All we need to do in that case is to create some kind of encoding schema to store references to bitmaps of text characters, and call them in sequence to replicate an actual string of text. Then the image of a page can be generated on the fly.
They certainly weren't done on an 8088-based IBM PC, either. x86 has proven it has legs (and then some) but the architecture has always been a kludge. The only things that hae kept it alive are the bottomless R&D budget provided by the huge customer base already pot-committed to the platform due to their vested interest in maintaning backward-compatibility, and the open-spec nature of the hardware platform.
Agreed; IBM's PC architecture was ALSO non-excellent.
Apple's architecture was better. Their software was better. It wasn't even funny how much better. But it was more expensive. And you could only buy it from Apple.
IBM regarded the PC as a toy, a piece of junk with no practical serious application. More a proof of concept than something you'd want to develop and support. They were pretty much right. They opened the spec, so that fools at other companies could build the boxes rather than be forced to build better.... and then gave away an empire in licensed software to Microsoft because they really didn't want to be bothered with it.
That's a bit of a distortion. MS usually wins the marketshare war by version 3, that's quite a different thing from saying that they achieve excellence at that point. I strongly question whether excellence is really a part of the Microsoft vision at all sometimes.
A few counter-examples for you:
Word wasn't all that excellent until v. 7.0 on Windows, or 5.1a on the Mac...
IE was decent for the time at version 3, but really didn't get better than the contemporary version of Netscape until version 5 was released.
Windows became actually usable... kindof at version 3.11. And still sucked donkey compared to Apple's System 6 and System 7 operating systems for Macintosh. Windows was NEVER, EVER excellent, however. Win95 sucked. Win98 sucked. Win98 SP2 was borderline acceptable, but still sucked. WinME was a relapse back into *dire* suckage.
Windows *NT* got close to excellent around the release of Windows 2000 SP 2, which would be version 5 for those keeping track.
Perhaps, but in the event that hard science reveals an anomality or continuity gaffe in the Star Trek mythos, Wesley will be able to use tachyons in some way to travel through time and alter the old scripts to resolve any contradictions, and all will be well by the time the closing credits roll.
1 - Wanted a backup copy, but did not know how to rip a DVD and figured the internet essentially provided the equivalent service for free.
2 - Forgot that he even owned the DVD in the first place.
3 - Was separated from the DVD by a long distance (CEO's travel) and wanted to watch the movie right now but didn't feel he ought to have to pay for it again.
4 - Got sued, figured he might be able to persuade the judge better if he owned the DVD.
5 - Someone else in the house did the download without the knowledge or consent of the computer owner. Kids, spouse, butler, house guest, wifi leech outside the property line, etc.
6 - Wanted the video in a different format (PSP, maybe?) but felt it ridiculous to have to pay twice for viewing rights to the same media.
7 - DVD was stolen, lost, or damaged, and he had a "moral right" to view the movie he paid for as often as he wanted, but had no other way of making that backup copy he had been entitled to make under Fair Use.
I have sympathy for most of these positions and I don't think that it ought to make much difference between whether you rip your own disk or you download a copy of something that you own the disk for. But the law isn't presently set up to work that way.
I haven't assumed the defendant's guilt; I've only pointed out that owning the DVD doesnt mean he didn't download it. You have a looong way to go from there to proove an assertion that he did or didn't do it.
I'm not even talking about legal standards in court here, just basic logic. It's POSSIBLE to download data that you already possess on physical media. Therefore, claiming to own the DVD is in no way a refutation or proof of falsehood to the claim that he downloaded the movie.
IF he DID already own the DVD, then yes, it makes little sense for him to have downloaded it. IF the plaintiff has evidence that he did download it, owning a copy of the DVD isn't going to amount to much. I haven't seen the plaintiff's evidence, I just know that the claim of owning the DVD already doesn't mean much.
I hadn't exactly stated what my position is, actually. It seems that a lot of people who responded to my initial post thought that I was in agreement with the RI/MPAA, thereby falling into the "if you're not with us, you're against us" trap. I hate the RI/MPAA. I disagree with copyright law and strongly believe that it must be reformed to protect both artists, individual consumer's Fair Use rights, AND the public domain from corporate greed.
But the claim "I already own the DVD" is bullshit as far as a refutation to the charge "You illegally downloaded a movie I hold the rights to." The download either happened or it didn't. The only arguments the defendant has that will win are "You can't PROVE that I downloaded your movie." or "I can prove that I didn't download your movie" or even "I had the right (or authorization) to download your movie." Sure, it seems like it wouldn't make sense to download a movie that you already own the media for. But "Why would anyone do it?" doesn't counter-establish whether or not someone did in fact do something. People do stuff that doesn't make sense all the time.
Owning the DVD isn't a license to download a copy for backup purposes any more than owning a ticket stub entitles you to video tape a presentation in the theater with a camcorder. Both, in my opinion, ought not to be criminal acts. But what ought to be law has little to do with what is presently law. I hope they throw out the law and write a better one. That'd be nice.
The claim that he already owns the DVD is a claim. It doesn't refute any evidence (if any) that the MPAA may have, though. If they have server logs from Hogan's ISP, or from some server he allegedly downloaded from, and those logs can be established as reliable, which is itself fairly doubtful, owning the DVD isn't going to do him a bit of good.
One can certainly download a DVD that one also happens to own. If the police arrest me for auto theft, pointing out that I already own a car won't by itself get the prosecution off my back, especially if they have evidence that indicates that I may have allegedly stolen a car.
The argument that taking any car that I happen to like and using it as my own ought to be the law of the land also is not going to work as a defense.
Neither will the argument that cars are too damn expensive and car companies are greedy.
I'm not a fan of copyright or of the MPAA, but beating them takes better arguments than this. Mr. Hogan may well get the case thrown out of court, and if he does more power to him, but even if he wins this case there's still a host of larger issues that will remain unaddressed.
I never claimed to be doing anything more than speculating.
I'm absolutely correct that ownership of a copy of the DVD in no way acts as proof that he didn't download the film.
You're correct to point out that downloading data from a P2P network is not a crime. If the data is copyrighted, and neither of the peers are authorized to share the data by the data's copyright holder, it's a violation of copyright.
You seem to think that owning the media grants license to obtain unauthorized copies, and that's simply untrue. Fair use provisions DO allow the creation of copies for backup purposes, but legalistically it's a bit of a stretch to say that that right extends as far as to downloading a copy from someone who's distributing the file without authorization from the copyright holder. Now, what's stupid about that is that the downloaded copy is for all intents and purposes functionally equivalent to ripping and burning a spare DVD on your own, but the fact remains that if bits get distributed from one non-copyright-holding individual to another non-copyright-holding individual, infringement is taking place according to the letter of the law.
Besides, p2p technologies don't in any way verify that those who download from sharing peers have some quasi-legal or moral entitlement to do so. I think p2p serves a much better purpose than acting as a distributed backup system for legitimate licensees of copyrighted material -- they serve to enable the have-nots to partake in a far greater volume and variety of cultural works than they ever could if they had to pay for access to everything. P2P eliminates artificial scarsity imposed by copy restriction.
That's the great beauty of the internet.
Now, it just happens that it fucks with existing business models, and those whose industries depend on those outmoded models are justifiably panicked and doing only what can be predicted of them. Financial empires are threatened and those who built them have always played hardball. But that doesn't stop the internet from being a greater good than the copyright industry, and it won't stop a more efficient distribution model from supplanting an obsolete one. But people sure are gonna cry over it, and they're going to get their day in court one way or another.
I'm not saying that the law should be enforced any particular way. I'm saying that the Plaintiff does have an interest in how the law is being applied, and it's up to the courts and the legislature to determine what makes sense. I personally hope that copyright gets scrapped and drastically reformed.
Bwa-ha-ha. Care about the consumer? The only one they care about is themself, the same as anyone else.
If they don't keep the consumers happy enough, it'll end up harming themselves, so it's not like they have no reason to care about the consumer, but they're businessmen, not altruists or even artists.
And they'll tell you that they love consumers, but hate thieves and pirates anyway.
I don't see how ownership of the original media serves as "proof" that he didn't download it.
Besides, with BitTorrent, you upload chunks of the torrent even as you download the file. What if he didn't download the.torrent of MtF, but rather seeded a.torrent of the ISO of the DVD he ripped?
What if he purchased the DVD after viewing the downloaded torrent? It's still an unauthorized distribution of a copyrighted work, even if it did end up resulting in a sale that benefits the Plaintiff... if they want to sue because to them the principle of control is more important than the short-term profit of a unit sale, who are we to question such prioritization?
There's no great equalizer. Rich people will simply mount a license-plate sized LCD screen and offer an ever-changing plate number to bamboozle you. Poor people will be able to afford neither the LCD screen nor the tracker. In fact, they'll probably have to pay-per-view for the license on the content of the rich guy's LCDplate, the poor sods.
We want to help you. I'm recommending you immediately pry the ">" key from your keyboard and put it into quarantine until this abuse can be isolated and dealt with properly. The Math Police have been informed of your IP address, and will be pinging you shortly with additional instructions. Do not panic. Help is on the way.
I call BS. Under System 7, Mac users were limited to 32-char file names..3letter extensions were not unheard of, but not used or required on System 7, either.
Slashdot Mirror
All we need to do in that case is to create some kind of encoding schema to store references to bitmaps of text characters, and call them in sequence to replicate an actual string of text. Then the image of a page can be generated on the fly.
They certainly weren't done on an 8088-based IBM PC, either. x86 has proven it has legs (and then some) but the architecture has always been a kludge. The only things that hae kept it alive are the bottomless R&D budget provided by the huge customer base already pot-committed to the platform due to their vested interest in maintaning backward-compatibility, and the open-spec nature of the hardware platform.
Agreed; IBM's PC architecture was ALSO non-excellent.
Apple's architecture was better. Their software was better. It wasn't even funny how much better. But it was more expensive. And you could only buy it from Apple.
IBM regarded the PC as a toy, a piece of junk with no practical serious application. More a proof of concept than something you'd want to develop and support. They were pretty much right. They opened the spec, so that fools at other companies could build the boxes rather than be forced to build better.... and then gave away an empire in licensed software to Microsoft because they really didn't want to be bothered with it.
And the rest is history.
Shut up, dude, this isn't funny. How am I supposed to get laid now?
Perhaps, but in the event that hard science reveals an anomality or continuity gaffe in the Star Trek mythos, Wesley will be able to use tachyons in some way to travel through time and alter the old scripts to resolve any contradictions, and all will be well by the time the closing credits roll.
Apparently this is as close to admission that they're not presently excellent as we can hope for.
1 - Wanted a backup copy, but did not know how to rip a DVD and figured the internet essentially provided the equivalent service for free.
2 - Forgot that he even owned the DVD in the first place.
3 - Was separated from the DVD by a long distance (CEO's travel) and wanted to watch the movie right now but didn't feel he ought to have to pay for it again.
4 - Got sued, figured he might be able to persuade the judge better if he owned the DVD.
5 - Someone else in the house did the download without the knowledge or consent of the computer owner. Kids, spouse, butler, house guest, wifi leech outside the property line, etc.
6 - Wanted the video in a different format (PSP, maybe?) but felt it ridiculous to have to pay twice for viewing rights to the same media.
7 - DVD was stolen, lost, or damaged, and he had a "moral right" to view the movie he paid for as often as he wanted, but had no other way of making that backup copy he had been entitled to make under Fair Use.
I have sympathy for most of these positions and I don't think that it ought to make much difference between whether you rip your own disk or you download a copy of something that you own the disk for. But the law isn't presently set up to work that way.
640 cores ought to be enough for anybody.
I haven't assumed the defendant's guilt; I've only pointed out that owning the DVD doesnt mean he didn't download it. You have a looong way to go from there to proove an assertion that he did or didn't do it.
I'm not even talking about legal standards in court here, just basic logic. It's POSSIBLE to download data that you already possess on physical media. Therefore, claiming to own the DVD is in no way a refutation or proof of falsehood to the claim that he downloaded the movie.
IF he DID already own the DVD, then yes, it makes little sense for him to have downloaded it. IF the plaintiff has evidence that he did download it, owning a copy of the DVD isn't going to amount to much. I haven't seen the plaintiff's evidence, I just know that the claim of owning the DVD already doesn't mean much.
Hell, in France you might actually score some real sex.
I hadn't exactly stated what my position is, actually. It seems that a lot of people who responded to my initial post thought that I was in agreement with the RI/MPAA, thereby falling into the "if you're not with us, you're against us" trap. I hate the RI/MPAA. I disagree with copyright law and strongly believe that it must be reformed to protect both artists, individual consumer's Fair Use rights, AND the public domain from corporate greed.
But the claim "I already own the DVD" is bullshit as far as a refutation to the charge "You illegally downloaded a movie I hold the rights to." The download either happened or it didn't. The only arguments the defendant has that will win are "You can't PROVE that I downloaded your movie." or "I can prove that I didn't download your movie" or even "I had the right (or authorization) to download your movie." Sure, it seems like it wouldn't make sense to download a movie that you already own the media for. But "Why would anyone do it?" doesn't counter-establish whether or not someone did in fact do something. People do stuff that doesn't make sense all the time.
Owning the DVD isn't a license to download a copy for backup purposes any more than owning a ticket stub entitles you to video tape a presentation in the theater with a camcorder. Both, in my opinion, ought not to be criminal acts. But what ought to be law has little to do with what is presently law. I hope they throw out the law and write a better one. That'd be nice.
I'm not defending pricks, I'm attacking bullshit arguments, wherever I find them.
The claim that he already owns the DVD is a claim. It doesn't refute any evidence (if any) that the MPAA may have, though. If they have server logs from Hogan's ISP, or from some server he allegedly downloaded from, and those logs can be established as reliable, which is itself fairly doubtful, owning the DVD isn't going to do him a bit of good.
One can certainly download a DVD that one also happens to own. If the police arrest me for auto theft, pointing out that I already own a car won't by itself get the prosecution off my back, especially if they have evidence that indicates that I may have allegedly stolen a car.
The argument that taking any car that I happen to like and using it as my own ought to be the law of the land also is not going to work as a defense.
Neither will the argument that cars are too damn expensive and car companies are greedy.
I'm not a fan of copyright or of the MPAA, but beating them takes better arguments than this. Mr. Hogan may well get the case thrown out of court, and if he does more power to him, but even if he wins this case there's still a host of larger issues that will remain unaddressed.
I never claimed to be doing anything more than speculating.
I'm absolutely correct that ownership of a copy of the DVD in no way acts as proof that he didn't download the film.
You're correct to point out that downloading data from a P2P network is not a crime. If the data is copyrighted, and neither of the peers are authorized to share the data by the data's copyright holder, it's a violation of copyright.
You seem to think that owning the media grants license to obtain unauthorized copies, and that's simply untrue. Fair use provisions DO allow the creation of copies for backup purposes, but legalistically it's a bit of a stretch to say that that right extends as far as to downloading a copy from someone who's distributing the file without authorization from the copyright holder. Now, what's stupid about that is that the downloaded copy is for all intents and purposes functionally equivalent to ripping and burning a spare DVD on your own, but the fact remains that if bits get distributed from one non-copyright-holding individual to another non-copyright-holding individual, infringement is taking place according to the letter of the law.
Besides, p2p technologies don't in any way verify that those who download from sharing peers have some quasi-legal or moral entitlement to do so. I think p2p serves a much better purpose than acting as a distributed backup system for legitimate licensees of copyrighted material -- they serve to enable the have-nots to partake in a far greater volume and variety of cultural works than they ever could if they had to pay for access to everything. P2P eliminates artificial scarsity imposed by copy restriction.
That's the great beauty of the internet.
Now, it just happens that it fucks with existing business models, and those whose industries depend on those outmoded models are justifiably panicked and doing only what can be predicted of them. Financial empires are threatened and those who built them have always played hardball. But that doesn't stop the internet from being a greater good than the copyright industry, and it won't stop a more efficient distribution model from supplanting an obsolete one. But people sure are gonna cry over it, and they're going to get their day in court one way or another.
I'm not saying that the law should be enforced any particular way. I'm saying that the Plaintiff does have an interest in how the law is being applied, and it's up to the courts and the legislature to determine what makes sense. I personally hope that copyright gets scrapped and drastically reformed.
Bwa-ha-ha. Care about the consumer? The only one they care about is themself, the same as anyone else.
If they don't keep the consumers happy enough, it'll end up harming themselves, so it's not like they have no reason to care about the consumer, but they're businessmen, not altruists or even artists.
And they'll tell you that they love consumers, but hate thieves and pirates anyway.
I don't see how ownership of the original media serves as "proof" that he didn't download it.
.torrent of MtF, but rather seeded a .torrent of the ISO of the DVD he ripped?
Besides, with BitTorrent, you upload chunks of the torrent even as you download the file. What if he didn't download the
What if he purchased the DVD after viewing the downloaded torrent? It's still an unauthorized distribution of a copyrighted work, even if it did end up resulting in a sale that benefits the Plaintiff... if they want to sue because to them the principle of control is more important than the short-term profit of a unit sale, who are we to question such prioritization?
There's no great equalizer. Rich people will simply mount a license-plate sized LCD screen and offer an ever-changing plate number to bamboozle you. Poor people will be able to afford neither the LCD screen nor the tracker. In fact, they'll probably have to pay-per-view for the license on the content of the rich guy's LCDplate, the poor sods.
I had no idea LPR had such capabilities. Let's see HP JetDirect do this!
Now if only someone can code an extension that will tell me where I left my car keys...
We want to help you. I'm recommending you immediately pry the ">" key from your keyboard and put it into quarantine until this abuse can be isolated and dealt with properly. The Math Police have been informed of your IP address, and will be pinging you shortly with additional instructions. Do not panic. Help is on the way.
3...
2...
1...
I call BS. Under System 7, Mac users were limited to 32-char file names. .3letter extensions were not unheard of, but not used or required on System 7, either.
Also, how do you "print screen" the audio, the menus, etc.?
Geez, that's a long time... have you tried cleaning your tape drive? ;)