Any school, city, county, state or nation that adopts the "Unlimited Distribution" model for school and other media is likely to far outstrip those of us who lag behind. ..their books will surpass all others in a matter of a few editions. ..as all the readers correct mistakes and make suggestions for improvements. ..and then write new books based on the materials in what will then be listed as the "old, first generation" Etexts they first used in schools.
While I think PG/Nu have great value, I don't think that having users "correct mistakes" is really a great idea. Imagine an army of/.ers trying to correct the "mistakes" in a text--the book would turn into a/. thread. I am also leery of allowing schoolchildren--who don't know enough about subject matter to critically analyze it or contribute to it--to "correct mistakes" in a text.
Open source/FSF folks need to worry about the precedent that is set if the court finds that giving something away for free is predatory and/or harms consumers. What company (Red Hat? VA Linux?) or individual(s) (Linus? ESR?) will then be fed into the DoJ woodchipper?
Hate crimes are often recorded in greater proportion to population in areas where the police are more attuned to them. I would expect police in Austin, a state capitol and a liberal college town rolled into one, to be more on the lookout for hate crimes than Dallas or Fort Worth. The stat reveals as much about the measurer as the measured.
This is what Singapore does, for example. Some countries use a simple registration system for patents, like with copyrights, where you simply get a patent number for mailing in a package. The patentee then has to prove the validity of that patent in court. There are pros and cons to this system, as/.ters will realize after a moment of reflection. It's cheap, gets rid of (some) lawyers (who write applications) and examiners, and doesn't give the patent a presumption of validity. However, it's a full employment act for (other) lawyers (who litigate), who will be needed to prove validity, and it enables easier shakedowns by big companies that get patents.
There are dozens of people and companies that search for prior art, and most of them are really pretty good. You can bet that all of them are getting calls right now about this patent.
I realize they wouldnt be TurboProp Planes like the local Flight Club
Dude, the first rule of Flight Club is: Never talk about Flight Club! You also forgot the second rule of Flight Club, which is: Never talk about Flight Club.
It's an unenforceable clause, though. Apple will never find out about hacks you make for your own environment, and they'll never be able to get a warrant for a fishing expedition to see if you have them. Philosophically, you are absolutely correct, but pragmatically, Apple can't do anything to enforce this. What I think they're trying to prevent is forking of their OS by people who may modify the OS and publish alternate distros.
These experts will simply be biased in a way that benefits their employer, AAAS, or that furthers its legal/politcal goals, if any. There's no such thing as an unbiased "expert".
She was 8. Cut her some slack. She's obviously not going to have real sophisticated experiment design, because she's 8. Of course there are flaws in her experiment and as a result her conclusions are flawed, because she's 8. If any of the administrators or teachers in her school had any training in science at all, they could have used this exhibit as a case study of experimental design & its problems, thereby teaching the kids something as well as showing that this girl's conclusions are not perfect. But, people with scientific training are nowhere to be found at schools.
On a related topic, doesn't this contribute to girls having less interest in science than boys? What if an 8 year old boy had performed this experiment?
The NSA/FBI are terrified of OSS because it means they can't hide their backdoors in Windows, PROMIS, or any number of closed-source packages popular over the last 30 years. When any coder can look at a particular distro and see if there is anything screwy, then take it out, the intelligence community loses out. MS would be a perfect sock puppet through which the NSA/FBI can express these concerns. I wouldn't be surprised to see anti-terrorism legislation within 2-5 years requiring that all OS software be closed, purportedly to protect it from terrorist hackers.
Rich Americans and other first worlders, whose idea of privation is finding that Starbucks is out of frappaccino mix, have the idea that if kids in the third world didn't work at a factory, they'd be going to school and learning. If this were really the case, I'd be against 3d world child labor too. But the sad fact is that in much of the world, kids have a choice between working and starving. If they're not working in a factory, they will be begging, scavenging, or falling prey to pimps. It's not pretty, but it's the way it is. The option of factory work is pretty attractive compared to the other options faced by many poor children.
Why is this thought-out viewpoint moderated to troll status? It may not be popular with most/. types, but it's hardly of penisbirdguy content; it is thoughtful and interesting. Gimme some mod points to help this poster out...
You can apply for a trademark if you simply have an intent to use it. Don't make token sales to attempt to establish use! They're a pain to do, and courts routinely dismiss them as shams. Visit the USPTO web site at www.uspto.gov for more information, or contact your local TM attorney.
Do you really believe that _any_ politician is there to do good? You must still be waiting on that high school diploma. Don't worry. You'll figure this stuff out on your own as you get older.
I didn't bash Al and Joe because the article wasn't about them. But now that you bring them up, they (and Joe in particular) are terrible enemies of the 1st Amendment, across all media--much more so than Mr. Hatch.
I'm thinking that as a hardcore Utah Mormon anti-1st Amendment conservative, Hatch salivates over the prospect of screwing the bejeezus out of the record companies that pollute the young white minds of the young white youth of Utah. Otherwise, I can't for the life of me figure out what possible interest Hatch could have in this issue, one way or another.
Open source does nothing to undermine IP rights. A person writing open source code simply chooses not to copyright/patent the code. It's no obstacle to others who wish to copyright or patent their code. Talk about M$ FUD.
It seems like over half of even the technical people are not aware of the problem. Perhaps over half of the technical people are aware that some individuals and groups consider software patents a problem, and simply disagree with them.
My university (the University of Arizona), back in the 80s, used to intercept financial aid checks sent directly to students, where those checks were made out to students. Good ol' U of A then deposited them in a slush fund for a couple of months, before they issued the student their financial aid money, and after they had garnered significant interest. The funny thing is that the external scholarship entities weren't aware of this. It didn't stop until I worked out what was going in on conjunction with my external scholarship entity, and they promptly had a bunch of high-priced lawyers put a stop to that nonsense immediately. I suppose the lesson is that big institutions will do whatever they can get away with.
Slashdot Mirror
While I think PG/Nu have great value, I don't think that having users "correct mistakes" is really a great idea. Imagine an army of /.ers trying to correct the "mistakes" in a text--the book would turn into a /. thread. I am also leery of allowing schoolchildren--who don't know enough about subject matter to critically analyze it or contribute to it--to "correct mistakes" in a text.
Open source/FSF folks need to worry about the precedent that is set if the court finds that giving something away for free is predatory and/or harms consumers. What company (Red Hat? VA Linux?) or individual(s) (Linus? ESR?) will then be fed into the DoJ woodchipper?
Hate crimes are often recorded in greater proportion to population in areas where the police are more attuned to them. I would expect police in Austin, a state capitol and a liberal college town rolled into one, to be more on the lookout for hate crimes than Dallas or Fort Worth. The stat reveals as much about the measurer as the measured.
This is what Singapore does, for example. Some countries use a simple registration system for patents, like with copyrights, where you simply get a patent number for mailing in a package. The patentee then has to prove the validity of that patent in court. There are pros and cons to this system, as /.ters will realize after a moment of reflection. It's cheap, gets rid of (some) lawyers (who write applications) and examiners, and doesn't give the patent a presumption of validity. However, it's a full employment act for (other) lawyers (who litigate), who will be needed to prove validity, and it enables easier shakedowns by big companies that get patents.
There are dozens of people and companies that search for prior art, and most of them are really pretty good. You can bet that all of them are getting calls right now about this patent.
Dude, the first rule of Flight Club is: Never talk about Flight Club! You also forgot the second rule of Flight Club, which is: Never talk about Flight Club.
It's an unenforceable clause, though. Apple will never find out about hacks you make for your own environment, and they'll never be able to get a warrant for a fishing expedition to see if you have them. Philosophically, you are absolutely correct, but pragmatically, Apple can't do anything to enforce this. What I think they're trying to prevent is forking of their OS by people who may modify the OS and publish alternate distros.
If only I could block all RMS stories in the same way that I block Jon Katz, all would be right with the world.
These experts will simply be biased in a way that benefits their employer, AAAS, or that furthers its legal/politcal goals, if any. There's no such thing as an unbiased "expert".
She was 8. Cut her some slack. She's obviously not going to have real sophisticated experiment design, because she's 8. Of course there are flaws in her experiment and as a result her conclusions are flawed, because she's 8. If any of the administrators or teachers in her school had any training in science at all, they could have used this exhibit as a case study of experimental design & its problems, thereby teaching the kids something as well as showing that this girl's conclusions are not perfect. But, people with scientific training are nowhere to be found at schools.
On a related topic, doesn't this contribute to girls having less interest in science than boys? What if an 8 year old boy had performed this experiment?
The NSA/FBI are terrified of OSS because it means they can't hide their backdoors in Windows, PROMIS, or any number of closed-source packages popular over the last 30 years. When any coder can look at a particular distro and see if there is anything screwy, then take it out, the intelligence community loses out. MS would be a perfect sock puppet through which the NSA/FBI can express these concerns. I wouldn't be surprised to see anti-terrorism legislation within 2-5 years requiring that all OS software be closed, purportedly to protect it from terrorist hackers.
Rich Americans and other first worlders, whose idea of privation is finding that Starbucks is out of frappaccino mix, have the idea that if kids in the third world didn't work at a factory, they'd be going to school and learning. If this were really the case, I'd be against 3d world child labor too. But the sad fact is that in much of the world, kids have a choice between working and starving. If they're not working in a factory, they will be begging, scavenging, or falling prey to pimps. It's not pretty, but it's the way it is. The option of factory work is pretty attractive compared to the other options faced by many poor children.
Why is this thought-out viewpoint moderated to troll status? It may not be popular with most /. types, but it's hardly of penisbirdguy content; it is thoughtful and interesting. Gimme some mod points to help this poster out...
You can apply for a trademark if you simply have an intent to use it. Don't make token sales to attempt to establish use! They're a pain to do, and courts routinely dismiss them as shams. Visit the USPTO web site at www.uspto.gov for more information, or contact your local TM attorney.
I appreciate your informative post. This is useful information that I did not know.
I wonder why he doesn't push for a repeal of the DMCA. I believe in strong copyright protection & still think the DMCA is bad.
Do you really believe that _any_ politician is there to do good? You must still be waiting on that high school diploma. Don't worry. You'll figure this stuff out on your own as you get older.
I didn't bash Al and Joe because the article wasn't about them. But now that you bring them up, they (and Joe in particular) are terrible enemies of the 1st Amendment, across all media--much more so than Mr. Hatch.
Good point. Iomega is in Utah, and they make big ol' storage media useful for storing large amounts of mp3s, pr0n, and warez.
I'm thinking that as a hardcore Utah Mormon anti-1st Amendment conservative, Hatch salivates over the prospect of screwing the bejeezus out of the record companies that pollute the young white minds of the young white youth of Utah. Otherwise, I can't for the life of me figure out what possible interest Hatch could have in this issue, one way or another.
So the Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager might actually be possible, but he'd be really, really cold.
Open source does nothing to undermine IP rights. A person writing open source code simply chooses not to copyright/patent the code. It's no obstacle to others who wish to copyright or patent their code. Talk about M$ FUD.
It seems like over half of even the technical people are not aware of the problem. Perhaps over half of the technical people are aware that some individuals and groups consider software patents a problem, and simply disagree with them.
How is it? I was planned to download their "satellite" client and try it out later.
My university (the University of Arizona), back in the 80s, used to intercept financial aid checks sent directly to students, where those checks were made out to students. Good ol' U of A then deposited them in a slush fund for a couple of months, before they issued the student their financial aid money, and after they had garnered significant interest. The funny thing is that the external scholarship entities weren't aware of this. It didn't stop until I worked out what was going in on conjunction with my external scholarship entity, and they promptly had a bunch of high-priced lawyers put a stop to that nonsense immediately. I suppose the lesson is that big institutions will do whatever they can get away with.
Oh, come on! This is /., where every IP topic ends up bashing patents! Join the fun!