Just read the whole darn set of arguments, and as an author I can argue this both ways, but I don't think either set of lawyers did a stellar job addressing the core issue. On the plaintiff side, they quote and quote and quote and quote -- but don't deal with the real issue which is that the RIAA et. al seem to say "if I tell you where something is located, I am guilty of copyright infringement because I am making it available". They mention child-pornography as relevant -- but conveniently ignore the fact that to even own child-pornography under any circumstance is illegal, where owning music is legal -- but only if the music was obtained through legal means.
My take on this is based on the copyright's fair use doctrine -- as a copyrighted author I have the exclusive right to control everything about my work -- up to the point where someone has "fair use rights", such as quoting from my work in another study, etc. etc. [Instead of music, for example, let's assume it was a novel I wrote...] What if the quote was used within the concept of "fair use", but in a hyperlink to an illegal copy of the work, and the linking author didn't know that it wasn't a legal copy? Was the fair user guilty of copyright infringement because they inadvertently made my illegally copied work available?
On the piracy/law-breaking side though, let's say that someone knowingly "makes available" a copy of my work in a distributable manner that I did not authorize [AKA the Internet]. My belief is that they just infringed my copyright. Suppose however, that someone ten or eleven links down the chain says "hey, there's this great story at ________________ and has no idea (from an indexed title, etc.) whether or not the available copy is legally authorized or not. Sort of like a book buyer who buys a book in good faith from a reputable seller, not knowing that it is a fourth or fifth generation illegal copy, reads it, sells it to another used book store, which is where I find it. Who infringed the copyright? the initial bookstore, the buyer, the buyer when he sold, the second used book store?
Nope. The person I can sue is the person who originally created the illegal copy, made it available for distribution, and then distributed it, or the person who originally and knowingly "bought" or accepted the illegal copy. But I have to show the point of origin, and with file sharing networks and the multiplicity of perfect copies, that is almost impossible to do. Which is where this whole thing gets muddied. Obviously the copyright has been infringed -- but without a single definable point of origin, a specific instance of illegal copying and publication (AKA making available), etc. there just doesn't seem to be a provable case.
you've proven that you don't understand those variables sufficiently to comment.
Nice try gumshoe. I've been doing engine work since 1997, so I do know what I am talking about, and IC gas engines are NOT the wave of the future. Although I will acknowledge should have used the word variations, not variables, i.e., there are way too many design variations...."
The fact is that gasoline engines are only about 20-25% efficient at turning fuel into power, diesels are quite a bit more efficient because they pack more oxygen and fuel into the piston at the same time and in closer molecular proximity, resulting in a better burn AKA the diesel is inherently producing energy at higher "stochiometric combustion ratios". Which is why in general diesels don't put out much carbon monoxide, instead the problem is NOx which forms because of the high heat of the engine.
Secondarily, to say that gasoline engines and diesel engines operate on a hugely different basis is misleading. Both gain power by creating a controlled explosion with wavefront patterns that allow a piston to drive a crankshaft in a rotary manner. One uses a spark to provide the high heat necessary to achieve a burn using lower compression, the other uses the heat of compression itself to trigger the burn. Both are designed to maximize the extraction of energy from the wavefront created by the explosion/detonation of the fuel when mixed at high compression inside the piston.
Anyway, to speak to the noise, think about this:
take an unmuffled high quality turbocharged diesel engine of say 200 hp. Take an unmuffled high quality turbocharged gasoline engine of equivalent power. Chances are very good that it will be the gasoline engine that is louder on a meter because that engine is probably cranking at 5000-6000 rpm to produce the 200 hp, where the diesel engine is probably turning at 2000-2500 rpm, i.e. with less than half the detonations.
How about we start with a young mathemetician explaining why in the heck some of these unsolved mathematical problems even matter. Another poster started to explain something about how certain functions had to do with "cusps" on geodesic structures, but his explanation made about as mud.
I can just about guarantee that if you can explain why this solution matters, your post will go to +5 on the moderation scale.
Not necessarily. I have heard quiet running diesels that put out far less sound than a comparably powered gasoline engine -- and are cleaner burning and less vibration intensive as well. What can't be compared is an average engine in each power range -- there are way too many design variables to simply look at noise as an engine constraint.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that Quigo's technology does create an effective ad-words competitor. If it doesn't make it into mainstream use, it doesn't matter, and without a major player such as Yahoo behind it, I frankly don't see how the "newly" available solution gets funded.
For example, assume I start up a brand new, state of the art TV channel -- but don't have much money to advertise it, don't have much money to hire professional marketing and sales pros to build a revenue stream. Also assume that if my channel succeeds, I take money from the big network channels in my area. Do you realistically think that the main channels (including cable) really want to help me get a leg up?
Then compare what happens if a well known VC with many many clients backs my new channel, funds a well-crafted sales and marketing campaign, advises his clients to use my new channel, etc.
Now this seems like a step in the right direction.
I was given an iPod shuffle at a company party last year, and am probably in the minority because I haven't gone hog wild downloading my favorite music from iTunes -- specifically because of the DRM restrictions. Now then, let's say that eventually Puretracks offers me those same tunes without DRM, and I can put them on my iPod for when I am out walking/jogging/etc., or convert the songs I paid for into one copy of a CD that I can play in my PC at work, or at home, etc. On my WinXX system or my Linux system or my car stereo. Let's even say that I put together my greatest hits anthology on CDs that I paid for the tracks for, but get tired of them and give my collection to my kid, or sell it at a yard sale, and then I delete all my copies. Still legal, still one paid for copy -- vs. DRM restricted usage.
Then copyright it. As an author you have the right to do that. Then put license restrictions around it that say in effect "if you have a copy of my code / algorithm that I didn't sell you, you are in violation of my rights as an author and you'd better pay up or I can sue you." This is how it was done for nigh on 30 years prior to the USPTO coming to the erroneous conclusion that software is somehow the same as a patentable device.
If you want better protection yet, build the algorithm into the appropriate binary (dll, loadable module, driver, or whatever) and now your work is protected by the (evil-ly usable) DMCA from reverse engineering, etc. and a violator is not only liable in civil courts but also in criminal courts.
Neither of these measures require software patents to work for the little guy.
Nasty mal-ware -- pops up on my new computer system, tells me to buy yet another package I need to have an absolutely wonderfully great and safe experience while I am working... Oh wait.... I was referring to the MS-Office tools requiring an OS upgrade and visa versa, and none of the above are really secure at all because the marketing droids need another way to make money and security still takes second place....
AKA microsoft doing business as usual, is it not? Which is why in my book Vista et. al will be classified as malware until proven differently a couple of years down the road.
"...remember that when we're talking about a software PATENT, it's not the implementation that is patented, it's the idea.
Um, no.... The rule for ALL patents is that an idea can't be patented, but a device which implements the idea can. For example in the mechanical world, they have had "nut crackers" and different kind of "nut cracking machines" for many many years. So I can't patent the idea of a nut cracking machine, but if I come up with a device that is the latest greatest way of cracking a nut out of it's shell (the nut cracking laser-cryo sonic air-hammer 2007...), and it doesn't infringe on someone else's patent I can patent it myself.
Which in the case of a "software patent" means that if an "inventor" comes up with a unique algorithm that implements a particular type of functionality (say video compression) in a way that has never been done before AKA no prior art, etc., they can patent it. Not that I agree with software patents by the way. Because the USPTO and the courts seem hopelessly clueless on understanding the difference between the ideas and the implementations and all of the anti-reverse engineering crap, etc. in the DMCA made it even worse.
Suppose Ballmer et. al manage to isolate some IP, manage to win the case, and then try to sue any company that sells or distributes the offending IP. Could put a serious cash flow dent in a competitor for a short period of time. Assume also that the M$ police can manage to pull an RIAA and threaten any non-corporate entity with a "roll your own" Linux distribution, and spend a hellacious amount of money doing it. An expenditure that probably wouldn't go over real well with the stock holders or market analysts.
In both cases there would be a brief chilling effect on the competition -- until the offending IP is pulled out of the Linux core and it is recompiled, at which point M$ has nothing. Except that in the mean time they may get hauled back into court for anti-monopoly practices, and that offending the highly intelligent Linux community is about as smart as kicking over a nest of fire ants -- because every major bit of M$ released code will be targeted for suing M$ for their own patent infringing code, etc.
So Ballmer's threat is akin to a robber pulling a gun in a doughnut shop only to discover that he is surrounded by a room full of well-armed, motivated policeman who would like nothing more than to put his sorry a$$ back where it belongs. We all know this, and M$ knows it as well. But so long as he can sell a few more copies of Vista, XP, etc. Ballmer has little to lose by acting the bully in the mean time.
For most residential applications, the idea of going 95% to compact fluorescent lighting is a good thing. Saves energy, etc. blah blah blah. Color not so great, but hey, most photographers and video folks weren't using CFL anyway.... But as an overall law, getting rid of incandescents completely is not a good idea, for two reasons: compact fluorescents are not dimmable nor do you find extremely low or high powered lamps. Which means that for certain applications, they just won't work.
As a dramatist's guild member my thought is very simple: if you want to have an award for an acting performance and pronounce someone to be the "best actor" or "best actress", or best supporting _____, based on their on-screen performance, then to be fair a digitally modified performance has to be excluded from nominations -- which then means that a director can damage an actor or actresses ability to receive due awards consideration for their own talents.
The director's job is to put together collaboratively the best performances (music, acting, special effects, etc.) that they have the time and ability and financing in order to tell "the story". Not to exercise God-like control over every film pixel that appears on the screen. Which means ultimately that there will have to be legal elements added that re-balance the scales so that an actor's contribution is either designated as modifiable or not-modifiable based on the contract when it is is signed.
Poor code writing and a failure to integrate known fixes is the problem. For example, code/modules developed by the Hardened PHP project referenced earlier has fixes many of the known vulnerabilities, and in general PHP 5.X is much more secure than prior versions.
Personally while I don't necessarily like all the work I have to do when there is a "bug exposure" in the media for tools I am using -- like PHP -- I don't have time to track everything let alone fix them, this "month of bugs" won't affect me as much because the ISP I use for my sites has historically been very good at fixing the server-based bugs, and alerting me when a known application error is widespread in the code base so that I can scan my modules and do the updates. That's where paying more than $3.95 a month for a GOOD php web hosting service is a pretty good exchange of $ for peace of mind.
MonetDb, is similarly configured as a column oriented AND Open source, and appears to clean the clock of most of the major commercial and Open Source databases for huge data set queries, (see the benchmarks at axyana.com for an example), where is Vertica's market advantage supposed to be?
By which I am asking that while Vertica is obviously well-researched and well funded as a start up, MonetDB is well-researched, already benchmarked and available now.. So why would I wait to invest my time, energy, and $$ in a proprietary future product rather than the time and energy, etc. to develop market leadership in my chosen corporate area in the present?
Very very good points. My belief has been that a properly clustered set up of Linux boxes would usually kick the backside of most single servers, but from a corporate standpoint I can see where the single source hardware and OS support + AMP stack would be something worth considering. Thanks!
Ummm, no.... A perfectly tuned, very very expensive MS stack blows the doors off the average LAMP stack.
But spend the same amount of money on the LAMP stacks, and you get can high availability plus database replication, load balanced multiple application servers, plus the bandwidth, and probably most of the programming expense, pepsi and pizza a team could could consume -- per year.
Seems to me that ASP and Java are the tired stacks. Not LAMP & Ruby.
Seriously....since I don't really want to use Sun hardware or Solaris, tell me again, why would I want to leave the "L" (Linux) out of the Apache/MySql/Php stack? Especially given the fact that most of the security and bug fixes --at least for Php and MySql -- which pop up are first dealt with in the Linux end of the stack.
Seems to me that this is not so much News as it is "snooze..."
Before you assume that an author of fictional works such as Michael Crichton shouldn't say much about the real world because *cough* "their works aren't real", I suggest that you read this Wikipedia article on Dr. Michael Crichton:
He attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude in 1964. Crichton was also initiated into the honors organization Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. He graduated at Harvard Medical School, gaining an M.D. in 1969 and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, in 1969-1970. Seems to me like we ought to be getting on board with Dr. Crichton in terms of congressional support, rather than lambasting his efforts because of his books.
These little engines resemble a modified "Tesla" bladeless turbine, with internal winglets such as in the experiment by Phoenix Turbine Builders Club back in March of 2002. From their article:
Based on other experimenter's test results with direct combustion and the Tesla configuration, we should expect our overall fuel to shaft efficiency to come in around 31% -- placing our design right between gas piston and diesel piston efficiencies.
Wouldn't it be interesting if MIT engineered a bladeless turbin at a size that Tesla could not, and have it be the wave of the future?
True for gasoline engines, less true for diesel. Methane/alchohol based engines even less. Thing is, if the top-technical engineering that goes into the maximally efficient super-size power plants were used, a system could approach 60% combined efficiency, and that doesn't even count using co-generation (using up the rest of the heat as hot water.
Problem is, all that super engineering is extremely costly, and any company smaller than say, General Electric (about the biggest employer in the US) or gov't units such the Department of Defense has to be able to recoup their research costs in a relatively short amount of time or go bust.
...any of the major projects on the list at opensourcecms.com for a simple reason: I can look at virtually every major open-source based CMS project out there, see installs, get user community feedback on each of them, and look for more effective implementations all in one place.
I think I have come up with more innovations that I can adapt for use in my company that are based on stuff in these CMS packages than any other single web location I can think of.
Re:Agreed. More hypothetical numbers.
on
Water From Wind
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· Score: 1
Thing is, I don't think that 20% is a optimistic figure -- I think it's an impossible figure -- for a windmill based system by itself, because in the Carnot efficiency game a small temperature change doesn't matter much. So the power to provide refrigerant compression has to come into play, and even then the Carnot numbers for efficiency aren't that great because the compressor gets hot in the process of doing the work -- and that heat has to be used or it just heats up some part of the environment nearby even more. Complex stuff, this.
Slashdot Mirror
On the plaintiff side, they quote and quote and quote and quote -- but don't deal with the real issue which is that the RIAA et. al seem to say "if I tell you where something is located, I am guilty of copyright infringement because I am making it available". They mention child-pornography as relevant -- but conveniently ignore the fact that to even own child-pornography under any circumstance is illegal, where owning music is legal -- but only if the music was obtained through legal means.
My take on this is based on the copyright's fair use doctrine -- as a copyrighted author I have the exclusive right to control everything about my work -- up to the point where someone has "fair use rights", such as quoting from my work in another study, etc. etc. [Instead of music, for example, let's assume it was a novel I wrote...] What if the quote was used within the concept of "fair use", but in a hyperlink to an illegal copy of the work, and the linking author didn't know that it wasn't a legal copy? Was the fair user guilty of copyright infringement because they inadvertently made my illegally copied work available?
On the piracy/law-breaking side though, let's say that someone knowingly "makes available" a copy of my work in a distributable manner that I did not authorize [AKA the Internet]. My belief is that they just infringed my copyright. Suppose however, that someone ten or eleven links down the chain says "hey, there's this great story at ________________ and has no idea (from an indexed title, etc.) whether or not the available copy is legally authorized or not. Sort of like a book buyer who buys a book in good faith from a reputable seller, not knowing that it is a fourth or fifth generation illegal copy, reads it, sells it to another used book store, which is where I find it. Who infringed the copyright? the initial bookstore, the buyer, the buyer when he sold, the second used book store?
Nope. The person I can sue is the person who originally created the illegal copy, made it available for distribution, and then distributed it, or the person who originally and knowingly "bought" or accepted the illegal copy. But I have to show the point of origin, and with file sharing networks and the multiplicity of perfect copies, that is almost impossible to do. Which is where this whole thing gets muddied. Obviously the copyright has been infringed -- but without a single definable point of origin, a specific instance of illegal copying and publication (AKA making available), etc. there just doesn't seem to be a provable case.
Any thoughts?
Nice try gumshoe. I've been doing engine work since 1997, so I do know what I am talking about, and IC gas engines are NOT the wave of the future. Although I will acknowledge should have used the word variations, not variables, i.e., there are way too many design variations...."
The fact is that gasoline engines are only about 20-25% efficient at turning fuel into power, diesels are quite a bit more efficient because they pack more oxygen and fuel into the piston at the same time and in closer molecular proximity, resulting in a better burn AKA the diesel is inherently producing energy at higher "stochiometric combustion ratios". Which is why in general diesels don't put out much carbon monoxide, instead the problem is NOx which forms because of the high heat of the engine.
Secondarily, to say that gasoline engines and diesel engines operate on a hugely different basis is misleading. Both gain power by creating a controlled explosion with wavefront patterns that allow a piston to drive a crankshaft in a rotary manner. One uses a spark to provide the high heat necessary to achieve a burn using lower compression, the other uses the heat of compression itself to trigger the burn. Both are designed to maximize the extraction of energy from the wavefront created by the explosion/detonation of the fuel when mixed at high compression inside the piston.
Anyway, to speak to the noise, think about this:
take an unmuffled high quality turbocharged diesel engine of say 200 hp. Take an unmuffled high quality turbocharged gasoline engine of equivalent power. Chances are very good that it will be the gasoline engine that is louder on a meter because that engine is probably cranking at 5000-6000 rpm to produce the 200 hp, where the diesel engine is probably turning at 2000-2500 rpm, i.e. with less than half the detonations.
Capisch?
I can just about guarantee that if you can explain why this solution matters, your post will go to +5 on the moderation scale.
Not necessarily. I have heard quiet running diesels that put out far less sound than a comparably powered gasoline engine -- and are cleaner burning and less vibration intensive as well. What can't be compared is an average engine in each power range -- there are way too many design variables to simply look at noise as an engine constraint.
For example, assume I start up a brand new, state of the art TV channel -- but don't have much money to advertise it, don't have much money to hire professional marketing and sales pros to build a revenue stream. Also assume that if my channel succeeds, I take money from the big network channels in my area. Do you realistically think that the main channels (including cable) really want to help me get a leg up?
Then compare what happens if a well known VC with many many clients backs my new channel, funds a well-crafted sales and marketing campaign, advises his clients to use my new channel, etc.
Which do you think is more likely to succeed?
Because the music I have downloaded is copyrighted, and I don't believe in music piracy.
I was given an iPod shuffle at a company party last year, and am probably in the minority because I haven't gone hog wild downloading my favorite music from iTunes -- specifically because of the DRM restrictions. Now then, let's say that eventually Puretracks offers me those same tunes without DRM, and I can put them on my iPod for when I am out walking/jogging/etc., or convert the songs I paid for into one copy of a CD that I can play in my PC at work, or at home, etc. On my WinXX system or my Linux system or my car stereo. Let's even say that I put together my greatest hits anthology on CDs that I paid for the tracks for, but get tired of them and give my collection to my kid, or sell it at a yard sale, and then I delete all my copies. Still legal, still one paid for copy -- vs. DRM restricted usage.
Guess who gets my money?
Then copyright it. As an author you have the right to do that. Then put license restrictions around it that say in effect "if you have a copy of my code / algorithm that I didn't sell you, you are in violation of my rights as an author and you'd better pay up or I can sue you." This is how it was done for nigh on 30 years prior to the USPTO coming to the erroneous conclusion that software is somehow the same as a patentable device.
If you want better protection yet, build the algorithm into the appropriate binary (dll, loadable module, driver, or whatever) and now your work is protected by the (evil-ly usable) DMCA from reverse engineering, etc. and a violator is not only liable in civil courts but also in criminal courts.
Neither of these measures require software patents to work for the little guy.
AKA microsoft doing business as usual, is it not? Which is why in my book Vista et. al will be classified as malware until proven differently a couple of years down the road.
Um, no.... The rule for ALL patents is that an idea can't be patented, but a device which implements the idea can. For example in the mechanical world, they have had "nut crackers" and different kind of "nut cracking machines" for many many years. So I can't patent the idea of a nut cracking machine, but if I come up with a device that is the latest greatest way of cracking a nut out of it's shell (the nut cracking laser-cryo sonic air-hammer 2007...), and it doesn't infringe on someone else's patent I can patent it myself.
Which in the case of a "software patent" means that if an "inventor" comes up with a unique algorithm that implements a particular type of functionality (say video compression) in a way that has never been done before AKA no prior art, etc., they can patent it. Not that I agree with software patents by the way. Because the USPTO and the courts seem hopelessly clueless on understanding the difference between the ideas and the implementations and all of the anti-reverse engineering crap, etc. in the DMCA made it even worse.
In both cases there would be a brief chilling effect on the competition -- until the offending IP is pulled out of the Linux core and it is recompiled, at which point M$ has nothing. Except that in the mean time they may get hauled back into court for anti-monopoly practices, and that offending the highly intelligent Linux community is about as smart as kicking over a nest of fire ants -- because every major bit of M$ released code will be targeted for suing M$ for their own patent infringing code, etc.
So Ballmer's threat is akin to a robber pulling a gun in a doughnut shop only to discover that he is surrounded by a room full of well-armed, motivated policeman who would like nothing more than to put his sorry a$$ back where it belongs. We all know this, and M$ knows it as well. But so long as he can sell a few more copies of Vista, XP, etc. Ballmer has little to lose by acting the bully in the mean time.
For most residential applications, the idea of going 95% to compact fluorescent lighting is a good thing. Saves energy, etc. blah blah blah. Color not so great, but hey, most photographers and video folks weren't using CFL anyway.... But as an overall law, getting rid of incandescents completely is not a good idea, for two reasons: compact fluorescents are not dimmable nor do you find extremely low or high powered lamps. Which means that for certain applications, they just won't work.
The director's job is to put together collaboratively the best performances (music, acting, special effects, etc.) that they have the time and ability and financing in order to tell "the story". Not to exercise God-like control over every film pixel that appears on the screen. Which means ultimately that there will have to be legal elements added that re-balance the scales so that an actor's contribution is either designated as modifiable or not-modifiable based on the contract when it is is signed.
Personally while I don't necessarily like all the work I have to do when there is a "bug exposure" in the media for tools I am using -- like PHP -- I don't have time to track everything let alone fix them, this "month of bugs" won't affect me as much because the ISP I use for my sites has historically been very good at fixing the server-based bugs, and alerting me when a known application error is widespread in the code base so that I can scan my modules and do the updates. That's where paying more than $3.95 a month for a GOOD php web hosting service is a pretty good exchange of $ for peace of mind.
Thanks for the perspective. That's what I like about /. I can put out a thought or question and mostly get good information back relatively quickly.
By which I am asking that while Vertica is obviously well-researched and well funded as a start up, MonetDB is well-researched, already benchmarked and available now.. So why would I wait to invest my time, energy, and $$ in a proprietary future product rather than the time and energy, etc. to develop market leadership in my chosen corporate area in the present?
Very very good points. My belief has been that a properly clustered set up of Linux boxes would usually kick the backside of most single servers, but from a corporate standpoint I can see where the single source hardware and OS support + AMP stack would be something worth considering. Thanks!
But spend the same amount of money on the LAMP stacks, and you get can high availability plus database replication, load balanced multiple application servers, plus the bandwidth, and probably most of the programming expense, pepsi and pizza a team could could consume -- per year.
Seems to me that ASP and Java are the tired stacks. Not LAMP & Ruby.
Seems to me that this is not so much News as it is "snooze..."
Yes, but last I checked GE and the DOD are involved in energy research, and Walmart is not.
Based on other experimenter's test results with direct combustion and the Tesla configuration, we should expect our overall fuel to shaft efficiency to come in around 31% -- placing our design right between gas piston and diesel piston efficiencies.
Wouldn't it be interesting if MIT engineered a bladeless turbin at a size that Tesla could not, and have it be the wave of the future?
Problem is, all that super engineering is extremely costly, and any company smaller than say, General Electric (about the biggest employer in the US) or gov't units such the Department of Defense has to be able to recoup their research costs in a relatively short amount of time or go bust.
...any of the major projects on the list at opensourcecms.com for a simple reason: I can look at virtually every major open-source based CMS project out there, see installs, get user community feedback on each of them, and look for more effective implementations all in one place.
I think I have come up with more innovations that I can adapt for use in my company that are based on stuff in these CMS packages than any other single web location I can think of.
Thing is, I don't think that 20% is a optimistic figure -- I think it's an impossible figure -- for a windmill based system by itself, because in the Carnot efficiency game a small temperature change doesn't matter much. So the power to provide refrigerant compression has to come into play, and even then the Carnot numbers for efficiency aren't that great because the compressor gets hot in the process of doing the work -- and that heat has to be used or it just heats up some part of the environment nearby even more. Complex stuff, this.