The concept of "property" really doesn't work very well when applied to ideas, does it? One can't very well set a price on something that hasn't even been placed into the market yet. An idea may sound good, but maybe it won't work, or people won't buy it, or it can't be brought to market profitably. There are hundreds of reasons why an idea may not make it.
Since the market is the final arbitrator of value in our quasi-capitalist economy, no government could ever compute a Fair Value price for an untested idea. The problem is unsolvable.
Compare this to a house or any tangible item that can be placed in the market. It's clear that the comparison between a product and an idea is apples-to-oranges.
An interesting scenario, but I don't think it alters the fundamental business dynamic. Let me see if stating the problem outside the context of multimedia makes the point any clearer:
Company 'X' sells a product in a form which can be perfectly copied by anyone who purchases it. Once copied, the product can be shared with an unlimited number of other people, none of whom need to pay the Company.
Faced with this development, the Company has two logical responses:
1. Try to stop people from making copies 2. Try to stop copies from being distributed
What they absolutely cannot afford to do is continue to distribute their product in its present form. If they do so, they will eventually go out of business.
No one seems to have mentioned that the wonderful people who are giving us downloadable music are the same people who publish CDs. Offering CDs works for their corporate interests now, but long-term, they will want consumers using DRM-based technologies.
It's the combination of a very high quality encode and open file format that got them into the whole mud puddle in the first place.
Wow, there's so much misunderstanding of the parent's basic point. Guess people didn't read the source very far.
The point is that by simply insisting that current patent holders obey the rules that other holders have to obey ("marking"), coupled with restoring the responsibility to defend your claim, or lose it, you make it impossible for the current sad state of software patents to continue.
You don't have to chuck out the system, you just have to get it back on its original track. The rest will take care of itself.
Man, oh man, I accomplished a TON of work on the Poquet PC. Imagine a portable PC with a fully-functional OS, keyboard and display in a form factor about the size of a VCR TAPE, with batteries that would last for WEEKS, not hours.
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/poqet_pc/
I ran Framework, an early DOS-based outliner/database/pda/writer application on my Poquet. The thing was so small and so quiet that I could keep it in my lap sitting at the conference table, and take notes without anyone noticing.
I never understod this elitist attitude and never encountered it from liberals... I just never seen it and I'm a liberal with liberal friends.
Well, since you asked. (Not trying to flame anyone here, just trying to illustrate what it looks like from the other side...)
elitist = condescending, arrogant, we-know-better-than-you: After the election, liberals were complaining that conservatives voted against their own best interest when they voted for Bush. Not a great way to win friends and influence people. If you want someone's vote, you have to win it by showing some respect.
elitist = smug, self-righteous: Liberals are oh, so proud of how diverse and "correct" they think they are.
elitist = putting on superior airs: Liberals are so certain that they have absolute truth (which for them is, "the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth"), and so sure that they're smart and everyone else is a moron.
You can probe a connection to determine bandwidth (e.g., download a file of a known size and time it), but this really isn't determnative since network speed varies so much (besides, it makes the user wait). Some media player API's allow you to detect the default bandwidth setting chosen by the end-user in their player, and playback a particular stream based on that setting. However, most end-users don't set those defaults properly (don't know about them, usually.)
The best technique is the one we see everywhere: provide multiple links to the end-user based on media format and bandwidth, and then provide fallback encodes within each of those targeted streams.
What constitutes a good fallback encode depends on the content. If the content is a sports video, you'd want to trade off higher framerate for lower bandwidth of audio. For a music video, maybe it'd be just the opposite.
For video, one of the best fallback tricks is a lower framerate. Your eye is a lot less sensitive than your ears. It's hard to notice the difference between 15fps and 12fps, but you'll definitely notice the difference between 20Kpbs and 16Kpbs audio.
Excessive buffering is almost always the fault of the encoding technician. If your 'net connection is healthy and you're buffering all the time, the encode is improperly targeted for your bandwidth.
You need to match the size of the video frame, the frames per second, and the quality of the audio to a specific bandwidth. You can't put a 640x480 video frame in a 100Kbps stream, and expect to get anything decent out of it, for example.
For such a small video, the differences between the various encoders is pretty trivial. Most people who are unhappy with the way an encode turns out do NOT UNDERSTAND how to optimize the source video and make the right encoding parameter trade-offs.
Give me two expertly-created video encodes in Real and Windows Media, and 98% of the people can't distinguish between 'em.
So, sure, go ahead and complain about how horrible those media players are, how they practically take over your desktop. But don't complain about quality of a 320x240 video.
Here's the thing: where's the difference between genuine risk and merely being exposed to the idea of risk? Playing Halo is not, in fact, risky. It does not, in fact, put anyone in danger. It will not raise insurance premiums.
"Some battles are worth the fighting" (with apologies to LOTR). The school system should fight this one, because they would win it, hands down. And what would they gain by the winning? They'd win a stick they can wave at the next person who wants to threaten them with a lawsuit.
Sure, using COTS makes sense if it does what you need. No one disagrees.
The difficulty is that answers to big, complex problems usually aren't found in a box. Before someone can give you a solution, they must have first envisioned your problem.
A better strategy is to have an infrastructure upon which various solutions can be developed independently and in parallel. Take the Internet, for example: a common infrastructure with, at first, only a few solutions, but now, with millions.
Hrm. Well, I can't find my source that I thought I was quoting, so you can dust off the spot where my position used to stand.
I guess I can only (rather lamely) restate my larger point as that there seem to be "some number" of Muslims who can live peacably in very close proximity with non-Muslims. They are able to do this without having to supress any religious practices that are not physically causing harm or voiding the rights of others.
And that's a good thing, I think everyone could agree.
Sorry, what I meant to say was I have heard that the U.S. has the second-largest expatriate Muslim population (Muslims not living in a Muslim-majority country.) I didn't mean to imply that more Muslims live in the U.S. than in Indonesia!
Interesting. I guess the way I would come down on this topic would be that what France may need is more free speech, not less. Preventing aggression may be better achieved by letting people express themselves. Repression often breeds animosity.
I'm not clear how allowing religious expression would "leads to" agression. A Muslim women wears a head scarf as a sign of respect. A Christians wears a cross as a sign of devotion. These are just expressions of personal piety, and pretty tame ones at that.
What are the French worried about? That a Muslim is going to see a Christian and bash them over the head?
In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Muslims live, work, play, and worship in the same neighborhoods as people of other faiths. I believe something like the world's second-largest Muslim population is in America, in fact.
So, it is possible to live together in peace.
Perhaps having a guarantee of free speech that cannot be taken away by any law is what helps avoid conflict.
Granted. But, perplexing. It seems counter-intuitive that a people so self-consciously "liberated" would permit their government to make personal expression illegal. I'm sure everyone understands that if one permits head scarves to be banned today, then banning nude statues is really only one election away.
Not wanting to get into the "Europeans are libertines/Americans are prudes" discussion here, just trying to learn something about why people are the way they are.
In America, you can have a statue without a fig leaf, and no one is going to arrest you. In Europe it is illegal to wear a Nazi symbol, and illegal to wear a Muslim head covering to school.
Hm. I think I like the American's "prudish" free speech better than the European's "liberated" suppressed speech.
Nobody is prohibiting the free exercise of religion with this ruling, merely making them do so outside school.
First, one does not shed one's First Amendment rights "at the schoolhouse door". The Constitution protects free exercise of religion in the public sphere, and public schools, are, well, public.
But that is not the main point. To say that evolution is a theory and one should have an open mind is simply not an endorsement of religion. One could have this opinion and not believe in God. In fact, having an open mind is supposedly something liberal-minded people who go where the facts lead them ought to support and encourage.
What the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution really says is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."
Why do people always forget the part about free exercise of religion? If religion is so full of @!$# as so many seem to be saying here, what have you got to fear from someone exercising a little freedom?
Furthermore, the logic of this ruling totally escapes me:
Some religious people don't believe in evolution. All scientists believe that evolution is a theory supported by the facts. Therefore, to agree with the scientists and say that evolution is a theory is to impose a religion.
NO, you are NOT disenfranchised by voting for the losing ticket. Your "franchise" is the RIGHT TO VOTE, not the RIGHT TO WIN.
Here in Virginia, the Democrats ran the state for 100 years until the 1990s. The Republicans won by getting stronger and stronger with each election. They worked from the ground up, and eventually took control.
That's the way it's supposed to work. Things aren't supposed to swing widely back and forth from year to year.
Sadly, the WINVote UI hase some horrible user interface design flaws:
1. They use RED to mark choices. Red means "stop", green means "go".
2. All the buttons are flat! You can't tell the difference between a button and a text box. No raised edges. Nothing that looks like a button, just big, colored squares on the screen.
3. To make a choice, you touch an EMPTY AREA at the top-right corner of the person's name or the admendment language. There are NO BUTTONS in this area. There are NO INPUT BOXES. There is nothing at all to indicate that you are supposed to touch this square of white.
4. What buttons there are, are are different sizes. The last button is a 640 x 480 square of color with the word, "VOTE" centered in the middle of the screen in 128pt type! I kid you not. What, is that supposed to be a Title? A Message? Oh, no, wait... it's A GIGANTIC BUTTON.
The arguments against the Electoral College simply dismiss the College out of hand, without staring the best reason for having them in the first place. Our government is a federation of sovereign states (e.g., "Federal" government and "United" States). We are not a monolithic governmental body. The purpose of the Electoral College is to intentionally skew the numerical advantage of smaller states to make them more equal in power to the larger states when the states are acting as equals, such as in the Senate and Presidential elections. This is a negotiated settlement of state vs. state power that is fair and balanced and has stood the test of time.
Properly speaking, our President is elected by the states, not by individual voters. (In fact, in the beginning, the President was directly elected by the state legislatures, and there was no direct, popular vote.) There's nothing "un-democratic" about the Electoral College. It's just the states' way of voting.
In my opinion, any proposed change in a voting mechanism must address the need for state vs. state balance of power, or it simply won't fly. The reason the Electoral College is in the Consitution has to do with the way our Union is is organized, not with some supposed desire to "keep women and minorities down" as electionmethods.org would argue (*sigh*).
It may be that changing the voting mechanism could help states select Electors better, especially in a tight race with more than two close contenders. But in the end, it will always be very much to each State's advantage to award the Electors as winner-take-all, because this maximizes their leverage against the other states in the Union.
In fact, without the Electoral College, the effect of winner-take-all would be even more pronounced, only, it would be the winners of just a handful of states.
I think folks may be focusing too much on the capitalist implications of an abused Trusted Computing Platform. Government censorship is a much more serious threat.
For the "good of the people", President Bob dictates that everyone in the United Federation must use a trusted computer platform or go to jail. Dissidents? Bye-bye. Free press? Bye-bye. Long live President Bob!
If you don't have root to your own machine, you are not free.
The DRM applications of this technology are small potatoes compared to the ability to lock-in consumers to an application suite (major score for the capitalists) and the ability to lock-out subversive information (major score for government censors).
That said, something absolutely must be done to protect end-user computers better; the current state of affairs is intolerable. I thought the EFF did a nice job not just crying Chicken Little, but making a specific suggestion on how to prevent the abuse of this important, needed technology.
Your use of the Products is conditioned upon your prior acceptance of the terms of this Agreement.
You shall be authorized to use the Product only for personal, non-commercial use... You shall be entitled to burn and export Products solely for personal, non-commercial use.... The delivery of a Product does not transfer to you any commercial or promotional use rights in the Product.
Selling is commercial use. Selling for the purpose of attracting attention is promotional use. Sounds like this strikes out on both counts.
Slashdot Mirror
The concept of "property" really doesn't work very well when applied to ideas, does it? One can't very well set a price on something that hasn't even been placed into the market yet. An idea may sound good, but maybe it won't work, or people won't buy it, or it can't be brought to market profitably. There are hundreds of reasons why an idea may not make it.
Since the market is the final arbitrator of value in our quasi-capitalist economy, no government could ever compute a Fair Value price for an untested idea. The problem is unsolvable.
Compare this to a house or any tangible item that can be placed in the market. It's clear that the comparison between a product and an idea is apples-to-oranges.
An interesting scenario, but I don't think it alters the fundamental business dynamic. Let me see if stating the problem outside the context of multimedia makes the point any clearer:
Company 'X' sells a product in a form which can be perfectly copied by anyone who purchases it. Once copied, the product can be shared with an unlimited number of other people, none of whom need to pay the Company.
Faced with this development, the Company has two logical responses:
1. Try to stop people from making copies
2. Try to stop copies from being distributed
What they absolutely cannot afford to do is continue to distribute their product in its present form. If they do so, they will eventually go out of business.
No one seems to have mentioned that the wonderful people who are giving us downloadable music are the same people who publish CDs. Offering CDs works for their corporate interests now, but long-term, they will want consumers using DRM-based technologies.
It's the combination of a very high quality encode and open file format that got them into the whole mud puddle in the first place.
So, logically, CDs will soon be gone.
Wow, there's so much misunderstanding of the parent's basic point. Guess people didn't read the source very far.
The point is that by simply insisting that current patent holders obey the rules that other holders have to obey ("marking"), coupled with restoring the responsibility to defend your claim, or lose it, you make it impossible for the current sad state of software patents to continue.
You don't have to chuck out the system, you just have to get it back on its original track. The rest will take care of itself.
Man, oh man, I accomplished a TON of work on the Poquet PC. Imagine a portable PC with a fully-functional OS, keyboard and display in a form factor about the size of a VCR TAPE, with batteries that would last for WEEKS, not hours.
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/poqet_pc/
I ran Framework, an early DOS-based outliner/database/pda/writer application on my Poquet. The thing was so small and so quiet that I could keep it in my lap sitting at the conference table, and take notes without anyone noticing.
Those were the days, my friend!
I never understod this elitist attitude and never encountered it from liberals ... I just never seen it and I'm a liberal with liberal friends.
...)
...
Well, since you asked. (Not trying to flame anyone here, just trying to illustrate what it looks like from the other side
elitist = condescending, arrogant, we-know-better-than-you: After the election, liberals were complaining that conservatives voted against their own best interest when they voted for Bush. Not a great way to win friends and influence people. If you want someone's vote, you have to win it by showing some respect.
elitist = smug, self-righteous: Liberals are oh, so proud of how diverse and "correct" they think they are.
elitist = putting on superior airs: Liberals are so certain that they have absolute truth (which for them is, "the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth"), and so sure that they're smart and everyone else is a moron.
Just a few examples
You can probe a connection to determine bandwidth (e.g., download a file of a known size and time it), but this really isn't determnative since network speed varies so much (besides, it makes the user wait). Some media player API's allow you to detect the default bandwidth setting chosen by the end-user in their player, and playback a particular stream based on that setting. However, most end-users don't set those defaults properly (don't know about them, usually.)
The best technique is the one we see everywhere: provide multiple links to the end-user based on media format and bandwidth, and then provide fallback encodes within each of those targeted streams.
What constitutes a good fallback encode depends on the content. If the content is a sports video, you'd want to trade off higher framerate for lower bandwidth of audio. For a music video, maybe it'd be just the opposite.
For video, one of the best fallback tricks is a lower framerate. Your eye is a lot less sensitive than your ears. It's hard to notice the difference between 15fps and 12fps, but you'll definitely notice the difference between 20Kpbs and 16Kpbs audio.
Excessive buffering is almost always the fault of the encoding technician. If your 'net connection is healthy and you're buffering all the time, the encode is improperly targeted for your bandwidth.
You need to match the size of the video frame, the frames per second, and the quality of the audio to a specific bandwidth. You can't put a 640x480 video frame in a 100Kbps stream, and expect to get anything decent out of it, for example.
For such a small video, the differences between the various encoders is pretty trivial. Most people who are unhappy with the way an encode turns out do NOT UNDERSTAND how to optimize the source video and make the right encoding parameter trade-offs.
Give me two expertly-created video encodes in Real and Windows Media, and 98% of the people can't distinguish between 'em.
So, sure, go ahead and complain about how horrible those media players are, how they practically take over your desktop. But don't complain about quality of a 320x240 video.
Here's the thing: where's the difference between genuine risk and merely being exposed to the idea of risk? Playing Halo is not, in fact, risky. It does not, in fact, put anyone in danger. It will not raise insurance premiums.
"Some battles are worth the fighting" (with apologies to LOTR). The school system should fight this one, because they would win it, hands down. And what would they gain by the winning? They'd win a stick they can wave at the next person who wants to threaten them with a lawsuit.
Sure, using COTS makes sense if it does what you need. No one disagrees.
The difficulty is that answers to big, complex problems usually aren't found in a box. Before someone can give you a solution, they must have first envisioned your problem.
A better strategy is to have an infrastructure upon which various solutions can be developed independently and in parallel. Take the Internet, for example: a common infrastructure with, at first, only a few solutions, but now, with millions.
Hrm. Well, I can't find my source that I thought I was quoting, so you can dust off the spot where my position used to stand.
I guess I can only (rather lamely) restate my larger point as that there seem to be "some number" of Muslims who can live peacably in very close proximity with non-Muslims. They are able to do this without having to supress any religious practices that are not physically causing harm or voiding the rights of others.
And that's a good thing, I think everyone could agree.
Sorry, what I meant to say was I have heard that the U.S. has the second-largest expatriate Muslim population (Muslims not living in a Muslim-majority country.) I didn't mean to imply that more Muslims live in the U.S. than in Indonesia!
However, we dont use it as an excuse to violently rip away the culture and traditions of those that choose not to immediately and completely conform.
What in the world are you talking about? Can you give an example of what you mean?
Interesting. I guess the way I would come down on this topic would be that what France may need is more free speech, not less. Preventing aggression may be better achieved by letting people express themselves. Repression often breeds animosity.
I'm not clear how allowing religious expression would "leads to" agression. A Muslim women wears a head scarf as a sign of respect. A Christians wears a cross as a sign of devotion. These are just expressions of personal piety, and pretty tame ones at that.
What are the French worried about? That a Muslim is going to see a Christian and bash them over the head?
In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Muslims live, work, play, and worship in the same neighborhoods as people of other faiths. I believe something like the world's second-largest Muslim population is in America, in fact.
So, it is possible to live together in peace.
Perhaps having a guarantee of free speech that cannot be taken away by any law is what helps avoid conflict.
Granted. But, perplexing. It seems counter-intuitive that a people so self-consciously "liberated" would permit their government to make personal expression illegal. I'm sure everyone understands that if one permits head scarves to be banned today, then banning nude statues is really only one election away.
Not wanting to get into the "Europeans are libertines/Americans are prudes" discussion here, just trying to learn something about why people are the way they are.
In America, you can have a statue without a fig leaf, and no one is going to arrest you. In Europe it is illegal to wear a Nazi symbol, and illegal to wear a Muslim head covering to school.
Hm. I think I like the American's "prudish" free speech better than the European's "liberated" suppressed speech.
First, one does not shed one's First Amendment rights "at the schoolhouse door". The Constitution protects free exercise of religion in the public sphere, and public schools, are, well, public.
But that is not the main point. To say that evolution is a theory and one should have an open mind is simply not an endorsement of religion. One could have this opinion and not believe in God. In fact, having an open mind is supposedly something liberal-minded people who go where the facts lead them ought to support and encourage.
What the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution really says is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."
Why do people always forget the part about free exercise of religion? If religion is so full of @!$# as so many seem to be saying here, what have you got to fear from someone exercising a little freedom?
Furthermore, the logic of this ruling totally escapes me:
Some religious people don't believe in evolution.
All scientists believe that evolution is a theory supported by the facts.
Therefore, to agree with the scientists and say that evolution is a theory is to impose a religion.
Huh?
NO, you are NOT disenfranchised by voting for the losing ticket. Your "franchise" is the RIGHT TO VOTE, not the RIGHT TO WIN.
Here in Virginia, the Democrats ran the state for 100 years until the 1990s. The Republicans won by getting stronger and stronger with each election. They worked from the ground up, and eventually took control.
That's the way it's supposed to work. Things aren't supposed to swing widely back and forth from year to year.
Sadly, the WINVote UI hase some horrible user interface design flaws:
... it's A GIGANTIC BUTTON.
1. They use RED to mark choices. Red means "stop", green means "go".
2. All the buttons are flat! You can't tell the difference between a button and a text box. No raised edges. Nothing that looks like a button, just big, colored squares on the screen.
3. To make a choice, you touch an EMPTY AREA at the top-right corner of the person's name or the admendment language. There are NO BUTTONS in this area. There are NO INPUT BOXES. There is nothing at all to indicate that you are supposed to touch this square of white.
4. What buttons there are, are are different sizes. The last button is a 640 x 480 square of color with the word, "VOTE" centered in the middle of the screen in 128pt type! I kid you not. What, is that supposed to be a Title? A Message? Oh, no, wait
*Sigh* Sad, so sad.
The arguments against the Electoral College simply dismiss the College out of hand, without staring the best reason for having them in the first place. Our government is a federation of sovereign states (e.g., "Federal" government and "United" States). We are not a monolithic governmental body. The purpose of the Electoral College is to intentionally skew the numerical advantage of smaller states to make them more equal in power to the larger states when the states are acting as equals, such as in the Senate and Presidential elections. This is a negotiated settlement of state vs. state power that is fair and balanced and has stood the test of time.
Properly speaking, our President is elected by the states, not by individual voters. (In fact, in the beginning, the President was directly elected by the state legislatures, and there was no direct, popular vote.) There's nothing "un-democratic" about the Electoral College. It's just the states' way of voting.
In my opinion, any proposed change in a voting mechanism must address the need for state vs. state balance of power, or it simply won't fly. The reason the Electoral College is in the Consitution has to do with the way our Union is is organized, not with some supposed desire to "keep women and minorities down" as electionmethods.org would argue (*sigh*).
It may be that changing the voting mechanism could help states select Electors better, especially in a tight race with more than two close contenders. But in the end, it will always be very much to each State's advantage to award the Electors as winner-take-all, because this maximizes their leverage against the other states in the Union.
In fact, without the Electoral College, the effect of winner-take-all would be even more pronounced, only, it would be the winners of just a handful of states.
I think folks may be focusing too much on the capitalist implications of an abused Trusted Computing Platform. Government censorship is a much more serious threat.
For the "good of the people", President Bob dictates that everyone in the United Federation must use a trusted computer platform or go to jail. Dissidents? Bye-bye. Free press? Bye-bye. Long live President Bob!
If you don't have root to your own machine, you are not free.
The DRM applications of this technology are small potatoes compared to the ability to lock-in consumers to an application suite (major score for the capitalists) and the ability to lock-out subversive information (major score for government censors).
That said, something absolutely must be done to protect end-user computers better; the current state of affairs is intolerable. I thought the EFF did a nice job not just crying Chicken Little, but making a specific suggestion on how to prevent the abuse of this important, needed technology.
From the Sales Agreement of iTunes:
... You shall be entitled to burn and export Products solely for personal, non-commercial use. ... The delivery of a Product does not transfer to you any commercial or promotional use rights in the Product.
CONTENT USAGE RULES
Your use of the Products is conditioned upon your prior acceptance of the terms of this Agreement.
You shall be authorized to use the Product only for personal, non-commercial use
Selling is commercial use. Selling for the purpose of attracting attention is promotional use. Sounds like this strikes out on both counts.