The way I read it, they were picking on people who had independently discovered the same solution to a 360 degree display that they had. This would mean that the solution is fairly obvious to anyone who is skilled in the field, and therefore is not patentable. They deserve to be punished for having such a sloppy business model.
Not exactly a valid analogy, chester. Dead-tree media are still around because very few people can actually stand to read print for long off a CRT, and high-quality LCD's that can be read on the shitter are still way too expensive.
$200 for an MP3 player represents an early-adopter price. The technology has now been developed and will only drop in price as the years pass. Assuming interest remains in the format, in another five years you will have a pen-sized MP3 player in the plastic bin at the gas station for $10. Think in terms of the pocket digital calculator. How long after they appeared were you seeing people tapping numbers on their digital watches?
Napster has proven that people like to choose their own playlists. Bandwidth won't matter, because you can load your player before you leave for the day. What will matter is increased efficiency in storage technology. So, close but no cigar. A well-encoded MP3 sounds better, in most cases, than the static-burst filled signal I get from a car radio. I really don't see major radio stations being around after another twenty years of this. Not unless their entire approach changes radically.
I guess it's socialism to assume that because the radio broadcasters are granted a monopoly on a free commidity (radio frequencies) that they owe something to the public that allows them to have this. Why don't you imagine how things could be otherwise? If we just cut the FCC's balls off we could have hundreds of micro-radio stations competing wildly all over the place in every city, and the entire corrupt monopolistic "market" that you obviously think is so great would evaporate.
Well, maybe try reading about what he did for a living for most of his life. It wasn't writing fantasy stories. Oh, and what exactly do you call the fully-formed elven and dwarfish languages that he used in his stories?
The only possible sanity would have to come from congress and bush, fat chance there. So basicly the people have lost control over DNS
Boy, I hope I'm never that apathetic. The reason ICANN is so absurd is that we really don't have to cotton to them in order to have control of DNS. The choice of DNS servers to use is up to us, the users. If a critical mass is reached that does not agree with ICANN, they will be out of business. The possibility of that occurring increases with each abuse perpetrated in ICANN's name.
He said: The dead have no claim to our world, because they are totally uneffected by it.
You said: Rather wild and unsubstantiated statement, can you prove it?
The problem is, exploring the converse of his statement is totally impossible. No, he can't prove it, but even gathering proof for an opposing opinion would be futile. Just curious, indeed.
You know, I freely admit that I am an MCSE and spend all my days supporting Windows. But I have never accused it of being intuitive or well-designed. If it was, I wouldn't have a job. Let's face it, indeed!
an unbiased person from the other side of the argument; not someone who has a significant financial interest in supporting the DMCA
I submit that you will never find such an opinion. Anyone who does not make money from this scheme will immediately recognize the DMCA for what it is: a con perpetrated upon the public through the abuse of the legislative system. Those who do make money from it will be tripping over themselves to justify it.
Time once again to post my "black hole" meme, which I hope will propagate up to the people who need to hear it the most, and encourage them to vote with their work for the system that benefits them the most: I speak to the artists, authors, and creators of copyrighted material.
Current copyright laws are, in my opinion, going to put the 20th century's greatest artistic outpourings into a legally mandated black hole. Most artists and authors have an expectation that their work will immortalize them. Otherwise we wouldn't have such things as the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame (as biased and political an organization as it is) or the Grammys, or the Oscars, or any other prizes and awards for great contributions to the field.
The problem with this expectation is that in order for your work to be immortalized, it has to survive beyond the first generation of its fans. Just because the Baby Boomers put down in their book that Bob Dylan was somebody fuckin' great, doesn't mean that I will. And it is my generation that will be responsible for ensuring the longevity of art created by my parents' generation. In order for a work to survive past a generation, copies have to be made. Lots of them. Vinyl albums are incredibly fragile, and are easily scratched by careless children, and left on radiators or in attics and warp. CD's get dropped behind the sofa. Cassette tapes are left on the dashboard and melt. Boo.
Since copying all of these media is now illegal, I won't be making any copies of them. The only entity authorised to copy the media is the record company. They only make copies when they think they'll get a sale. Now, as the generation who popularized the work starts dropping off, sales of the work drop off as well. Fewer copies are made. But the copyright term still stands. Before the copyright expires, virtually every "consumer" of his work will have expired as well. Their collections will be sold at estate sales, thrown in the trash, or left in the attic to decay.
Finally, the copyright expires and people are now free to distribute their own copies of the work. But who cares anymore? The first generation that will be legally able to make free and clear copies of Bob Dylan's work, as I understand it, will be my own grandchildren, who will not be born for another twenty years.
The possibility exists that there will be few private copies after 75 years. The company that owns them may clear them out to make more room in their vault.
Put that in the wayforward machine and imagine any type of bleak orwellian culture you like. The results are in the long-term detrimental to that which most artists crave: their continued adulation by a rapt audience. It is the cheer of the crowd that keeps them going. Knowing that the cheer goes on after their funeral has to be a significant part of what they expect as their legacy. Over-restrictive copyright laws will cut that legacy short, and their life's work will be merely "product," to be disposed of immediately upon consumption.
I almost started laughing when I read this. It looks like the "Tao of networking" or "Confucious on IP", or even worse, "Yoda the Network Master." But "literature" -- no way. "Lampoon" is more like it.
I equate the term common sense with the term lowest common denominator. A common-sense opinion represents the collective, uninformed, ill-considered opinion of a mob, rather than a carefully researched argument. You've spouted the popular picture of what you think this issue is about, but it's painfully clear you haven't put ten seconds of actual thought into it.
Re:lawyer needn't snap -- will pursue immediately
on
RFC for Spammers
·
· Score: 1
you can lose trademark protection if you don't defend it
I'd say some 30-odd years after the original Viking Restaurant skit, and some 10-15 years after the appearance of the Internet version, that Hormel's already lost that battle. It's just a matter of admitting defeat.
Yes, a novel business plan should be rewarded, but not as much as the standard patent amount.
Why not reward it the way it's traditionally been done? By exceeding the performance of one's competitors. One-click alone does not guarantee Amazon will be more profitable than their competitors. They still have to deliver the product on-time and at a lower cost than those they compete with. Isn't that enough, for crying out loud? Or do they seek a guarantee that no one will be able to compete with them?
It matters because we can and do get reproducible results from the universe, when we don't have a bunch of Creationists standing there denying the reality right in front of their faces. The technology that our society operates upon in many cases would not work at all without the laws of physics which underlie many of the claims described here. If we assume that some magical being is manipulating things to make our lives a delusion, then really we don't need to bother living them, do we? We can just put guns to our heads and BANG! the dream is over and we're back in wherever it is we came from. Right? Willing to test your faith on it?
If the universe was all these billions of years old then the estimates were
I believe you meant to say the BLUE SKY estimates that were pulled OUT OF SOMEONE'S ASS, based on measurements with a tool not designed for the job. The real estimates give an expected dust depth which tallies with what was observed. And as always, in science, the real measurements will trump the estimates every time. A dozen other verifiable clocks require us to start the sun's life at about 5 billion years ago, and the existence of the planets sometime shortly after that. One blue-sky estimate which doesn't conform and is proven wrong later doesn't mean jack.
There is no verifiable evidence for the Creationist point of view. None. Not a single iota. The reason is that there is no testable hypothesis, and therefore no reason to gather evidence, catalog it, or use it for anything.
If your wrong you burn in hell for all eternity.
You know, this is usually where Christianity and I disconnect completely. First off, this is an argument from authority, or an argument as a threat. Not only is it logically feeble, it's a complete turnoff for me as well. I do not have time to subscribe to someone's point of view that includes frying me in a lake of fire if I am somehow wrong. I can buy all the love thy neighbor stuff but this "believe it or go to hell" is just crap. There are billions of people on the earth who go through their entire day not believing in Jesus. I am to assume, therefore, that somehow they just missed the boat, and their belief in other completely different deities and their drastically different schemes means that your Lord God somehow failed to get the word to over half the planet.
It's just simpler for me to assume that all religions are wrong, and that any belief system that starts from the assumption of an invisible being directing one's destiny is probably a crock.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I meant to write 'inapt.' As in
inapt (n-pt)
adj.
Inappropriate: an inapt remark.
I was going to moderate this, but I couldn't find a category for -1, Shill.
The law got broken? Gee, I hope no one actually got hurt.
Let's hear it for the inapt analogy!
The way I read it, they were picking on people who had independently discovered the same solution to a 360 degree display that they had. This would mean that the solution is fairly obvious to anyone who is skilled in the field, and therefore is not patentable. They deserve to be punished for having such a sloppy business model.
Or maybe Conway suffers from a case of fullishitus.
$200 for an MP3 player represents an early-adopter price. The technology has now been developed and will only drop in price as the years pass. Assuming interest remains in the format, in another five years you will have a pen-sized MP3 player in the plastic bin at the gas station for $10. Think in terms of the pocket digital calculator. How long after they appeared were you seeing people tapping numbers on their digital watches?
Napster has proven that people like to choose their own playlists. Bandwidth won't matter, because you can load your player before you leave for the day. What will matter is increased efficiency in storage technology. So, close but no cigar. A well-encoded MP3 sounds better, in most cases, than the static-burst filled signal I get from a car radio. I really don't see major radio stations being around after another twenty years of this. Not unless their entire approach changes radically.
I guess it's socialism to assume that because the radio broadcasters are granted a monopoly on a free commidity (radio frequencies) that they owe something to the public that allows them to have this. Why don't you imagine how things could be otherwise? If we just cut the FCC's balls off we could have hundreds of micro-radio stations competing wildly all over the place in every city, and the entire corrupt monopolistic "market" that you obviously think is so great would evaporate.
Well, maybe try reading about what he did for a living for most of his life. It wasn't writing fantasy stories. Oh, and what exactly do you call the fully-formed elven and dwarfish languages that he used in his stories?
Ahh, let's hear it for the surface impression.
Boy, I hope I'm never that apathetic. The reason ICANN is so absurd is that we really don't have to cotton to them in order to have control of DNS. The choice of DNS servers to use is up to us, the users. If a critical mass is reached that does not agree with ICANN, they will be out of business. The possibility of that occurring increases with each abuse perpetrated in ICANN's name.
You said: Rather wild and unsubstantiated statement, can you prove it?
The problem is, exploring the converse of his statement is totally impossible. No, he can't prove it, but even gathering proof for an opposing opinion would be futile. Just curious, indeed.
You know, I freely admit that I am an MCSE and spend all my days supporting Windows. But I have never accused it of being intuitive or well-designed. If it was, I wouldn't have a job. Let's face it, indeed!
I submit that you will never find such an opinion. Anyone who does not make money from this scheme will immediately recognize the DMCA for what it is: a con perpetrated upon the public through the abuse of the legislative system. Those who do make money from it will be tripping over themselves to justify it.
Current copyright laws are, in my opinion, going to put the 20th century's greatest artistic outpourings into a legally mandated black hole. Most artists and authors have an expectation that their work will immortalize them. Otherwise we wouldn't have such things as the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame (as biased and political an organization as it is) or the Grammys, or the Oscars, or any other prizes and awards for great contributions to the field.
The problem with this expectation is that in order for your work to be immortalized, it has to survive beyond the first generation of its fans. Just because the Baby Boomers put down in their book that Bob Dylan was somebody fuckin' great, doesn't mean that I will. And it is my generation that will be responsible for ensuring the longevity of art created by my parents' generation. In order for a work to survive past a generation, copies have to be made. Lots of them. Vinyl albums are incredibly fragile, and are easily scratched by careless children, and left on radiators or in attics and warp. CD's get dropped behind the sofa. Cassette tapes are left on the dashboard and melt. Boo.
Since copying all of these media is now illegal, I won't be making any copies of them. The only entity authorised to copy the media is the record company. They only make copies when they think they'll get a sale. Now, as the generation who popularized the work starts dropping off, sales of the work drop off as well. Fewer copies are made. But the copyright term still stands. Before the copyright expires, virtually every "consumer" of his work will have expired as well. Their collections will be sold at estate sales, thrown in the trash, or left in the attic to decay.
Finally, the copyright expires and people are now free to distribute their own copies of the work. But who cares anymore? The first generation that will be legally able to make free and clear copies of Bob Dylan's work, as I understand it, will be my own grandchildren, who will not be born for another twenty years.
The possibility exists that there will be few private copies after 75 years. The company that owns them may clear them out to make more room in their vault.
Put that in the wayforward machine and imagine any type of bleak orwellian culture you like. The results are in the long-term detrimental to that which most artists crave: their continued adulation by a rapt audience. It is the cheer of the crowd that keeps them going. Knowing that the cheer goes on after their funeral has to be a significant part of what they expect as their legacy. Over-restrictive copyright laws will cut that legacy short, and their life's work will be merely "product," to be disposed of immediately upon consumption.
I almost started laughing when I read this. It looks like the "Tao of networking" or "Confucious on IP", or even worse, "Yoda the Network Master." But "literature" -- no way. "Lampoon" is more like it.
I equate the term common sense with the term lowest common denominator. A common-sense opinion represents the collective, uninformed, ill-considered opinion of a mob, rather than a carefully researched argument. You've spouted the popular picture of what you think this issue is about, but it's painfully clear you haven't put ten seconds of actual thought into it.
I'd say some 30-odd years after the original Viking Restaurant skit, and some 10-15 years after the appearance of the Internet version, that Hormel's already lost that battle. It's just a matter of admitting defeat.
And what doofus would confuse UCE with luncheon meat of questionable origin?
You must merely invoke the one-click patent twice in a row.
Why not reward it the way it's traditionally been done? By exceeding the performance of one's competitors. One-click alone does not guarantee Amazon will be more profitable than their competitors. They still have to deliver the product on-time and at a lower cost than those they compete with. Isn't that enough, for crying out loud? Or do they seek a guarantee that no one will be able to compete with them?
It matters because we can and do get reproducible results from the universe, when we don't have a bunch of Creationists standing there denying the reality right in front of their faces. The technology that our society operates upon in many cases would not work at all without the laws of physics which underlie many of the claims described here. If we assume that some magical being is manipulating things to make our lives a delusion, then really we don't need to bother living them, do we? We can just put guns to our heads and BANG! the dream is over and we're back in wherever it is we came from. Right? Willing to test your faith on it?
I believe you meant to say the BLUE SKY estimates that were pulled OUT OF SOMEONE'S ASS, based on measurements with a tool not designed for the job. The real estimates give an expected dust depth which tallies with what was observed. And as always, in science, the real measurements will trump the estimates every time. A dozen other verifiable clocks require us to start the sun's life at about 5 billion years ago, and the existence of the planets sometime shortly after that. One blue-sky estimate which doesn't conform and is proven wrong later doesn't mean jack.
There is no verifiable evidence for the Creationist point of view. None. Not a single iota. The reason is that there is no testable hypothesis, and therefore no reason to gather evidence, catalog it, or use it for anything.
If your wrong you burn in hell for all eternity.
You know, this is usually where Christianity and I disconnect completely. First off, this is an argument from authority, or an argument as a threat. Not only is it logically feeble, it's a complete turnoff for me as well. I do not have time to subscribe to someone's point of view that includes frying me in a lake of fire if I am somehow wrong. I can buy all the love thy neighbor stuff but this "believe it or go to hell" is just crap. There are billions of people on the earth who go through their entire day not believing in Jesus. I am to assume, therefore, that somehow they just missed the boat, and their belief in other completely different deities and their drastically different schemes means that your Lord God somehow failed to get the word to over half the planet.
It's just simpler for me to assume that all religions are wrong, and that any belief system that starts from the assumption of an invisible being directing one's destiny is probably a crock.
If this is true, then all of reality can be subjective moment to moment, and there's no reason to get out of bed. Fuck that, man.