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BladeIP hereby grants you a one-time, non-exclusive, non-transferrable, revocable license to use this knife for non-commercial purposes within its "acceptable use." Acceptable use for this knife under this license is limited to peeling fruits in one single-family home defined as a primary residence. The license does not permit using the knife outside of the licensor's primary residence including but not limited to other homes, condos, apartments, restaurants, picnics, barbecues, etc.. Any other uses including but not limited to cutting, chopping, slicing, or peeling any other objects are in violation of this license and strictly prohibited.
BladeIP reserves the right to revoke your license at any time without reason. Once your license is revoked, you are no longer eligible for any refunds, exchanges, credits, or any warranty repairs; in the case your license is revoked, you are under legal obligation to return the knife to BladeIP at your own expense within 2 business days. Your purchase and/or continued use of this knife indicates your acceptance of these license terms.
Privacy notice: this device is implanted with an RFID chip and a small censor to track its usage. If at any time BladeIP suspects that its IP is used in a manner not consistent with this license and its property rights are being violated, BladeIP reserves the right to report such incidents to the law enforcement officials and pursue any legal options. The U.S. and international laws provide stiff penalties for IP violators and both civil and criminal penalties - up to $250,000 per violation and up to 20 years jail term.
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I prefer having google searching my personal mails and its grouping and management are better than any of the offline pop mail programs I've tried.
Wow. I did not know I would be seeing stuff like this on/.
I'd like to remind you of this statement in the future in case google gets accused of selling this info to FBI for Carnivore III/CAPPS III, or something like this happens to them. In the latter case, spammers could even offer you a personalized targeted spam brought to you by your friendly google data mine.
Personally, I prefer that no 3rd parties search through, tag keywords and phrases, and categorize my personal e-mails at all, not with my express permission anyway. It's just too prone to abuse. Google now is "good." After IPO - who knows: change of management or strategy? Acquired by another company? You know all you personal data collected (minus e-mail texts) could be up for sale to the highest bidder.
I would have to come up with a full business proposal with marketing analysis an such, which I don't have the time or money to do. Plus I'm not really that interested in starting a company around the product and I certainly wouldn't want it to be controlled by venture capitalists.
Surely, if you cannot find time or money to devote to your invention, you should not be granted 17 years of monopoly on it for just having an idea. I thought the patent laws were put in place to encourage investments in unique inventions, not discourage them.
What you are looking for is a no-risk no-commitment (other than patent fees) scenario where you just think up some ideas, patent them, and sue everyone else who thought up the same on their own, or derived or improved yours to make actual products. This is counterproductive. I think it is fair to ask patent applicants to demonstrate that they have already, or intend in the near future, to devote time and financial investment to the invention described in the application.
You could have criteria such as creating a product or a prototype within 3-6 months of patent grant, or making a product generally available for purchase within 6-9 months. I'm not saying that this should be the exact criteria, but one can come up with different requirements that would help tell whether the inventor is trying to abuse the system, or genuinely offer an innovative product. If the inventor fails to comply with those requirements, then the patent is revoked and becomes public domain.
Maybe if we had this type of system, we would not have IP companies that purely consist of lawyers trying to sue legitimate businesses out of existence.
Well, I'm not sure this entire thing rests on a "balancing of interests." The Court merely stated that Nevada has this law, and in your specific case, it did not violate your rights. No "in general", no rule-make, no rights-interpreting, just an application of this specific law to this specific case.
The Supreme Court takes cases that it thinks need general clarification or interpretation of law and policy; so that every other court can follow their interpretation of law; and so that lawmakers can use court's rulings when writing laws. So, yes, whatever the Supreme Court says and however it states its reasoning in the ruling is extremely important. I think that part of this case did rest on "balancing of interests" because that was one of the major reasons the court gave in its ruling.
Did making this man give that cop his name in this situation violate his rights against unreasonable searches and seizures?
That question is slightly, but importantly, misstated. The cops did not violate his 4th amendment rights by asking him for his name. The argument was that the Nevada law granting the police authority to arrest him without probable cause when he refused to answer, is unconstitutional in violation of the 4th amendment.
Obviously, cops are free to ask any question they think is appropriate including your name, but they should not have a power to arrest you and charge you with a crime if you choose not to answer their question, unless they have a probable cause to arrest you [to begin with] as it says in the 4th amendment.
Nope, because it's not a search nor a seizure.
No, read the ruling - that's not what the court said. The court did not dispute that this case "falls within" the 4th amendment but stated different reasons why it was OK for Nevada to have such laws, including balancing interests between an individual and the government. It goes back to what I was saying about how far you can extend these "interests" and what other rights can be "balanced" this way.
It's the classic case of falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. It balances your right to free speech against the State's interest in preserving order. And the State's interest is overwhelmingly greater, since they have lives to protect, and you're just being an ass.
OK, IANAL, so correct me where I am wrong. I don't see the analogy of this. Shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater is not illegal outright, especially if there is a fire. In this case, it's the consequences of your actions that determine whether what you did was protected speech or intentionally caused public disorder that endangered people's lives. I don't see this right balanced against government interests, but against public interests, and general safety.
Now, I don't see any "legitimate government interests," much less public interests, being served by a police officer requiring someone not under probable cause to disclose their name/identity "under a threat of criminal sanction" (quotes from the ruling). The court ruling failed to state what those "interests" were, as well as how the right was balanced against, and not simply overridden by those undefined "interests."
If you take it all the way, you could have the whole Bill of Rights "balanced" (read: nullified) citing "legitimate government interests" without a need to explain or justify. If the Constitution needs to be changed, it has to be done through the Congress, not the Supreme Court.
As I read the ruling, it seems to have more to do with someone being stopped on reasonable suspicion (something the officer must articulate in court), rather than stopping people willy-nilly to check their ID.
I don't understand why this "reasonable suspicion" is even relevant to the 4th amendment. The 4th amendment clearly states that there has to be probable cause and I did not see in the ruling where the court acknowledged that or even explained how this "suspicion" even relates to probable cause.
In fact, as I understood, one of the arguments from the other side was that the officer did not have probable cause and the court did not say otherwise. What the court did say was that 4th amendment was not violated because the Nevada statute properly balanced individual's interests against the promotion of government's legitimate interests. Unfortunately, this does not seem to satisfy the 4th amendment as I see it. The 4th amendment does NOT balance the promotion of government's legitimate interests against individual's interests. The 4th amendment balances people's rights against the probable cause. But IANAL, feel free to correct.
Excellent arguments. IANAL, but few things I found were disturbing to me. Maybe lawyers could explain better the consequences of these:
The Nevada statute is consistent with Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures because it properly balances the intrusion on the individual's interests against the promotion of legitimate government interests. [case citation]
I can't read this in the 4th amendment. First off, the court seemed to have replaced the phrase "[t]he right of people" with the new made up phrase of "individual's interests." It's not simply people's interest "to be secure in their persons, [etc.]" - it's their right.
Perhaps more importantly, the court also has replaced the phrase "probable cause" with a new phrase "promotion of legitimate government interests." What does this mean? The court explains that this is justified if there is a suspicion but does not explain how mere suspicion meets the probable cause requirement of the 4th amendment either. Therefore, I don't find the part of ruling discussing suspicion of any relevance with regards to the protection under the 4th amendment. The 4th amendment does not balance people's rights against government's interests or mere suspicion, it balances it against probable cause.
And then exactly what you said:... and the threat of criminal sanction helps ensure that the request does not become a legal nullity.
How is this not running over the 4th amendment with a bulldozer? Now that they have removed the "right" from the discussion as well as the "probable cause" they might as well make not following the government's interests a crime?
Since I am not a lawyer, I'd like to ask - is this type of wording in the ruling likely to expand what's in government's interests beyond asking for a name or identifying oneself? Shouldn't this require amending the Fourth amendment?
Even though I do not agree with the court's ruling with regards to the Fourth amendment, I found their reasoning reasonable with regard to the Fifth amendment.
Yes, but your city council does not put the "No Solicitors" sign on your door for you, and give you no option to remove it if you happen to enjoy solicitors.
I don't like the analogy, but if you continue through with it, then yes - both Yahoo! and Hotmail offer you an option to disable spam filters in which case everything will arrive in your inbox.
1. Sell worm-friendly OS (hey, you are a monopoly, everybody's buying) 2. Sell anti-virus software to combat worms 3. Sell anti-virus update service to keep anti-virus software uptodate. 4. PROFIT!
Those formats are already ubiquitous. They're everywhere.
Nope, they are not. In fact, it's safe to say that most people do not encode video on a PC. Compare this to audio market with CD mixes and portable players - you see the difference. The video market is not as mature.
You're misreading.
No, I am not. You are not reading or not understanding - I even gave you a pasted content and a link for reference.
Go download Darwin Streaming Server and start streaming MPEG-4 content for free, and see how wrong you are.
Unfortunately, downloading Darwin Streaming Server does not grant you MPEG-4 patent licenses. Even if it magically did, this is not what I was talking about since Darwin Streaming Server is not intended to be used by average computer users.
OK, unless you have something new, it's going to be:
Wanna create Sorenson 3 content? It's $29.95 for QuickTime Pro....
Honest to god, I don't know where these bullshit rumors get started. Sorenson 3 is NOT expensive.
This is not a bullshit rumor - read the discussion thread more carefully. If video creation and sharing is to become popular, then yes - that price is expensive. By this I mean the price will prevent the format from becoming "ubiquitous" as I was discussing in my parent reply. It's almost like the tools themselves have to be free or very close to it to really catch on - like MP3 licensing was (and still is) virtually ignored.
Imagine, if every MP3 encoder cost that much few years ago, MP3 would not have been a format of choice for many. Unless, of course, groups of developers create free unlicensed sorenson encoders and Apple and Sorenson choose not to pursue anything legally about it. But I don't think either is likely to happen.
Again, and as I said before, the market for video messaging or sharing or streaming has not reached the level of maturity that audio counterparts have - so all this is up in the air as far as which way not only the technology, but also its uses, will go.
Q: What are the royalties for the MPEG-4 Systems Patent Portfolio License (excluding those patents that are essential to the MPEG-J portion of the MPEG-4 Systems standard)?
A: For the right to manufacture, sell and use, one-time royalties to be paid by the manufacturer are US $0.15 per decoder and US $0.25 per encoder (except Stored Data encoders), but (a) only one royalty is payable on a single decoder product or a single encoder product that is licensed across one or more business categories and (b) decoders and encoders are each subject to a total annual cap of $100,000 per legal entity (Sections 3.1.1 - 3.1.9 and 3.3)
For the right to make, sell and use Stored Data encoders, royalties to be paid by the encoder or transmitter are (a) $0.001 per 30 minutes or part to a maximum of $0.004 per movie for each copy; (b) $0.0005 per 30 minutes or part thereof to a maximum of $0.002 per movie for each copy where the content of the Stored Video is 5 years or older, and (c) $0.0002 for each copy of Stored Video that is 12 minutes or less (Section 3.1.10).
Granted, this most likely refers to streaming content and movies, but they do charge royalties per content you make and its length. This is what I was referring to as being "absurd" in the original reply.
I realise that free (as in speech) sound and video formats are a good thing but it seems that certain formats, particularly mp3 are now more or less ubiqoutous (sp??).
I'm not sure that's the case with video. As far as products (not technologies), there's Quicktime/Sorenson and WMV which definitely are not ubiquitous; both are proprietary and somewhat expensive to license. Then there's MPEG-4 which is even more absurd at licensing. Real's format does not really fall into the same category. If anything was "ubiquitous" I would say MPEG-2, but that does not count in the same category either as it does not serve the same purpose as MPEG-4 (MPEG-2 is nearly useless at low bitrates).
Yes, there are free divx/xvid implementations but those are useless in commercial offerings as they are not properly licensed. So as late as Theora would be getting to the market, IMO, the field is still wide open. Not only has the consumer market not been saturated with any single low bitrate high quality video compression technology, but video "sharing" itself has not reached a maturity level of audio streams when Vorbis first beta was released and standard frozen.
The range can be "configured" to be quite small - thus you are safe.
No, you are not. No matter how small the range, you can still get scanned in public places like crowded buses and other transportation as well as theaters, shopping malls, events with crowded people, or even while standing in line. The difference is that a thief does not have to pick your pocket. The thing should definitely have an on/off switch; except that that's not how most, if not all, passive RFID chips work.
The scary thing is the credit card receipt copy that the merchant keep that actually contain your number and expiry date!
That is why most relatively new credit card processing machines do not print the credit card number (maybe only last 4 digits) or an expiry date on the receipt. Obviously, manual processing of the credit card is not as "safe."
You may get falsely accused of murder and be executed. Do you seriously worry about that?
Wrong analogy again - this is not about getting falsely accused, but getting sued under patent infringement and losing under the law, unfairly. I am talking about the legal issue and the system, not chances of a dog peeing on your laptop, or a meteorite landing on your head. Just because the chances of getting sued under that law are not as high as some others, does not mean the law is right and nobody should do anything about it.
Once that happens, then you can start worrying about it. And the people that have to worry about it (e.g., the Mono project) will know that. Just like commercial developers, for that matter
Not as much worrying about it as pointing out it's wrong and needs to be corrected. Once you do get sued, then it's too late to start worrying about the system and "making it right."
At 5 bucks a share, with almost nothing available to short, SCO isn't worth much of your investing effort. But it's definitely worth watching, if only as an example of the way a company can be run into the ground, taking investors along.
I guess they stopped short of recommending/. as your technology investment resource.
But as an open source developer, the chances that I get sued and suffer ill consequences are just not something worth seriously worrying about.
Why not? If your project becomes popular (downloaded by thousands of users or more) and a corporate patent holder sees you as an obstacle or a competitor, the least he would be able to do is shut you down; maybe sue your for damages too, if they wanted to prove a point or make an example out of you.
This does not mean that Microsoft will necessarily do this to Eclipse, but all it takes is a company like SCO and their "IP theft" PR campaign. The illusion of being "safe" is not real.
Yeah, but if all patent applications have to stay public after they are filed, then it's hard to say who implemented the "invention" independently, and who looked up the patent applications. My whole point with the post was that an argument that patents and patent applications are public does not justify granting virtual and artificial monopoly on most "inventions" to anyone. Maybe if the patent office brought down the number of patents granted to few hundred a year and to only legitimately innovative advances, you could have an argument, but the way it is today, it's just another artificial legal barrier to entry to a market. This doesn't serve well the economy and the people.
You are also not immune from getting struck be meteorites. However, neither is something to worry about seriously.
Nice thinking. You don't need to have any human rights either. After all, governments are not likely to violate them anyway, so why bother?
The difference is that government passed the patent laws to give more power to big corporations and take your rights away, and against public interest in general. The meteorite is not an analogy.
For a single developer or even a small team or company staying on the right side of patent law is impossible - the proportion of time you'd have to spend searching patents as opposed to doing anything productive would be wholly uneconomic.
Well, that was my point too. In another post I said the patent system creates an artificial legal barrier to entry in the market; this is done not only to protect corporations from each other (defensive patents) but also that small firms and independent developers challenging big corporations can be labelled as "pirates" and "IP thieves."
This does not only apply to software development either - it technically also applies to software users as well. i.e., if your software vendor does not have a license to distribute the patented technology with their product, and you - the user - do not have a license to use the said technology, then by using that product, you - the user - are also infringing on the patent and can be sued for damages, whether you knew of the possible infringement or not.
It is bad enough that people support the system, but to recommend that developers go spend their time sifting through patent files?
Sorry that you misunderstood the point of my post. It was not to make every developer look through the patents and patent applications before they write each function. Neither was it to make every software user look through the same databases before they start using a piece of software, and make sure with the software vendor that all relevant patents are licensed.
This is a problem with the patent system in general - you cannot know you are violating anything, even as a user of a product, before someone sues someone else and you. I mean how can you possibly be expected to know if your product vendor has properly licensed and paid for all patents? While patents and patent applications are public, corporate licensing agreements regarding them are not. Even if they were, it would not make any sense for every product consumer to hire a patent attorney to check for "legality" before using the product. The argument that all patents and patent applications are public does not hold water.
It does not make sense for developers to check for patents either, even though they are risking infringing on someone else's patents by not doing so. What corporations are doing is not only applying for "defensive" patents, but also creating an artificial and legal barriers to entry in the market.
This feature has been in Eclipse for I can recall 2.5 years (not sure on date).
Well, Eclipse and its users are in trouble then, because the patent application in question has been filed over 4 years ago. Just a reminder to every developer next time you try to implement a feature in your program, don't forget to search all existing patents and patent applications for possible violations. And another reminder to all software users - you are not immune from patent lawsuits if the software you are using (whether closed or open source) is violating other(s') patent(s) and neither you or your software vendor have a license to use or distribute the patented "technology."
Fonts look perfect for me. Nimbus Sans L is what I use for most of the UI and it looks better (for me) than the default Windows choice. I don't know if Nimbus fonts come with Windows or you have to shell out for them.
As far as installing fonts, it can be done with only few clicks in KDE; you can just as easily enable or disable any of them.
- I feel claustrophobic in a single-desktop environment; NVidia's and others' hacks do not match up; - If I don't like something, I change it, not deal with it; - I get more software for less - more choice, flexibility and ability to customize to accomplish exactly what I want; - You don't have to be a scripting expert to write simple, extremely useful scripts for automation - perfect for any developer.
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BladeIP hereby grants you a one-time, non-exclusive, non-transferrable, revocable license to use this knife for non-commercial purposes within its "acceptable use." Acceptable use for this knife under this license is limited to peeling fruits in one single-family home defined as a primary residence. The license does not permit using the knife outside of the licensor's primary residence including but not limited to other homes, condos, apartments, restaurants, picnics, barbecues, etc.. Any other uses including but not limited to cutting, chopping, slicing, or peeling any other objects are in violation of this license and strictly prohibited.
BladeIP reserves the right to revoke your license at any time without reason. Once your license is revoked, you are no longer eligible for any refunds, exchanges, credits, or any warranty repairs; in the case your license is revoked, you are under legal obligation to return the knife to BladeIP at your own expense within 2 business days. Your purchase and/or continued use of this knife indicates your acceptance of these license terms.
Privacy notice: this device is implanted with an RFID chip and a small censor to track its usage. If at any time BladeIP suspects that its IP is used in a manner not consistent with this license and its property rights are being violated, BladeIP reserves the right to report such incidents to the law enforcement officials and pursue any legal options. The U.S. and international laws provide stiff penalties for IP violators and both civil and criminal penalties - up to $250,000 per violation and up to 20 years jail term.
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Google it. This paper is an interesting read as well.
Wow. I did not know I would be seeing stuff like this on
I'd like to remind you of this statement in the future in case google gets accused of selling this info to FBI for Carnivore III/CAPPS III, or something like this happens to them. In the latter case, spammers could even offer you a personalized targeted spam brought to you by your friendly google data mine.
Personally, I prefer that no 3rd parties search through, tag keywords and phrases, and categorize my personal e-mails at all, not with my express permission anyway. It's just too prone to abuse. Google now is "good." After IPO - who knows: change of management or strategy? Acquired by another company? You know all you personal data collected (minus e-mail texts) could be up for sale to the highest bidder.
Surely, if you cannot find time or money to devote to your invention, you should not be granted 17 years of monopoly on it for just having an idea. I thought the patent laws were put in place to encourage investments in unique inventions, not discourage them.
What you are looking for is a no-risk no-commitment (other than patent fees) scenario where you just think up some ideas, patent them, and sue everyone else who thought up the same on their own, or derived or improved yours to make actual products. This is counterproductive. I think it is fair to ask patent applicants to demonstrate that they have already, or intend in the near future, to devote time and financial investment to the invention described in the application.
You could have criteria such as creating a product or a prototype within 3-6 months of patent grant, or making a product generally available for purchase within 6-9 months. I'm not saying that this should be the exact criteria, but one can come up with different requirements that would help tell whether the inventor is trying to abuse the system, or genuinely offer an innovative product. If the inventor fails to comply with those requirements, then the patent is revoked and becomes public domain.
Maybe if we had this type of system, we would not have IP companies that purely consist of lawyers trying to sue legitimate businesses out of existence.
The Supreme Court takes cases that it thinks need general clarification or interpretation of law and policy; so that every other court can follow their interpretation of law; and so that lawmakers can use court's rulings when writing laws. So, yes, whatever the Supreme Court says and however it states its reasoning in the ruling is extremely important. I think that part of this case did rest on "balancing of interests" because that was one of the major reasons the court gave in its ruling.
That question is slightly, but importantly, misstated. The cops did not violate his 4th amendment rights by asking him for his name. The argument was that the Nevada law granting the police authority to arrest him without probable cause when he refused to answer, is unconstitutional in violation of the 4th amendment.
Obviously, cops are free to ask any question they think is appropriate including your name, but they should not have a power to arrest you and charge you with a crime if you choose not to answer their question, unless they have a probable cause to arrest you [to begin with] as it says in the 4th amendment.
No, read the ruling - that's not what the court said. The court did not dispute that this case "falls within" the 4th amendment but stated different reasons why it was OK for Nevada to have such laws, including balancing interests between an individual and the government. It goes back to what I was saying about how far you can extend these "interests" and what other rights can be "balanced" this way.
OK, IANAL, so correct me where I am wrong. I don't see the analogy of this. Shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater is not illegal outright, especially if there is a fire. In this case, it's the consequences of your actions that determine whether what you did was protected speech or intentionally caused public disorder that endangered people's lives. I don't see this right balanced against government interests, but against public interests, and general safety.
Now, I don't see any "legitimate government interests," much less public interests, being served by a police officer requiring someone not under probable cause to disclose their name/identity "under a threat of criminal sanction" (quotes from the ruling). The court ruling failed to state what those "interests" were, as well as how the right was balanced against, and not simply overridden by those undefined "interests."
If you take it all the way, you could have the whole Bill of Rights "balanced" (read: nullified) citing "legitimate government interests" without a need to explain or justify. If the Constitution needs to be changed, it has to be done through the Congress, not the Supreme Court.
I don't understand why this "reasonable suspicion" is even relevant to the 4th amendment. The 4th amendment clearly states that there has to be probable cause and I did not see in the ruling where the court acknowledged that or even explained how this "suspicion" even relates to probable cause.
In fact, as I understood, one of the arguments from the other side was that the officer did not have probable cause and the court did not say otherwise. What the court did say was that 4th amendment was not violated because the Nevada statute properly balanced individual's interests against the promotion of government's legitimate interests. Unfortunately, this does not seem to satisfy the 4th amendment as I see it. The 4th amendment does NOT balance the promotion of government's legitimate interests against individual's interests. The 4th amendment balances people's rights against the probable cause. But IANAL, feel free to correct.
Excellent arguments. IANAL, but few things I found were disturbing to me. Maybe lawyers could explain better the consequences of these:
... and the threat of criminal sanction helps ensure that the request does not become a legal nullity.
The Nevada statute is consistent with Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures because it properly balances the intrusion on the individual's interests against the promotion of legitimate government interests. [case citation]
I can't read this in the 4th amendment. First off, the court seemed to have replaced the phrase "[t]he right of people" with the new made up phrase of "individual's interests." It's not simply people's interest "to be secure in their persons, [etc.]" - it's their right.
Perhaps more importantly, the court also has replaced the phrase "probable cause" with a new phrase "promotion of legitimate government interests." What does this mean? The court explains that this is justified if there is a suspicion but does not explain how mere suspicion meets the probable cause requirement of the 4th amendment either. Therefore, I don't find the part of ruling discussing suspicion of any relevance with regards to the protection under the 4th amendment. The 4th amendment does not balance people's rights against government's interests or mere suspicion, it balances it against probable cause.
And then exactly what you said:
How is this not running over the 4th amendment with a bulldozer? Now that they have removed the "right" from the discussion as well as the "probable cause" they might as well make not following the government's interests a crime?
Since I am not a lawyer, I'd like to ask - is this type of wording in the ruling likely to expand what's in government's interests beyond asking for a name or identifying oneself? Shouldn't this require amending the Fourth amendment?
Even though I do not agree with the court's ruling with regards to the Fourth amendment, I found their reasoning reasonable with regard to the Fifth amendment.
I don't like the analogy, but if you continue through with it, then yes - both Yahoo! and Hotmail offer you an option to disable spam filters in which case everything will arrive in your inbox.
That should be:
1. Sell worm-friendly OS (hey, you are a monopoly, everybody's buying)
2. Sell anti-virus software to combat worms
3. Sell anti-virus update service to keep anti-virus software uptodate.
4. PROFIT!
Like there's no conflict of interest.
Nope, they are not. In fact, it's safe to say that most people do not encode video on a PC. Compare this to audio market with CD mixes and portable players - you see the difference. The video market is not as mature.
No, I am not. You are not reading or not understanding - I even gave you a pasted content and a link for reference.
Unfortunately, downloading Darwin Streaming Server does not grant you MPEG-4 patent licenses. Even if it magically did, this is not what I was talking about since Darwin Streaming Server is not intended to be used by average computer users.
OK, unless you have something new, it's going to be:
10 PRINT "HELLO "
20 PRINT "WORLD "
30 GOTO 10
Good luck!
This is not a bullshit rumor - read the discussion thread more carefully. If video creation and sharing is to become popular, then yes - that price is expensive. By this I mean the price will prevent the format from becoming "ubiquitous" as I was discussing in my parent reply. It's almost like the tools themselves have to be free or very close to it to really catch on - like MP3 licensing was (and still is) virtually ignored.
Imagine, if every MP3 encoder cost that much few years ago, MP3 would not have been a format of choice for many. Unless, of course, groups of developers create free unlicensed sorenson encoders and Apple and Sorenson choose not to pursue anything legally about it. But I don't think either is likely to happen.
Again, and as I said before, the market for video messaging or sharing or streaming has not reached the level of maturity that audio counterparts have - so all this is up in the air as far as which way not only the technology, but also its uses, will go.
Quote from the MPEG-LA licensing Q&A page:
Q: What are the royalties for the MPEG-4 Systems Patent Portfolio License (excluding those patents that are essential to the MPEG-J portion of the MPEG-4 Systems standard)?
A: For the right to manufacture, sell and use, one-time royalties to be paid by the manufacturer are US $0.15 per decoder and US $0.25 per encoder (except Stored Data encoders), but (a) only one royalty is payable on a single decoder product or a single encoder product that is licensed across one or more business categories and (b) decoders and encoders are each subject to a total annual cap of $100,000 per legal entity (Sections 3.1.1 - 3.1.9 and 3.3)
For the right to make, sell and use Stored Data encoders, royalties to be paid by the encoder or transmitter are (a) $0.001 per 30 minutes or part to a maximum of $0.004 per movie for each copy; (b) $0.0005 per 30 minutes or part thereof to a maximum of $0.002 per movie for each copy where the content of the Stored Video is 5 years or older, and (c) $0.0002 for each copy of Stored Video that is 12 minutes or less (Section 3.1.10).
Granted, this most likely refers to streaming content and movies, but they do charge royalties per content you make and its length. This is what I was referring to as being "absurd" in the original reply.
I'm not sure that's the case with video. As far as products (not technologies), there's Quicktime/Sorenson and WMV which definitely are not ubiquitous; both are proprietary and somewhat expensive to license. Then there's MPEG-4 which is even more absurd at licensing. Real's format does not really fall into the same category. If anything was "ubiquitous" I would say MPEG-2, but that does not count in the same category either as it does not serve the same purpose as MPEG-4 (MPEG-2 is nearly useless at low bitrates).
Yes, there are free divx/xvid implementations but those are useless in commercial offerings as they are not properly licensed. So as late as Theora would be getting to the market, IMO, the field is still wide open. Not only has the consumer market not been saturated with any single low bitrate high quality video compression technology, but video "sharing" itself has not reached a maturity level of audio streams when Vorbis first beta was released and standard frozen.
No, you are not. No matter how small the range, you can still get scanned in public places like crowded buses and other transportation as well as theaters, shopping malls, events with crowded people, or even while standing in line. The difference is that a thief does not have to pick your pocket. The thing should definitely have an on/off switch; except that that's not how most, if not all, passive RFID chips work.
That is why most relatively new credit card processing machines do not print the credit card number (maybe only last 4 digits) or an expiry date on the receipt. Obviously, manual processing of the credit card is not as "safe."
Wrong analogy again - this is not about getting falsely accused, but getting sued under patent infringement and losing under the law, unfairly. I am talking about the legal issue and the system, not chances of a dog peeing on your laptop, or a meteorite landing on your head. Just because the chances of getting sued under that law are not as high as some others, does not mean the law is right and nobody should do anything about it.
Not as much worrying about it as pointing out it's wrong and needs to be corrected. Once you do get sued, then it's too late to start worrying about the system and "making it right."
Relax, I have it from a very close source that this sum is the total of the monopoly money that /. users have been sending to Darl.
One more quote:
/. as your technology investment resource.
At 5 bucks a share, with almost nothing available to short, SCO isn't worth much of your investing effort. But it's definitely worth watching, if only as an example of the way a company can be run into the ground, taking investors along.
I guess they stopped short of recommending
Why not? If your project becomes popular (downloaded by thousands of users or more) and a corporate patent holder sees you as an obstacle or a competitor, the least he would be able to do is shut you down; maybe sue your for damages too, if they wanted to prove a point or make an example out of you.
This does not mean that Microsoft will necessarily do this to Eclipse, but all it takes is a company like SCO and their "IP theft" PR campaign. The illusion of being "safe" is not real.
Yeah, but if all patent applications have to stay public after they are filed, then it's hard to say who implemented the "invention" independently, and who looked up the patent applications. My whole point with the post was that an argument that patents and patent applications are public does not justify granting virtual and artificial monopoly on most "inventions" to anyone. Maybe if the patent office brought down the number of patents granted to few hundred a year and to only legitimately innovative advances, you could have an argument, but the way it is today, it's just another artificial legal barrier to entry to a market. This doesn't serve well the economy and the people.
Nice thinking. You don't need to have any human rights either. After all, governments are not likely to violate them anyway, so why bother?
The difference is that government passed the patent laws to give more power to big corporations and take your rights away, and against public interest in general. The meteorite is not an analogy.
Well, that was my point too. In another post I said the patent system creates an artificial legal barrier to entry in the market; this is done not only to protect corporations from each other (defensive patents) but also that small firms and independent developers challenging big corporations can be labelled as "pirates" and "IP thieves."
This does not only apply to software development either - it technically also applies to software users as well. i.e., if your software vendor does not have a license to distribute the patented technology with their product, and you - the user - do not have a license to use the said technology, then by using that product, you - the user - are also infringing on the patent and can be sued for damages, whether you knew of the possible infringement or not.
Sorry that you misunderstood the point of my post. It was not to make every developer look through the patents and patent applications before they write each function. Neither was it to make every software user look through the same databases before they start using a piece of software, and make sure with the software vendor that all relevant patents are licensed.
This is a problem with the patent system in general - you cannot know you are violating anything, even as a user of a product, before someone sues someone else and you. I mean how can you possibly be expected to know if your product vendor has properly licensed and paid for all patents? While patents and patent applications are public, corporate licensing agreements regarding them are not. Even if they were, it would not make any sense for every product consumer to hire a patent attorney to check for "legality" before using the product. The argument that all patents and patent applications are public does not hold water.
It does not make sense for developers to check for patents either, even though they are risking infringing on someone else's patents by not doing so. What corporations are doing is not only applying for "defensive" patents, but also creating an artificial and legal barriers to entry in the market.
Well, Eclipse and its users are in trouble then, because the patent application in question has been filed over 4 years ago. Just a reminder to every developer next time you try to implement a feature in your program, don't forget to search all existing patents and patent applications for possible violations. And another reminder to all software users - you are not immune from patent lawsuits if the software you are using (whether closed or open source) is violating other(s') patent(s) and neither you or your software vendor have a license to use or distribute the patented "technology."
Fonts look perfect for me. Nimbus Sans L is what I use for most of the UI and it looks better (for me) than the default Windows choice. I don't know if Nimbus fonts come with Windows or you have to shell out for them.
As far as installing fonts, it can be done with only few clicks in KDE; you can just as easily enable or disable any of them.
- I feel claustrophobic in a single-desktop environment; NVidia's and others' hacks do not match up;
- If I don't like something, I change it, not deal with it;
- I get more software for less - more choice, flexibility and ability to customize to accomplish exactly what I want;
- You don't have to be a scripting expert to write simple, extremely useful scripts for automation - perfect for any developer.