Might I introduce you to a word - tangible. Tangible means it's something physical you can reach out and touch, intangible means you can't.
Just because something is intangible doesn't mean it doesn't exist. A law is intangible - it's just words on paper. But if you break a law, police officers, who carry very tangible guns and clubs, will come to haul you away.
That's because the law is reality, even if you can't see it.
Kaa: No, you don't. You get a license to use it.
Here's where you go wrong. You don't need a license to use a program any more than you need a license to read a book. They're exactly the same from the point of view of copyright law.
Kaa: I'm not comparing GPL to unlicensed use (which is basically illegal, anyway).
No more illegal than buy a book and reading it. Anything not forbidden by copyright law is allowed. You only need to look at the license if you want to do more with it (copy it, etc) than is usually allowed or if you were informed beforehand that usage is limited.
Kaa: Ah, I see.
Good. Your slamming the other guy over his correct usage of the word 'rights' was silly and didn't accomplish anything except to make you look ignorant.
I imagine that one was because the box said that it was a personal edition. It's not like the user bought it, took it to work, and only then found out that it was a personal version. If the shrinkwrap is 'visible' beforehand, then it's not a shrinkwrap. The shrinkwrap term means a license you don't see till you break the shrinkwrap.
If you believe otherwise, post a link to the trial info, I'd be interested in seeing.
The commonly perceived reality that you OWN software that you buy IS reality. Sure, some megacorp may buy a few politicians and get that changed, but that's then and this is now. You currently own the software you buy.
And shrinkwrap licenses have never (not once, not even for a second) been found to be valid. The only time there was even a chance was when the company sued a pirate, and based the claim on the shrinkwrap prohibition of piracy, not the statute. This was upheld, but only because the basic action was illegal, not because the shrinkwrap said so. In no other case has a shrinkwrap been uphelp.
You're also wrong, the GPL imposes no more restrictions that an unlicensed program. It is assumed that all distribution is prohibited, except in the case of transfering ownership, or fair use of samples. The GPL simply gives the user more rights than the default (barely any). It's not as free as saying "Here, do *anything* you want with it" but it's a hell of a lot more free than not putting a license on it at all, in which case the assumption is that everything which can be forbidden is forbidden.
If you don't like my word usage, don't waste my time telling me so. My terms are correct and if you disagree, you're just proving that you're either wrong, or pedantic.
Sure, having a copy is legal. But having the means to make the copy isn't. So they've essentially made fair use illegal.
The problem with the DMCA is that any anti-copy protection measure is prohibited, even if required to exercise your rights.
Re:DeCSS & CPHack aren't illegal until October!
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'Battling Censorware'
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It's not as much to stop modifying the list as it is to stop their competitors from using it. The competition in this industry is as harsh as with anti-virus programs, because the effectiveness of both tends to be judged by the number of sites/viruses they block, not by the actual job they do.
So they probably just want to keep people from using their list... this IMHO would be better served by using sentinel websites. They could setup a porn site, without any links to it, and block it in their software. If their competitors' products start to block it, they just show a judge that the only way their competitors could have found that site would be to have read their list. Much like a map maker including fake culdesacs in rural areas to try to catch companies who would just copy their map instead of doing their own research.
Re:Can't we re-reverse engineer CSS?
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I'd prefer to have a decent open source and easily modifiable player instead of having to crack some buggy incompatible commercial player.
Especially because I'm sure the players for Linux are being written just to satisfy the "There are no players - we have to write our own" claim. The companies won't bother making them work well, or supporting other fringe OSes. If we don't make it work, why will they?
It wouldn't matter. You can't write a contract (which a license is) for performance of illegal acts, nor can one which forbids illegal acts have any force, it's assumed that illegal acts are outside the scope of contract law.
Besides, there's no sort of operation I'm wanting to prohibit. If someone wants to write a player with an export option, I'd support that, as there are *many* legal uses for copying part or all of a movie.
I'd prefer to just distribute the library in such a way that it has no functions directly of use to a player, so that movies could be read through the codec, but not written. Not that it'd be hard to add, but so that it'd be clean the way it was released.
Actually, there is one license solution to this...
Use something incompatible with the LGPL and BSDL, have it grant the same sort of rights, allow linking, etc, but prevent the addition of any functions to the codec, all changes required to be in a seperate library or implemented by the maintainer. But primarily, prevent distribution of the library with any application the primary obvious purpose of which isn't to *view* movies in realtime. This was the library couldn't be modified into a pirate player, and applications couldn't include it (like a GPL module) by default, they'd have to fit the license (be primarily a DVD player) to use it...
This way any player could include the codec, and pirates could even use it, or a player which existed mainly for making copies, but they'd have to link to a site which distributes it and have the user start the procedure, which would be enough to show that it was a seperate package.
Just throwing ideas out. If I ever get close to finished something like this I'll make sure I talk to a bunch of prominent people and/or a lawyer or two before I do anything.
Re:Can't we re-reverse engineer CSS?
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If the Xing-player is shareware, then the clickthrough is probably enforceable... If you don't pay for the software, you have no right to expect to be able to use it - thus an EULA could be legit. The reason shrinkwrap and traditional click-through licenses aren't valid is because you've already bought the software by the time you see the license.
There's a good chance that the anti-reverse engineering clause is void, but the idea is to not bother breaking it, just to save ourselves one more legal hassle. And we all know how a company or association (MPAA) can win even when they're in the wrong, just by buying the trial, especially against poor hackers who can't really afford lawyers.
So, the idea is to avoid as many sticky legalities as possible.
I've seen many legal opinions on the issue and most people seem to believe that for the purpose of being a key, a key isn't copyrightable. (You could copyright a poem, but if it's a required key, people would be free to use that poem in that context.) But, even assuming the key can be freely distributed, why try? What would be ideal is simply writing the codec to strip the keys from the first disk inserted after installing, that way we don't have to distribute any keys or possibly copyrighted material.
What could also help the cause is someone to write a tool that uses a software decoder and hacks it to write.VOB files to the HD, that way we can say that we aren't trying to pirate movies, that many easier ways already exist. Especially if we only release a library, incomplete from a pirating sense, but essential for a player.
Re:Can't we re-reverse engineer CSS?
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Two ways, one is to make sure the code is never run, so the click-through doesn't become an issue. That may mean manually decrypting the install files as well, or finding an older version, which would be less protected.
Or, simply by using the information gained from hearing about DeCSS's attempts (without actually looking at their code) enough could probably be assumed to aid in analyzing device communication and reverse engineering that way.
Clean-rooming the Xing source isn't what I meant to say, I meant that Xing (or another software player) would be disassembled and analyzed, this information would be sent to the programmers, who not having seen Xing's source, or DeCSS wouldn't be influenced by it.
As long as the programming is done clean-room, that should be all that matters. A way to distribute clients without an actual player key would be helpful though.
Then they can sell subscriptions. If one business model doesn't work, who should we blame, the customers who don't like it, or the company? I say we hold companies accountable for lame business ideas. If nobody is willing to watch ads, they lose customers. Big deal.
Actually, a subscription model, where you look at ads and answer questions based about them, and no money is required, is probably a good idea. That lets them get ad revenue without requiring special clients.
I for one will never use a special browser/irc client just to help a company collect banner revenue.
I answered someone's question, as to the relevance of mainframes in today's computing world.
Oh, you don't by any chance have 'reparent highly scored articles' on, do you? Is there a chance you missed the question I replied to, and saw my post as a root-level post?
Anyways, I maintain that my post was not only on topic, but factually correct.
Can't we re-reverse engineer CSS?
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It seems like there are a few problems with DeCSS, like that it was partially based on Xing's player against a perhaps effective click-through license, and that it was packaged in a way that effectively made it a piracy tool.
I propose that 'we' should clean-room reverse engineer the spec. It should be just the CSS part, the minimum necessary to let a seperate player play the movie, specifically it shouldn't do any actual file access, or compile to a standalone program.
If we avoid any legal complications, such as possible license violations, or making it a tool to specifically break copyright, we should be alright.
And if it's against the DMCA, well, it's a USA law, and quite frankly, the MPAA can go... well, perform anatomically impossible actions. A server in a country outside the USA can host the CSS-Auth code, much like we downloaded secure crypto from non-USA sites.
But, anyways, cleanly reverse engineer the code, make all details of the process and the end result public.
That way anyone can use it. I'd love to see hardware that ignores CSS. It'd rock to buy a DVD player that didn't just have region bypass, but didn't include the concepts of regions at all.
I will boycott DVDs (the movies on them, not the hardware, or writable, etc) until the MPAA gets the hell out of my business. What I watch, when I watch it, how I watch it, and in what 'region' I watch it is none of their business. I won't let them use my own technology against me.
And when I say 'we', I'm serious. I'm a coder, not the best, but pretty good. I've seen the source to DeCSS, so I shouldn't be involved in that segment, but I'm going to research clean-room reverse engineering to see how much can be known and still have it 'clean', and then I'll start to describe the process, to the best of my ability, for others to use. Supposedly the keys are easy to crack, even if you don't start with a specific key for plaintext, as long as you understand a few of their mistakes. This will be ideal, because starting with a player key might make it harder to claim it was cleanly reversed. In fact, if there's a way to automate this process, and get it down under a minute or so, every player could determine its own key by cracking the ones on the disk when first installed, thus meaning we don't have to actually distribute anything they could object to under international laws.
Anyone in Iraq willing to run a server? (If you can think of any country less willing to cooperate with pushy US megacorps, let me know.)
Mainframes aren't dead. But, the jobs that required a mainframe 20 years ago can now usually be done by a couple PCs. So, now mainframes have larger work loads.
Mainframe CPUs are pretty impressive, but a cluster of Dual celeron or OCed P3 FCs will blow them out of the water, if all you want is raw number crunching. If you're rendering 3d frames for a movie, which is very parallel (each frame, or portion of, can be done by a seperate CPU with very little overhead) then PCs are your best bet, by *huge* margins.
But, if you want to do database work, with huge databases (think, the phone company, recording long distance calls as they happen, for 15 million customer) then you need a mainframe, something with internal bandwidth so high as to make the 1.6GB/s of a PC look like a serial port.
But, even in the huge database model, you could still be using PCs to ease the load, by passing transactions through a cluster of PCs which would do the rate lookups, or something, letting the mainframe deal with just the one database.
Mainframe aren't dead, but they aren't the ultimate solution either, when used properly, they are worth every penny.
The gamers I know would all rather buy Celeron systems than spring for a 'real' P3 which would get perhaps 5% more speed. They'd then throw the extra money into a GeForce DDR or 128MB more RAM, where they'd really notice a speed difference.
Buying a P2 over a Celeron A is a bad decision. Similarly, buying a P3 over a Celeron 2 will probably be a bad decision.
Instead of padding Intel's profits, try spending the money where it'll actually do some good.
I think you just said that wrong, because there's an obvious error.
Contracts can be valid without signatures, any time you purchase something in a store, you're entering into an implicit contract (with all the force of a signed paper contract) with the store.
What a contract requires is that both parties be aware of it. I can enter into an unspoken implicit contract for you by waving a five dollar bill while reaching for something you own, if you give me the thing and take the money, it's legally sold. If I just took the item without your knowledge and left money, even way more money than the item was worth, it wouldn't be a valid contract, I'd have stolen the item.
But, the GPL isn't a contract, the GPL is a license, which offers a contract, basically.
I can download GPLed software and use it in *any* way I want, as long as it doesn't conflict with copyright law. The GPL has no force yet. As soon as I want to break the inherent copyright protections, by distributing it, or modifying and distributing it for instance, then the GPL comes in, because it allows that, *if* you agree to certain terms. You signal you acceptance of this offer by using those extra rights granted. If you don't agree, you aren't given any extra rights.
The GPL could include any clause they wish, making you compose a sonnet in honor of RMS perhaps, if it was so written, it doesn't have to relate only to the specific piece of software. This is how it can not only dictate what you do with this piece of software, but what you do with any derivative software. By agreeing to the GPL for one package, you agree to release your later modifications under the GPL. Similar to walking off a car lot with a new car, and the obligation of paying for it later. (Except that the car dealership would probably want to see some ID...:)
There are a bunch of other things which are required to make a contract valid, but most aren't relevant here. Basically the idea is that both people are capable of agreeing, it's not a criminal action, there's no coercion, etc.
The last one is wrong. You can't assume that merely having a lawn is an invitation for someone to mow it. If someone does mow it, you're under no obligation to them, as long as you didn't indicate your desire to have it mowed. If you sat and watched them do it, that's irrelevant. But, on a related note, you don't have to even know about it, if you for instance posted a sign asking for it to be done, someone could do it and bill you, without you ever seeing them.
There are very few contracts that the law required must be written, putting a contract in writing is just for ongoing contracts where a difference of opinion in a small wording issue could be costly. What the law requires is that both parties be aware of the contract, even the implicit candy-bar waving, and not coerced, etc.
If someone sends you something in the mail, with a bill, and you didn't ask for this, you're free to keep the something and ignore the bill. The only time this isn't true is when the something is free, like an AOL disk, but the bill is for a potential service you could sign up for, with the free product they sent.
Good advice. Just don't log, or delete the logs in rotation. That way they can't recover anything.
But, don't forget that Mattel isn't the court. If Mattel wants the logs, you can delete them. Until they get around to asking the court, it's just the wishes of some company.
If they had sued you and then you went around removing evidence, it wouldn't go so well for you. But if you're a neutral third party they just might think of suing, you have no reason to keep those logs, especially if they might contain private information.
Dismantling something (a car or software) and pulling out trade secrets isn't IP theft. Neither is publishing these secrets. The whole idea is that trade secrets have no protection.
The only way dissemination of trade secrets becomes illegal is if they are stolen, by stealing documents, or other information from the company. Simply reverse engineering the device is perfectly legal.
If a company wants protection for their trade secrets, they should patent the damn things, that's why patents were invented, to grant a legal monopoly in trade for making the information public.
But, either way, by reverse engineering, or reading a patent, the information is available for public consumption. If it's patented, you just can't use it.
But, a list of sites can't be patented, I don't think even the moronic US patent office could do something that stupid.
If the list is autogenerated, or is ruled to not be creative, then it isn't copy protected.
But, that doesn't matter. The encryption isn't designed to make the product hard to copy, the whole thing can be easily pirated. The encryption was used to prevent users and competitors from seeing what they block. That way people can't complain about all the misblocked sites.
But, they can't encrypt the data in such a way that it can't be viewed. As long as the software needs to decrypt it to check for a match, they can't encrypt it in such a way that the hacker can't simply replicate whatever the software does. They could use a one-way hash, like unix passwords (all good password systems, actually) which would be unreversible, but this is probably beyond their skill. (Mattel isn't a company known for great software, and their software sounds like the bottom of the barrel anyways.)
The only cheat-proof parts of regular university courses are the tests, everything else, with the exception of lab classes, is done outside of class.
A professor teaching a small class has a better chance of catching a plagarized essay by noting a similarity between two papers, but as long as the essays are all unique, how are they to tell what work the students did on their own?
And tests could be handled by hiring an independant agency to administer the tests somewhere local to the student. This wouldn't be free, but even with paying an examiner to watch a bunch of students, it's far cheaper than having to have a "bricks and mortar" school that everyone must attend. This isn't even much less secure, because most university tests I've seen have been administered by TAs, not the professor.
I think this could be almost, if not as secure, as the measures taken by a physical university, without costing much.
An online university may be worth little to you, but to people who can study off hours, and don't have to pay exorbitant fees to go to school, an online university will be a godsend.
Simply being able to get an education without costing the school anything except bandwidth and testing time means that the schools costs would be much lower, going almost entirely to content creation, and where content creation means more classes it is a good thing.
One advantage of an online university is that you get the best education their professors can give you. Teaching assistants are for filling in, because a flesh and blood professor can only see so many students in a day, and can only give so many lectures. Once a professor wrote down and edited their lecture, everyone could read it, and learn the same from it, without the prof having a bad day, or a TA without a deep understanding of the subject filling in.
To me, the importance of having a person hand me a degree, which I wear a funny robe, is much less than the importance of being able to upgrade my skills at a real university, even while working at a regular job.
What do you think Amazon did that was innovative? Use cookies for that they were originally designed, and simply remove a verification dialog box?
Not very impressive.
It's not like that actually invented anything. They just want to patent the use of commonly available tools in certain cases. Like patenting the color green, with respect to computer cases. Or patenting the use of cars/trucks to deliver fozen yogurt, or whatever bullshit a company think they're the first to do, no matter how obvious it is.
If Amazon actually *invented* a new *technology* then I could see them patenting it.
They didn't.
They *modified* an exiting *interface* by using already existing technology.
That's not patentable in any sane system, but they pushed it through, and are now on the offensive with it. And we're supposed to think they're the good guys?
Corporations aren't required to make a profit at all costs, they're required to make all reasonable attempts to make a profit. (Basically, it's a bit more complex, but not in a way we need to worry about.)
Many corporations are 'green' or 'ethical' and invest in, and buy materials from, humanitarian-friendly concerns. Examples are shoe companies that have third-world factories but that still keep them at first-world safety standards, and that pay the workers a good wage. Contrast this to Nike.
This builds brand loyalty among customers, and brings in new customers fed up at the outrages they hear about in the news, so in the long run, it's more cost effective to buy the more expensive materials.
Similarly, Amazon would be perfectly justified in passing up a bit of potential profit (not patenting things that aren't inventions, or they didn't invent) to build customer loyalty.
What do you think advertising is? It's a big outlay of money that might bring in more customers. Same as charitable donations, they're there to make the employees and customers happy. A loss on the books, but a long-term gain.
Think of delayed gratification (doing something now for a future gain) and enlightened self interest (helping someone else because you know it'll endup helping you later). These are valid strategies and a company employing these, as long as they have a valid reason, will not be in the wrong wrt the shareholders.
(Not that you couldn't sue them in the states, for some stupid thing or another... I should sue microsoft for causing alien visitations... I bet they'd be forced to settle to avoid a long lawsuit. Gotta love the US legal system.)
Why not say the shareholders have a right to profit, so Bezos was justified in mugging that nun?
Fuck, you're a moron.
Patenting something that isn't worthy of a patent deserves no protection. Using that fraudulently obtained patent to sue someone else isn't a good thing. (Claiming they 'invented' 1-click ordering is like buying a car, using it to deliver some new product and trying to patent the use of cars to deliver that product.)
All your post proves is that you will believe anything a big company tells you, and that the word communist still scares ignorant people who think they live in a capitalist society. You're just showing your ignorance.
Bezos is required to act in the best *legal* interest of Amazon. Fraudulently obtaining patents is not a legal means. Just because nobody has the money to fight them and prove that not only was the patent invalid, but they knew it was before they applied, doesn't mean that what they did was illegal.
The clue for you is that illegal actions are illegal, even if you don't get caught of convicted.
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Just because something is intangible doesn't mean it doesn't exist. A law is intangible - it's just words on paper. But if you break a law, police officers, who carry very tangible guns and clubs, will come to haul you away.
That's because the law is reality, even if you can't see it.
Here's where you go wrong. You don't need a license to use a program any more than you need a license to read a book. They're exactly the same from the point of view of copyright law.
No more illegal than buy a book and reading it. Anything not forbidden by copyright law is allowed. You only need to look at the license if you want to do more with it (copy it, etc) than is usually allowed or if you were informed beforehand that usage is limited.
Good. Your slamming the other guy over his correct usage of the word 'rights' was silly and didn't accomplish anything except to make you look ignorant.
I imagine that one was because the box said that it was a personal edition. It's not like the user bought it, took it to work, and only then found out that it was a personal version. If the shrinkwrap is 'visible' beforehand, then it's not a shrinkwrap. The shrinkwrap term means a license you don't see till you break the shrinkwrap.
If you believe otherwise, post a link to the trial info, I'd be interested in seeing.
The commonly perceived reality that you OWN software that you buy IS reality. Sure, some megacorp may buy a few politicians and get that changed, but that's then and this is now. You currently own the software you buy.
And shrinkwrap licenses have never (not once, not even for a second) been found to be valid. The only time there was even a chance was when the company sued a pirate, and based the claim on the shrinkwrap prohibition of piracy, not the statute. This was upheld, but only because the basic action was illegal, not because the shrinkwrap said so. In no other case has a shrinkwrap been uphelp.
You're also wrong, the GPL imposes no more restrictions that an unlicensed program. It is assumed that all distribution is prohibited, except in the case of transfering ownership, or fair use of samples. The GPL simply gives the user more rights than the default (barely any). It's not as free as saying "Here, do *anything* you want with it" but it's a hell of a lot more free than not putting a license on it at all, in which case the assumption is that everything which can be forbidden is forbidden.
If you don't like my word usage, don't waste my time telling me so. My terms are correct and if you disagree, you're just proving that you're either wrong, or pedantic.
Sure, having a copy is legal. But having the means to make the copy isn't. So they've essentially made fair use illegal.
The problem with the DMCA is that any anti-copy protection measure is prohibited, even if required to exercise your rights.
It's not as much to stop modifying the list as it is to stop their competitors from using it. The competition in this industry is as harsh as with anti-virus programs, because the effectiveness of both tends to be judged by the number of sites/viruses they block, not by the actual job they do.
So they probably just want to keep people from using their list... this IMHO would be better served by using sentinel websites. They could setup a porn site, without any links to it, and block it in their software. If their competitors' products start to block it, they just show a judge that the only way their competitors could have found that site would be to have read their list. Much like a map maker including fake culdesacs in rural areas to try to catch companies who would just copy their map instead of doing their own research.
I'd prefer to have a decent open source and easily modifiable player instead of having to crack some buggy incompatible commercial player.
Especially because I'm sure the players for Linux are being written just to satisfy the "There are no players - we have to write our own" claim. The companies won't bother making them work well, or supporting other fringe OSes. If we don't make it work, why will they?
It wouldn't matter. You can't write a contract (which a license is) for performance of illegal acts, nor can one which forbids illegal acts have any force, it's assumed that illegal acts are outside the scope of contract law.
Besides, there's no sort of operation I'm wanting to prohibit. If someone wants to write a player with an export option, I'd support that, as there are *many* legal uses for copying part or all of a movie.
I'd prefer to just distribute the library in such a way that it has no functions directly of use to a player, so that movies could be read through the codec, but not written. Not that it'd be hard to add, but so that it'd be clean the way it was released.
Actually, there is one license solution to this...
Use something incompatible with the LGPL and BSDL, have it grant the same sort of rights, allow linking, etc, but prevent the addition of any functions to the codec, all changes required to be in a seperate library or implemented by the maintainer. But primarily, prevent distribution of the library with any application the primary obvious purpose of which isn't to *view* movies in realtime. This was the library couldn't be modified into a pirate player, and applications couldn't include it (like a GPL module) by default, they'd have to fit the license (be primarily a DVD player) to use it...
This way any player could include the codec, and pirates could even use it, or a player which existed mainly for making copies, but they'd have to link to a site which distributes it and have the user start the procedure, which would be enough to show that it was a seperate package.
Just throwing ideas out. If I ever get close to finished something like this I'll make sure I talk to a bunch of prominent people and/or a lawyer or two before I do anything.
If the Xing-player is shareware, then the clickthrough is probably enforceable... If you don't pay for the software, you have no right to expect to be able to use it - thus an EULA could be legit. The reason shrinkwrap and traditional click-through licenses aren't valid is because you've already bought the software by the time you see the license.
.VOB files to the HD, that way we can say that we aren't trying to pirate movies, that many easier ways already exist. Especially if we only release a library, incomplete from a pirating sense, but essential for a player.
There's a good chance that the anti-reverse engineering clause is void, but the idea is to not bother breaking it, just to save ourselves one more legal hassle. And we all know how a company or association (MPAA) can win even when they're in the wrong, just by buying the trial, especially against poor hackers who can't really afford lawyers.
So, the idea is to avoid as many sticky legalities as possible.
I've seen many legal opinions on the issue and most people seem to believe that for the purpose of being a key, a key isn't copyrightable. (You could copyright a poem, but if it's a required key, people would be free to use that poem in that context.) But, even assuming the key can be freely distributed, why try? What would be ideal is simply writing the codec to strip the keys from the first disk inserted after installing, that way we don't have to distribute any keys or possibly copyrighted material.
What could also help the cause is someone to write a tool that uses a software decoder and hacks it to write
Two ways, one is to make sure the code is never run, so the click-through doesn't become an issue. That may mean manually decrypting the install files as well, or finding an older version, which would be less protected.
Or, simply by using the information gained from hearing about DeCSS's attempts (without actually looking at their code) enough could probably be assumed to aid in analyzing device communication and reverse engineering that way.
Clean-rooming the Xing source isn't what I meant to say, I meant that Xing (or another software player) would be disassembled and analyzed, this information would be sent to the programmers, who not having seen Xing's source, or DeCSS wouldn't be influenced by it.
As long as the programming is done clean-room, that should be all that matters. A way to distribute clients without an actual player key would be helpful though.
Then they can sell subscriptions. If one business model doesn't work, who should we blame, the customers who don't like it, or the company? I say we hold companies accountable for lame business ideas. If nobody is willing to watch ads, they lose customers. Big deal.
Actually, a subscription model, where you look at ads and answer questions based about them, and no money is required, is probably a good idea. That lets them get ad revenue without requiring special clients.
I for one will never use a special browser/irc client just to help a company collect banner revenue.
Does the GPL status of IRCd really matter, as long as they don't distribute it?
This might be a hole, with GPL... If you can screw with the servers, then you control the clients.
Yes, I did read the article.
What's your point?
I answered someone's question, as to the relevance of mainframes in today's computing world.
Oh, you don't by any chance have 'reparent highly scored articles' on, do you? Is there a chance you missed the question I replied to, and saw my post as a root-level post?
Anyways, I maintain that my post was not only on topic, but factually correct.
It seems like there are a few problems with DeCSS, like that it was partially based on Xing's player against a perhaps effective click-through license, and that it was packaged in a way that effectively made it a piracy tool.
... well, perform anatomically impossible actions. A server in a country outside the USA can host the CSS-Auth code, much like we downloaded secure crypto from non-USA sites.
I propose that 'we' should clean-room reverse engineer the spec. It should be just the CSS part, the minimum necessary to let a seperate player play the movie, specifically it shouldn't do any actual file access, or compile to a standalone program.
If we avoid any legal complications, such as possible license violations, or making it a tool to specifically break copyright, we should be alright.
And if it's against the DMCA, well, it's a USA law, and quite frankly, the MPAA can go
But, anyways, cleanly reverse engineer the code, make all details of the process and the end result public.
That way anyone can use it. I'd love to see hardware that ignores CSS. It'd rock to buy a DVD player that didn't just have region bypass, but didn't include the concepts of regions at all.
I will boycott DVDs (the movies on them, not the hardware, or writable, etc) until the MPAA gets the hell out of my business. What I watch, when I watch it, how I watch it, and in what 'region' I watch it is none of their business. I won't let them use my own technology against me.
And when I say 'we', I'm serious. I'm a coder, not the best, but pretty good. I've seen the source to DeCSS, so I shouldn't be involved in that segment, but I'm going to research clean-room reverse engineering to see how much can be known and still have it 'clean', and then I'll start to describe the process, to the best of my ability, for others to use. Supposedly the keys are easy to crack, even if you don't start with a specific key for plaintext, as long as you understand a few of their mistakes. This will be ideal, because starting with a player key might make it harder to claim it was cleanly reversed. In fact, if there's a way to automate this process, and get it down under a minute or so, every player could determine its own key by cracking the ones on the disk when first installed, thus meaning we don't have to actually distribute anything they could object to under international laws.
Anyone in Iraq willing to run a server? (If you can think of any country less willing to cooperate with pushy US megacorps, let me know.)
Mainframes aren't dead. But, the jobs that required a mainframe 20 years ago can now usually be done by a couple PCs. So, now mainframes have larger work loads.
Mainframe CPUs are pretty impressive, but a cluster of Dual celeron or OCed P3 FCs will blow them out of the water, if all you want is raw number crunching. If you're rendering 3d frames for a movie, which is very parallel (each frame, or portion of, can be done by a seperate CPU with very little overhead) then PCs are your best bet, by *huge* margins.
But, if you want to do database work, with huge databases (think, the phone company, recording long distance calls as they happen, for 15 million customer) then you need a mainframe, something with internal bandwidth so high as to make the 1.6GB/s of a PC look like a serial port.
But, even in the huge database model, you could still be using PCs to ease the load, by passing transactions through a cluster of PCs which would do the rate lookups, or something, letting the mainframe deal with just the one database.
Mainframe aren't dead, but they aren't the ultimate solution either, when used properly, they are worth every penny.
The gamers I know would all rather buy Celeron systems than spring for a 'real' P3 which would get perhaps 5% more speed. They'd then throw the extra money into a GeForce DDR or 128MB more RAM, where they'd really notice a speed difference.
Buying a P2 over a Celeron A is a bad decision. Similarly, buying a P3 over a Celeron 2 will probably be a bad decision.
Instead of padding Intel's profits, try spending the money where it'll actually do some good.
I think you just said that wrong, because there's an obvious error.
:)
Contracts can be valid without signatures, any time you purchase something in a store, you're entering into an implicit contract (with all the force of a signed paper contract) with the store.
What a contract requires is that both parties be aware of it. I can enter into an unspoken implicit contract for you by waving a five dollar bill while reaching for something you own, if you give me the thing and take the money, it's legally sold. If I just took the item without your knowledge and left money, even way more money than the item was worth, it wouldn't be a valid contract, I'd have stolen the item.
But, the GPL isn't a contract, the GPL is a license, which offers a contract, basically.
I can download GPLed software and use it in *any* way I want, as long as it doesn't conflict with copyright law. The GPL has no force yet. As soon as I want to break the inherent copyright protections, by distributing it, or modifying and distributing it for instance, then the GPL comes in, because it allows that, *if* you agree to certain terms. You signal you acceptance of this offer by using those extra rights granted. If you don't agree, you aren't given any extra rights.
The GPL could include any clause they wish, making you compose a sonnet in honor of RMS perhaps, if it was so written, it doesn't have to relate only to the specific piece of software. This is how it can not only dictate what you do with this piece of software, but what you do with any derivative software. By agreeing to the GPL for one package, you agree to release your later modifications under the GPL. Similar to walking off a car lot with a new car, and the obligation of paying for it later. (Except that the car dealership would probably want to see some ID...
There are a bunch of other things which are required to make a contract valid, but most aren't relevant here. Basically the idea is that both people are capable of agreeing, it's not a criminal action, there's no coercion, etc.
The last one is wrong. You can't assume that merely having a lawn is an invitation for someone to mow it. If someone does mow it, you're under no obligation to them, as long as you didn't indicate your desire to have it mowed. If you sat and watched them do it, that's irrelevant. But, on a related note, you don't have to even know about it, if you for instance posted a sign asking for it to be done, someone could do it and bill you, without you ever seeing them.
There are very few contracts that the law required must be written, putting a contract in writing is just for ongoing contracts where a difference of opinion in a small wording issue could be costly. What the law requires is that both parties be aware of the contract, even the implicit candy-bar waving, and not coerced, etc.
If someone sends you something in the mail, with a bill, and you didn't ask for this, you're free to keep the something and ignore the bill. The only time this isn't true is when the something is free, like an AOL disk, but the bill is for a potential service you could sign up for, with the free product they sent.
Good advice. Just don't log, or delete the logs in rotation. That way they can't recover anything.
But, don't forget that Mattel isn't the court. If Mattel wants the logs, you can delete them. Until they get around to asking the court, it's just the wishes of some company.
If they had sued you and then you went around removing evidence, it wouldn't go so well for you. But if you're a neutral third party they just might think of suing, you have no reason to keep those logs, especially if they might contain private information.
Considering that there's no law against deleting log files unless they're subponeaed, it's not breaking the law.
Mattel only WANTS to view the logs, that has no legal force until they actually bribe a judge, or in this case, bribe a foreign judge.
Until that point, the log files are just another text file, which could be deleted to save space.
Dismantling something (a car or software) and pulling out trade secrets isn't IP theft. Neither is publishing these secrets. The whole idea is that trade secrets have no protection.
The only way dissemination of trade secrets becomes illegal is if they are stolen, by stealing documents, or other information from the company. Simply reverse engineering the device is perfectly legal.
If a company wants protection for their trade secrets, they should patent the damn things, that's why patents were invented, to grant a legal monopoly in trade for making the information public.
But, either way, by reverse engineering, or reading a patent, the information is available for public consumption. If it's patented, you just can't use it.
But, a list of sites can't be patented, I don't think even the moronic US patent office could do something that stupid.
If the list is autogenerated, or is ruled to not be creative, then it isn't copy protected.
But, that doesn't matter. The encryption isn't designed to make the product hard to copy, the whole thing can be easily pirated. The encryption was used to prevent users and competitors from seeing what they block. That way people can't complain about all the misblocked sites.
But, they can't encrypt the data in such a way that it can't be viewed. As long as the software needs to decrypt it to check for a match, they can't encrypt it in such a way that the hacker can't simply replicate whatever the software does. They could use a one-way hash, like unix passwords (all good password systems, actually) which would be unreversible, but this is probably beyond their skill. (Mattel isn't a company known for great software, and their software sounds like the bottom of the barrel anyways.)
The only cheat-proof parts of regular university courses are the tests, everything else, with the exception of lab classes, is done outside of class.
A professor teaching a small class has a better chance of catching a plagarized essay by noting a similarity between two papers, but as long as the essays are all unique, how are they to tell what work the students did on their own?
And tests could be handled by hiring an independant agency to administer the tests somewhere local to the student. This wouldn't be free, but even with paying an examiner to watch a bunch of students, it's far cheaper than having to have a "bricks and mortar" school that everyone must attend. This isn't even much less secure, because most university tests I've seen have been administered by TAs, not the professor.
I think this could be almost, if not as secure, as the measures taken by a physical university, without costing much.
An online university may be worth little to you, but to people who can study off hours, and don't have to pay exorbitant fees to go to school, an online university will be a godsend.
Simply being able to get an education without costing the school anything except bandwidth and testing time means that the schools costs would be much lower, going almost entirely to content creation, and where content creation means more classes it is a good thing.
One advantage of an online university is that you get the best education their professors can give you. Teaching assistants are for filling in, because a flesh and blood professor can only see so many students in a day, and can only give so many lectures. Once a professor wrote down and edited their lecture, everyone could read it, and learn the same from it, without the prof having a bad day, or a TA without a deep understanding of the subject filling in.
To me, the importance of having a person hand me a degree, which I wear a funny robe, is much less than the importance of being able to upgrade my skills at a real university, even while working at a regular job.
The problem is the word "innovations".
What do you think Amazon did that was innovative? Use cookies for that they were originally designed, and simply remove a verification dialog box?
Not very impressive.
It's not like that actually invented anything. They just want to patent the use of commonly available tools in certain cases. Like patenting the color green, with respect to computer cases. Or patenting the use of cars/trucks to deliver fozen yogurt, or whatever bullshit a company think they're the first to do, no matter how obvious it is.
If Amazon actually *invented* a new *technology* then I could see them patenting it.
They didn't.
They *modified* an exiting *interface* by using already existing technology.
That's not patentable in any sane system, but they pushed it through, and are now on the offensive with it. And we're supposed to think they're the good guys?
Corporations aren't required to make a profit at all costs, they're required to make all reasonable attempts to make a profit. (Basically, it's a bit more complex, but not in a way we need to worry about.)
Many corporations are 'green' or 'ethical' and invest in, and buy materials from, humanitarian-friendly concerns. Examples are shoe companies that have third-world factories but that still keep them at first-world safety standards, and that pay the workers a good wage. Contrast this to Nike.
This builds brand loyalty among customers, and brings in new customers fed up at the outrages they hear about in the news, so in the long run, it's more cost effective to buy the more expensive materials.
Similarly, Amazon would be perfectly justified in passing up a bit of potential profit (not patenting things that aren't inventions, or they didn't invent) to build customer loyalty.
What do you think advertising is? It's a big outlay of money that might bring in more customers. Same as charitable donations, they're there to make the employees and customers happy. A loss on the books, but a long-term gain.
Think of delayed gratification (doing something now for a future gain) and enlightened self interest (helping someone else because you know it'll endup helping you later). These are valid strategies and a company employing these, as long as they have a valid reason, will not be in the wrong wrt the shareholders.
(Not that you couldn't sue them in the states, for some stupid thing or another... I should sue microsoft for causing alien visitations... I bet they'd be forced to settle to avoid a long lawsuit. Gotta love the US legal system.)
Why not say the shareholders have a right to profit, so Bezos was justified in mugging that nun?
Fuck, you're a moron.
Patenting something that isn't worthy of a patent deserves no protection. Using that fraudulently obtained patent to sue someone else isn't a good thing. (Claiming they 'invented' 1-click ordering is like buying a car, using it to deliver some new product and trying to patent the use of cars to deliver that product.)
All your post proves is that you will believe anything a big company tells you, and that the word communist still scares ignorant people who think they live in a capitalist society. You're just showing your ignorance.
Bezos is required to act in the best *legal* interest of Amazon. Fraudulently obtaining patents is not a legal means. Just because nobody has the money to fight them and prove that not only was the patent invalid, but they knew it was before they applied, doesn't mean that what they did was illegal.
The clue for you is that illegal actions are illegal, even if you don't get caught of convicted.