why they didn't press hybrid CDs with a CD-ROM part that contains the MP3s for the album, and eventually some bonus material (bitmaps, video clips, interviews, etc...).
In Asia, it's commonplace for CD's to come with little posters, trading cards, stickers, bonus VCDs, etc, which add significant value to the title, and increase the likelihood that an actual purchase will be made.
Netflix is a better deal. Yes it is. The solution for the download sites is simple: They should allow you to watch any given movie an unlimited number of times, but charge monthly subscription rates, like Netflix does. Movie studios might cringe about the idea of someone having a huge library of downloads on their PC. But, in practice, they'd be able to get greater revenue from that method. They could even use a bittorrent-type protocol to lighten the load to their servers. Since the movies would be DRM'ed, it wouldn't matter who downloaded them, you'd still need to have a subscription to watch them.
Interesting (and informative) link, but your comment is wrong. The plaintiff does not have to prove that you're not a parody. They merely have to prove that you have infringed the work. Once they've done that, it's game over (at least in terms of liability*). Unless you can prove that your infringment was allowable under Fair Use provisions.
As long as these people CAN convince the judge that what they are doing is a parody, LucasFilm doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Wrong.
Why?
Imagine this. I decide I want to sell Star Wars bootleg videos in the street. So I break out DVDAuthor and superimpose MST3K-ish "parody" subtitles onto the movie. Now, according to you, I can go ahead and distribute my "parody" SW version with impunity?
Fair use doesn't work that way. Just because something's a parody, doesn't automatically make it fair use. In every case, the rights of the defendant must be weighed against those of the plaintiff, and except in very clear cut circumstances, the plaintiff has the upper hand because fair use is an affirmative defense -- you must prove that it applies to your infringement, not just assert it.
Re:All I know is...
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.
Now, if you look at the qualifications for collecting unemployment, you'll see that unemployment eligible people are a proper subset of "unemployed" people. If you're unemployment benefits ineligible, you're not considered "unemployed." So the poster you were disagreeing with was exactly right in saying that the figures "don't count people who're no longer collecting unemployment and have simply given up.."
Find a lawyer, that's what.:) Personally, I think the example is still problematic in that there isn't really a relationship between the illegality of the act and the injury to the victim. What I mean is this: If she were an adult, and the same thing happened, VD, ovaries, etc., it would simply be viewed as a horrible accident. Possibly, her family would be wondering (in vain) how they could sue you, but there'd be no chance of a criminal case. So the criminal matter here is solely the issues of statutory rape, seducing a minor, adultery, etc. The VD is a separate and distinct side-issue.
But let's make this situation even starker. Let's say you've got AIDS and you deliberately infect her. And then she comes back to the US. And dies. Now, could you be extradited? My guess is technically yes, but I doubt the US government would make the effort to do so. (Again, the matter of age seems to be unrelated, like one of those trick bits of spurious information that they use in exams.)
I'd really appreciate an attorney familiar with this specific area of the law clearing things up a bit.
Even though we are on the same side in principle -- I don't care for what's happening -- in all honesty your examples are not good ones.
This is not merely a situation where an act, legal in one country, is illegal in another. This is a case where the act committed in one country had a direct and significant impact upon life or property in a second country.
A better comparison would be this: Imagine that you are in Belarus, and of your own willful accord you launch an ICBM at the United States, and it hits a person there and kills him. Your act of launching a missile might not be illegal in Belarus, but be damned sure that the Belarussian authorities will turn you over to the US government. Indeed, it could be considered an act of war if a country fails to take proactive steps to prevent its citizens from bringing harm to another country. This should be obvious with some thought. And that's why there are extradition laws in the first place.
First of all, the software companies say you don't "own" the software anyway, just the media it comes on. That's the official story.
Secondly, if you've got antivirus software, you are almost certainly already paying to rent without realizing it. Except as you've already noted, they call it a "subscription," those sneaky bastards. The same with MMORPGs. It'll be coming very soon with Microsoft also. Why do you think they're readying their own antivirus product? They're going to push that along with other upgrade and maintenance services for a fee. Windows without constant updates is worse than useless, and Microsoft will definitely find a way to monetize that as their traditional revenue streams start to dry up. Think MSNDoublePlusGood.
Third, just like mp3 prices, the market is already constrained by the product that's already out there. Almost everyone knows how to get illegal copies of Office97, Photoshop, etc. for free. And let's not forget GNU/Linux. So don't expect end users to pay exorbitant rates for simple word processing. There isn't going to be a situation where you're paying an arm and a leg but you have no alternative.
Please mod up the above reply. My original comment was wrong. There are a variety of claims here, not just regarding highlighting the weblinks or imagemaps (as I mistakenly said), and the very first claim is in fact a method to use the keyboard to navigate the hyperlinks on a webpage.
Regarding that first claim, Microsoft is claiming to have come up with a different (unique?) method for doing what Lynx and other browsers already did. It is commonplace to patent a distinct method of achieving something which has already been patented in the past. Microsoft's behavior (in this instance) is nothing unusual or improper.
Speaking of hyperlinks, it's both interesting and informative to follow back the trail of references cited in this patent. You'll come across some surprising stuff.
Move along. It's just Yet Another Topic Where Submitter Did Not Actually Read The Patent Application.
It doesn't patent "the use of a keyboard to navigate a web page." What it patents is, as far as I can tell, the use of the tab key to navigate to and to place a non-rectangular highlight over a weblink, or to place any-shaped highlight over an imagemap.
I'm not sure I'd rely on that source either. In their domain stats, they've got Chinese (.CN) domains way down at 123 in popularity behind such internet heavyweights as Mauritius and Mozambique. Which makes me wonder if they're only counting Internet traffic to English-language sites.
Um, your own chart shows that IE6 usage has barely budged in the past year and holds firm around 70%, near its high. Yes, Mozilla's increased, but at the expense of old IE5 installations only.
This was exactly on my mind when my bank called me the other day. They left a message on my machine to question some unusual charges that had been made, and said to call them back.
Caller ID identified them as my actual bank.
When I called, the rep asked me for my card number and my mom's maiden name to verify. I gave them the information, but how do I know for sure that I wasn't just pwned?
More generally, how is one ever supposed to tell in the future that one is not the victim of a phish? The Star38 guy said he was likely scammed himself, and you'd think he'd know better.
In my particular case, the way I handled it was to initially give the "wrong" maiden name...then the rep said, "that's not what we have on record." At that point I knew she was legit, but one can potentially see this escalating to Frank Herbert-like levels of feints within feints, with the pro more likely to be one step ahead of the mark.
It's well known among activists that an effective boycott requires organization, e.g. contacting the company in question to let them know you are boycotting them. Contacting the press to inform them what's going on. Just an unexplained dropoff in purchases will, as you suggest, be explained by the RIAA in such a manner as to demonize their opponents.
He wasn't just asking for people to spout the names of various free recording tools. He was specifically asking if any make a good replacement for cdrecord-ProDVD. Which, I think, is a perfectly good Ask Slashdot question.
Anyway, it appears that SuSE and Mandrake have patched versions of cdrtools which are able to write to DVD without restriction. I don't have personal experience with this tool, so perhaps someone else who regularly runs Linux can verify.
Methinks Microsoft has a problem here. The only people who "WinFS" could possibly sound sexy to are slashgeeks, but they hate Microsoft, so, er, how's this supposed to work?
Look. I want to come over to your house. And I want to say "cock sandwich" in front of your wife and kids. Is it wrong for you to forbid me?
That's the issue here. The French people have laws, and if you want to conduct business with France, you have to obey them. Or are you seriously saying that the French government ought to be subject to American laws and values? This is France we're talking about, not some two bit country like Iraq or Bosnia that we can just invade any time we feel like.
They don't respect peoples freedoms, why should we respect their laws?
You're kidding, right? Respect freedoms? I wonder which government in the world incarcerates more of its citizens than any other? I wonder which government routinely violates the rights of other people in other countries more than any other?
Anyway this whole topic is a tempest in a teapot. France isn't extraditing Yahoo. Nothing's really changed except that the 9th Circuit is going, "Er no, we can't absolve you against the French prosecuting you IN FRANCE. Duh!"
Wow on demand cable without the abialty to record the shows.
The logical extension of this type of service is one which is everywhere accessible, and has everything (movies, music, books, games) instantly available for mostly a fixed monthly cost. When that occurs, then there will be no need to "record" anything because you can just watch it again whenever you like.
I think eventually this will happen, and at that point, the content producers will have won, because most people will cease to see the need for information as property. Who needs their house cluttered up with DVD's, magazines and books when they can just stream every Linkin Park song they'd ever want?
(More ominously though, once we old infohoarders have all died out, "we were always at war with Eurasia" (and "Greedo always shot first") becomes a distinct possibility.)
Slashdot Mirror
why they didn't press hybrid CDs with a CD-ROM part that contains the MP3s for the album, and eventually some bonus material (bitmaps, video clips, interviews, etc...).
In Asia, it's commonplace for CD's to come with little posters, trading cards, stickers, bonus VCDs, etc, which add significant value to the title, and increase the likelihood that an actual purchase will be made.
Netflix is a better deal. Yes it is. The solution for the download sites is simple: They should allow you to watch any given movie an unlimited number of times, but charge monthly subscription rates, like Netflix does. Movie studios might cringe about the idea of someone having a huge library of downloads on their PC. But, in practice, they'd be able to get greater revenue from that method. They could even use a bittorrent-type protocol to lighten the load to their servers. Since the movies would be DRM'ed, it wouldn't matter who downloaded them, you'd still need to have a subscription to watch them.
Interesting (and informative) link, but your comment is wrong. The plaintiff does not have to prove that you're not a parody. They merely have to prove that you have infringed the work. Once they've done that, it's game over (at least in terms of liability*). Unless you can prove that your infringment was allowable under Fair Use provisions.
*The matter of damages is obviously more complex.
Does this effect only happen upon mouse movement, or do you detect the same problem while playing a video?
Did you try setting your monitor resolution to 800X600 or decreasing your colors to 16-bit?
Did you try resizing the window with your keyboard (e.g. in Windows using ALT+Space to activate the System menu)?
Did you try seeing what happens with a different OS? (e.g Knoppix)
Did you try changing your mouse drivers?
As long as these people CAN convince the judge that what they are doing is a parody, LucasFilm doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Wrong.
Why?
Imagine this. I decide I want to sell Star Wars bootleg videos in the street. So I break out DVDAuthor and superimpose MST3K-ish "parody" subtitles onto the movie. Now, according to you, I can go ahead and distribute my "parody" SW version with impunity?
Fair use doesn't work that way. Just because something's a parody, doesn't automatically make it fair use. In every case, the rights of the defendant must be weighed against those of the plaintiff, and except in very clear cut circumstances, the plaintiff has the upper hand because fair use is an affirmative defense -- you must prove that it applies to your infringement, not just assert it.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_faq.htm#Ques5
Now, if you look at the qualifications for collecting unemployment, you'll see that unemployment eligible people are a proper subset of "unemployed" people. If you're unemployment benefits ineligible, you're not considered "unemployed." So the poster you were disagreeing with was exactly right in saying that the figures "don't count people who're no longer collecting unemployment and have simply given up.."
The "whatever reason" is that theppn.com is an Asian Music-related tracker so your torrent was simply not on topic.
BTW, why is there an automatic assumption that bidding mechanisms will lower wages?
If it doesn't lower wages, then what's the point? The hospitals will deem it a failure and go back to hiring temps.
what then?
:) Personally, I think the example is still problematic in that there isn't really a relationship between the illegality of the act and the injury to the victim. What I mean is this: If she were an adult, and the same thing happened, VD, ovaries, etc., it would simply be viewed as a horrible accident. Possibly, her family would be wondering (in vain) how they could sue you, but there'd be no chance of a criminal case. So the criminal matter here is solely the issues of statutory rape, seducing a minor, adultery, etc. The VD is a separate and distinct side-issue.
Find a lawyer, that's what.
But let's make this situation even starker. Let's say you've got AIDS and you deliberately infect her. And then she comes back to the US. And dies. Now, could you be extradited? My guess is technically yes, but I doubt the US government would make the effort to do so. (Again, the matter of age seems to be unrelated, like one of those trick bits of spurious information that they use in exams.)
I'd really appreciate an attorney familiar with this specific area of the law clearing things up a bit.
Heh. I'm not a Mac person so my first thought when you said "Color Classic" was the TRS-80 CoCo.
;)
For a second I was really in complete awe of your retro-geek chops.
I'm afraid I'll have to downgrade that to quietly impressed.
Even though we are on the same side in principle -- I don't care for what's happening -- in all honesty your examples are not good ones.
This is not merely a situation where an act, legal in one country, is illegal in another. This is a case where the act committed in one country had a direct and significant impact upon life or property in a second country.
A better comparison would be this: Imagine that you are in Belarus, and of your own willful accord you launch an ICBM at the United States, and it hits a person there and kills him. Your act of launching a missile might not be illegal in Belarus, but be damned sure that the Belarussian authorities will turn you over to the US government. Indeed, it could be considered an act of war if a country fails to take proactive steps to prevent its citizens from bringing harm to another country. This should be obvious with some thought. And that's why there are extradition laws in the first place.
First of all, the software companies say you don't "own" the software anyway, just the media it comes on. That's the official story.
Secondly, if you've got antivirus software, you are almost certainly already paying to rent without realizing it. Except as you've already noted, they call it a "subscription," those sneaky bastards. The same with MMORPGs. It'll be coming very soon with Microsoft also. Why do you think they're readying their own antivirus product? They're going to push that along with other upgrade and maintenance services for a fee. Windows without constant updates is worse than useless, and Microsoft will definitely find a way to monetize that as their traditional revenue streams start to dry up. Think MSNDoublePlusGood.
Third, just like mp3 prices, the market is already constrained by the product that's already out there. Almost everyone knows how to get illegal copies of Office97, Photoshop, etc. for free. And let's not forget GNU/Linux. So don't expect end users to pay exorbitant rates for simple word processing. There isn't going to be a situation where you're paying an arm and a leg but you have no alternative.
Please mod up the above reply. My original comment was wrong. There are a variety of claims here, not just regarding highlighting the weblinks or imagemaps (as I mistakenly said), and the very first claim is in fact a method to use the keyboard to navigate the hyperlinks on a webpage.
Regarding that first claim, Microsoft is claiming to have come up with a different (unique?) method for doing what Lynx and other browsers already did. It is commonplace to patent a distinct method of achieving something which has already been patented in the past. Microsoft's behavior (in this instance) is nothing unusual or improper.
Speaking of hyperlinks, it's both interesting and informative to follow back the trail of references cited in this patent. You'll come across some surprising stuff.
Move along. It's just Yet Another Topic Where Submitter Did Not Actually Read The Patent Application.
It doesn't patent "the use of a keyboard to navigate a web page." What it patents is, as far as I can tell, the use of the tab key to navigate to and to place a non-rectangular highlight over a weblink, or to place any-shaped highlight over an imagemap.
Not if my bank was a huge multinational corporation with offices all over the globe, and they were calling me with one of their many 1-800 numbers.
But yes, under other circumstances, that would likely work.
I'm not sure I'd rely on that source either. In their domain stats, they've got Chinese (.CN) domains way down at 123 in popularity behind such internet heavyweights as Mauritius and Mozambique. Which makes me wonder if they're only counting Internet traffic to English-language sites.
Um, your own chart shows that IE6 usage has barely budged in the past year and holds firm around 70%, near its high. Yes, Mozilla's increased, but at the expense of old IE5 installations only.
So, in this case, complacency is working fine.
This was exactly on my mind when my bank called me the other day. They left a message on my machine to question some unusual charges that had been made, and said to call them back.
Caller ID identified them as my actual bank.
When I called, the rep asked me for my card number and my mom's maiden name to verify. I gave them the information, but how do I know for sure that I wasn't just pwned?
More generally, how is one ever supposed to tell in the future that one is not the victim of a phish? The Star38 guy said he was likely scammed himself, and you'd think he'd know better.
In my particular case, the way I handled it was to initially give the "wrong" maiden name...then the rep said, "that's not what we have on record." At that point I knew she was legit, but one can potentially see this escalating to Frank Herbert-like levels of feints within feints, with the pro more likely to be one step ahead of the mark.
Yeah, but back then "porn" consisted of ASCII printouts of Snoopy getting whacked off by Peppermint Patty.
It's well known among activists that an effective boycott requires organization, e.g. contacting the company in question to let them know you are boycotting them. Contacting the press to inform them what's going on. Just an unexplained dropoff in purchases will, as you suggest, be explained by the RIAA in such a manner as to demonize their opponents.
He wasn't just asking for people to spout the names of various free recording tools. He was specifically asking if any make a good replacement for cdrecord-ProDVD. Which, I think, is a perfectly good Ask Slashdot question.
Anyway, it appears that SuSE and Mandrake have patched versions of cdrtools which are able to write to DVD without restriction. I don't have personal experience with this tool, so perhaps someone else who regularly runs Linux can verify.
Marketing. WinFS sounds sexy.
Methinks Microsoft has a problem here. The only people who "WinFS" could possibly sound sexy to are slashgeeks, but they hate Microsoft, so, er, how's this supposed to work?
If you look at the 2 year chart...
That's a log graph, take a look at the linear chart for a better idea of how close they are to their lows.
Look. I want to come over to your house. And I want to say "cock sandwich" in front of your wife and kids. Is it wrong for you to forbid me?
That's the issue here. The French people have laws, and if you want to conduct business with France, you have to obey them. Or are you seriously saying that the French government ought to be subject to American laws and values? This is France we're talking about, not some two bit country like Iraq or Bosnia that we can just invade any time we feel like.
They don't respect peoples freedoms, why should we respect their laws?
You're kidding, right? Respect freedoms? I wonder which government in the world incarcerates more of its citizens than any other? I wonder which government routinely violates the rights of other people in other countries more than any other?
Anyway this whole topic is a tempest in a teapot. France isn't extraditing Yahoo. Nothing's really changed except that the 9th Circuit is going, "Er no, we can't absolve you against the French prosecuting you IN FRANCE. Duh!"
Wow on demand cable without the abialty to record the shows.
The logical extension of this type of service is one which is everywhere accessible, and has everything (movies, music, books, games) instantly available for mostly a fixed monthly cost. When that occurs, then there will be no need to "record" anything because you can just watch it again whenever you like.
I think eventually this will happen, and at that point, the content producers will have won, because most people will cease to see the need for information as property. Who needs their house cluttered up with DVD's, magazines and books when they can just stream every Linkin Park song they'd ever want?
(More ominously though, once we old infohoarders have all died out, "we were always at war with Eurasia" (and "Greedo always shot first") becomes a distinct possibility.)