Adobe has tons of say in whether he goes to prison or not.
Let's say the U.S. government goes to trial against Sklyarov. They put their witnesses (all from Adobe) on the stand. The witnesses say, "Actually, he has a valid point; the protection on our products is really pretty weak, and we probably shouldn't say they're encrypted."
Unfortunately, not all evidence becomes a matter of public record. Particularly in the case of copyrighted documents used as evidence, they can be kept out of the record made available to the public, and restricted to only the court, lawyers and litigants in the case.
Perhaps I shouldn't say unfortunately. This is a good thing in cases involving, say, sexual assault.
Yeah, that'd be about right, maybe a little low. I have a 400MHz G3 and it feels like a 700-750MHz PIII.
It also encodes with BladeEnc almost exactly 6 times as quickly as my P133 box.
However, I'm running OS 9.1. Although an ex of mine also has a 400MHz G3, and is very happy with her OS X. But she's got 192MB of RAM, which may be a factor.
I like AltaVista, and I will continue to use it until Google:
Gives me the + and - operators;
Starts handling phrases correctly (when I am searching for "The Lord of the Rings", I do not want stopwords removed, thus finding "Lord Rings"); and
Gives me easier access to translation (Babelfish, guys, it's better).
That said, I'd actually pay for AltaVista if I could get it ad-free and with Google's caching feature. Of course, I'm not a typical Slashdotter there, I know.:) (I pay for Salon. So there.;)
IANAL. Also, IANAPA (patent agent, or patent attorney, not all of whom are lawyers).
Slashdotters evidently need more information about patents. I'm going to try and give what I know, using this patent as an example.
First, each patent claim is separate from the others. Each one is effectively its own patent. You'll notice how patent 2 includes patent 1. This is because the first claim is the broadest claim that the patentholder can possibly lay claim to. Claim 2 is more specific, and then it just gets more detailed as you go on. This is normal. In most patent filings, you get a hierarchy of claims.
If Slashdot would let me, I'd put up a table enumerating the hierarchy. But it won't. Sigh.:)
Therefore, I will use my own webspace. Open this in another window and keep it handy.
Anyway, there appear to be three root claims in this particular patent. To wit, claims 1, 29, and 37 each have no dependencies, and set up their own trees.
This is important. One thing to remember is that the root claim is most often just a case of wishful thinking on the part of the patent drafter. It is probably too broad, and will be struck down in court. In theory, the PTO and its equivalent agencies in other countries would get rid of these claims, but in practice, they don't.
However, this does not mean that its dependent claims go with it. Actually, quite the opposite. Because they've been modified, they're narrower, they cover less, they're harder to attack.
But on the other hand, if you get one of the really narrow claims, you get all of its predecessors too. For example, suppose you find prior art for Claim No. 12. That allows you to knock out Claims No. 1, 2, 5, and 7 through 11.
That's why you get so many branches. This is a pretty good piece of drafting, this patent. 12 and 47 are the only big target claims. There's lots of others with only one or two dependencies.
I was going to try and figure out the claims themselves today, but I won't. My head hurts. Maybe tomorrow.
You can lend things you own to other people. That's fine. It doesn't matter if they're cars, computers, basketballs or CDs. That's just personal property. Copyright only comes in when you (duh) make copies. (It also comes in if you charge for lending. Under the Canadian Copyright Act, renting needs a license.)
You may create copies for your personal use ON APPROVED MEDIA. You see those ridiculously expensive CD-Rs in music stores? You know, the $8 range things? Well, the reason they cost so much is because there's a levy paid from them to the record companies.
Ordinary CD-Rs, the $10 for 10 CDs and so on, haven't had this levy paid. So they're cheaper.
Blank audio cassettes also have a levy paid on them.
The levy is administered by the Copyright Board.
Actually, Canadian copyright law is much tighter than its US counterpart. It is more laxly enforced, though.
Finally, as for the church and state biz. I live in Ontario. We've got a Catholic school system that's funded by the province here. (And in fact, it's required to be funded by the Constitution.) We don't have separation of church and state. That's those wonky Americans again.:)
Back in the '80s, when the first space arm was introduced on the shuttle, CNN did a huge, in-depth story on it and how it was made by Canadians (Sperry IIRC).
So did Time, and so did Discover.
Okay, I'm a Canadian. But I'm rational. It can happen.:)
The Globe's coverage is actually pretty good, as I would expect from them. However, the opinion itself is here.
Note that the opinion is still subject to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, on constitutional grounds only. I can see some pretty major First Amendment problems with it.
Voyager seems to have "softened" the Borg, and I don't like that. All of a sudden they're not scarry any more. One doesn't think "Oh shit, I'm gonna be assimilated for sure... my life is over" when seeing them on the screen.
I'm not sure you can blame Voyager entirely. I think you can trace the softer, weaker, nicer Borg back to "I, Borg." In attempting to make Borg society more complex, the Trek writers merely made it more like another cute, cuddly, friendly alien race with just a few bad habits. And sometimes in Voyager, you get the old Borg, too.
What I'd love to see in a movie sometime is a sequel to the first season TNG ep "Conspiracy." Now, those villains were classics. However, I think they get excised because they don't really fit the Trek paradigm.
Trek tends to borrow from other genres when it needs to for commercial reasons; the Borg are a kind of bastardization of cyberpunk, which was getting some real commercial success in Hollywood in the early 90s (note Total Recall). However, ultimately it always returns to the cute-cuddly vision. IMO that's its downfall. While I (often) love Trek, mainly because it has the best music of any SF show ever made, good acting, reasonable scripts, and pretty f/x, it's still a formula.
The reason why it's a prequel is because they're running out of storylines that involve the humans that they can film; Voyager is going to get a movie or two I think, and that means no 24th-century Federation storylines on TV for a little bit (they could do TNG movies easy enough while DS9/Voyager were going on because those two shows were so far away from the Main Action).
More importantly, it's a prequel because the gutless wonders (I wish Rick Berman read Slashdot:) who run Trek don't have the courage to do a show about a Klingon ship. I mean, that's where we've got real excitement in the Trek universe, in the alien races. Most of the best TNG episodes involved the Klingons, or the Romulans, or both (and of course there was the Cardassian classic, Chains of Command, maybe the best TNG episode ever). Actually, it wouldn't even have to be a Klingon ship, but they're the race we know the most about.
That's why DS9 was better than TNG. The Bajorans and Cardassians actually got to be recurring, important characters, and they're interesting. Even Quark the Ferengi had some decent eps, although again most of his character was the result of simple-minded anti-capitalist ranting.
That's why Voyager isn't so good, too. The aliens are less interesting. The Borg make neato-keen villains, but they're really not a complex society. And then there's the Q Continuum. Well, whatever. Kes had potential but she Transcended To A Higher Plane Of Existence (tm):) The Vidiians had potential I thought, but it was utterly wasted.
Or maybe they just don't give a shit. Perhaps they are merely trying to protect their trademarks, so they can continue to sell their software.
IMO Adobe's one of the few rational software companies left. They don't "fear" or "embrace"; they just focus on their product line, and go with it. That's probably why they're doing so well.
Another thing to note is that if you take a screenshot in OS 9 while playing a DVD you get a big magenta rectangle where the DVD screenshot is supposed to be. Is there a technical reason for this or are the MPAA really that paranoid?
There must be a technical reason.
On my iMac DV, OS 9.1, Apple DVD Player 2.7, I can use the OS window-shooter to grab a pic.
(Don't know how this works? command-caps-lock-shift-4, click on the window. gets you a PICT.)
Nice try, but legally they'd be acting as agents for the people they were installing software for. So, in other words, they'd be accepting license agreements on behalf of their employers, and the employers would get hit with the EULA still.
You're not free to redistribute IE 5.5. You'd need a specific copyright license from Microsoft to grant you that right. However, use is almost certainly okay.
As for proof of the license, it would be up to the court. Should Microsoft sue you for illegally using IE 5.5 (perhaps in a way that violated the license they believe you agreed to), then it would be up to the court as to whether or not you're telling the truth. The test in a civil case is on the balance of probabilities: in other words, if the court thought the odds were you were telling the truth, they could side with you.
Certainly, snapping the screen, timestamping and encrypting would be helpful evidence for you.
Also, Microsoft's web server logs could also be helpful evidence for you. Find the error where IIS couldn't find the license agreement, and bingo. Yes, you could get access to their logs during discovery. This is a major reason why they probably wouldn't sue you. However, doing this as a practical matter, it would be helpful if you knew the date of the download.
Copyright licenses cannot cover rights to use software directly, and the GPL does not try to cover use.
While the latter is true, due to an unusual provision, software copyright can cover use.
It's dumb. Here's how it works: You have to copy software from a disk to RAM to use it. This copying infringes copyright. Therefore, you need a license to do it legally.
Not all jurisdictions hold to this. But some do. It's really dumb.
The judge applies the California Commercial Code to determine issues regarding the formation of the licensing contract. However, that Code only applies to "goods," which are defined as "moveable, tangible objects." It is by no means certain that this definition covers software distributed over the internet.
Software is a good. Everything sold is either a good or a service. Why isn't software a service?
It's tangible. It has a physical form. Sure, that physical form may just be electrons being arranged in a particular way, but it's there.
It's moveable. You can put software on a floppy disk and carry it around. Or a CD.
So it's just as much a good as the latest from Tool is.
Slashdot Mirror
Adobe has tons of say in whether he goes to prison or not.
Let's say the U.S. government goes to trial against Sklyarov. They put their witnesses (all from Adobe) on the stand. The witnesses say, "Actually, he has a valid point; the protection on our products is really pretty weak, and we probably shouldn't say they're encrypted."
Conviction? I don't think so.
Lawyers don't get convictions; witnesses do.
There's another major competitor for Photoshop, it's called Macromedia Fireworks.
Where Adobe lacks competition is Acrobat and PageMaker. Everything else, you can go somewhere else: usually Macromedia.
In fact, Mac IE doesn't have a JVM at all. It just interfaces to Apple's virtual machine.
Of course, the result is that it gets better Java support than (Mac) Netscape. How odd. ;)
Unfortunately, not all evidence becomes a matter of public record. Particularly in the case of copyrighted documents used as evidence, they can be kept out of the record made available to the public, and restricted to only the court, lawyers and litigants in the case.
Perhaps I shouldn't say unfortunately. This is a good thing in cases involving, say, sexual assault.
well, I started college in '87, and I've been programming computers since '80 I think.
I say, computers, because I used to hack my programmable calculator before that...
XML is not an application. It's merely a data format, used by a number of applications. Sheesh.
The BSD tcp/ip stack took longer than a week. Sometimes I wonder about you people. You know, there were several years of ARPAnet even before TCP.
As for vi, you can keep your opinions to yourself. :) (Won't touch anything but EMACS or TPU/EVE, at least not willingly.)
Actually, I quite liked the movie. Sure, it was cheesy, but isn't that the point?
A thousand points for the first network to create a reality show with Richard Dawson as the host. :)
It must be DMA. When my iMac (OS 9.1) dies, the CD keeps on playing. Every control in the OS is down.
'Course, it stops at the end of the track. The OS has to tell the CD player to play the next track, please.
However, if it wasn't DMA, when the rest of the thing died, the CD sound would die too. Has to be done in hardware.
Yeah, that'd be about right, maybe a little low. I have a 400MHz G3 and it feels like a 700-750MHz PIII.
It also encodes with BladeEnc almost exactly 6 times as quickly as my P133 box.
However, I'm running OS 9.1. Although an ex of mine also has a 400MHz G3, and is very happy with her OS X. But she's got 192MB of RAM, which may be a factor.
I like AltaVista, and I will continue to use it until Google:
That said, I'd actually pay for AltaVista if I could get it ad-free and with Google's caching feature. Of course, I'm not a typical Slashdotter there, I know. :) (I pay for Salon. So there. ;)
IANAL. Also, IANAPA (patent agent, or patent attorney, not all of whom are lawyers).
Slashdotters evidently need more information about patents. I'm going to try and give what I know, using this patent as an example.
First, each patent claim is separate from the others. Each one is effectively its own patent. You'll notice how patent 2 includes patent 1. This is because the first claim is the broadest claim that the patentholder can possibly lay claim to. Claim 2 is more specific, and then it just gets more detailed as you go on. This is normal. In most patent filings, you get a hierarchy of claims.
If Slashdot would let me, I'd put up a table enumerating the hierarchy. But it won't. Sigh. :)
Therefore, I will use my own webspace. Open this in another window and keep it handy.
Anyway, there appear to be three root claims in this particular patent. To wit, claims 1, 29, and 37 each have no dependencies, and set up their own trees.
This is important. One thing to remember is that the root claim is most often just a case of wishful thinking on the part of the patent drafter. It is probably too broad, and will be struck down in court. In theory, the PTO and its equivalent agencies in other countries would get rid of these claims, but in practice, they don't.
However, this does not mean that its dependent claims go with it. Actually, quite the opposite. Because they've been modified, they're narrower, they cover less, they're harder to attack.
But on the other hand, if you get one of the really narrow claims, you get all of its predecessors too. For example, suppose you find prior art for Claim No. 12. That allows you to knock out Claims No. 1, 2, 5, and 7 through 11.
That's why you get so many branches. This is a pretty good piece of drafting, this patent. 12 and 47 are the only big target claims. There's lots of others with only one or two dependencies.
I was going to try and figure out the claims themselves today, but I won't. My head hurts. Maybe tomorrow.
I'm a Canadian too. :)
You can lend things you own to other people. That's fine. It doesn't matter if they're cars, computers, basketballs or CDs. That's just personal property. Copyright only comes in when you (duh) make copies. (It also comes in if you charge for lending. Under the Canadian Copyright Act, renting needs a license.)
You may create copies for your personal use ON APPROVED MEDIA. You see those ridiculously expensive CD-Rs in music stores? You know, the $8 range things? Well, the reason they cost so much is because there's a levy paid from them to the record companies.
Ordinary CD-Rs, the $10 for 10 CDs and so on, haven't had this levy paid. So they're cheaper.
Blank audio cassettes also have a levy paid on them.
The levy is administered by the Copyright Board.
Actually, Canadian copyright law is much tighter than its US counterpart. It is more laxly enforced, though.
Finally, as for the church and state biz. I live in Ontario. We've got a Catholic school system that's funded by the province here. (And in fact, it's required to be funded by the Constitution.) We don't have separation of church and state. That's those wonky Americans again. :)
Back in the '80s, when the first space arm was introduced on the shuttle, CNN did a huge, in-depth story on it and how it was made by Canadians (Sperry IIRC).
So did Time, and so did Discover.
Okay, I'm a Canadian. But I'm rational. It can happen. :)
The Globe's coverage is actually pretty good, as I would expect from them. However, the opinion itself is here.
Note that the opinion is still subject to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, on constitutional grounds only. I can see some pretty major First Amendment problems with it.
I'm not sure you can blame Voyager entirely. I think you can trace the softer, weaker, nicer Borg back to "I, Borg." In attempting to make Borg society more complex, the Trek writers merely made it more like another cute, cuddly, friendly alien race with just a few bad habits. And sometimes in Voyager, you get the old Borg, too.
What I'd love to see in a movie sometime is a sequel to the first season TNG ep "Conspiracy." Now, those villains were classics. However, I think they get excised because they don't really fit the Trek paradigm.
Trek tends to borrow from other genres when it needs to for commercial reasons; the Borg are a kind of bastardization of cyberpunk, which was getting some real commercial success in Hollywood in the early 90s (note Total Recall). However, ultimately it always returns to the cute-cuddly vision. IMO that's its downfall. While I (often) love Trek, mainly because it has the best music of any SF show ever made, good acting, reasonable scripts, and pretty f/x, it's still a formula.
The reason why it's a prequel is because they're running out of storylines that involve the humans that they can film; Voyager is going to get a movie or two I think, and that means no 24th-century Federation storylines on TV for a little bit (they could do TNG movies easy enough while DS9/Voyager were going on because those two shows were so far away from the Main Action).
More importantly, it's a prequel because the gutless wonders (I wish Rick Berman read Slashdot :) who run Trek don't have the courage to do a show about a Klingon ship. I mean, that's where we've got real excitement in the Trek universe, in the alien races. Most of the best TNG episodes involved the Klingons, or the Romulans, or both (and of course there was the Cardassian classic, Chains of Command, maybe the best TNG episode ever). Actually, it wouldn't even have to be a Klingon ship, but they're the race we know the most about.
That's why DS9 was better than TNG. The Bajorans and Cardassians actually got to be recurring, important characters, and they're interesting. Even Quark the Ferengi had some decent eps, although again most of his character was the result of simple-minded anti-capitalist ranting.
That's why Voyager isn't so good, too. The aliens are less interesting. The Borg make neato-keen villains, but they're really not a complex society. And then there's the Q Continuum. Well, whatever. Kes had potential but she Transcended To A Higher Plane Of Existence (tm) :) The Vidiians had potential I thought, but it was utterly wasted.
According to the Great Bird, Klingons always had foreheads like that. It was just that in TOS they didn't have the budget to show them.
Of course, that doesn't explain Worf's embarrassment in the Tribbles ep. However, continuity's never been Trek's strong point. :)
Or maybe they just don't give a shit. Perhaps they are merely trying to protect their trademarks, so they can continue to sell their software.
IMO Adobe's one of the few rational software companies left. They don't "fear" or "embrace"; they just focus on their product line, and go with it. That's probably why they're doing so well.
There must be a technical reason.
On my iMac DV, OS 9.1, Apple DVD Player 2.7, I can use the OS window-shooter to grab a pic.
(Don't know how this works? command-caps-lock-shift-4, click on the window. gets you a PICT.)
Nice try, but legally they'd be acting as agents for the people they were installing software for. So, in other words, they'd be accepting license agreements on behalf of their employers, and the employers would get hit with the EULA still.
I did say it was dumb.
Apply the same logic to CDs: Any oversampling CD player will copy at least a few bytes from the CD into RAM. Therefore... etc.
The point is halfway there.
As for police fabricating evidence: here's an interesting story. Here's another. Here's another. And just in case you think this only happens in Canada, here's another.
Let's not even get into the number of death row prisoners cleared every year by DNA...
This is very interesting, actually.
You're not free to redistribute IE 5.5. You'd need a specific copyright license from Microsoft to grant you that right. However, use is almost certainly okay.
As for proof of the license, it would be up to the court. Should Microsoft sue you for illegally using IE 5.5 (perhaps in a way that violated the license they believe you agreed to), then it would be up to the court as to whether or not you're telling the truth. The test in a civil case is on the balance of probabilities: in other words, if the court thought the odds were you were telling the truth, they could side with you.
Certainly, snapping the screen, timestamping and encrypting would be helpful evidence for you.
Also, Microsoft's web server logs could also be helpful evidence for you. Find the error where IIS couldn't find the license agreement, and bingo. Yes, you could get access to their logs during discovery. This is a major reason why they probably wouldn't sue you. However, doing this as a practical matter, it would be helpful if you knew the date of the download.
While the latter is true, due to an unusual provision, software copyright can cover use.
It's dumb. Here's how it works: You have to copy software from a disk to RAM to use it. This copying infringes copyright. Therefore, you need a license to do it legally.
Not all jurisdictions hold to this. But some do. It's really dumb.
Software is a good. Everything sold is either a good or a service. Why isn't software a service?
So it's just as much a good as the latest from Tool is.