Big Deal: An electric scooter.
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
With a balence controled throttle.
But your not going to sell these things even at $1000. The deluxe can indeed go for as much as $3000 but there has to be a cheeper $500 model.
The biggest initial market I see for these things is collge students. So they will need a basket or wider base to help carry a book bag. In order to seed the market they will need to rent the scooters out on campus for something like $20 a week.
I don't think people will be commuting on these things. The best senerio I can imagine is that people purchase a use licence and use them temperarily. I'm in Portland Oregon and I avoid going downtown at all costs. City officials want people to use the bus. This could make it practical where you could just pick up a scoot when you get off at a stop. Then drop it off in a lot when you get where your going. Then pick up a different one when you leave and drop it off when you get back to your bus stop. You wouldn't have to worry about battery charge as you could move than likely get a couple bocks away to exchange your scoot for a charged one.
I can't imagine people getting on the bus with these things. Too bulky unless they make the busses standing room only. I wouldn't want to stand for 20 minutes on the bus going downtown.
I liked the theme song but breaks continuity with later treks and it doesn't really show any technological development after Cockrane's test ship and as the characters pointed out numerous times that's almost a hundred years. They have implied slow warp capable vehicles as they have been to a few other close systems.
The DS9 tribble episode establishes that the klingons really did look the way they did so it's something that must be adressed and I honestly don't think it's that hard to come up with something though most people probably won't like it. The klingon skull is somewhat bigger so they might require a preop if they are to pose as other species in the field. It's hard not to notice a klingon. Also the new species, the Suluban, are trying to speed up evolution, why couldn't the klingons head down the same path? They are not exactly a cautious people.
The way the Valcan's directly patronize humans is overacted. To be in character and follow the story they should be subdued like the Talons in EFC. They seem overly preoccupied with keeping humans restrained yet are quiet and unjudgemental conserning all other species.
This was definetly a successful first contact. Unless they plan on time travel that drasticly changes history ala Dallas(old drama show in the 80's) which I doubt it is inconsistent with the few references to first contact with the Klingons.
I'm looking forward to ten years from now when this series dies and TOS will be revamped to update the effects, makeup, and ships. The sets were all neutral colored so it should be quite possible to update the TOS enterprise to better match the ST Movies. They might even be able to repair some trivial ST history that they are bound to mess up with this series. It would certainly be neat to see TOS with a ship and sets like this series. They could ironically update the tribble episode so that we get to see the tribble episode such that we see glimpses of the DS9 cast.
It needs to be slightly superior to mp3: Just add some wiz bang feature to the file format such a lyrics.
It needs a good file extention:.ogg - those three letters are the biggest hinderence to it being accepted.
The decoder needs to be included in Winamp.
The biggest advantage is it's non patented process. So mp3 to ogg convertion features can be build in or bundled with free software players. And free software players can now add ripping features. If winamp came with a perfectly good ogg encoder how many people are going to bother finding and or purchacing an ogg or mp3 encoder?
Wrong. Your only right about the ship going back in time but it's to the new planet - it had three moons.
Mark went back in time to earth. To after 2100 which would have still been about 50 years after his time.
The apes on earth were further evolved through science and somehow thade must have traveled back in time before mark and caused a revolution.
This remake seems to focus more on the playing god aspects of genetics rather than the evils of nuclear weapons.
Remember that Marky's systems were not disrupted until that last pust through the magnetic storm. So obviously Pericles's pod make it through without getting fried. Also the ship went backwards in time and it's systems got fried and so it crash landed. Figure a 50/50 shot of frying the flight systems.
As for why Pericles landed in the right spot at the right time that obviously has a connection with firing of the main engine. Uncluttered an antenna or some such or somehow strengthened the homing signal. Pericles's homes in on the strong signal through a vortex like he is trained to do.
From start to finish the whole thing is a Kubrick story. Your just getting it second hand from Spielburg. I don't think Spielburg was even trying to be Kubrick which is why the transitions don't seem more subtle. Spielburg gets the goods on film but I think some of the Kubric touch is missing is in the editing and the transitions. Hard to convey those on a storyboard or in a conversation.
Many people don't seem to get that your not suppose to fully get the movie at the end. Your ment to keep thinking and then see the movie again. Leaving the Boy plumeting into the water or praying is way too simple. You can almost understand that. This movie has more to say.
The movie does have some rough spots but seeing the movie again helps to clear them up. I thought they were aliens too. It didn't dawn on me and I missed it that they were the decendents of the robots. It also explains their curiosity and profound interest in man. It would have helped if that was more obvious but it could have been intentional.
The part about reviving a person only for a day is hokey but go past it; might take several viewings to figure that out. But basicly they can resurrect a persons "soul" in a cloned body for a day.
The decended AI's want the boy to live (even if they know everything in the boys head) but ultimetly the machines have aquired greater compassion than their human foreberrers and they let him go.
The government must distribute under public domain
on
Microsoft and the GPL
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· Score: 1
The GPL is not without it's uses but it is not the place of my governmont to spend tax money, which I contribute part of, to restrict uses and promote a socialist agenda. My government must release their works under public domain so that they can be used by anyone for any purpose, including comercial entities and proprietary software. Once released under public domain it is up to an individual to enhance it and then slap a GPL on it.
All this has little effect on Microsoft. They simply take the same offence to it as I do. There is little that they say thay I agree with but this is one.
I was one of the people that purchased EZCD4. I'm on Win2K and I was honestly considering upgrading to EZCD5 once I was sure it worked. With the Win2K bugs I'm glad I waited. I suspect MS had a lot to do with Roxio's bugs but I digress. With them in bed with the devil spawn, I will rest much easier having crossed them off my software list.
To tell the truth I didn't pay much attention to music before. I hate radio. Then MP3's came along and I was actually buying music because friends were always sending stuff. I was more aware of it. I was actually interested in concerts. But now that I am aware of the greed that exists in the industry; I am discusted to think that one cent lest alone 99% of what I spent went to corperate trolls and slick lawyers. Some greed is good but some people have evidently not heard that too much of a good thing can be bad...
I find myself caring less about music again. I am left with a sour taste in my mouth. In fact I am looking more at all entertainment more cynically. Come to think about it I don't go much to the movies anymore either where I use to always go the day an interesting movie came out...
Why couldn't the phone companies use this as an excuse to run fiber into a small number of homes? They are going to have to do it sometime...
For us it will be expensive but at the same time an investment in your home. The same way it was expensive to get copper to your home a hundred years ago. The phone company will have a reason for customers to pay for upgrading that last mile. But I can't imagine it costing more than $2000. Around the same as they charge to install a T1 to most locations.
The incremental approach is the best approach.
I just don't like it. It seems too MS centric. All other operating systems have to conform to the partitioning scheme that MS specifies? I would rather see a standard designed by a myrad of hard drive and BIOS venders.
And couldn't it be designed to utilize infinite bitness? Haveing maximum size and positioning coordinents seems like the same short sighted thinking that created the MBR system in the first place. Right now we are around 2^27 if you assume 1K sectors for simplisity. According to moores law be should exceed 2^64 sectors in 60 years. By then it should be so entrenched in system that it would cause more problems than Win2K. Let's do our great great grandchildren a favor design the thing right.
Purely on the technical merits I don't see anything they can do to design an effective watermarking system. If enough people have physical access to a device someone is going to take it apart molecule by molecule and figure out how it works and how it can be defeated. So all the MP3 players that are crippled will not be crippled for long.
On the other hand I do believe that some watermarks verses any other type of protection have some small practical use. Distortion resistent watermarks can help scanning software identify restricted material. If it were applied in MP3's as an example the recording industry or whenever they forced to, would do the filtering by useing a black box to test so many bytes from a file in an automated system to block that material or to shut down the offending server within an hour of detection.
The title and the cover clearly misrepresented this work. It is not even slightly what I would consider to be science fiction; it is pure fantasy. A few of the stories were OK but nothing to write home about.
That's what's so great about it. It actually stimulates commercial software companies. The more such companies the more people that need programmers. More programming jobs plus better pay. You can actually use stuff from home at work. Any valuble functionality will be recreated in the base software. It's actually in the self interest of programmers to release their own modest creations under such a liberal licence. What's so great for consumers is that the code has a proven track record, so it's less buggy than it could be.
Not that BSD style licences are perfect. I personally would like to see some non Unix, BSD licened OS's. I also wish there was a new classification name for such licences. I would also like to see a BSD type licence that established a procedure and infrastructure for giving credit for each and every line of code. And maybe require disclosures from software companies exactly what code they did use and what code they did not. Not just files but the exact linenumber-sections of the code.
GPL is useful when you want to create reference software or to a standardize common tools like compilers. It's more for socialistic academic uses generally.
Everyone please think about it. These is always a scheme behind what Microsoft says or does. Open your eyes.
The GPL works by a specific mechanism and application of copyright.
Congress controls copyrights. And according to a recent appeals court case involving the extension of copyright Congress doesn't even have to comply or demonstrate the "promote arts and science" preamble in the IT section of the constitution. And even if they did have to comply with that clause they would be arguing to conservative judges that are more than likely to see it as a good thing.
Laws that are specific and focused are given more tollerence in court. It would be easy to make illegal the mechanism of how the GPL propagates without really affecting anything else. It can be specifically targeted and overnight the congress could effectively turn the GPL into the BSD license.
Even if Congress was not bought it would be popular for being anti socialistic. But imagine if Bill was willing to spend a quarter of a billion to guarantee that a proper clause was tacked onto something otherwise very popular? He has donated many times that to charity and to probably equally as much paying off his lawyers. Spending money to get rid of problems is how microsoft works.
It has wires to trasnfer files doesn't it? If it's not USB then the trend would be to buy pirate adaptor cables like people buy pirate cable boxes. But it will be even more common for techies as it's only a cable. Once the thing is hooked up to a computer the computer can encode the files however it likes as whatever encryption will be broken. If the machines know how to break the encryption then crackers will break them open to learn their secrets. I give any encryption scheme six months tops on the market.
And to all the crackers out there. Don't fall for their reward challenges. Wait until they get it on the market and then milk the SOB's until too many crackers figure it out. If they keep replacing the encryption scheme every six months they won't be able to sell units since who is going to buy a $200 dollar unit that is going to be useless so quickly?
Why not just create a medical Library of Congress website? A state of the practice one which explains it all in not ss technical a mannor and focuses on impact and implications rather than every last gorry detail. It would be the general consensus that determines what is there with articles about presently controvercial subjects which are properly labed as such. Then you can provide links to the proper references and more technical explainations on it and other related subjects. Get the information to the people and then when they get the general concept and will know what questions to ask. Not only judges but everyone.
Art is a emotional expedience.
Functional objects can be art. Take a walking stick for example. Even the most practical of craftsmen has choices to make. From the shape and type of the material used to the paint/polish/finish of the final product. It has a definite feel to it. Comparing the merits of walking sticks is a personal expedience. It's the possible choices that make it art.
If you give a rigid set of design specifications to a hundred programmers you will get a hundred different programs. Each will hake it's own experience. I doubt there is anyone that can say after they have purchased a program from a store that after they have used it for a while they don't form personal opinions about how they like or dislike it no matter if it delivers everything promised on the box.
I notice that some people are limiting the artistic content to the expressiveness to the form of the source code and not considering the object of that code, the program itself.
The Mandelbrot Set is beautiful but not artistic while the program that creates it is, no matter if it uses an ugly commend line interface. But then again other people may actually like it. That's what makes it art!
If the court wants to maintain any king of integrety then they will lock themselves in a room for six months and figure out how to preserve the integrety of patents where this case shows blatent misuse of patents which cuts accross the gain of what the US constitution had in mind. Not only do they have to withdraw the ammended claims, it is imperitive that they issue some type of penalty or there is bound to be copycats which will further bog down patent claims if they don't fear satctions. Plus if the court fails to completely and utterly slam Rambus, the majority of standards organizaions will disolve because the membership legal agreements will simply grow too exceedingly complex due to paranoia.
Or why not ongoing? Why can't the patent office just remove a patent after it's awarded and just say it was a mistake. The patent holder would then have to go to court to prove his merit.
The patent office doesn't have the technical experience to review patents. As it currently stands the patent office is nothing more than a rubber stamp registry. If it's going to work the way it's suppose to work then the patent office needs to start charging higher fees in order to hire the right people to actually review the submitted patent.
I think the whole system is out of wack and needs to be replaced by a new system for patents. A system where patents are rewared based on need. It would allow government a guiding hand as far as developing needed technology for both the economic and non economic welfare of the nation. It should would work much like bidding on government contracts with the goverment looking for the best deals. A deal in the sence of the pricing of the technology, who gets to use it, and the duration of the patent. This means that every patent would have to be reviewed by a review board long before it was ever rewarded. And under a system like like this I could tollerate short term software patents; five years is an eternity in the software industry and under this system the goverenment would have to see the software technology as needed by the general public before they awarded it. No more automatic paents.
And if you really wanted to read bar codes why not just write software to scan a picture from a quickcam? Or heck why not just type the numbers on the bar code label?
Thanks for the explanation. If I understand you correctly your saying that you took the opertunity to shake hands and walk away from the fight for now.
Why does everyone seem to avoid the free speech issue inhearting in all this? The question is can someone communicate the location of an person, place, or thing which involves illegal content? Let's assume that every file on individual users computers was an illegal copy. Can Napster share the locations for those files? Let's reduce the problem. Let's say there is only one file. If you did a seach on Napster only that file would come up. Napster knows that if anyone copies that file they will infringe on the files copyright holder. The napster software is irrelevent. Napster is irrelevent. Can the New York times print a URL to this infringing file? Let's say that the content was the script for the next Star Wars movie. Is the New York times prohibited from publishing the location of infringing content? If the New York Times can't publish that URL then Napster is guilty of facilitating infringement. If the New York Times can publish that URL then Napster is off the hook because that's what napster does. Publish the location of various content.
Slashdot Mirror
With a balence controled throttle.
But your not going to sell these things even at $1000. The deluxe can indeed go for as much as $3000 but there has to be a cheeper $500 model.
The biggest initial market I see for these things is collge students. So they will need a basket or wider base to help carry a book bag. In order to seed the market they will need to rent the scooters out on campus for something like $20 a week.
I don't think people will be commuting on these things. The best senerio I can imagine is that people purchase a use licence and use them temperarily. I'm in Portland Oregon and I avoid going downtown at all costs. City officials want people to use the bus. This could make it practical where you could just pick up a scoot when you get off at a stop. Then drop it off in a lot when you get where your going. Then pick up a different one when you leave and drop it off when you get back to your bus stop. You wouldn't have to worry about battery charge as you could move than likely get a couple bocks away to exchange your scoot for a charged one.
I can't imagine people getting on the bus with these things. Too bulky unless they make the busses standing room only. I wouldn't want to stand for 20 minutes on the bus going downtown.
This is just as bad as copyrighted laws and regulations.
The DS9 tribble episode establishes that the klingons really did look the way they did so it's something that must be adressed and I honestly don't think it's that hard to come up with something though most people probably won't like it. The klingon skull is somewhat bigger so they might require a preop if they are to pose as other species in the field. It's hard not to notice a klingon. Also the new species, the Suluban, are trying to speed up evolution, why couldn't the klingons head down the same path? They are not exactly a cautious people.
The way the Valcan's directly patronize humans is overacted. To be in character and follow the story they should be subdued like the Talons in EFC. They seem overly preoccupied with keeping humans restrained yet are quiet and unjudgemental conserning all other species.
This was definetly a successful first contact. Unless they plan on time travel that drasticly changes history ala Dallas(old drama show in the 80's) which I doubt it is inconsistent with the few references to first contact with the Klingons.
I'm looking forward to ten years from now when this series dies and TOS will be revamped to update the effects, makeup, and ships. The sets were all neutral colored so it should be quite possible to update the TOS enterprise to better match the ST Movies. They might even be able to repair some trivial ST history that they are bound to mess up with this series. It would certainly be neat to see TOS with a ship and sets like this series. They could ironically update the tribble episode so that we get to see the tribble episode such that we see glimpses of the DS9 cast.
It needs a good file extention: .ogg - those three letters are the biggest hinderence to it being accepted.
The decoder needs to be included in Winamp.
The biggest advantage is it's non patented process. So mp3 to ogg convertion features can be build in or bundled with free software players. And free software players can now add ripping features. If winamp came with a perfectly good ogg encoder how many people are going to bother finding and or purchacing an ogg or mp3 encoder?
Wrong. Your only right about the ship going back in time but it's to the new planet - it had three moons. Mark went back in time to earth. To after 2100 which would have still been about 50 years after his time. The apes on earth were further evolved through science and somehow thade must have traveled back in time before mark and caused a revolution. This remake seems to focus more on the playing god aspects of genetics rather than the evils of nuclear weapons.
As for why Pericles landed in the right spot at the right time that obviously has a connection with firing of the main engine. Uncluttered an antenna or some such or somehow strengthened the homing signal. Pericles's homes in on the strong signal through a vortex like he is trained to do.
Many people don't seem to get that your not suppose to fully get the movie at the end. Your ment to keep thinking and then see the movie again. Leaving the Boy plumeting into the water or praying is way too simple. You can almost understand that. This movie has more to say.
The movie does have some rough spots but seeing the movie again helps to clear them up. I thought they were aliens too. It didn't dawn on me and I missed it that they were the decendents of the robots. It also explains their curiosity and profound interest in man. It would have helped if that was more obvious but it could have been intentional.
The part about reviving a person only for a day is hokey but go past it; might take several viewings to figure that out. But basicly they can resurrect a persons "soul" in a cloned body for a day.
The decended AI's want the boy to live (even if they know everything in the boys head) but ultimetly the machines have aquired greater compassion than their human foreberrers and they let him go.
All this has little effect on Microsoft. They simply take the same offence to it as I do. There is little that they say thay I agree with but this is one.
I was one of the people that purchased EZCD4. I'm on Win2K and I was honestly considering upgrading to EZCD5 once I was sure it worked. With the Win2K bugs I'm glad I waited. I suspect MS had a lot to do with Roxio's bugs but I digress. With them in bed with the devil spawn, I will rest much easier having crossed them off my software list.
To tell the truth I didn't pay much attention to music before. I hate radio. Then MP3's came along and I was actually buying music because friends were always sending stuff. I was more aware of it. I was actually interested in concerts. But now that I am aware of the greed that exists in the industry; I am discusted to think that one cent lest alone 99% of what I spent went to corperate trolls and slick lawyers. Some greed is good but some people have evidently not heard that too much of a good thing can be bad...
I find myself caring less about music again. I am left with a sour taste in my mouth. In fact I am looking more at all entertainment more cynically. Come to think about it I don't go much to the movies anymore either where I use to always go the day an interesting movie came out...
Why couldn't the phone companies use this as an excuse to run fiber into a small number of homes? They are going to have to do it sometime... For us it will be expensive but at the same time an investment in your home. The same way it was expensive to get copper to your home a hundred years ago. The phone company will have a reason for customers to pay for upgrading that last mile. But I can't imagine it costing more than $2000. Around the same as they charge to install a T1 to most locations. The incremental approach is the best approach.
Sounds like a woman to me.
I ment Y2K. Why can't slashdot have an edit button like other boards? Or if they do where the heck is it?
And couldn't it be designed to utilize infinite bitness? Haveing maximum size and positioning coordinents seems like the same short sighted thinking that created the MBR system in the first place. Right now we are around 2^27 if you assume 1K sectors for simplisity. According to moores law be should exceed 2^64 sectors in 60 years. By then it should be so entrenched in system that it would cause more problems than Win2K. Let's do our great great grandchildren a favor design the thing right.
On the other hand I do believe that some watermarks verses any other type of protection have some small practical use. Distortion resistent watermarks can help scanning software identify restricted material. If it were applied in MP3's as an example the recording industry or whenever they forced to, would do the filtering by useing a black box to test so many bytes from a file in an automated system to block that material or to shut down the offending server within an hour of detection.
The title and the cover clearly misrepresented this work. It is not even slightly what I would consider to be science fiction; it is pure fantasy. A few of the stories were OK but nothing to write home about.
That's what's so great about it. It actually stimulates commercial software companies. The more such companies the more people that need programmers. More programming jobs plus better pay. You can actually use stuff from home at work. Any valuble functionality will be recreated in the base software. It's actually in the self interest of programmers to release their own modest creations under such a liberal licence. What's so great for consumers is that the code has a proven track record, so it's less buggy than it could be.
Not that BSD style licences are perfect. I personally would like to see some non Unix, BSD licened OS's. I also wish there was a new classification name for such licences. I would also like to see a BSD type licence that established a procedure and infrastructure for giving credit for each and every line of code. And maybe require disclosures from software companies exactly what code they did use and what code they did not. Not just files but the exact linenumber-sections of the code.
GPL is useful when you want to create reference software or to a standardize common tools like compilers. It's more for socialistic academic uses generally.
Everyone please think about it. These is always a scheme behind what Microsoft says or does. Open your eyes.
The GPL works by a specific mechanism and application of copyright.
Congress controls copyrights. And according to a recent appeals court case involving the extension of copyright Congress doesn't even have to comply or demonstrate the "promote arts and science" preamble in the IT section of the constitution. And even if they did have to comply with that clause they would be arguing to conservative judges that are more than likely to see it as a good thing.
Laws that are specific and focused are given more tollerence in court. It would be easy to make illegal the mechanism of how the GPL propagates without really affecting anything else. It can be specifically targeted and overnight the congress could effectively turn the GPL into the BSD license.
Even if Congress was not bought it would be popular for being anti socialistic. But imagine if Bill was willing to spend a quarter of a billion to guarantee that a proper clause was tacked onto something otherwise very popular? He has donated many times that to charity and to probably equally as much paying off his lawyers. Spending money to get rid of problems is how microsoft works.
It has wires to trasnfer files doesn't it? If it's not USB then the trend would be to buy pirate adaptor cables like people buy pirate cable boxes. But it will be even more common for techies as it's only a cable. Once the thing is hooked up to a computer the computer can encode the files however it likes as whatever encryption will be broken. If the machines know how to break the encryption then crackers will break them open to learn their secrets. I give any encryption scheme six months tops on the market. And to all the crackers out there. Don't fall for their reward challenges. Wait until they get it on the market and then milk the SOB's until too many crackers figure it out. If they keep replacing the encryption scheme every six months they won't be able to sell units since who is going to buy a $200 dollar unit that is going to be useless so quickly?
Why not just create a medical Library of Congress website? A state of the practice one which explains it all in not ss technical a mannor and focuses on impact and implications rather than every last gorry detail. It would be the general consensus that determines what is there with articles about presently controvercial subjects which are properly labed as such. Then you can provide links to the proper references and more technical explainations on it and other related subjects. Get the information to the people and then when they get the general concept and will know what questions to ask. Not only judges but everyone.
Art is a emotional expedience. Functional objects can be art. Take a walking stick for example. Even the most practical of craftsmen has choices to make. From the shape and type of the material used to the paint/polish/finish of the final product. It has a definite feel to it. Comparing the merits of walking sticks is a personal expedience. It's the possible choices that make it art. If you give a rigid set of design specifications to a hundred programmers you will get a hundred different programs. Each will hake it's own experience. I doubt there is anyone that can say after they have purchased a program from a store that after they have used it for a while they don't form personal opinions about how they like or dislike it no matter if it delivers everything promised on the box. I notice that some people are limiting the artistic content to the expressiveness to the form of the source code and not considering the object of that code, the program itself. The Mandelbrot Set is beautiful but not artistic while the program that creates it is, no matter if it uses an ugly commend line interface. But then again other people may actually like it. That's what makes it art!
If the court wants to maintain any king of integrety then they will lock themselves in a room for six months and figure out how to preserve the integrety of patents where this case shows blatent misuse of patents which cuts accross the gain of what the US constitution had in mind. Not only do they have to withdraw the ammended claims, it is imperitive that they issue some type of penalty or there is bound to be copycats which will further bog down patent claims if they don't fear satctions. Plus if the court fails to completely and utterly slam Rambus, the majority of standards organizaions will disolve because the membership legal agreements will simply grow too exceedingly complex due to paranoia.
Or why not ongoing? Why can't the patent office just remove a patent after it's awarded and just say it was a mistake. The patent holder would then have to go to court to prove his merit.
The patent office doesn't have the technical experience to review patents. As it currently stands the patent office is nothing more than a rubber stamp registry. If it's going to work the way it's suppose to work then the patent office needs to start charging higher fees in order to hire the right people to actually review the submitted patent.
I think the whole system is out of wack and needs to be replaced by a new system for patents. A system where patents are rewared based on need. It would allow government a guiding hand as far as developing needed technology for both the economic and non economic welfare of the nation. It should would work much like bidding on government contracts with the goverment looking for the best deals. A deal in the sence of the pricing of the technology, who gets to use it, and the duration of the patent. This means that every patent would have to be reviewed by a review board long before it was ever rewarded. And under a system like like this I could tollerate short term software patents; five years is an eternity in the software industry and under this system the goverenment would have to see the software technology as needed by the general public before they awarded it. No more automatic paents.
And if you really wanted to read bar codes why not just write software to scan a picture from a quickcam? Or heck why not just type the numbers on the bar code label?
Thanks for the explanation. If I understand you correctly your saying that you took the opertunity to shake hands and walk away from the fight for now.
Why does everyone seem to avoid the free speech issue inhearting in all this? The question is can someone communicate the location of an person, place, or thing which involves illegal content? Let's assume that every file on individual users computers was an illegal copy. Can Napster share the locations for those files? Let's reduce the problem. Let's say there is only one file. If you did a seach on Napster only that file would come up. Napster knows that if anyone copies that file they will infringe on the files copyright holder. The napster software is irrelevent. Napster is irrelevent. Can the New York times print a URL to this infringing file? Let's say that the content was the script for the next Star Wars movie. Is the New York times prohibited from publishing the location of infringing content? If the New York Times can't publish that URL then Napster is guilty of facilitating infringement. If the New York Times can publish that URL then Napster is off the hook because that's what napster does. Publish the location of various content.