But, in cutting corners, they also tend to cut out things like english-language manuals, product testing, ergonomics, etc. You might not be able to drop a XviD onto your iPod, but download a video from iTMS, and you know it will work, period. Meanwhile, your XviD might or might not work on the off-brand player, even spending an hour with the conversion software.
An analog recording can in theory have infinite resolution in both frequency, volume, and time, and some is inevitably lost to rounding when converting to digital. Digital sampling can in theory reproduce an analog waveform exactly. In practice its true that some information is distorted/lost. But the same is true of any analog recording. LPs have a dynamic resolution that is limited by the width of the grooves, hence RIAA equalization. They're also subject to wow due to warpage/imperfection in the medium, hiss due to noise generated in the recording process, and although not part of the recording process, there is inevitable rumble/flutter/more hiss/popping/scratching/crosstalk etc due to playback. Also, probably any LP made today is pseudo-analog, it will still be digitally mixed and/or mastered, meaning there's going to be a loss of fidelity both ways in the digital-analog conversion. And is your amp digital or analog?
However, if an audiophile has thousands of euros worth of equipment designed to bring out the best in an LP recording, of course it will sound better than someone's 200 integrated system. Most people have cheap CD players, but expensive ones exist and they do tend to have a "warmer" output. Also, our own hearing ability suffers greatly as we age. That analog recording we listened to at age 10 sounded better because we could hear it better.
Wikipedia has very little in the way of genuine quality, independence or accuracy, but thanks to the vanity of its leaders and admins it has every illusion of authority and integrity. You are mistaken about this, at least with respect to accuracy. The whole reason why propaganda on Wikipedia has any chance of being effective is because Wikipedia is mostly accurate. For any random fact that you care to look up on the site, chances are it will be true. The site's overall accuracy has been repeatedly tested and found to be generallyhigh. And there lies the danger. Because it is mostly accurate, it encourages a lack of skepticism in areas where it is not so accurate. But this is no different from the evening news or the morning paper, neither of them having disclaimers, either.
And as another poster pointed out, Wikipedia owes nothing to us. It comes with no warranty of reliability, and since it is free, it is too much even to say "caveat emptor." On the other hand, dismissing government duplicity by a mere wave of "thus it has always been" is a real danger. That is the same logic that argues we should condone torture and assassinations because all governments do it. I don't want my government engaged in wholesale deception of its citizenry. Concealment has a place. I don't need to know the launch codes. Lies too have a place (e.g. sting operations) but a campaign to misinform the public with the goal of influencing policy undermines the foundations of democracy.
Besides, if wikipedia's wrong, I can always go to britannica or to a real book. If my government systemically lies, who do I go to for the truth?
Slashdot Mirror
It bothers me that people keep modding your posts up as interesting and insightful. Not because I disagree with them, although I do. But because apparently for a significant number of people, you're teaching them something new, interesting, insightful. Which leads me to think, what the hell have people been thinking about while we've been at war for these past seven years? I realize this is an international site but certainly anybody who calls themselves an American, and arguably anyone who is a citizen of the world, should have already given very careful thought to the issues that you are raising. Agree or disagree is fine (ok, disagree is better :)), but to think that they are novel or fresh, that's rather frightening. Do we now only think of our personal liberties when our uncensored internet is being jeopardized?
I suppose it would be unfair for me to not state why I disagree. Basically: YouTube is not part of the military. Therefore its rights are protected by the US constitution. In particular, it is entitled to freedom of speech, which is nothing if not the right to support a point of view that diverges from our government's policies, even its wartime policies. If anything, YouTube, in its fourth estate role, is a better citizen by allowing counterpropaganda to be shown. We must have the right as American citizens to hear the "enemy" point of view, to give us information so that we may decide that perhaps the enemy are right and our elected/appointed officials are our real enemies. If we can't hear, or read or see their point of view, how can we be informed voters? Aside from freedom of speech, the principle of separation of church and state at its foundation is an idea that each person should be allowed to interpret truth for himself, to not be subject to the official government version of what is true.
You are correct that in the past we have often lost freedoms during war under the guise of security. But I believe the vast majority of these calls for security have been in fact tyranny draped in the flag.
"HD" is just a buzzword. The point is can it play x264 video at the resolution of the screen? If not then the device needs more power.
Misleading. TASER is a brand name for a manufacturer of electroshock weaponry (or more euphemistically "Electronic Control Devices") The company's literature always refers to them as TASER devices, TASER products, TASER ECDs, or TASER [model name] -- in other words, the name is never pluralized/lowercased like "tasers," in the way that you do in your post. However, in common usage you can tase people with tasers, either through propoelled wire electrodes or through direct contact ("drive stun") mode. TASER devices can usually either be used in either mode. They aren't two different devices, they're the same ECD, just with or without the "TASER cartridge" inserted. Of course this is easy to verify.
Then why is it that "Africian Americans" refer to "European Americans" as "white"?
The short answer to that question is that Europeans made up the term "white" to describe themselves, and non-Europeans have gone along with it.
I think what irritates people the most about the term "Africian American" is not that it is not particularly accurate, but that it conveys some special social standing that is not equally applied to all other racial groups.
Of course it is applied to other groups. Italian-American, Haitian-American, Asian-American, Arab American, Greek-American, Nigerian-American, Jewish American, etc. In fact, I used to belong to a bank called "European American Bank" before it was bought out by Citigroup.
It suggests that, irrelevant of their personal experiences and lifestyle, knowledge of minor details of their genetic heritage gives major knowledge of their culture, traditions, customs and beliefs.
Well, yes, and no. I see "African American" or ANY similar term, "French", "Gypsy", "Arab," as a way to say that the people so described have a certain commonality of culture, tradition, custom or belief which sets them apart from others of ostensibly similar genetic heritage. AA's are to some identifiable extent different from other blacks. French people are to some extent different from other Europeans, Arabs different from other Middle Easterners. Not necessarily genetically, but culturally. Of course we accept that not all French eat baguettes, not all Arabs are Muslim, but even so, by and large, we can link a certain population through cultural affinity. If you move to France, your kids, despite their total lack of French racial heritage, will start adopting French customs. Barack Obama, e.g., despite his total lack of "African American" heritage (and I'm aware of the irony), attends an African American church and speaks in AA cadences. He has adopted an AA culture, not the Kenyan or mainstream American cultures of his parents.
Knowing your racial heritage does not tell me anything about you, and to assume that it does is simply ridiculous.
I think you're overstating your case. Advertisers make a living on the exact premise that knowing someone's racial heritage in the US and other places is likely to tell you a great deal about their cultural habits. I'm not enamored of his overall politics, but Thomas Sowell has written a highly regarded book on this very subject.
While I'm a big fan of McWhorter's books on linguistics, I find myself usually disagreeing with his opinions on race, which I do here as well. That is a nice find, however - a well thought-out counterargument.
Your link misses the entire point of the term "African American," which is not a fancy P.C. word for "black people," but a term used to identify people in a specific cultural group, with certain overall traditions, customs, and apparently gaming habits. It's come into commonplace usage because it's a unique phrase which sets that group off from other cultural, ethnic and racial groups in America. Exactly like Pennsylvania Dutch, who are called "Pennsylvania Dutch" even though they aren't really Dutch and don't all live in Pennsylvania. And, check it: someone might actually be from the Netherlands and move to Pennsylvania, oh no, what do we call them?
Regarding black Americans and the notion of "well, let's just call them black Americans." True, you could do exactly that. But how is it more accurate? I'd venture to say that there are extremely few black people who are truly "black" skinned, and lots who are on the pale side of brown. They're just called "black" by convention, even if it's not 100% precise. Furthermore, America doesn't equal the USA, it's two continents. We call USA-ians "Americans" also by convention. There's no escaping it, we're stuck using a non-precise moniker one way or another. "African American" is just one more, and happens to be the one that people generally find less offensive when compared with Negro, Afro-American and nigger. It leads one to wonder, is the constant self-righteous outrage over the term "African American" based on logic (I've argued here, no) or based upon an anger that the blacks among us have the gall to object to being called whatever the hell we feel like calling them?
To answer the parent post's question directly, obviously black people in Denmark aren't African-Americans, just like Russians aren't Poles, even if they wind up in the same country. But if by chance a black person from Denmark moves to the US and gets called African-American, it's not going to cause the universe to self-destruct. Real world categories are heuristic, not absolute.
As for the pic of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who cares? Oops, maybe some ijit misidentified him as African American. What does that prove? I accidentally called my Scottish friend Irish one day, According to Genius Maddox, I guess my dumb mistake means that Scotland and Ireland don't make any sense.
Now, on to people of color. No argument from me: that's nauseatingly P.C.
They would never go for mandatory licensing, so this 'fix' will never happen.
True, but I wasn't talking about mandatory licensing. Simply the *ability* for companies to codify "FRAND" into the patent app if they wish, so that someone can't come along later on and attempt to weasel their way out of the contract, leaving an entire industry on the hook, as we see happening here. I'm not saying "FRAND" should be required in those cases where the patent developer has no intention of offering it. Except possibly for "open standards" (see below).
no patents at all on open standards
I think we're basically in agreement here, but just to clarify: Say Alice invents a technology which, as things turn out, winds up being of importance to an entire industry. Now Bob and a bunch of other investors decide they want to use Alice's technology. Does Bob's consortium then get to make up an "open standard" which conveniently tramples on Alice's patent, leaving her uncompensated? I would be against that. I think at the very least, there still needs to be a hearing at which time Alice can attempt to contravene the "open standard" designation. That's really all I'm saying. There should be a reasonable window for the original patent holder(s) to exercise an absolute right to disallow an infringing open standard, but if he, she or they fail to act during that window, the patent should thenceforth be unenforceable with respect to that standard. I agree that the best course at that point would be for the open standard to be entirely without encumbrances, but if that is too much, then at least FRAND should be built into it, as a matter of public policy and not merely contract law (as another poster suggested).
I agree. What makes this troll particularly disgusting (for the benefit of the non-RTFA'ers) is that it is based upon patents originally owned by AT&T which had agreed to license the patents to all for Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents got bought up by this troll company which is now refusing to honor those terms. If this is allowed to stand, then no company can ever rely on FRAND as a business assurance. Any patented process could get sold to an IP management company and be fair game for extortion.
I propose two short-term fixes.
First, FRAND terms should be able to be added to the patent itself, either originally or through some amendment process. That way, if it gets bought or sold, the IP holding compnay has to adhere to the original terms.
Second, companies that are developing open standards should be allowed some kind of superpatent, where (presumably for higher fees) there is a public hearing at which the final standard is vetted, and challengers are given sufficient time to come forward with their own patents which may encumber upon the proposed open standard, and they can negotiate whatever terms are in their best interest, without restriction. Afterwards, though, if the superpatent is granted, no more challenges will be entertained. Anyone who finds a prior patent in their closet or falling out of their portfolio five or ten years hence will be out of luck.
I don't know that it will achieve its intended purpose, but nevertheless, as a concept, that is shockingly genius in its elegance and simplicity. Damn you Canon, for not waiting for me to come up with it first.
It strikes me that the patent system is much like Slashdot in that only one person gets to shout "First Patent!" whilst everyone else with the same idea is downmodded to oblivion.
So the movie makers, musicians, writers, software developers and game designers should all go do a basic course in plumbing and carpentry?
Are those the only options? Is it any wonder that some people don't give a shit about IP "owners" who disdainfully think that the rest of society is comprised of troglodytes?
Plumbers would like to fix someone's leaky faucet and get paid a royalty for the next 70 years but they can't. Carpenters would like it if they got a small percentage from everyone who sat on a chair they made, but oddly it doesn't work that way. They have to go to work the next day, and so, must charge an accurate up front materials and labor cost. The real question should be: Is what movie makers, musicians, writers, software developers and game designers do worth enough to society that they can get paid a salary or for labor like everyone else? Or can they only make a living by extorting payments out of consumers, in cahoots with our lawmakers, in such a bold and shameless fashion that would make a mob protection racket blush?
I don't know any of the science in this area, but since everywhere I've been in the world, across languages and cultures, parents seem to speak "baby talk" to their kids, I would guess that it has some purpose, evolutionarily speaking. I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I'm just saying don't be so sure it is a superior method. Also, I'd venture a guess that at some point, your little ones will more or less know English and that will be that. And eventually other kids will catch up to their level, and maybe surpass them.
My GF's nephew grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and was basically fluent at 4. But now, at age 13, he seems to have mostly forgotten it in favor of his dominant language, English. Same thing happened with a GF I had when I was much younger. Kids have a tremendous ability to learn things. But also to utterly forget them.
In the US, anybody can be sued, and probably will be sued if their actions may in any way have contributed to someone's death. Good Samaritan laws only mean that after they've gone through the expense and humiliation of defending themselves, if a jury finds that they acted in good faith, they can't be held liable. N.B., outside of North America, Good Samaritan laws usually denote an affirmative responsibility to assist someone in need in an emergency situation (as well as the pursuant lack of liability therefrom).
What we need is a system where the number that you provide is keyed to a specific retailer for a specific transaction of a specific monetary amount at a specific moment in time. So that even if(when) someone gets your number in the clear, they can't use it for anything else. Even that same retailer won't be able to double bill you or charge you more than you agreed to pay. It'll mean that we'll have to use "smart cards" (or fobs or bracelets) but who cares? There's no reason, even, why you can't use a single password-protected smart card to authenticate multiple sources of credit.
If trademarking stuff makes it go away, maybe we can get him to trademark "e-law", "weblaw", "nanolaw", "IANAL", "I-for-one-law" and "attorney-at-law." Especially attorney-at-law.
True. Watermarking, whether through an ID3 fingerprint or something involving PhD level cryptography, is only going to deter the casual pirate in any case. Anyone else can use a stolen credit card and a zombie or hijacked wifi connection to eliminate IP tracing.
I think RL watermarking is considerably more complicated than you're considering. Think of watermark as an alteration embedded in a number.
162341369871938126341.
Someone else gets a similar but not-identical number:
762441365871928129341.
Just based on those two numbers, can you reconstruct the "original" number? Can you even identify which digits have been altered by the watermark? You can do a diff, but so what. Take the leading digit. Which was altered? The 1, the 7, or both? It could be that any non-2 digit in that location serves as a partial identifier. Multiply partial identifiers by the full length of an mp3 file, and you'll see it could become intractibly difficult to locate and eradicate the full watermark without knowing the protocol. In any event you're overthinking this. If you have access to two accounts, presumably one real and one fake/fraudulent, then why not just download it once under the fake one? Then you can give a rat's ass if it gets out into the wild.
Better yet, why not just p2p the damn thing from the outset?
And to remind everybody yet again, APPLE IS ALREADY DOING THIS and has sold billionz of watermarked files. Nobody's gotten prosecuted yet to my knowledge.
The only danger I see coming out of this is when, down the road, after CDs have bitten the dust, all digital media will be available by digitally fingerprinted downloads only. Which could mean, if you're carrying around an media player with any songs released after 2010, and they DON'T have your personal digital fingerprint on them, the presumption will be that you stole them. By that time of course, stripping your fingerprint off the files will be as illegal as filing off your car's VIN (vehicle identification number). The same will go for any commercial software we buy, which in addition to fingerprinting, will be constantly communicating its/our authenticity to some central server and upgraded and downgraded outside of our control. Welcome to Steam, punk!
First, click-thru contract be damned, they still have to convince a judge in court that you should be held responsible.
Second, even if you're deemed in breach of contract and have to compensate them for their actual losses or some agreed upon penalty, I don't see how you could be liable for the statutory infringment if they can't establish that you engaged in tortious behavior or didn't contribute through negligence.
The record companies already know that watermarking isn't going to deter a determined filesharer. Watermarks can be easily reverse-engineered and stripped, making the file safe for you to "save" without fear of it being stolen, and honestly, who's gonna bother to hack into a computer to "steal" mp3's when the stuff is available for free at every filesharing site in existence?
Not to mention, there's deniability at every stage. My credit card was stolen, my PC was hacked, my iPod was stolen, someone registered using my name, a friend reverse-transcribed my watermark onto an mp3 as a joke, etc. Nobody's going to prosecute on the strength of watermarks alone, although they may be used as proof in conjunction with other stuff. I.e., what if some "pirate" has a cache of stolen credit cards PLUS a hard drive full of mp3s with various people's watermarks? That can be used as evidence to show ID theft. Etc.
And of course, iTunes have already been using watermarks since forever. But, being Apple, somehow that's OK and superior to normal watermarking, I'm sure.
Aside from that, I think the rest of your points are excellent, and it remains to be seen how this will play out. You're absoutely right about SVCD being a simple add-on to current tech. However, I recall my first $200+ Panasonic not being able to support anything but vanilla DVD-Video and Red Book CDs, no mp3, no VCD, no mpeg, no +R/-R/+RW/-RW anything. This contrasts greatly with the current crop of $50 machines that will play almost anything written on a 12cm disc, with the notable exception of free formats like mkv, ogg, srt. My feeling is that if HD-DVD is virtually abandoned, the cheap manufacturers will be able to license the DRM cheaply and add it to their future $50 systems as a selling point, much in the same way that licensed divx and wma capability is built into many of the cheap $50 DVD players today. Even without any more movies being pressed, there's no reason why writable HD-DVD discs themselves won't persist as a cheap media storage format (cheaper than BR discs), and you'll want to be able to play back what you record on them. Nobody will use it inside or outside of the country. That may be the case, but the relevant issue is whether China will mandate its inclusion into next gen players. And if so, once the firmware is there, it's only a matter of time, IMO until it is made fully HD-DVD compatible. The issue for the OP is if that compatibility is in time to allow him to keep playing his current discs. At least, until they get irreparably scratched.
Regarding your other point, yes, I do like Shaolin Kung Fu movies. But aside from that, Chinese manufacturers are already members of the BRDA, so I wouldn't expect them to be excluded.
Look at it this way. You got ten movies that will play forever, you got a very good upscaling DVD player, and you got an opportunity to buy a bunch of films in the very near future at fire sale prices.
Also, don't expect HD-DVD to entirely die out so quickly. Toshiba will still be making players and recorders for a good while longer -- the standard may even manage to live on as a drop-in replacement for DVD+Rs. Furthermore, HD-DVD is supposedly compatible with China's new CH-DVD standard. After cheap upscaling DVD players start to flood the market with HD-DVD compatibility mode, you won't have to worry about your collection being unplayable in the future. Don't minimize China's influence here, after all, old Chinese (S)VCD's are still playable on every new $30 player, some 10 years after they were obsoleted by DVDs.
I suspect that some of the reason the small off-brand manufacturers devices are so useful is because they don't bother with such insignificant details as licensing (and the requisite fees). So they don't have to disable features the content "owners" don't want you to have. Really, they're hardware versions of allofmp3.com
And let's be fair. The iPod got huge by being useful to a hell of a lot of people, namely the vast majority that wants a round-edged managed experience. If the $20 player was useful to the masses, it would be #1 on the market. But, in cutting corners, they also tend to cut out things like english-language manuals, product testing, ergonomics, etc. You might not be able to drop a XviD onto your iPod, but download a video from iTMS, and you know it will work, period. Meanwhile, your XviD might or might not work on the off-brand player, even spending an hour with the conversion software.
However, if an audiophile has thousands of euros worth of equipment designed to bring out the best in an LP recording, of course it will sound better than someone's 200 integrated system. Most people have cheap CD players, but expensive ones exist and they do tend to have a "warmer" output. Also, our own hearing ability suffers greatly as we age. That analog recording we listened to at age 10 sounded better because we could hear it better.
And as another poster pointed out, Wikipedia owes nothing to us. It comes with no warranty of reliability, and since it is free, it is too much even to say "caveat emptor." On the other hand, dismissing government duplicity by a mere wave of "thus it has always been" is a real danger. That is the same logic that argues we should condone torture and assassinations because all governments do it. I don't want my government engaged in wholesale deception of its citizenry. Concealment has a place. I don't need to know the launch codes. Lies too have a place (e.g. sting operations) but a campaign to misinform the public with the goal of influencing policy undermines the foundations of democracy.
Besides, if wikipedia's wrong, I can always go to britannica or to a real book. If my government systemically lies, who do I go to for the truth?