This causes problems of its own. It can be difficult for individuals and small companies to bring suit because their case isn't 100% watertight, and they can't afford to lose.
I don't understand the exact details. I just read something where a small company sued a large one for copyright infringment in England. LargeCo's lawyers argued that he wouldn't be able to afford to lose. It turned out to be irrelevant since he was bringing suit under Scottish law, and now English law. If anyone can add more information on the differences in civil suits I'd be most grateful.
This was in the UK. It's remarkably difficult for a 16 year old burglar to get hold of a weapon, especially outside of the cities. Firing a warning shot will scare off most burglars. Even if armed, their risk of being killed is still quite high, and a few bits and pieces are not worth the risk.
He could have shouted "Leave, or I'll shoot", then fired a shot in the air. Granted - The police were incompetent, but that is no excuse for premeditated murder. His solution was simply too extreme.
Yes. Tony Martin. He had an illegal shotgun, and shot some burglars, killing one injuring the other. He was sentenced for murder, and then reduced to manslaughter on appeal.
Basically, in England, the law does not consider lethal force to be justified in protecting your home - only your life. He had an illegal gun that he purchased specifically for shooting at the kids, and firing a shot into the air would have been more than adequate to deter them, but instead, he fired several shots directly at them.
The burglar who was injured is filing suit for loss of earnings, which considering his legal earnings were non-existent does sound like a spurious case, but he would have been just as likely to sue in the US.
In practice, what you do is make a public appeal for funds, figuring that a lot of other people will see that investing in your defense is a good investment. You then make yourself out to be the victim as much as possible, and see if you can get some support from rival companies.
It will be interesting to see the argument when someone eventually goes to court. There are clear alternative uses for this technology. DirectTV's only possible argument that I can think of is that they were advertised as a mechanism for breaching copyright. They would have to demonstrate that these devices were probably used for this purpose and that DirectTV suffered a loss as a result.
I agree with some of what you say, however, taking a coin in general circulation:
Then we already have a wealth of statistical information that tells us that they are not biased.
No. The odds are still 50:50.
The only way you can be sure of that is because you have experimented with a coin toss before, and discovered that it is not biased. If I wrote a random number generator, and it came up with ten 1's in a row, I'd start to suspect that it was faulty, and be absolutely certain by the time it managed 100.
No again. The odds are 50:50 you will toss tails. That's like saying if the lotto draw is numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 then the draw is biased. Intuitively it is, but humans are very good at pulling 'signals' out of noise when they really are none.
Well, the odds of it actually happening, assuming there are 50 numbers is about 1 in 11 billion. Is it more likely that the number selection is broken? You're assuming that the coin is not biased. I am making no such assumption. Given those figures I'd assume that the coin was biased rather than a statistical anomoly. Such a result is highly unlikely in the real world.
Lets look at it this way. Out of about 130 flight, the shuttle has failed twice. Do you think that it has a 50:50 chace of failure given this success rate? Do you think we can manage another 1000 shuttle flights without an accident?
We have no data apart from previous results. It doesn't give us a very accurate measurement, but it's about all we've got to work from.
Yes, but that will only happen 1 every 1024 sets of 10 coin tosses. The more heads you get in a row, the closer the probability of the next toss resulting in a head appraches one. There is a non-zero probability that the coin is biased or your toss is biased, or that the coin is double headed.
Considering there is no other data, we can only use what we have to predict future events. With our sample set, the margin for error is huge, and we can hope that the probability of failure is decreasing since we're learning more from each accident, but since this is the only data we have, 1 in 65 is about as accurate as you'll get. If you toss a coin 130 times, and it comes up tails 128 of those times, then it's probably biased, and I'll quite happily take 2:1 odds that it will come down tails on the next toss.
No, but if you purchase 130 lottery tickets and win twice, then one might suspect that the odds of winning are roughly 1 in 65. The difference here is that this can be calculated mathematically.
For shuttle failures, the only data we have is past performance. The odds of catstrophic failure are 1 in 65, but the error margin is pretty vast.
Okay, here's the issue - There simply isn't enough support for a boycott to mean anything. How many people really care that you can't watch imported DVDs? Or that copyright keeps getting extended to keep Micky Mouse in the public domain? It simply doesn't affect most people. They don't want to watch anything that hasn't come out in the past 6 months, and haven't a clue about foreign films.
So, we find that the few percent who care decide that we shouldn't support this corrupt industry. What happens? (a) I miss out on a movie that I would like to see, and (b) the Movie studios notice a small reduction in viewers and put it down to piracy. (Curiously - the story above about voting machines links to an article with a vote from Stalin - "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.". The MPAA are the ones counting the votes here). Not only that, but they find that the sort of film I like is less popular, so they target the people who don't want the movies I like, so I lose out again.
Besides, this is what I want to happen - The movie studios release a movie. I pay to go and see it, they get paid for providing me with entertainment. This is a good and sensible use of copyright. I approve, so I support it.
I will avoid any film that is based on something that should be in the public domain, and will refuse to sign up for any service or product with any form of DRM. these are things I disapprove of, and will not support them.
Come up with a means to convince or force these industries to behave, and I will support it. First you have to convince me that it will work. Do that, I'll sign up.
Not quite. We have a split personality over the matter - Some people like the MPAA, some people hate them, and some people hate them, but like a lot of the stuff they produce.
I'm in the third category. The MPAA does some pretty nasty stuff, but I do like what they produce. I want to encourage them to continue making these things whilst discouraging them from trying to take away my rights.
Satalite uplinks can provide decent ammounts of bandwith in a pinch though the latency is horid.
Considering latency doesn't matter, you might as well ship physical backup tapes to a vault several miles away. You have the usual truck full of storage tapes bandwidth argument again.
Sadly true. Always been a problem as well. Babbage complained that if you demonstrated a new type of potato peeler in the US, everyone would leap on the idea and see how it could be improved further, whereas in England, it would be declared useless because it does not also peel apples.
Slashdot Mirror
This causes problems of its own. It can be difficult for individuals and small companies to bring suit because their case isn't 100% watertight, and they can't afford to lose.
I don't understand the exact details. I just read something where a small company sued a large one for copyright infringment in England. LargeCo's lawyers argued that he wouldn't be able to afford to lose. It turned out to be irrelevant since he was bringing suit under Scottish law, and now English law. If anyone can add more information on the differences in civil suits I'd be most grateful.
This was in the UK. It's remarkably difficult for a 16 year old burglar to get hold of a weapon, especially outside of the cities. Firing a warning shot will scare off most burglars. Even if armed, their risk of being killed is still quite high, and a few bits and pieces are not worth the risk.
Fair enough - In that case he should have made sure to kill them all, get hold of some other guns, and plant them on the corpses.
They didn't have guns in this case.
He could have shouted "Leave, or I'll shoot", then fired a shot in the air. Granted - The police were incompetent, but that is no excuse for premeditated murder. His solution was simply too extreme.
How can a gun be illegal when according to the natural law (note that I'm not talking about the US Constitution) one has the right to defend oneself?
Because according to natural law, one only has the right to defend oneself in general, and not neccesarily the right to defend oneself with a shotgun.
Yes. Tony Martin. He had an illegal shotgun, and shot some burglars, killing one injuring the other. He was sentenced for murder, and then reduced to manslaughter on appeal.
Basically, in England, the law does not consider lethal force to be justified in protecting your home - only your life. He had an illegal gun that he purchased specifically for shooting at the kids, and firing a shot into the air would have been more than adequate to deter them, but instead, he fired several shots directly at them.
The burglar who was injured is filing suit for loss of earnings, which considering his legal earnings were non-existent does sound like a spurious case, but he would have been just as likely to sue in the US.
Yes. They do that in India. They don't believe in imprisonment of cows.
You mean: there are no other data. The word "data" is plural.
I guess so. although these days the word does tend to be treated as a mass noun rather than a plural.
Indeed. That's a naive way of doing things.
In practice, what you do is make a public appeal for funds, figuring that a lot of other people will see that investing in your defense is a good investment. You then make yourself out to be the victim as much as possible, and see if you can get some support from rival companies.
It will be interesting to see the argument when someone eventually goes to court. There are clear alternative uses for this technology. DirectTV's only possible argument that I can think of is that they were advertised as a mechanism for breaching copyright. They would have to demonstrate that these devices were probably used for this purpose and that DirectTV suffered a loss as a result.
I agree with some of what you say, however, taking a coin in general circulation:
Then we already have a wealth of statistical information that tells us that they are not biased.
No. The odds are still 50:50.
The only way you can be sure of that is because you have experimented with a coin toss before, and discovered that it is not biased. If I wrote a random number generator, and it came up with ten 1's in a row, I'd start to suspect that it was faulty, and be absolutely certain by the time it managed 100.
No again. The odds are 50:50 you will toss tails. That's like saying if the lotto draw is numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 then the draw is biased. Intuitively it is, but humans are very good at pulling 'signals' out of noise when they really are none.
Well, the odds of it actually happening, assuming there are 50 numbers is about 1 in 11 billion. Is it more likely that the number selection is broken? You're assuming that the coin is not biased. I am making no such assumption. Given those figures I'd assume that the coin was biased rather than a statistical anomoly. Such a result is highly unlikely in the real world.
Lets look at it this way. Out of about 130 flight, the shuttle has failed twice. Do you think that it has a 50:50 chace of failure given this success rate? Do you think we can manage another 1000 shuttle flights without an accident?
We have no data apart from previous results. It doesn't give us a very accurate measurement, but it's about all we've got to work from.
Yes, but that will only happen 1 every 1024 sets of 10 coin tosses. The more heads you get in a row, the closer the probability of the next toss resulting in a head appraches one. There is a non-zero probability that the coin is biased or your toss is biased, or that the coin is double headed.
Considering there is no other data, we can only use what we have to predict future events. With our sample set, the margin for error is huge, and we can hope that the probability of failure is decreasing since we're learning more from each accident, but since this is the only data we have, 1 in 65 is about as accurate as you'll get. If you toss a coin 130 times, and it comes up tails 128 of those times, then it's probably biased, and I'll quite happily take 2:1 odds that it will come down tails on the next toss.
No, but if you purchase 130 lottery tickets and win twice, then one might suspect that the odds of winning are roughly 1 in 65. The difference here is that this can be calculated mathematically.
For shuttle failures, the only data we have is past performance. The odds of catstrophic failure are 1 in 65, but the error margin is pretty vast.
Really?
I've got a 28" widescreen TV, a comfy sofa and a decent sound system. It's on a different floor from my PC.
I'll download it and burn to CD to watch on my TV. Oh... It's not available in MPEG. Ah sod it, I'll ignore it then.
Presumably that one was taken inside The Matrix. I knew that guy from SCO looked familiar.
Okay, here's the issue - There simply isn't enough support for a boycott to mean anything. How many people really care that you can't watch imported DVDs? Or that copyright keeps getting extended to keep Micky Mouse in the public domain? It simply doesn't affect most people. They don't want to watch anything that hasn't come out in the past 6 months, and haven't a clue about foreign films.
So, we find that the few percent who care decide that we shouldn't support this corrupt industry. What happens? (a) I miss out on a movie that I would like to see, and (b) the Movie studios notice a small reduction in viewers and put it down to piracy. (Curiously - the story above about voting machines links to an article with a vote from Stalin - "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.". The MPAA are the ones counting the votes here). Not only that, but they find that the sort of film I like is less popular, so they target the people who don't want the movies I like, so I lose out again.
Besides, this is what I want to happen - The movie studios release a movie. I pay to go and see it, they get paid for providing me with entertainment. This is a good and sensible use of copyright. I approve, so I support it.
I will avoid any film that is based on something that should be in the public domain, and will refuse to sign up for any service or product with any form of DRM. these are things I disapprove of, and will not support them.
Come up with a means to convince or force these industries to behave, and I will support it. First you have to convince me that it will work. Do that, I'll sign up.
Not quite. We have a split personality over the matter - Some people like the MPAA, some people hate them, and some people hate them, but like a lot of the stuff they produce.
I'm in the third category. The MPAA does some pretty nasty stuff, but I do like what they produce. I want to encourage them to continue making these things whilst discouraging them from trying to take away my rights.
Satalite uplinks can provide decent ammounts of bandwith in a pinch though the latency is horid.
Considering latency doesn't matter, you might as well ship physical backup tapes to a vault several miles away. You have the usual truck full of storage tapes bandwidth argument again.
They're the customers!?
Fantastic! I'll happily accept a machine with this on it if the entertainment industry buys it for me!
Wel, then you're clearly an evil copyright infringer, and ought to be sentenced to death as an example to us all.
You better do as we say, or we'll throw you in it!
British carriers don't use them do they? I thought they relied on harriers.
Cool!
Those guys would be fantastic in Junkyard Wars!
Sadly true. Always been a problem as well. Babbage complained that if you demonstrated a new type of potato peeler in the US, everyone would leap on the idea and see how it could be improved further, whereas in England, it would be declared useless because it does not also peel apples.