So having finally understood what I was writing, you instead go for a different angle of attack. That's fine, but try to RTFA first when you do.
The conversation was derailed several times already. By the 2nd level commenter for disagreeing with the first and then bringing up another solution instead (one actually given in TFA); something that should have been at the first level. Then I perpetuated that derailment by remaining on the topic of reduction of the length of a copyright term and suggesting that while this is a popular argument - it is often used misguidedly. Then you decided to derail that by jumping to conclusions, making assumptions, and going full-on ad hominem to the point of name calling. But quite frankly, this isn't a 1-dimensional thread and there is no such thing as a derailment. OP's post is stil there, 2nd commenter's post is still there - split off from that if you would like to discuss the finer points of their comments' details.
Quite frankly, if you feel so strongly, I don't understand why you bothered writing such manifest rubbish. You can go ahead and hold your breath; I'm certainly done here as there's no reasonable discourse to be had. Nevertheless, it's been 'fun' - have a great week!
Very well, I will keep this short and without 'verbiage'.
If you are somebody who complains about yourself or somebody else being targeted for 'piracy' of a work that is less than N years old, then any suggestion for reduction of the length of copyright terms to N+M years is dumb in so far as the actual complaint goes.
The suggestion itself is fine, and 'piracy' in a broader scope does not even enter the argument. Its applicability to the situation of an individual pirate complaining when the context is recent works is generally non-existent or dubious at best.
I'll even give you a car analogy: Getting a ticket for going 100 in a 60 zone and when contesting the ticket before the court, suggesting that it should be a 75 zone. That suggestion itself may very well be fine and be substantiated by data and research, but it's certainly not going to make your current ticket disappear nor keep you from getting a new one if you still insist on going 100 once the zone is changed to a 75 limit.
I don't want you to play a lawyer, and I certainly am not seeking legal advice. I just want you to back up your statement of _exactly_ (emphasis entirely yours) in light of a highly relevant case suggesting that it's not quite as exact as the dictionary definition would have one believe.
Which means that in your new statement of "instead of choosing between 1,000,000 possible animations, they only have a choice of 999,999", we really may very well be looking at "instead of choosing between 1,000,000 possible animations, they only have a choice of 500,000 because the other 500,000 are going to be '_exactly_' like Apple's."
Which in turn leads to the remainder of my questions.
You can't really tell people - and I'm paraphrasing here - it's a design patent, and that one would only be infringing if one were to make an exact copy, when in fact the copy needn't be all that exact and there's every reason to still think the design patent is absurd.
But then you're actually arguing, in a way, my point.
If you are a pirate if you download something from today, 5 years ago, or 50 years ago - but not if you download something from 1922 or earlier and you absolutely 1. don't want to fund a system that isn't fair and 2. don't want to be a pirate.. then why not download/share Robin Hood or Oliver Twist?
Now I realize those are some pretty darn old movies and eventually people are going to want something a little more contemporary. So let's say that the copyright term were indeed reduced to 5 years. You can no longer argue that you'd be a pirate if you downloaded something from 50 years ago, or even something from 5 years ago. Would you still say "Might as well get it over with..."?
And what if it were reduced to 1 year? 6 months? 1 month?
At which point of 'older' does the sentiment "Might as well be a pirate and grab that 0-day release" get etched away by older works being released into the public domain?
Actually, I believe my statement stands as the group you are referring to is not the group I was referring to. I did mention the same group you're referring to - others who want to create works, and not just consume and/or share it 'as is'.
For those who want to create works, and are currently withheld from doing so due to the long copyright term on e.g. characters that they wish to incorporate, a reduction in the length of copyright term would be a great boon.
For those who complain about getting busted for sharing a bad cam version of a movie that was released the other day, reduction does nothing. They'll continue to ignore it, and rights holders will continue to try and combat it. A losing battle for sure - but one that the length of copyright terms doesn't touch on (unless that length is reduced to zero).
I do find one part of your reply a bit amusing, though. On the one hand you suggest that a 'use it or lose it' system would encourage companies to have to generate new ideas instead of relying on old ones, but at the same time you suggest that fans should be able to rely on those old works rather than generating new ideas themselves. I suspect companies would still rely on old ones, unless the fan made works actually 'interfered' commercially. Sadly, shutting down fanfic/etc. is usually the result of bureaucracy and panicky legal staffers who fear more for brand and even trademark dilution, rather than any actual concerns about copyright.
That's a jump to conclusion that comes down to not having read my post. Or at least, not having understood it.
I'm certainly not saying "You just want free things, that's why you want copyright reform."
Heck, I'm not even referring to any particular 'You'. What I am referring to is that if there is an article about somebody having shared, say, a movie that was released on DVD just a month earlier and getting sued over it, any comments that point out the absurdly long copyright term are essentially off-topic; if the copyright term were only 1 year, that person would still be getting sued. Unless people want to make the case that the 'pirate' in that case would instead have legally been sharing a 1 year and 1 day old movie. That's not saying that copyright reform wouldn't be a good thing (presuming that reform includes, among other, a reduction of the term). Far from it.
The remainder of your reply is off topic, I might add, as I haven't stated anything as to the benefits or pitfalls of making works available freely (be that free as in beer, free as in speech, or free as in beerspeech). If anything, you should look through my comment history to learn a little more about my thoughts on copyright (summary: abolish it, replace with distribution rights), so that next time you wouldn't even have to contemplate that third paragraph.
The jury certainly believed it did. Yet there's also obvious differences.
So if I make a page turn with obvious differences, but that still looks sort of similar (and let's face it, out of the few reasonable ways a 1-page page turn can be shown that at least somewhat mimics real life page turns, a great many of them will easily end up looking similar), why wouldn't I be faced with a citation of this design patent? Even if Apple doesn't come after me, who's to say some other entity that holds a design patent on another page turn animation wouldn't? That's one of the reasons this design patent - and, really, any design patent on page turns by any other company - is lambasted. Not because people want to make an animation that is '_exactly_' like it, but because '_exactly_' is not defined, variants may also be covered by design patents, and eventually you're left with making a page turn animation that actually more closely resembles crumbling the page and setting it on fire at the same time just to evade all the design patents, leaving the end-user wondering just wtf is going on when they turn pages.
THe lock screen page turn on an Acer Liquid MT can be made to look extremely similar to the design patent in question here. It requires a very particular swipe motion (the page curl is dynamically generated based on touch position), but it can be done. Should Acer have to exclude a particular array of (similar) touch positions so as to prevent the end-user from causing infringement? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqK0vLIsHuM#t=130s
imho, once you have a limited animation algorithm (and I'd say a 2-parameter input algorithm is limited), any and all results produced by inputs to that algorithm should never be able to be considered for a design patent. Of course then the question becomes when an algorithm is considered limited, etc.
I've seen this argument before - making the copyright terms shorter - and I agree with it.
Yet that aspect of copyright is rarely actually railed against by the masses. If anything it tends to only be cited - usually with a sneer at Disney and its copyright on Mickey Mouse - as a general attack on copyright without actually being related to their concerns.
I.e. it is not that the author of a comment has had this long-lived dream of making a Mickey Mouse work and is only prevented from carrying out this task due to the life+dozens of years+etc. of copyright resting on the character. They have no direct interest in this.
They may argue that because of that copyright term, however, others are unable to produce such works, which deprives society-aka-them of such works, which they would want to have made.
Unfortunately, however, if such a work were eventually made, the main reason for railing against copyright tends to be encountered. The work - let's say it's a new Mickey Mouse movie - is released into theaters, gets out on DVD a few months later, immediately gets ripped by 'pirates' to a nice MK4 and released to the rest of the world.
It is this latter activity - the file sharing of a work, regardless of age - that most comment authors feel should not draw the (legal) ire of copyright holders, citing a multitude of arguments.
So in essence, to most of these comment authors, a reduction in the copyright term is really just symbolic - a way to let others, producers, editors, publishers, etc. who would be easy copyright infringement targets to no longer be a valid target - as to their own purposes the copyright term is essentially deemed moot.
Note that it is rarely 5+ year old material that is 'pirated', and rarely such older material for which 'pirates' are targeted for legal action; it tends to be more recent material, from 'only released on DVD a few months ago' to 'not even playing in theaters yet - leaked workprints'.
Making the copyright term shorter would do nothing for this group, except reduce the number of times it would be brought up as an argument that does not actually speak against or in favor of their actual sentiment.
I'll happily agree that Apple started the smart phone boom as we know it, but it certainly wasn't "they didn't allow carriers to customize/lock-in" that did so.
If anything, while Apple is keeping carriers from locking you into their services (well, mostly. Visual Voicemail was AT&T-only, right? right. Sure that was a collaborative effort, but I'm not sure that doesn't make it worse.) they instead lock you into their services.
Windows Mobile (going a long way back), while letting carriers customize (most didn't - t-mobile in germany, O2 and Orange in UK did but mostly visual tweaks), was easily unlocked if needed and restored to stock, and then tweaked far further than even Android allows now (which can be considered both a good or a bad thing). In addition, there were a plethora of app stores not just from the carriers (with few offerings) but third parties.
It was never a highly popular platform, though - and that's the additional factor that Apple did bring to the table.
But they wouldn't have given that money to the producers because the producers weren't offering their product at a price / time / place that the buyers were comfortable with.
Of course they were willing to give money. You'll find that from most pirates. They're perfectly willing to give money. Just not the $25 they want. They'd be happy to spend, say, $2 if it were an online movie download. But it's not an online movie download. So this guy, maybe he was selling them for $20. So people were willing to spend $20, not the $25. You still can't claim that $20 was 'stolen' as they're not offering it for $20 so they would never have gotten the $20.
Or perhaps they would be willing to spend $25, but not at Amazon, or at Best Buy, or whathaveyou - but they're perfectly willing to pay it at the street corner where this guy was, because it was more convenient.
Quite basically, you can't rationally say it's not theft when there's no direct exchange of money, and then say it is theft when there is, or you'd have to consider whether it's $0.01 that makes it theft, or $fullprice that makes it theft, or somewhere in between - and then exactly at which point that would be.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand why this would be theft while the usual (somebody/site sharing movies for free) would not.
The usual arguments for why that isn't theft are, among other: 1. The product wasn't stolen, they still have it and can do with it what they want - including sell it. 2. People who download it wouldn't have bought it anyway or at least not at that price, or at that venue, etc. etc.
Those same arguments still apply here. The only difference is that the guy made money from doing so.
Then again, that could be reflected back to binaries 'news' servers that charge e.g. $8/month subscription, or torrent indexing sites with ads. ( I know, I know... the torrent indexing site doesn't actually host the files. So if this guy had an accomplice who would point to the guy whenever somebody asked them where to find a particular movie and only the accomplice would receive money.... etc. Oh, the hum^H^H^Hanalogy. )
Of course it's time consuming. Isn't that partially the point?
I understand that the question as is left at the end of the submission is just a case of curiosity and there's plenty of good answers to the question here.
But the problem being described is entirely separate from that question - and the problem seems to be that there's a teacher who sets time-consuming tasks but does not want to do time-consuming review.
I find it rather similar to math teachers.
Some math teachers will give you a test and they just want the answers. Very easy to review - if you don't get the exact right answer, you just don't get any points for that question. If you get the exact right answer, you get all points. Not only is it not time consuming, you could let a computer do this. You'll have no idea of how the student got the answer, and thus have no idea whether they just got lucky, or have a mistaken understanding of the problem, etc. But then, that's not those teachers' concern.
Other math teachers do want to know, and require that students write out how they got to the solutions they give. Of course, you may have to weigh points not just by answer but also methodology, and rather than just saying correct vs wrong, explain where they went wrong. This takes time, and isn't something a computer can readily perform.
Unfortunately for the problem stated, a lot of the solutions are in the form of letting a computer figure it out - mostly in terms of a difference between the intended result file as given, and the student's result. Which does mean that you can have a student who worked painstakingly from the source material to get pretty much the exact same result, and then have the computer say "sorry, too similar" and the teacher act upon that by handing them an F, claiming that the student just fudged the given end result file (i.e. cheated) - while on the other hand, the given end result file could just be fudged around enough for the computer to say "these look nothing alike" and the teacher implicitly trusting that before any further review.
I liked the ideas of not handing them the result file in the first place, and reviewing Photoshop's history (require that to be embedded). But this still means 'time consuming' review.
Honestly, I think that for teachers in these cases, they'll just have to accept that reviewing work takes time. If they don't like it, they should become math teachers who only want the result answers.. or maybe get into multiple choice tests. ( and yes, I know teachers generally have too little time as it is, and too little pay to boot - that's another topic, though. )
I'm happy for your karma, but how exactly is your response "No.", or even related to my comment?
The GP suggested that the title "Skype Hands Teenager's Information To Private Firm" should read "Microsoft Hands Teenager's Information To Private Firm". The handing over of the information occurred in late 2010. The acquisition of Skype by Microsoft occurred in mid 2011. Thus the headline is correct.
Even if it weren't, though, I have no idea what the government wiretap request-smoothovering linux skype supernodes would have to do with the handing over of information to a private firm.
I can only guess you meant to reply to somebody else - maybe slashcode derped:)
Seriously though, I don't think this is as big a deal as the last attempt was. The javascript may very well be completely unrelated. The statement is still obviously pushed as far out of view as possible, though. One could argue it's not even technically part of the page layout's normal content, given that it sits below the normal acceptation of a footer. So what is it, a subfooter? But this one they could possibly get away with. And if not, well their footer's class says it all, I suppose; sosumi.
Of course, even if they have no ties to the U.S., there's nothing preventing the U.S. authorities from 'asking' the Dutch authorities to look into it - and they aren't accustomed to hearing 'no'.
I've given away approximately 20,000 books on Amazon, but I've sold about 1,000. I didn't lose 19,000 sales.
In this case, you chose to give it away yourself.
If I got your book and decided to plaster it all over the internet, and you actually managed to see a decline in sales for that book, say 20% less than the month before - would you still suggest that you didn't lose those sales? Note that I'm only referring to that book. Perhaps my actions cause a surge in sales of your other books and you'll thank me.
I only came here, to this comment reply form, to pose the following question, though: What do you believe would be an appropriate 'damages awarded' amount for the case in the story, and why?
I ask you because you may have better insight into making that determination than the tens of others who have only suggested that the damages amount is ridiculously high but fail to offer an alternative.
Thanks!
( Oh, and I'll check out your book - won't plaster it anywhere, though. Not my kinda thing. )
A sentencing isn't supposed to be pretty. You're arguing that a jail sentence verdict for a fashion designer could be appealed on grounds of the orange fatigues being damaging to their aesthetic image which they consider extremely important for their business.
I gave an example HTML chunk above. Yeah, it's ugly - it's also visible. But I'm sure Apple could polish it into their grey/glass/gloss look to make it prettier and still be perfectly clear and visible.
If their aim, however, is to make it as invisible as possible so as to not interfere with the rest of the page, then they're not quite getting the point of the verdict.
Except this isn't a printing press. It's just a webpage.
Yes, things can go horribly wrong with webpages if you start doing horrible things to them (such as massaging it so that it looks just the way you want it... in WebKit and screw the rest.).
But it's not exactly difficult to add the notice without anything breaking. Go here: http://www.apple.com/ Find <nav id="globalheader"...
Stick this below: <div style="width:974px; position:relative; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3); background-color:#fdd; padding:0.25em; border:1px solid #800; border-radius:0.25em; text-align:center;">On October 18th, 2012, the England and Wales High Court ordered Apple, Inc. to formally apologize to Samsung Electronics Ltd. for making false statements.<br/>Read our full apology to Samsung Electronics, Ltd. at <a style="color:#000;" href="http://www.apple.com/uk/legal-judgement/">http://www.apple.com/uk/legal-judgement/</a></div>
Works perfectly well on desktop, iPad 2, and smartphone (Android in my case).
If they want to further limit it to UK region, I'm sure they already have the server-side code for that.
If there's any horrible issues with it (maybe it blows up on iPod Touch or something), they can fix that along the way. There's no excuse, however, for suggesting that the simple statement included in the page with clear wording and visibility that I whipped up in 3 minutes would take them 14 days. No excuse whatsoever.
WHAT!? It's visible. It's text. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT!? What do you mean it's still getting lost way down there in the footer along with all the other links nobody clicks? Ugh. Make up your mind, judge!
Of course, we all know what the court wanted - not the letter of the ruling, but the spirit. Maybe something like: <h1 id="inyourfaceheadline">Welcome to QuasiSteve, Inc.</h1> <div id="rightbelowtheheadline" style="background-color:#fcc;">On November 1st, 2012, QuasiSteve, Inc. was ordered by the court to apologize to PseudoJohn, Ltd. for making false claims. Read our full apology:<br/> <a href="apology.html">http://www.quasisteve.co.uk/apology.html</a></div>
The judge would have done well to not leave this is the hands of Apple's legal and marketing teams, and instead sit down with somebody with half a clue about editing an HTML page, get to the result he believes to be fair, get back to Apple with that, and barring any valid complaints from their side, order them to make it just so.
But you're right. They complied. They also probably knew very well that they were taking the piss.
Shoot. I had an asterisk there that I was going to expand on.
Many many years ago SONY had started outfitting cameras with NightShot mode. This was basically just removing the IR filter at the press of a button. While this was great for those playing with near-IR photography, it also had the side-effect of very badly 'looking through clothing'. This had some backlash, SONY modified it a bit, and this mode in general never found wide adoption across manufacturers, and is even absent from many current SONY models - requiring those interested in IR photography to manually remove the filter.
It's entirely possible, then, that FLIR would not make it onto cameras/cellphones because there would actually be a public backlash against it.
Slashdot Mirror
So having finally understood what I was writing, you instead go for a different angle of attack. That's fine, but try to RTFA first when you do.
The conversation was derailed several times already. By the 2nd level commenter for disagreeing with the first and then bringing up another solution instead (one actually given in TFA); something that should have been at the first level. Then I perpetuated that derailment by remaining on the topic of reduction of the length of a copyright term and suggesting that while this is a popular argument - it is often used misguidedly. Then you decided to derail that by jumping to conclusions, making assumptions, and going full-on ad hominem to the point of name calling.
But quite frankly, this isn't a 1-dimensional thread and there is no such thing as a derailment. OP's post is stil there, 2nd commenter's post is still there - split off from that if you would like to discuss the finer points of their comments' details.
Quite frankly, if you feel so strongly, I don't understand why you bothered writing such manifest rubbish. You can go ahead and hold your breath; I'm certainly done here as there's no reasonable discourse to be had. Nevertheless, it's been 'fun' - have a great week!
Very well, I will keep this short and without 'verbiage'.
If you are somebody who complains about yourself or somebody else being targeted for 'piracy' of a work that is less than N years old, then any suggestion for reduction of the length of copyright terms to N+M years is dumb in so far as the actual complaint goes.
The suggestion itself is fine, and 'piracy' in a broader scope does not even enter the argument. Its applicability to the situation of an individual pirate complaining when the context is recent works is generally non-existent or dubious at best.
I'll even give you a car analogy: Getting a ticket for going 100 in a 60 zone and when contesting the ticket before the court, suggesting that it should be a 75 zone. That suggestion itself may very well be fine and be substantiated by data and research, but it's certainly not going to make your current ticket disappear nor keep you from getting a new one if you still insist on going 100 once the zone is changed to a 75 limit.
I don't want you to play a lawyer, and I certainly am not seeking legal advice. I just want you to back up your statement of _exactly_ (emphasis entirely yours) in light of a highly relevant case suggesting that it's not quite as exact as the dictionary definition would have one believe.
Which means that in your new statement of "instead of choosing between 1,000,000 possible animations, they only have a choice of 999,999", we really may very well be looking at "instead of choosing between 1,000,000 possible animations, they only have a choice of 500,000 because the other 500,000 are going to be '_exactly_' like Apple's."
Which in turn leads to the remainder of my questions.
You can't really tell people - and I'm paraphrasing here - it's a design patent, and that one would only be infringing if one were to make an exact copy, when in fact the copy needn't be all that exact and there's every reason to still think the design patent is absurd.
But then you're actually arguing, in a way, my point.
If you are a pirate if you download something from today, 5 years ago, or 50 years ago - but not if you download something from 1922 or earlier and you absolutely 1. don't want to fund a system that isn't fair and 2. don't want to be a pirate.. then why not download/share Robin Hood or Oliver Twist?
Now I realize those are some pretty darn old movies and eventually people are going to want something a little more contemporary. So let's say that the copyright term were indeed reduced to 5 years. You can no longer argue that you'd be a pirate if you downloaded something from 50 years ago, or even something from 5 years ago. Would you still say "Might as well get it over with..."?
And what if it were reduced to 1 year? 6 months? 1 month?
At which point of 'older' does the sentiment "Might as well be a pirate and grab that 0-day release" get etched away by older works being released into the public domain?
Actually, I believe my statement stands as the group you are referring to is not the group I was referring to. I did mention the same group you're referring to - others who want to create works, and not just consume and/or share it 'as is'.
For those who want to create works, and are currently withheld from doing so due to the long copyright term on e.g. characters that they wish to incorporate, a reduction in the length of copyright term would be a great boon.
For those who complain about getting busted for sharing a bad cam version of a movie that was released the other day, reduction does nothing. They'll continue to ignore it, and rights holders will continue to try and combat it. A losing battle for sure - but one that the length of copyright terms doesn't touch on (unless that length is reduced to zero).
I do find one part of your reply a bit amusing, though. On the one hand you suggest that a 'use it or lose it' system would encourage companies to have to generate new ideas instead of relying on old ones, but at the same time you suggest that fans should be able to rely on those old works rather than generating new ideas themselves.
I suspect companies would still rely on old ones, unless the fan made works actually 'interfered' commercially. Sadly, shutting down fanfic/etc. is usually the result of bureaucracy and panicky legal staffers who fear more for brand and even trademark dilution, rather than any actual concerns about copyright.
That's a jump to conclusion that comes down to not having read my post. Or at least, not having understood it.
I'm certainly not saying "You just want free things, that's why you want copyright reform."
Heck, I'm not even referring to any particular 'You'. What I am referring to is that if there is an article about somebody having shared, say, a movie that was released on DVD just a month earlier and getting sued over it, any comments that point out the absurdly long copyright term are essentially off-topic; if the copyright term were only 1 year, that person would still be getting sued. Unless people want to make the case that the 'pirate' in that case would instead have legally been sharing a 1 year and 1 day old movie.
That's not saying that copyright reform wouldn't be a good thing (presuming that reform includes, among other, a reduction of the term). Far from it.
The remainder of your reply is off topic, I might add, as I haven't stated anything as to the benefits or pitfalls of making works available freely (be that free as in beer, free as in speech, or free as in beerspeech).
If anything, you should look through my comment history to learn a little more about my thoughts on copyright (summary: abolish it, replace with distribution rights), so that next time you wouldn't even have to contemplate that third paragraph.
True, but Opera - and Mozilla - were/are planning to, or already do, just support the -webkit prefixes in order to stay relevant in an increasingly this-site-best-rendered-using-webkit mobile era;
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/05/09/1310255/w3c-member-proposes-fix-for-css-prefix-problem
I don't know if they have since decided against that, but if not... -webkit prefixes to be had for all!
Really, MSFT is right here. But being right is only 1/10th the battle.
Define '_exactly_'.
Do the back of a Samsung Galaxy S and an iPhone 4 look '_exactly_' the same?
http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/samsung_galaxy_s_vs_iphone_back.jpg
The jury certainly believed it did. Yet there's also obvious differences.
So if I make a page turn with obvious differences, but that still looks sort of similar (and let's face it, out of the few reasonable ways a 1-page page turn can be shown that at least somewhat mimics real life page turns, a great many of them will easily end up looking similar), why wouldn't I be faced with a citation of this design patent?
Even if Apple doesn't come after me, who's to say some other entity that holds a design patent on another page turn animation wouldn't?
That's one of the reasons this design patent - and, really, any design patent on page turns by any other company - is lambasted. Not because people want to make an animation that is '_exactly_' like it, but because '_exactly_' is not defined, variants may also be covered by design patents, and eventually you're left with making a page turn animation that actually more closely resembles crumbling the page and setting it on fire at the same time just to evade all the design patents, leaving the end-user wondering just wtf is going on when they turn pages.
THe lock screen page turn on an Acer Liquid MT can be made to look extremely similar to the design patent in question here. It requires a very particular swipe motion (the page curl is dynamically generated based on touch position), but it can be done. Should Acer have to exclude a particular array of (similar) touch positions so as to prevent the end-user from causing infringement?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqK0vLIsHuM#t=130s
imho, once you have a limited animation algorithm (and I'd say a 2-parameter input algorithm is limited), any and all results produced by inputs to that algorithm should never be able to be considered for a design patent.
Of course then the question becomes when an algorithm is considered limited, etc.
I've seen this argument before - making the copyright terms shorter - and I agree with it.
Yet that aspect of copyright is rarely actually railed against by the masses. If anything it tends to only be cited - usually with a sneer at Disney and its copyright on Mickey Mouse - as a general attack on copyright without actually being related to their concerns.
I.e. it is not that the author of a comment has had this long-lived dream of making a Mickey Mouse work and is only prevented from carrying out this task due to the life+dozens of years+etc. of copyright resting on the character. They have no direct interest in this.
They may argue that because of that copyright term, however, others are unable to produce such works, which deprives society-aka-them of such works, which they would want to have made.
Unfortunately, however, if such a work were eventually made, the main reason for railing against copyright tends to be encountered. The work - let's say it's a new Mickey Mouse movie - is released into theaters, gets out on DVD a few months later, immediately gets ripped by 'pirates' to a nice MK4 and released to the rest of the world.
It is this latter activity - the file sharing of a work, regardless of age - that most comment authors feel should not draw the (legal) ire of copyright holders, citing a multitude of arguments.
So in essence, to most of these comment authors, a reduction in the copyright term is really just symbolic - a way to let others, producers, editors, publishers, etc. who would be easy copyright infringement targets to no longer be a valid target - as to their own purposes the copyright term is essentially deemed moot.
Note that it is rarely 5+ year old material that is 'pirated', and rarely such older material for which 'pirates' are targeted for legal action; it tends to be more recent material, from 'only released on DVD a few months ago' to 'not even playing in theaters yet - leaked workprints'.
Making the copyright term shorter would do nothing for this group, except reduce the number of times it would be brought up as an argument that does not actually speak against or in favor of their actual sentiment.
I'll happily agree that Apple started the smart phone boom as we know it, but it certainly wasn't "they didn't allow carriers to customize/lock-in" that did so.
If anything, while Apple is keeping carriers from locking you into their services (well, mostly. Visual Voicemail was AT&T-only, right? right. Sure that was a collaborative effort, but I'm not sure that doesn't make it worse.) they instead lock you into their services.
Windows Mobile (going a long way back), while letting carriers customize (most didn't - t-mobile in germany, O2 and Orange in UK did but mostly visual tweaks), was easily unlocked if needed and restored to stock, and then tweaked far further than even Android allows now (which can be considered both a good or a bad thing). In addition, there were a plethora of app stores not just from the carriers (with few offerings) but third parties.
It was never a highly popular platform, though - and that's the additional factor that Apple did bring to the table.
But they wouldn't have given that money to the producers because the producers weren't offering their product at a price / time / place that the buyers were comfortable with.
I'll just refer you to my earlier reply to somebody with much the same argument:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3249443&cid=41976693
Of course they were willing to give money. You'll find that from most pirates. They're perfectly willing to give money. Just not the $25 they want. They'd be happy to spend, say, $2 if it were an online movie download. But it's not an online movie download. So this guy, maybe he was selling them for $20. So people were willing to spend $20, not the $25. You still can't claim that $20 was 'stolen' as they're not offering it for $20 so they would never have gotten the $20.
Or perhaps they would be willing to spend $25, but not at Amazon, or at Best Buy, or whathaveyou - but they're perfectly willing to pay it at the street corner where this guy was, because it was more convenient.
Quite basically, you can't rationally say it's not theft when there's no direct exchange of money, and then say it is theft when there is, or you'd have to consider whether it's $0.01 that makes it theft, or $fullprice that makes it theft, or somewhere in between - and then exactly at which point that would be.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand why this would be theft while the usual (somebody/site sharing movies for free) would not.
The usual arguments for why that isn't theft are, among other:
1. The product wasn't stolen, they still have it and can do with it what they want - including sell it.
2. People who download it wouldn't have bought it anyway or at least not at that price, or at that venue, etc. etc.
Those same arguments still apply here. The only difference is that the guy made money from doing so.
Then again, that could be reflected back to binaries 'news' servers that charge e.g. $8/month subscription, or torrent indexing sites with ads. ( I know, I know... the torrent indexing site doesn't actually host the files. So if this guy had an accomplice who would point to the guy whenever somebody asked them where to find a particular movie and only the accomplice would receive money.... etc. Oh, the hum^H^H^Hanalogy. )
Of course it's time consuming. Isn't that partially the point?
I understand that the question as is left at the end of the submission is just a case of curiosity and there's plenty of good answers to the question here.
But the problem being described is entirely separate from that question - and the problem seems to be that there's a teacher who sets time-consuming tasks but does not want to do time-consuming review.
I find it rather similar to math teachers.
Some math teachers will give you a test and they just want the answers. Very easy to review - if you don't get the exact right answer, you just don't get any points for that question. If you get the exact right answer, you get all points. Not only is it not time consuming, you could let a computer do this. You'll have no idea of how the student got the answer, and thus have no idea whether they just got lucky, or have a mistaken understanding of the problem, etc. But then, that's not those teachers' concern.
Other math teachers do want to know, and require that students write out how they got to the solutions they give. Of course, you may have to weigh points not just by answer but also methodology, and rather than just saying correct vs wrong, explain where they went wrong. This takes time, and isn't something a computer can readily perform.
Unfortunately for the problem stated, a lot of the solutions are in the form of letting a computer figure it out - mostly in terms of a difference between the intended result file as given, and the student's result.
Which does mean that you can have a student who worked painstakingly from the source material to get pretty much the exact same result, and then have the computer say "sorry, too similar" and the teacher act upon that by handing them an F, claiming that the student just fudged the given end result file (i.e. cheated) - while on the other hand, the given end result file could just be fudged around enough for the computer to say "these look nothing alike" and the teacher implicitly trusting that before any further review.
I liked the ideas of not handing them the result file in the first place, and reviewing Photoshop's history (require that to be embedded). But this still means 'time consuming' review.
Honestly, I think that for teachers in these cases, they'll just have to accept that reviewing work takes time. If they don't like it, they should become math teachers who only want the result answers.. or maybe get into multiple choice tests.
( and yes, I know teachers generally have too little time as it is, and too little pay to boot - that's another topic, though. )
I'm happy for your karma, but how exactly is your response "No.", or even related to my comment?
The GP suggested that the title "Skype Hands Teenager's Information To Private Firm" should read "Microsoft Hands Teenager's Information To Private Firm".
The handing over of the information occurred in late 2010.
The acquisition of Skype by Microsoft occurred in mid 2011.
Thus the headline is correct.
Even if it weren't, though, I have no idea what the government wiretap request-smoothovering linux skype supernodes would have to do with the handing over of information to a private firm.
I can only guess you meant to reply to somebody else - maybe slashcode derped :)
This happened pre-acquisition. It's still Microsoft's mess to deal with now, of course, but the headline is correct.
Prosser: But the statement was on display.
Arthur Dent: On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar.
Prosser: That's the display department.
( ref: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3224281&cid=41843567 )
Seriously though, I don't think this is as big a deal as the last attempt was. The javascript may very well be completely unrelated. The statement is still obviously pushed as far out of view as possible, though. One could argue it's not even technically part of the page layout's normal content, given that it sits below the normal acceptation of a footer. So what is it, a subfooter? But this one they could possibly get away with. And if not, well their footer's class says it all, I suppose; sosumi.
Who with? Do they do business in the U.S. as well? Your data, meet the patriot act.
http://surfsites.nl/cloud/download/Clouddiensten_in_HO_en_USA_Patriot_Act.pdf
Of course, even if they have no ties to the U.S., there's nothing preventing the U.S. authorities from 'asking' the Dutch authorities to look into it - and they aren't accustomed to hearing 'no'.
In this case, you chose to give it away yourself.
If I got your book and decided to plaster it all over the internet, and you actually managed to see a decline in sales for that book, say 20% less than the month before - would you still suggest that you didn't lose those sales? Note that I'm only referring to that book. Perhaps my actions cause a surge in sales of your other books and you'll thank me.
I only came here, to this comment reply form, to pose the following question, though: What do you believe would be an appropriate 'damages awarded' amount for the case in the story, and why?
I ask you because you may have better insight into making that determination than the tens of others who have only suggested that the damages amount is ridiculously high but fail to offer an alternative.
Thanks!
( Oh, and I'll check out your book - won't plaster it anywhere, though. Not my kinda thing. )
No, this isn't the cue marker - which is a rather blatantly obvious piece and you would rarely even see these days (no reel to change over).
He's most likely referring to CAP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti-Piracy
http://rinzewind.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Cap_code_screenshot.jpg
A sentencing isn't supposed to be pretty. You're arguing that a jail sentence verdict for a fashion designer could be appealed on grounds of the orange fatigues being damaging to their aesthetic image which they consider extremely important for their business.
I gave an example HTML chunk above. Yeah, it's ugly - it's also visible. But I'm sure Apple could polish it into their grey/glass/gloss look to make it prettier and still be perfectly clear and visible.
If their aim, however, is to make it as invisible as possible so as to not interfere with the rest of the page, then they're not quite getting the point of the verdict.
Except this isn't a printing press. It's just a webpage.
Yes, things can go horribly wrong with webpages if you start doing horrible things to them (such as massaging it so that it looks just the way you want it... in WebKit and screw the rest.).
But it's not exactly difficult to add the notice without anything breaking. ...
Go here:
http://www.apple.com/
Find <nav id="globalheader"
Stick this below: />Read our full apology to Samsung Electronics, Ltd. at <a style="color:#000;" href="http://www.apple.com/uk/legal-judgement/">http://www.apple.com/uk/legal-judgement/</a></div>
<div style="width:974px; position:relative; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3); background-color:#fdd; padding:0.25em; border:1px solid #800; border-radius:0.25em; text-align:center;">On October 18th, 2012, the England and Wales High Court ordered Apple, Inc. to formally apologize to Samsung Electronics Ltd. for making false statements.<br
Works perfectly well on desktop, iPad 2, and smartphone (Android in my case).
If they want to further limit it to UK region, I'm sure they already have the server-side code for that.
If there's any horrible issues with it (maybe it blows up on iPod Touch or something), they can fix that along the way. There's no excuse, however, for suggesting that the simple statement included in the page with clear wording and visibility that I whipped up in 3 minutes would take them 14 days. No excuse whatsoever.
It depends a bit on context, doesn't it?
Let's say the judge a judge orders me to place a link to their ruling in the page.
Now I'm going to comply. I'm going to add the following:
<-- <a href="ruling.html">link</a> -->
You see? There's a link, and it's in the page. I complied.
Oh, I'm not allowed to comment it out? Well okay.
<div id="footerwaydown"><a href="ruling.html">link</a><img src="1px.gif"/></div>
What do you mean I have to have a text link? Fine. Whatever.
<div id="footerwaydown"><a style="font-size=1px; color:#fff" href="ruling.html">court ruling</a></div>
What? I did everything you asked. I cannot possibly comply more with your demands. Oh you have new demands. It has to actually be visible? FINE.
<div id="footerwaydown"><a href="aboutus.html">about us</a> | <a href="support.html">support</a> | <a href="tos.html">terms of service</a> | <a href="ruling.html">court ruling</a> | <a href="copyright.html">copyright</a> | <a href="privacy.html">privacy policy</a></div>
WHAT!? It's visible. It's text. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT!? What do you mean it's still getting lost way down there in the footer along with all the other links nobody clicks? Ugh. Make up your mind, judge!
Of course, we all know what the court wanted - not the letter of the ruling, but the spirit. Maybe something like: />
<h1 id="inyourfaceheadline">Welcome to QuasiSteve, Inc.</h1>
<div id="rightbelowtheheadline" style="background-color:#fcc;">On November 1st, 2012, QuasiSteve, Inc. was ordered by the court to apologize to PseudoJohn, Ltd. for making false claims. Read our full apology:<br
<a href="apology.html">http://www.quasisteve.co.uk/apology.html</a></div>
The judge would have done well to not leave this is the hands of Apple's legal and marketing teams, and instead sit down with somebody with half a clue about editing an HTML page, get to the result he believes to be fair, get back to Apple with that, and barring any valid complaints from their side, order them to make it just so.
But you're right. They complied. They also probably knew very well that they were taking the piss.
Shoot. I had an asterisk there that I was going to expand on.
Many many years ago SONY had started outfitting cameras with NightShot mode. This was basically just removing the IR filter at the press of a button. While this was great for those playing with near-IR photography, it also had the side-effect of very badly 'looking through clothing'. This had some backlash, SONY modified it a bit, and this mode in general never found wide adoption across manufacturers, and is even absent from many current SONY models - requiring those interested in IR photography to manually remove the filter.
It's entirely possible, then, that FLIR would not make it onto cameras/cellphones because there would actually be a public backlash against it.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126782&page=1#.UJGoRmffCKE