Delicate balance? Poppycock. The Earth's biosphere is an extremely robust system that is self-correcting and auto-adaptive across billions of years of huge environmental changes.
I'd say the only real worry is that man may get overwhelmed by one of these corrections or adaptations.
No, but there are certain psychological patterns that correlate strongly with future criminal behavior. The problem with this proposal is that teachers aren't qualified to assess these children, and even if they were the assessment should be used to treat such children's problems rather than just gather biometric information to aid in tracking them down after it is too late to prevent the crime.
for an intelligent person to be a successful politician in the USA they mostly have to lie about their religious beliefs
Nonsense. There are many non-Christians in US politics that have done or are doing quite well. Mit Romney and Joe Lieberman are two recent such examples who are very successful politicians and were recently quite serious candidates for President and Vice-President.
The pen register act (title III under the 1986 ECPA) is a privacy law. Prior to the act no judicial order was required because of the fact that individuals making phone calls are disclosing the numbers they dial to a third party (the phone company) and thus should have no expectation of privacy in regard to the numbers they dialed. There is no Constitutional guarantee of privacy for information disclosed to a third party. Law enforcement benefits from the pen register act because court orders granted under the act can be used to compel service providers to collect this information; prior to the act law enforcement had no tool to compel disclosure, and had to collect the information itself (at it's own expense).
Under the Clinton administration law enforcement and courts generally assumed that the pen register act also applied to internet communications. This was under some debate, and Clinton was working to get this codified in law. This eventually occurred under the 2001 Patriot Act.
The Bush administration is widely believed to have violated the act by collecting large numbers of telephone call detail records in an indiscriminate fashion. Prior to the act Bush could have collected all this with no restriction.
In the case of email I certainly don't have any expectation of privacy of either the content or the routing information if I use my ISP's mail servers. This is material that is obviously saved by intermediate storage devices during processing (i.e. RAM, hard disks, etc.). The routing and content must always be disclosed to a 3rd party which means no Constitutional expectation of privacy should be expected.
Bottom line: if you really want your email to be private, you had better encrypt it unless there is some explicit change to the law in the future.
Also, you might want to watch out for texting on cell phones, voicemail captured by the phone company (and by VOIP systems) etc. - these recordings are less protected than a regular phone call.
One of the interesting aspects of the article referenced is the video of Rush Holt giving his support to the bill. Rush is perhaps the only true scientist in the House of representatives - he is a Physics PhD who served as Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (a fusion reactor research lab) located in New Jersey. During an open house of the lab I had the chance to meet Rush, and since I am in his congressional district I've been glad to have the privilege of voting for him several times.
Rush's district is a traditionally conservative district that has elected some candidates who I disliked intensely - the person holding his office prior to Rush was very much a new wave conservative and in favor of amending the constitution to allow things like school prayer, and to ban burning the flag. My level of satisfaction in how this bill came out, and Rush's part in it was very satisfying.
If the music I wanted was freely and legally available for download from the internet in lossless un-DRMed form I'd be perfectly willing to sell out $5 per month for access to this music. I currently spend about 10 times that per month for my music acquisitions.
I am suggesting that the popularity of overcompressed crappy quality downloadable mp3's is not a meaningful predictor for the popularity of overcompressed crappy quality download movies.
1. I seriously doubt that more people own nice stereos than HDTVs. 2. I own a nice stereo and MP3's are very much a non-starter for me. SACD or DVD-A is what I prefer although a well-mastered CD is ok. Pop music is so atrociously engineered these days that I can't listen to it at all. 3. HDTV isn't a non-starter because there is no competing digital format with higher resolution, If there was I'd be using it. 4. XVID? Less than DVD quality when I have an HDTV? I don't think so. Have you ever seen an XVID on a 50+" HDTV? Looks like crap.
Nobody is going to be building combo players. It just doesn't make sense to add to the cost of a player for a format where there will be no new software.
iTunes has already made a lot of progress for music, movies will most assuredly follow.
I don't think there is anything assured about it. iTunes has been a winner for pop singles, but hasn't made a dent in the album market or in other genres. HD movies are an entirely different ballgame from pop singles. 30 GB vs. 5MB is huge factor.
iTunes works for 'music as background noise' that you don't pay any real attention to, much like car radio and elevator music.
I am sure ITMS does fine as a means to enable sales of iPods. But I don't think they sell much besides top 40 singles. It is not a model that is applicable to movies.
Online album sales are minuscule. CD sales outside disposable pop music is actually increasing.
My bet is that a movie is a heck of a lot more like a music album, and anything that you can take from online music sales is not going to apply to movies.
It was a revelation - I remember when I saw my first trinitron. Up until then color TVs were washed out blurry affairs, barely superior to black and white - the trinitron brough real, sharp color into the home. The trinitron made watching porn far more exciting! The jump in quality was like going from VHS EP to upscaled DVD.
In at least two fundamental ways. First, the summary quoted the abstract of the patent, not the claims. The abstract is almost always a simplified extract of the contents of the patent and rarely has any meat to it. Of course it looks obvious.
READ THE CLAIMS TO FIND OUT WHAT IS BEING COVERED BY THE PATENT!!
Here is claim 1:
1. A distributed hosting framework operative in a computer network in which users of client machines connect to a content provider server, the framework comprising:
a routine for modifying at least one embedded object URL of a web page to include a hostname pretended to a domain name and path;
a set of content servers, distinct from the content provider server, for hosting at least some of the embedded objects of web pages that are normally hosted by the content provider server;
at least one first level name server that provides a first level domain name service (DNS) resolution; and
at least one second level name server that provides a second level domain name service (DNS) resolution;
wherein in response to requests for the web page, generated by the client machines the web page including the modified embedded object URL is served from the content provider server and the embedded object identified by the modified embedded object URL is served from a given one of the content servers as identified by the first level and second level name servers.
Doesn't seem so obvious now, does it?
The second is the fact is that Akamai is a very innovative company that has pioneered a lot of distributed content delivery starting with the early days of the internet. In my mind it is very obvious that they would have a lot of valid patent material. They are most assuredly NOT patent trolls, and in fact have brought many innovations based on some very advanced work to commercial fruition. It is insane that their work is being shown in this light by Slashdot.
The company was founded by an MIT graduate student (Dan Lewin) and an applied math professor from MIT, Tom Leighton who is currently head of the algorithms group at at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Lewin was tragically killed when AA flight 11 was crashed during the 9-11 terrorist attack.
This article is one of the most ridiculous ever posted by Slashdot.
In the case of a software patent the implementation is use of the algorithm on a computer. The concept that a software patent is a patent on the use of the algorithm is a misconception; it is the implementation of the algorithm in the form of software as being executed on a computer that is patented.
There is nothing in these patents that prevents you from utilization of the algorithm, say using pencil and paper. If it truly was the algorithm being patented then it would cover all uses.
Now you could argue that computer + algorithm = obvious, which I don't have a problem with. But the idea that a software patent is the same thing as actually patenting an algorithm isn't right.
To me business process patents are much closer to algorithm patents than software patents.
To me a piece of software (the actual code) is more an expression of the idea, and that is the province of copyrights.
As far as how much you have to deviate from the actual patent to avoid infringement, well that is a subject that there is much argument about. Different people read patents differently. If you really want to be sure that you are avoiding the patent the concept is that you should be far enough away to avoid claims under the doctrine of equivalents.
i.e if:
1. It performs substantially the same function
2. in substantially the same way
3. to yield substantially the same result.
You are infringing. Writing a different merge sort code isn't going to avoid a software patent covering merge sort under this principle.
Well that is not really the idea.. Patents are supposed to protect implementations. A mathematical principle or natural law is something that a person implements. Like today I am going to implement F=ma. Not really unless you have a lot more abilities than a normal person.
Of course you can implement a computur program that implements the RSA algorithm... that is a little different.
I don't believe in the concept that scarcity does not exist for IP protected works. If it was the case that such scarcity did not exist people would not be willing to pay for goods controlled by a monopoly copyright - copyrighted books etc. would not sell because there were fungible non-copyrighted books.
That isn't the case though. Joe's backyard skating lessons posted on Youtube are not fungible with "Lawrence of Arabia" even though both are movies.
The fact is that there are damn few movies at the level of LofA, and the idea that such are not scarce is false.
Now it is true that this is not the same as the concept of physical good scarcity, and that is true. But the physical good in the case of the movie is a DVD blank, worth a fraction of a dollar and in good supply. This physical good is NOT fungible with the same DVD containing a copy of LofA.
Ultimately the question is how a society wants to structure the concept of 'ownership'. In most of the western world the decision has been made that 'ownership' of IP provides the appropriate incentives for people to create great works like LofA which will necessarily be scare because of the cost of production, talent, knowledge and artistic passion entailed in such a masterpiece.
Slashdot Mirror
Delicate balance? Poppycock. The Earth's biosphere is an extremely robust system that is self-correcting and auto-adaptive across billions of years of huge environmental changes.
I'd say the only real worry is that man may get overwhelmed by one of these corrections or adaptations.
Unfortunately tin foil is very hard to find these days, and the guys at MIT proved that aluminum foil only acts as an antenna.
No, but there are certain psychological patterns that correlate strongly with future criminal behavior. The problem with this proposal is that teachers aren't qualified to assess these children, and even if they were the assessment should be used to treat such children's problems rather than just gather biometric information to aid in tracking them down after it is too late to prevent the crime.
for an intelligent person to be a successful politician in the USA they mostly have to lie about their religious beliefs
Nonsense. There are many non-Christians in US politics that have done or are doing quite well. Mit Romney and Joe Lieberman are two recent such examples who are very successful politicians and were recently quite serious candidates for President and Vice-President.
The pen register act (title III under the 1986 ECPA) is a privacy law. Prior to the act no judicial order was required because of the fact that individuals making phone calls are disclosing the numbers they dial to a third party (the phone company) and thus should have no expectation of privacy in regard to the numbers they dialed. There is no Constitutional guarantee of privacy for information disclosed to a third party. Law enforcement benefits from the pen register act because court orders granted under the act can be used to compel service providers to collect this information; prior to the act law enforcement had no tool to compel disclosure, and had to collect the information itself (at it's own expense).
Under the Clinton administration law enforcement and courts generally assumed that the pen register act also applied to internet communications. This was under some debate, and Clinton was working to get this codified in law. This eventually occurred under the 2001 Patriot Act.
The Bush administration is widely believed to have violated the act by collecting large numbers of telephone call detail records in an indiscriminate fashion. Prior to the act Bush could have collected all this with no restriction.
In the case of email I certainly don't have any expectation of privacy of either the content or the routing information if I use my ISP's mail servers. This is material that is obviously saved by intermediate storage devices during processing (i.e. RAM, hard disks, etc.). The routing and content must always be disclosed to a 3rd party which means no Constitutional expectation of privacy should be expected.
Bottom line: if you really want your email to be private, you had better encrypt it unless there is some explicit change to the law in the future.
Also, you might want to watch out for texting on cell phones, voicemail captured by the phone company (and by VOIP systems) etc. - these recordings are less protected than a regular phone call.
One of the interesting aspects of the article referenced is the video of Rush Holt giving his support to the bill. Rush is perhaps the only true scientist in the House of representatives - he is a Physics PhD who served as Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (a fusion reactor research lab) located in New Jersey. During an open house of the lab I had the chance to meet Rush, and since I am in his congressional district I've been glad to have the privilege of voting for him several times.
Rush's district is a traditionally conservative district that has elected some candidates who I disliked intensely - the person holding his office prior to Rush was very much a new wave conservative and in favor of amending the constitution to allow things like school prayer, and to ban burning the flag. My level of satisfaction in how this bill came out, and Rush's part in it was very satisfying.
If the music I wanted was freely and legally available for download from the internet in lossless un-DRMed form I'd be perfectly willing to sell out $5 per month for access to this music. I currently spend about 10 times that per month for my music acquisitions.
I am suggesting that the popularity of overcompressed crappy quality downloadable mp3's is not a meaningful predictor for the popularity of overcompressed crappy quality download movies.
1. I seriously doubt that more people own nice stereos than HDTVs.
2. I own a nice stereo and MP3's are very much a non-starter for me. SACD or DVD-A is what I prefer although a well-mastered CD is ok. Pop music is so atrociously engineered these days that I can't listen to it at all.
3. HDTV isn't a non-starter because there is no competing digital format with higher resolution, If there was I'd be using it.
4. XVID? Less than DVD quality when I have an HDTV? I don't think so. Have you ever seen an XVID on a 50+" HDTV? Looks like crap.
Music and geometry have followed the same paths in western civilization since the days of Pythagoras.
A lot of people own HDTVs now. VCDs etc. are a non-starter.
Nobody is going to be building combo players. It just doesn't make sense to add to the cost of a player for a format where there will be no new software.
iTunes has already made a lot of progress for music, movies will most assuredly follow.
I don't think there is anything assured about it. iTunes has been a winner for pop singles, but hasn't made a dent in the album market or in other genres. HD movies are an entirely different ballgame from pop singles. 30 GB vs. 5MB is huge factor.
iTunes works for 'music as background noise' that you don't pay any real attention to, much like car radio and elevator music.
HD Movies are a very different usage scenario.
So if I have wifi I am safe?
I am sure ITMS does fine as a means to enable sales of iPods. But I don't think they sell much besides top 40 singles. It is not a model that is applicable to movies.
You have it reversed. One fuckwit easily negates all the good work of 10 good programmers.
100 programmers if the fuckwit is a manager.
I'll believe it is sexy when the campus babes start trying to pick up CS students in the Engineering library.
Online album sales are minuscule. CD sales outside disposable pop music is actually increasing.
My bet is that a movie is a heck of a lot more like a music album, and anything that you can take from online music sales is not going to apply to movies.
It was a revelation - I remember when I saw my first trinitron. Up until then color TVs were washed out blurry affairs, barely superior to black and white - the trinitron brough real, sharp color into the home. The trinitron made watching porn far more exciting! The jump in quality was like going from VHS EP to upscaled DVD.
Right. Look at Akamai. The perfect counter-argument to your thesis.
In at least two fundamental ways. First, the summary quoted the abstract of the patent, not the claims. The abstract is almost always a simplified extract of the contents of the patent and rarely has any meat to it. Of course it looks obvious.
READ THE CLAIMS TO FIND OUT WHAT IS BEING COVERED BY THE PATENT!!
Here is claim 1:
1. A distributed hosting framework operative in a computer network in which users of client machines connect to a content provider server, the framework comprising:
a routine for modifying at least one embedded object URL of a web page to include a hostname pretended to a domain name and path;
a set of content servers, distinct from the content provider server, for hosting at least some of the embedded objects of web pages that are normally hosted by the content provider server;
at least one first level name server that provides a first level domain name service (DNS) resolution; and
at least one second level name server that provides a second level domain name service (DNS) resolution;
wherein in response to requests for the web page, generated by the client machines the web page including the modified embedded object URL is served from the content provider server and the embedded object identified by the modified embedded object URL is served from a given one of the content servers as identified by the first level and second level name servers.
Doesn't seem so obvious now, does it?
The second is the fact is that Akamai is a very innovative company that has pioneered a lot of distributed content delivery starting with the early days of the internet. In my mind it is very obvious that they would have a lot of valid patent material. They are most assuredly NOT patent trolls, and in fact have brought many innovations based on some very advanced work to commercial fruition. It is insane that their work is being shown in this light by Slashdot.
The company was founded by an MIT graduate student (Dan Lewin) and an applied math professor from MIT, Tom Leighton who is currently head of the algorithms group at at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Lewin was tragically killed when AA flight 11 was crashed during the 9-11 terrorist attack.
This article is one of the most ridiculous ever posted by Slashdot.
Cutting boxes to minimize waste and facilitate processing can be solutions to VERY nonobvious problems easily desrving patents.
In the case of a software patent the implementation is use of the algorithm on a computer. The concept that a software patent is a patent on the use of the algorithm is a misconception; it is the implementation of the algorithm in the form of software as being executed on a computer that is patented.
There is nothing in these patents that prevents you from utilization of the algorithm, say using pencil and paper. If it truly was the algorithm being patented then it would cover all uses.
Now you could argue that computer + algorithm = obvious, which I don't have a problem with. But the idea that a software patent is the same thing as actually patenting an algorithm isn't right.
To me business process patents are much closer to algorithm patents than software patents.
To me a piece of software (the actual code) is more an expression of the idea, and that is the province of copyrights.
As far as how much you have to deviate from the actual patent to avoid infringement, well that is a subject that there is much argument about. Different people read patents differently. If you really want to be sure that you are avoiding the patent the concept is that you should be far enough away to avoid claims under the doctrine of equivalents.
i.e if:
1. It performs substantially the same function
2. in substantially the same way
3. to yield substantially the same result.
You are infringing. Writing a different merge sort code isn't going to avoid a software patent covering merge sort under this principle.
Well that is not really the idea.. Patents are supposed to protect implementations. A mathematical principle or natural law is something that a person implements. Like today I am going to implement F=ma. Not really unless you have a lot more abilities than a normal person.
Of course you can implement a computur program that implements the RSA algorithm... that is a little different.
I don't believe in the concept that scarcity does not exist for IP protected works. If it was the case that such scarcity did not exist people would not be willing to pay for goods controlled by a monopoly copyright - copyrighted books etc. would not sell because there were fungible non-copyrighted books.
That isn't the case though. Joe's backyard skating lessons posted on Youtube are not fungible with "Lawrence of Arabia" even though both are movies.
The fact is that there are damn few movies at the level of LofA, and the idea that such are not scarce is false.
Now it is true that this is not the same as the concept of physical good scarcity, and that is true. But the physical good in the case of the movie is a DVD blank, worth a fraction of a dollar and in good supply. This physical good is NOT fungible with the same DVD containing a copy of LofA.
Ultimately the question is how a society wants to structure the concept of 'ownership'. In most of the western world the decision has been made that 'ownership' of IP provides the appropriate incentives for people to create great works like LofA which will necessarily be scare because of the cost of production, talent, knowledge and artistic passion entailed in such a masterpiece.