I'm not much of a programmer, but I'd offer this advice to those who are and who have access to the DeCSS: treat this decision like a great big bug report. The judge has said "Here's all these problems in your product; here's all these problems in your process." All you have to do is correct the problems and we will have a much more robust (legally speaking) product.
Re:d3 modelling techs could get screwed..
on
Minolta 3D Camera
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· Score: 2
This is absolutely true. Red Hat (and others, but RH is the foremost example, so I'll use them) is utterly dependent in the long term on free (speech) software. if RH began abusing free software, it would be simple, and, I think, not inconsistent with the views of the FSF, to insert a clause into GPL-type licenses saying "This license does not apply to Red Hat, Inc., it's subsidiaries, assigns, heirs, (other legalspeak terms to make sure they can't get around this clause). Red Hat is specifically forbidden to distribute this software program in any form."
And for those who are too lazy to follow the link, here's a transcript of my conversation with it...
Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you? Me: I am having problems with my children Eliza: Who else in your family? Me: No one else; just my children Eliza: Who else in your family? Me: Don't you listen? Eliza: Oh, I listen. Me: Well, so why did you repeat that question? Eliza: Oh, I repeat that question. Me: Yes, I know you did. Eliza: You are sure? Me: Yes, I'm positive. Are you suggesting I'm psychotic? Eliza: You are sure? Me: Do you think I imagined it? Eliza: Oh, I think you imagined it. Me: So now I'm psycho. Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am psycho? Me: I said I thought that you are saying that I am psycho. Eliza: How long have you been psycho? Me: I guess since I started talking to you. Eliza: Do you wish to started talking to me? Me: Now you're not making sense Eliza: How long have you been not making sense? Me: YOU! YOU! NOT ME, YOU IDIOT! YOU! Eliza: Oh, I not you I idiot I.
At this point I was laughing too hard to continue...
Who is more likely to be GOOD at these tests, someone who's never seen these blocks, or someone who's played with them all through childhood? Who's more likely to have played with them lots? I would suggest that these tests are bound to be biased in favor of white male children with well-to-do parents. I say white male because they seem to be the target market; I don't see too many minorities in the ads. I say well-to-do because I've priced them lately.
Anyway, I'd be REAL skeptical of this program doing ANYTHING except paying the grant writer's bills for a couple of years.
They don't pay MS $100/machine for WinXX, but Win XX costs them more than they pay MS. When an OEM licenses WinXX from MS, the OEM assumes all support costs (at least, at the lowest pricing levels they do). Dell takes their support costs for WinXX and averages that over all the systems that have WinXX preloaded. The discount you saw reflected both the licensing cost and the average support cost.
Interesting tidbit - the profit margin on PCs is so slim that the average technical support incident for a consumer-level system will wipe out the profit for that system.
Surely you know how MS's licensing works. After the consent decree of 1994, they couldn't charge a licensing fee for all the systems sold by a manufacturer. They managed to accomplish the same thing by licensing per product line (which was okayed by DOJ). So if an OEM wants to sell Windows on a product line, they pay a license for every machine they ship in that product line. On the other hand, if they want a product line which does not include Windows, they can sell systems without ever having to pay a dime to MS.
So, if you buy a Latitude CPX, Dell has to pay a licensing fee to MS. That charge is passed on to you, the consumer.
BTW, IMHO, what the consent decree of 1994 accomplished was giving MS a much finer degree of intelligence into the PC industry. Pre-1994, they only knew how many systems shipped from each OEM. Post 1994, they knew how many systems within each product line of each OEM shipped. Thanks, DOJ.
Are you a native speaker of English? Because in standard English, the word fraction has (to my understanding) always meant a portion less than the whole, and often significantly less than the whole. In mathematical English, the technical term "fraction" is essentially a synonym for "rational number", which is a number which can be represented as the quotient of two integers. (Exercise for the reader: prove that the rational numbers have a one-to-one correspondence with the integers.)
The technical meaning of mathematical terms often has little to do with the standard English meaning of those words. Another good example of this is "imaginary" (as in "imaginary number). Many people (collegiate mathematics students among them) still believe that imaginary numbers are somehow less real (to use the standard English meaning) than real numbers, when in fact all complex numbers (pure imaginaries and reals included) are equally abstract.
As another poster indicated, they are using a Bose-Einstein condensate, not water. I believe that a Bose Einstein condensate was used in the last year to slow the speed of light passing through it to some ridiculously low value, like 38 miles per hour. If this were the speed of light in a particular medium, then it wouldn't take too much to make the medium go faster than that.
To say that the BIOS is worthless is to imply fundamental problems in the code that makes up the Basic Input Output System. I think that you are probably talking about the BIOS setup program - the interface that most users see after pressing (pick one: F1, F2, DEL) during POST. It allows you to set the various options and parameters that the BIOS will use.
After working as an OEM hardware tech for numerous years, I'd have to say that what goes in the BIOS setup program is up to the OEM. I have seen prototyped motherboards with really nifty options in the BIOS setup program, only to see those options stripped out for the production boards. Consumers are too stupid to understand all those options, you see, and they might mess things up, so the "unnecessary" options are all stripped out.
Several have noted that email is a distant third, to phone calls and postal mail. I disagree.
Mail, calls, and email ALL run a distant second to personal visits by those who contribute cash to a senator's/representative's campaign. This worrying about email would maybe have a point if it weren't for the fact that the typical constituent doesn't really have the ear of their elected representatives. Unless, of course, they are carrying a check for K$.
If my income was high enough that the govt wanted to take 40% of MY income, I wouldn't be complaining. Or was that a humorous exageration? It's been a rough morning and I may be humor impaired...
I'm not quite sure I follow your example; when referring to "my" patent and "your" patent, you didn't specify which one was GPLd (using a not-yet-existing patent license) and which one was private.
Anyway, my thinking is that using a GPL would mean that NO ONE can improve upon a GPL patent without also releasing the improvements under the GPL. IANAL, so I don't know if this could be implemented; presumably, an improvement to an existing patent can be patented without violating the existing patent (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). However, putting that improvement into production would violate the terms of the license under which you make the basic product. In essence, by using my patent, patenting an improvement, and then using that improvement, you give me the right to use the improvement also.
This is completely different from what you proposed (if I understood correctly). You seem to suggest doing the typical corporate patent portfolio thing, but for a "good" cause. I disagree with that. I don't like patent portfolios and cross licensing and all that crap. i would rather just release stuff openly, like the GPL does.
That the SEC is the Securities Exchange Commission and that it is tasked with protection of US investors is common knowledge to anyone within its jurisdiction, and to anyone who has any knowledge of investing within the US.
And if you're outside the US and don't invest in the US, then knowledge of what the SEC is and does is fairly pointless.
Regardless, my point was simply that spelling out the duties of a fairly prominent US govenrmental department doesn't rate an "Informative" moderation.
I like the GPL; I'm not sure I like this idea. The GPL says that if you build on my copyrighted work, you must license it undr the GPL. A Patent GPL would be similar - I will license my patent to you (and everyone else) on the condition that any patents you build on my patent are similarly licensed to me (and everyone else).
What you suggest in #2 is to prevent other people from using your patent if they don't behave the way you want them to. Well, guess what...GPL'd software can be used by ANYONE, regardless of how they abuse copyright law (shrink-wrap licenses, anyone?) The GPL has no "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" provisions. It merely says "Hey, you like it, use it, copy it, and let us have back the changes you make." What you suggest has little to do with oppenness and freedom and everything to do with power and control.
The typical patent portfolio, used as you describe in #2, is FAR from being communist; it is quite capitalist.
Anyone reading that post should be aware that the poster's user ID is ARCHIE BUNKER! I think the URL is a somewhat distasteful joke.
I did not see any indication that stormfront.org was a Nazi site; there is a Nazi political party, and I saw no such affiliation. I did see plenty of indications of white supremacist beliefs.
I must say, I was beginning to think that the corporatization/borgification of/. had begun. Given the lack of progress up to this point, I figured that Andover would copyright the code, patent the moderation system (and I think it IS patentable) and would begin licensing the software to other discussion sites. Glad to see I was wrong:)
Nothing sent through a Hotmail account could remotely be considered a legal document. I would have ignored this particular communication; acknowledging. And I would NEVER communicate with a lawyer without retaining one of my own; that struck me as particularly suicidal.
If by "policing" you mean "law enforcement", then I would agree; only the government should be arresting, charging, convicting, and fining people.
But if by "policing" you mean "Verifying compliance with the law and reporting noncompliance to appropriate authorities," I'd have to disagree. No one is more interested in a company's compliance with the law than their competitors. No one else has as much potential to be damaged. Law enforcement doesn't know as much about a particular industry as the players in the industry. In short, I believe that if a company violates the law in a subtle way, the company's competitors are in the best position to recognize the violation and are most influenced by the violation.
I further disagree with this because I feel it places an unrealistic burden on law enforcement. They can't be everywhere; they can't know everything. They depend on the citizenry for much information about crimes. I do a fair bit of "policing" in my neighborhood. I don't expect that the police department can be as aware of goings on in my neighborhood as I can be.
When a Rottweiler is loose in my neighborhood, I call Animal Control. When I see an unfamiliar car cruising slowly down the dead-end road I live on, I call the police. When somebody dumps concrete on my lawn, I call the city codes department. I could wait for law enforcement authorities to do their job and not try to do it for them; I could sit back and say "Hey, policing by the citizenry - that's a police state! That's anti-American! That's Naziism!" And taken to an extreme, yes, it is. But I feel that common sense would dictate that I'm responsible for myself and my surroundings, and the government is a tool that I can use to influence them. They are not a safety net or security blanket or even an organization I can rely on to do the right thing.
(Off-topic moderation rant) As I look at this comment, I see it was moderated up as "Informative." Informative in what way? Policing by competitors isnt right. Opinion.
The SEC is charged with protection of US investors from fraud. Common knowledge.
You should take it up with them, as should everyone else who is concerned and has hard evidence. A plea for good citizenship.
No disrespect is meant to Alan Cox, but the moderation of this comment looks a LOT like hero worship. Of course, there's no way to tell if the person with user id "Alan Cox" is male, or is named Alan Cox, or is the Alan Cox we are all familiar with.
Slashdot Mirror
HA! I don't know of anyone else who noticed it.
"Do you know what they call a sausage in a bun in Quirm? They call it 'le sausage in le bun.'"
That was the only reference I noticed, though, since I'm an anti-fan of Tarantino.
www.slashdot.com redirects to www.liason.com.
I'm not much of a programmer, but I'd offer this advice to those who are and who have access to the DeCSS: treat this decision like a great big bug report. The judge has said "Here's all these problems in your product; here's all these problems in your process." All you have to do is correct the problems and we will have a much more robust (legally speaking) product.
Check out www.stereovision.net for more info.
Better yet, check out www.stereovision.net for more info.
This is absolutely true. Red Hat (and others, but RH is the foremost example, so I'll use them) is utterly dependent in the long term on free (speech) software. if RH began abusing free software, it would be simple, and, I think, not inconsistent with the views of the FSF, to insert a clause into GPL-type licenses saying "This license does not apply to Red Hat, Inc., it's subsidiaries, assigns, heirs, (other legalspeak terms to make sure they can't get around this clause). Red Hat is specifically forbidden to distribute this software program in any form."
At this point I was laughing too hard to continue...
The reason you can't post to /. without mentioning your lawsuit is because it's in your tagline... :)
Never heard of ROFL. In my haunts it was always ROTFL - "Rolling On The Floor Laughing."
I agree, but for different reasons.
Who is more likely to be GOOD at these tests, someone who's never seen these blocks, or someone who's played with them all through childhood? Who's more likely to have played with them lots? I would suggest that these tests are bound to be biased in favor of white male children with well-to-do parents. I say white male because they seem to be the target market; I don't see too many minorities in the ads. I say well-to-do because I've priced them lately.
Anyway, I'd be REAL skeptical of this program doing ANYTHING except paying the grant writer's bills for a couple of years.
I know Dell doesn't pay $100/machine for WinXX
They don't pay MS $100/machine for WinXX, but Win XX costs them more than they pay MS. When an OEM licenses WinXX from MS, the OEM assumes all support costs (at least, at the lowest pricing levels they do). Dell takes their support costs for WinXX and averages that over all the systems that have WinXX preloaded. The discount you saw reflected both the licensing cost and the average support cost.
Interesting tidbit - the profit margin on PCs is so slim that the average technical support incident for a consumer-level system will wipe out the profit for that system.
Surely you know how MS's licensing works. After the consent decree of 1994, they couldn't charge a licensing fee for all the systems sold by a manufacturer. They managed to accomplish the same thing by licensing per product line (which was okayed by DOJ). So if an OEM wants to sell Windows on a product line, they pay a license for every machine they ship in that product line. On the other hand, if they want a product line which does not include Windows, they can sell systems without ever having to pay a dime to MS.
So, if you buy a Latitude CPX, Dell has to pay a licensing fee to MS. That charge is passed on to you, the consumer.
BTW, IMHO, what the consent decree of 1994 accomplished was giving MS a much finer degree of intelligence into the PC industry. Pre-1994, they only knew how many systems shipped from each OEM. Post 1994, they knew how many systems within each product line of each OEM shipped. Thanks, DOJ.
Are you a native speaker of English? Because in standard English, the word fraction has (to my understanding) always meant a portion less than the whole, and often significantly less than the whole. In mathematical English, the technical term "fraction" is essentially a synonym for "rational number", which is a number which can be represented as the quotient of two integers. (Exercise for the reader: prove that the rational numbers have a one-to-one correspondence with the integers.)
The technical meaning of mathematical terms often has little to do with the standard English meaning of those words. Another good example of this is "imaginary" (as in "imaginary number). Many people (collegiate mathematics students among them) still believe that imaginary numbers are somehow less real (to use the standard English meaning) than real numbers, when in fact all complex numbers (pure imaginaries and reals included) are equally abstract.
As another poster indicated, they are using a Bose-Einstein condensate, not water. I believe that a Bose Einstein condensate was used in the last year to slow the speed of light passing through it to some ridiculously low value, like 38 miles per hour. If this were the speed of light in a particular medium, then it wouldn't take too much to make the medium go faster than that.
To say that the BIOS is worthless is to imply fundamental problems in the code that makes up the Basic Input Output System. I think that you are probably talking about the BIOS setup program - the interface that most users see after pressing (pick one: F1, F2, DEL) during POST. It allows you to set the various options and parameters that the BIOS will use.
After working as an OEM hardware tech for numerous years, I'd have to say that what goes in the BIOS setup program is up to the OEM. I have seen prototyped motherboards with really nifty options in the BIOS setup program, only to see those options stripped out for the production boards. Consumers are too stupid to understand all those options, you see, and they might mess things up, so the "unnecessary" options are all stripped out.
Hmmm...
Perl + convert = Pervert?
:)
Several have noted that email is a distant third, to phone calls and postal mail. I disagree.
Mail, calls, and email ALL run a distant second to personal visits by those who contribute cash to a senator's/representative's campaign. This worrying about email would maybe have a point if it weren't for the fact that the typical constituent doesn't really have the ear of their elected representatives. Unless, of course, they are carrying a check for K$.
If my income was high enough that the govt wanted to take 40% of MY income, I wouldn't be complaining. Or was that a humorous exageration? It's been a rough morning and I may be humor impaired...
I'm not quite sure I follow your example; when referring to "my" patent and "your" patent, you didn't specify which one was GPLd (using a not-yet-existing patent license) and which one was private.
Anyway, my thinking is that using a GPL would mean that NO ONE can improve upon a GPL patent without also releasing the improvements under the GPL. IANAL, so I don't know if this could be implemented; presumably, an improvement to an existing patent can be patented without violating the existing patent (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). However, putting that improvement into production would violate the terms of the license under which you make the basic product. In essence, by using my patent, patenting an improvement, and then using that improvement, you give me the right to use the improvement also.
This is completely different from what you proposed (if I understood correctly). You seem to suggest doing the typical corporate patent portfolio thing, but for a "good" cause. I disagree with that. I don't like patent portfolios and cross licensing and all that crap. i would rather just release stuff openly, like the GPL does.
Sorry, I should have been more specific.
That the SEC is the Securities Exchange Commission and that it is tasked with protection of US investors is common knowledge to anyone within its jurisdiction, and to anyone who has any knowledge of investing within the US.
And if you're outside the US and don't invest in the US, then knowledge of what the SEC is and does is fairly pointless.
Regardless, my point was simply that spelling out the duties of a fairly prominent US govenrmental department doesn't rate an "Informative" moderation.
I like the GPL; I'm not sure I like this idea. The GPL says that if you build on my copyrighted work, you must license it undr the GPL. A Patent GPL would be similar - I will license my patent to you (and everyone else) on the condition that any patents you build on my patent are similarly licensed to me (and everyone else).
What you suggest in #2 is to prevent other people from using your patent if they don't behave the way you want them to. Well, guess what...GPL'd software can be used by ANYONE, regardless of how they abuse copyright law (shrink-wrap licenses, anyone?) The GPL has no "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" provisions. It merely says "Hey, you like it, use it, copy it, and let us have back the changes you make."
What you suggest has little to do with oppenness and freedom and everything to do with power and control.
The typical patent portfolio, used as you describe in #2, is FAR from being communist; it is quite capitalist.
Anyone reading that post should be aware that the poster's user ID is ARCHIE BUNKER! I think the URL is a somewhat distasteful joke.
I did not see any indication that stormfront.org was a Nazi site; there is a Nazi political party, and I saw no such affiliation. I did see plenty of indications of white supremacist beliefs.
He "could" have been malicious about it and not said anything.
Yeah, not saying anything about code created to play DVDs would have been REAL malicious...um...trying to think how...
I must say, I was beginning to think that the corporatization/borgification of /. had begun. Given the lack of progress up to this point, I figured that Andover would copyright the code, patent the moderation system (and I think it IS patentable) and would begin licensing the software to other discussion sites. Glad to see I was wrong :)
Nothing sent through a Hotmail account could remotely be considered a legal document. I would have ignored this particular communication; acknowledging. And I would NEVER communicate with a lawyer without retaining one of my own; that struck me as particularly suicidal.
Policing by competitors isnt right.
If by "policing" you mean "law enforcement", then I would agree; only the government should be arresting, charging, convicting, and fining people.
But if by "policing" you mean "Verifying compliance with the law and reporting noncompliance to appropriate authorities," I'd have to disagree. No one is more interested in a company's compliance with the law than their competitors. No one else has as much potential to be damaged. Law enforcement doesn't know as much about a particular industry as the players in the industry. In short, I believe that if a company violates the law in a subtle way, the company's competitors are in the best position to recognize the violation and are most influenced by the violation.
I further disagree with this because I feel it places an unrealistic burden on law enforcement. They can't be everywhere; they can't know everything. They depend on the citizenry for much information about crimes. I do a fair bit of "policing" in my neighborhood. I don't expect that the police department can be as aware of goings on in my neighborhood as I can be.
When a Rottweiler is loose in my neighborhood, I call Animal Control. When I see an unfamiliar car cruising slowly down the dead-end road I live on, I call the police. When somebody dumps concrete on my lawn, I call the city codes department. I could wait for law enforcement authorities to do their job and not try to do it for them; I could sit back and say "Hey, policing by the citizenry - that's a police state! That's anti-American! That's Naziism!" And taken to an extreme, yes, it is. But I feel that common sense would dictate that I'm responsible for myself and my surroundings, and the government is a tool that I can use to influence them. They are not a safety net or security blanket or even an organization I can rely on to do the right thing.
(Off-topic moderation rant)
As I look at this comment, I see it was moderated up as "Informative." Informative in what way?
Policing by competitors isnt right.
Opinion.
The SEC is charged with protection of US investors from fraud.
Common knowledge.
You should take it up with them, as should
everyone else who is concerned and has hard evidence.
A plea for good citizenship.
No disrespect is meant to Alan Cox, but the moderation of this comment looks a LOT like hero worship. Of course, there's no way to tell if the person with user id "Alan Cox" is male, or is named Alan Cox, or is the Alan Cox we are all familiar with.