I thought the DMCA only made it illegal to circumvent encryption for the purpose of defeating copyright. In which case, once copyright is over, you'd have free reign on encryption circumvention.
Of course, at that point, if that type of encryption were still in use in copyrighted works, they might be able to argue that research into decryption of the public domain work would also be research into copyright circumvention.
As two other respondents have noted, you are exactly wrong.
You are correct: private parties are not bound by the declaration of independence. You are incorrect: Microsoft really can't restrict your freedom of speech.
The reason for this apparent contradiction is that Microsoft cannot make laws. How would Microsoft limit your freedom of speech? By arresting you? All they could do would be to sue you if you damaged them, or make business arrangements to mess with your life. That's what AOL does. They kick you out of the chat room. They can't stop you from swearing on someone else's dime.
In this particular case, Microsoft is not the party accused of restricting freedom of speech. Since this student isn't using MS resources to make his speech, they would have no grounds at all. The DMCA is a law passed by the federal government. The federal government is restricting freedom of speech. Just like copyright. The constitution makes allowance for both the DMCA and regular copyright, however.
Article 1, section 8, clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
So I think it's pretty clear that the DMCA has grounds in the US Constitution. But it's not because MS can limit your freedom of speech. They can't. Of course, I don't think the DMCA has good enough grounds in the Constitution, given the absurd ramifications. Some day, we may see what the Supreme Court thinks.
You're right. And their cards used to cost $30. If the card fails, for $30, you'd get another one. It would still be Cheap.
If you didn't want to deal with that, you could spend $100 on your graphics card. You are apparently not in Trident's target market. If you had a head on your shoulders, you would never have dealt with them at all. Otherwise, you would have been happy to save the $70.
It's silly to make arbitrary distinctions between graphical/aural/tactile interfaces. The optimal interface (the one we use with the rest of the world) uses all senses, clearly.
It's also silly to focus exclusively on nerve bandwidth. Just think of the amount of information we have stored in our brains about the physical world around us. If an interface played on that information, then it gets the benefit of evolutionarily perfected compression over that nerve bandwidth.
Of course, you're right, we'd have to be morons to forgo the GUI for an exclusively tactile UI, but that's not what the author is talking about at all. He's talking about integrating visual, aural, and tactile stimulus. Done correctly, it'd be awful close to a perfect UI.
Also, PowerPC is an instruction set, like IA32 or IA64, it's not a chip architecture. IBM and Motorola currently make chips that implement the PowerPC instruction set (and IBM's chip, the Power4, is currently the fastest chip available, BTW).
No. Power4 uses a slightly different instruction set. Running PPC code on a Power3 or Power4 chip would require recompile or emulation. It's a lot closer than x86 or something, so emulation might not be the worst idea, but it's definitely different.
I can't give you specifics, but my iBook battery lasts half as long when I'm using AirPort networking. Wired networking has no noticeable effect on battery life. Perhaps that's due to some design quirk on Apple's part, but I don't think so.
As far as I imagine (kindof the opposite of afaik), the only limitation on a craft kept aloft by it's density and size is that it would have to have a very large volume. If the craft were relatively flat, then it would have to be much larger to make up for the less voluminous shape.
But no, the shape and orientation of the craft would be totally unlimited. A blimp could be upside down and backwards and it would still be lighter than air, right?
Yeah, but a stealth blimp would need to be angular. That way it doesn't reflect radar back in every direction. And being thin like you describe would be advantageous too, in that regard. However, it would still have to be big enough that it could have sufficient lift. How big was the object you saw? If your UFO was full of helium, think it could lift a few tanks?
The orientation of a blimp could change. It's lift is not defined by the direction it's facing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't necesarily believe your story *or* the one on space.com, but I don't see what your argument is. Your description sounds like it could easily be a... um... stealth blimp. How else is it going to remain airborne silently?
Looks like Bruce is having a rough couple of weeks.
It's so nice to have a leader in FS or OSS that isn't an egomaniac. Not that I have a problem with our resident egomaniacs, but Bruce Perens is a welcome relief. He doesn't even insist that we know his middle initial!
It seems to me like this would be an excellent way of giving IP to idiots. Which is the business MS is in. When I first start up/install WinXP, how come they don't do the same thing for me? Everytime my dad gets a new computer for his office, he calls me and tells me to come in and configure it for him. Why aren't all devices self configuring like this?
You sound as if you feel that people have a fundamental right to control the reproduction and use of their ideas. The more I talk to people about these issues, I get the idea that almost everyone agrees with you. I can't really understand where people come up with this natural right. It's practically assumed.
I don't see why. To my reading, the framers have included copyright provisions in the Constitution as a means of solving the Tragedy of the Commons. That is, they seemed to desire to maximize common good, rather than recognize a natural right. If there was a fundamental right to control the use of your art, I can't imagine why it wouldn't last indefinitely. This could not possibly maximize common good. It would give artists a miniscule increase in projected revenue from their artwork. This would not inspire the creation of better/more artwork.
Why is copyright a natural right? I just don't get it.
Anyway. A million/.ers have made my argument before. As the copyright term goes from 40 years to 90 years, artists gain something like.5% in projected return on investment. Further increases are even less beneficial. At some duration, the total public benefit is higher if there is unlimited access to the work. Unless there's a persuasive reason for copyright to be natural, then it's simply too damaging to be so long.
This is an excellent example of a situation in which government can be beneficial to the public interest. I'm not sure that the FCC is actually acting in the public interest in this case, but broadcasting as currently envisioned requires government intervention. Otherwise I could set up a tower in my back yard that would jam TV, radio, anything you like. Spectrum use is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. Cooperation is required for maximum benefit, and government (yes, force.) is one way of getting cooperation.
For its time, Kane is actually heavy in special effects. Practically every shot has some combination of miniatures, paintings, and all that classic stuff, leaving alone the sound work. Some of the commentary tracks on the DVD describe them.
Yeah, I know you were joking, but Kane's a perfect example of the unnoticed special effects thing he's talking about, it really is.
Yeah, I know. The joke is funny because I made up special effects that were not used, even though the movie is well known to be SF heavy.
I guess it would have worked better if I said that Mark Hamill had Mickey Rooney stand in for him in all his lightsaber battles.
Whenever they talk about special effects that aren't noticed, it's like in Amelie with the inserted blue lamp. Of *course* we didn't notice the *&^%ing blue lamp. It's a *lamp*. It was in the portion of the frame that was furthest from the action. They could have had a two year old draw it in with MS Paint and we still wouldn't have noticed the *&^%ing effect.
You should see the special effects I did in Citizen Kane. For example, Mickey Rooney played the part of Citizen Kane. Orson Wells was disappointed with the outcome, so we had to replace Rooney with bluescreen shots of Wells for the entire movie.
Wells like Rooney's costumes better, though, so we had to modify Rooney's costumes digitally so that they would look like they fit a man of Orson's... "stature."
To be fair, this had nothing to do with Free Software. And he didn't say that he was doing anything as important as the civil rights movement, he simply admitted that his version of civil disobedience was much less ballsy than the civil disobedience they employed.
I disagree. AI may have this making-artificial-people mythos about it, but if you look at the direction of AI research in the past 20 years, that's not really what the field is about.
There are exceptions; people are trying to make magical leaps over some percieved barrier, usually self-awareness. The cyc [cyc.com] project works along those lines.
I also disagree with grandparent, but for other reasons. Cyc is an interesting expert system, but it hasn't made any magical leaps. Wallace's disparagements towards the project are plenty accurate.
By and large, though, AI research occurs in little steps, and most of those steps are like this one. There is a need for a good understanding of what works and what doesn't work for smaller tasks before we're going to solve the bigger problems. What you seem to call "Cognitive Imitation" I would often call "Trying to understand cognition".
Corporations cannot commit criminal activities, only individuals. The only exceptions to this are rico cases. Corporations are only ever liable to civil action. HP could be concerned that the MPAA would sue them, not criminal procedings.
Aqua apps cannot be tunneled via X. You can use VNC, or Apple Remote Desktop. ARD is excellent, but closed source and expensive ($500). It's only like 2MB, so I stole it. VNC support was kindof weak last time I checked, and I don't know about a tightVNC server that works with aqua.
It seems that his depression has lead him to be quite a misanthrope:
Slashdot: Is alice intelligent? Wally: People are dumb.
Well, fair 'nuff, Wallace. If we hogtied the man behind the curtain, could Alice have written your responses to these questions? Maybe that's a bad example, because many of the answers were very distantly related to the questions asked...
Anyway, aside from general misanthropy, Wallace seems like a wonderful person. Glad to have read every word.
If wages and working conditions were lowered across the entire industry, but the H1Bs were free to quit their jobs and do as they please, I wouldn't be complaining at all. I realize/. is full of blow hards and idiots, but it seems like at least a few people agree with me.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the DMCA only made it illegal to circumvent encryption for the purpose of defeating copyright. In which case, once copyright is over, you'd have free reign on encryption circumvention.
Of course, at that point, if that type of encryption were still in use in copyrighted works, they might be able to argue that research into decryption of the public domain work would also be research into copyright circumvention.
*That* would make it unconstitutional.
No, an intentional invocation of Godwin's law isn't when someone says, "I invoke Godwin's law."
It's when someone says, "You're being just like the Nazis." so that that side loses the argument. I realize the definition is unclear. Read it again.
As two other respondents have noted, you are exactly wrong.
You are correct: private parties are not bound by the declaration of independence. You are incorrect: Microsoft really can't restrict your freedom of speech.
The reason for this apparent contradiction is that Microsoft cannot make laws. How would Microsoft limit your freedom of speech? By arresting you? All they could do would be to sue you if you damaged them, or make business arrangements to mess with your life. That's what AOL does. They kick you out of the chat room. They can't stop you from swearing on someone else's dime.
In this particular case, Microsoft is not the party accused of restricting freedom of speech. Since this student isn't using MS resources to make his speech, they would have no grounds at all. The DMCA is a law passed by the federal government. The federal government is restricting freedom of speech. Just like copyright. The constitution makes allowance for both the DMCA and regular copyright, however.
Article 1, section 8, clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
So I think it's pretty clear that the DMCA has grounds in the US Constitution. But it's not because MS can limit your freedom of speech. They can't. Of course, I don't think the DMCA has good enough grounds in the Constitution, given the absurd ramifications. Some day, we may see what the Supreme Court thinks.
You're right. And their cards used to cost $30. If the card fails, for $30, you'd get another one. It would still be Cheap.
If you didn't want to deal with that, you could spend $100 on your graphics card. You are apparently not in Trident's target market. If you had a head on your shoulders, you would never have dealt with them at all. Otherwise, you would have been happy to save the $70.
It's silly to make arbitrary distinctions between graphical/aural/tactile interfaces. The optimal interface (the one we use with the rest of the world) uses all senses, clearly.
It's also silly to focus exclusively on nerve bandwidth. Just think of the amount of information we have stored in our brains about the physical world around us. If an interface played on that information, then it gets the benefit of evolutionarily perfected compression over that nerve bandwidth.
Of course, you're right, we'd have to be morons to forgo the GUI for an exclusively tactile UI, but that's not what the author is talking about at all. He's talking about integrating visual, aural, and tactile stimulus. Done correctly, it'd be awful close to a perfect UI.
Also, PowerPC is an instruction set, like IA32 or IA64, it's not a chip architecture. IBM and Motorola currently make chips that implement the PowerPC instruction set (and IBM's chip, the Power4, is currently the fastest chip available, BTW).
No. Power4 uses a slightly different instruction set. Running PPC code on a Power3 or Power4 chip would require recompile or emulation. It's a lot closer than x86 or something, so emulation might not be the worst idea, but it's definitely different.
It uses much more energy than wired networking.
I can't give you specifics, but my iBook battery lasts half as long when I'm using AirPort networking. Wired networking has no noticeable effect on battery life. Perhaps that's due to some design quirk on Apple's part, but I don't think so.
As far as I imagine (kindof the opposite of afaik), the only limitation on a craft kept aloft by it's density and size is that it would have to have a very large volume. If the craft were relatively flat, then it would have to be much larger to make up for the less voluminous shape.
But no, the shape and orientation of the craft would be totally unlimited. A blimp could be upside down and backwards and it would still be lighter than air, right?
Yeah, but a stealth blimp would need to be angular. That way it doesn't reflect radar back in every direction. And being thin like you describe would be advantageous too, in that regard. However, it would still have to be big enough that it could have sufficient lift. How big was the object you saw? If your UFO was full of helium, think it could lift a few tanks?
The orientation of a blimp could change. It's lift is not defined by the direction it's facing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't necesarily believe your story *or* the one on space.com, but I don't see what your argument is. Your description sounds like it could easily be a... um... stealth blimp. How else is it going to remain airborne silently?
Looks like Bruce is having a rough couple of weeks.
It's so nice to have a leader in FS or OSS that isn't an egomaniac. Not that I have a problem with our resident egomaniacs, but Bruce Perens is a welcome relief. He doesn't even insist that we know his middle initial!
Nice troll. Well worded, not flamebait, timely, naive.
Perfect, as far as I can tell. Let's see how high you get modded.
You messed up the formatting.
It seems to me like this would be an excellent way of giving IP to idiots. Which is the business MS is in. When I first start up/install WinXP, how come they don't do the same thing for me? Everytime my dad gets a new computer for his office, he calls me and tells me to come in and configure it for him. Why aren't all devices self configuring like this?
You sound as if you feel that people have a fundamental right to control the reproduction and use of their ideas. The more I talk to people about these issues, I get the idea that almost everyone agrees with you. I can't really understand where people come up with this natural right. It's practically assumed.
/.ers have made my argument before. As the copyright term goes from 40 years to 90 years, artists gain something like .5% in projected return on investment. Further increases are even less beneficial. At some duration, the total public benefit is higher if there is unlimited access to the work. Unless there's a persuasive reason for copyright to be natural, then it's simply too damaging to be so long.
I don't see why. To my reading, the framers have included copyright provisions in the Constitution as a means of solving the Tragedy of the Commons. That is, they seemed to desire to maximize common good, rather than recognize a natural right. If there was a fundamental right to control the use of your art, I can't imagine why it wouldn't last indefinitely. This could not possibly maximize common good. It would give artists a miniscule increase in projected revenue from their artwork. This would not inspire the creation of better/more artwork.
Why is copyright a natural right? I just don't get it.
Anyway. A million
This is an excellent example of a situation in which government can be beneficial to the public interest. I'm not sure that the FCC is actually acting in the public interest in this case, but broadcasting as currently envisioned requires government intervention. Otherwise I could set up a tower in my back yard that would jam TV, radio, anything you like. Spectrum use is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. Cooperation is required for maximum benefit, and government (yes, force.) is one way of getting cooperation.
For its time, Kane is actually heavy in special effects. Practically every shot has some combination of miniatures, paintings, and all that classic stuff, leaving alone the sound work. Some of the commentary tracks on the DVD describe them.
Yeah, I know you were joking, but Kane's a perfect example of the unnoticed special effects thing he's talking about, it really is.
Yeah, I know. The joke is funny because I made up special effects that were not used, even though the movie is well known to be SF heavy.
I guess it would have worked better if I said that Mark Hamill had Mickey Rooney stand in for him in all his lightsaber battles.
Whenever they talk about special effects that aren't noticed, it's like in Amelie with the inserted blue lamp. Of *course* we didn't notice the *&^%ing blue lamp. It's a *lamp*. It was in the portion of the frame that was furthest from the action. They could have had a two year old draw it in with MS Paint and we still wouldn't have noticed the *&^%ing effect.
You should see the special effects I did in Citizen Kane. For example, Mickey Rooney played the part of Citizen Kane. Orson Wells was disappointed with the outcome, so we had to replace Rooney with bluescreen shots of Wells for the entire movie.
Wells like Rooney's costumes better, though, so we had to modify Rooney's costumes digitally so that they would look like they fit a man of Orson's... "stature."
To be fair, this had nothing to do with Free Software. And he didn't say that he was doing anything as important as the civil rights movement, he simply admitted that his version of civil disobedience was much less ballsy than the civil disobedience they employed.
I disagree. AI may have this making-artificial-people mythos about it, but if you look at the direction of AI research in the past 20 years, that's not really what the field is about.
There are exceptions; people are trying to make magical leaps over some percieved barrier, usually self-awareness. The cyc [cyc.com] project works along those lines.
I also disagree with grandparent, but for other reasons. Cyc is an interesting expert system, but it hasn't made any magical leaps. Wallace's disparagements towards the project are plenty accurate.
By and large, though, AI research occurs in little steps, and most of those steps are like this one. There is a need for a good understanding of what works and what doesn't work for smaller tasks before we're going to solve the bigger problems. What you seem to call "Cognitive Imitation" I would often call "Trying to understand cognition".
Yeah. Exactly. Cyc is a little step too.
Corporations cannot commit criminal activities, only individuals. The only exceptions to this are rico cases. Corporations are only ever liable to civil action. HP could be concerned that the MPAA would sue them, not criminal procedings.
Aqua apps cannot be tunneled via X. You can use VNC, or Apple Remote Desktop. ARD is excellent, but closed source and expensive ($500). It's only like 2MB, so I stole it. VNC support was kindof weak last time I checked, and I don't know about a tightVNC server that works with aqua.
It seems that his depression has lead him to be quite a misanthrope:
Slashdot: Is alice intelligent?
Wally: People are dumb.
Well, fair 'nuff, Wallace. If we hogtied the man behind the curtain, could Alice have written your responses to these questions? Maybe that's a bad example, because many of the answers were very distantly related to the questions asked...
Anyway, aside from general misanthropy, Wallace seems like a wonderful person. Glad to have read every word.
So much for Americans being better at the three Ms. Indians are catching up in Music, Movies, and Microcode.
Uh... speak for yourself. No, really.
/. is full of blow hards and idiots, but it seems like at least a few people agree with me.
If wages and working conditions were lowered across the entire industry, but the H1Bs were free to quit their jobs and do as they please, I wouldn't be complaining at all. I realize
Just think... if they had notified the Attorney General's office it would have been legal. Well. In a few months.