I have it on good authority that Apple is going to pull a rabbit out from their hat. They're actually going to put hither-to unannounced 2GHz Motorola 68060s in this one. Apparently, Apple has had OS X running on '060s, Pentiums, and PowerPCs over the last few years. But that's not all.
In August, they'll be announcing the new range of PowerBooks. These will be powered by 2.5GHz ARM CPUs. And in September, the new Xserve 65816s will be launched, running the latest generation 6502s. SPARC based iMacs will follow in November.
Finally, in January, you'll see the first Intel based Mac. While some will consider a 4.77MHz 8088* a little slow in today's computing environment, there's little doubt that the power savings alone will make the switchover worthwhile.
* Note, selected models will feature the NEC V20, depending on availability and demand.
OS/2 1.x, which came out in the late eighties, not early nineties, was targetted at the 80286 and probably did have significant portions written in assembler.
By the time OS/2 2.0 came out, a large amount had clearly been rewritten in a higher level language, presumably C, as it had gone from being targetted to the 80286 to the 80386, and there's little reason to believe that IBM had done this retargetting by rewriting significant portions in 80386 assembler, which just about everyone would have seen as bone-headed.
More to the point, by the early nineties, IBM was demonstrating PowerPC versions of OS/2 in public.
I find it improbable that the bulk of OS/2 is written in assembler today. I suspect large portions of the kernel may be, but, well, replacing the kernel isn't exactly difficult, given there are so many portable, optimized, kernels in existance that could form the basis of a replacement.
Please, for the love of God, don't ever post to Slashdot again. This is a website for people who find "geek stuff" interesting. That means people using technology in odd and wonderful ways. We don't care if it's useful, we care if it's interesting.
Take you fat, pointy-haired self, off this website, and go study for your MBA or something.
The pro-nuker "kooks" just point out that countries like France generate 76% of their electricity with nuclear power, without using coal like the USA does.
Not sure how that rebuts any point, but whatever.
There is more energy in the uranium and thorium spewed out from the black belched smoke in a coal power plant than in the coal which it burned. We are literally pissing gold away.
No, we're not. It would be extremely hard to piss gold at the best of times. I guess it'd have to be dissolved in your urine, and how it'd get through your body into your urine is anyone's guess.;-)
Anyway, ignoring your flagrant violation of the word "literally", again this is quoting statistics without making much of an argument one way or another. Let's address this after your next point:
Nuclear power is the safest way of generating electricity per GWhr we have.
Quite simply, that's false. The reason Nuclear Power has an excellent safety record is the same as the reason why the airline industry has an excellent safety record: they're both so remarkably dangerous that they're under far, far, stricter regulations and scrutiny than their rivals. If we built cars with the same degree of care as we do planes, trained drivers the same way, had road traffic control systems designed to prevent two vehicles from being within a few hundred feet of one another, etc, you can bet road safety would be better than air safety. The tailgate falling off my motor vehicle is a minor problem, it falling off an airliner can be catastrophic.
It's much the same thing with Nuclear. When these "safety statistics" are quoted, it's rarely acknowledging that the issues aren't comparable. We don't put as much effort into containment of coal waste as we do radiation from Nuclear reactors, for example.
To be honest though, I think the major problem we have at the moment is nobody has come up with a real solution to the Nuclear waste issue, and it's one that tends to get the most outrageous solutions proposed by the Nuclear advocates, who usually claim one of (a) it doesn't matter, because we'll find a solution in 20 years if we just start using Nuclear for everything now, (b) There's perfectly simple ways of dealing with the problem, it's just there's a giant conspiracy between the US government and Greenpeace to keep the Nuclear man down!, or (c) who cares? It's not my mountain it's buried under; or they just launch into generic attacks on Nuclear opponents, normally by misrepresenting opinions as well as lumping everyone together.
Is it kooky to whine that environmentalists are hypocritical by opposing both greenhouse gas emissions and Nuclear energy, when actually the environmentalists who do oppose both are usually into conservation, as the kook normally knows full well? Is it kooky to whine about this as if the only alternatives to greenhouse emissions are Nuclear ones, and as if people supporting other forms of energy are opposed to them too? You bet.
And that's why I used the term. I read Slashdot enough to know that the majority (I don't know you, if the above doesn't apply to you then obviously You Are Not A Kook, not for that reason anyway) of pro-Nuclear advocates here speak that way. And so, as I said in the beginning, it's hard to take the pro-Nuclear argument very seriously, as by and large, the argument is coming from people who, well, are kooky.
Wind power is also economical in the right places. I have little doubt we will eventually turn to biodiesel for transportation, even if for no other reason, it is energy dense and works on current internal combustion engines. But trying to devise an economy without fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum) using existing technology without putting nuclear power into the mix is *not* going to work.
As I said, I'm not in favour of putting all of our eggs in one basket. I think we agree on that.
There's not a single thing you just said that makes any sense whatsoever.
The peak oil theory is not a claim that "we'll be out of oil by XXX", it's that oil production will peak in a certain number of years. "Never mind that proven oil reserves are larger now than when I first heard this nonsense", in this context, is entirely fitting, indeed, the theory wouldn't make any sense if oil production wasn't higher today than at any time in the past.
I especially like this new idea that we'll run out of oil all of a sudden
(a) How is this a "new idea"?
(b) How is it relevent to the peak oil theory, which claims the exact opposite?
I'm not sure I'd want one of them new-fangled nearing break-even fusion reactors in my car, and I have no idea if the sodium/water/hydrogen thing is useful in practice.
Ethanol strikes me as a reasonable way to store energy generated by other means for use in internal combustion engines. If it costs 50% more to make than the power it gives, then it appears to be around 60-70% efficient as a storage medium. It may be hydrogen is better, I don't know, there are storage issues with hydrogen, in theory.
There are probably better solutions. But there's also no reason to keep all one's eggs in one basket, especially when the people who are most vocal in hyping a particular solution to all mankind's energy needs, the pro-nukers, seem to be a bunch of kooks for the most part, usually promoting technologies that have never been implemented, and assuming that very real issues that affect us today will be solved in twenty years if we just ramp up our use of Nuclear "solutions".
The Supreme Court hasn't reversed itself, it's just you don't have the "rights" you think you do.
In particular, you have the right to not go to prison for the limited situation of making a copy of a TV programme as it airs. However, you do not have the right to not go to prison for producing equipment that circumvents an access control mechanism enveloping that content. You see, while SCOTUS ruled it's not illegal to time shift TV programmes, they didn't rule anything beyond that. They didn't even rule that you have any right to do so. And the law has changed several times since that ruling anyway.
So far as I've seen, the DMCA has withstood challenges to that particular part of the law.
What we need is a bill of rights for content users. And while a large proportion of those demanding such rights are those who enthused about blatent anti-content-makers systems such as the original Napster, we don't have a lot of credibility right now, whereas Hollywood does every time they're able to get a few million people to watch their latest movie.
I'm sure that's how you feel, and probably how many others feel too. But I wihs I could agree with the notion that negative/"immoral" portrayals of sex are the "real reason" "why everyone throws a tizzy about sex in the media".
If this was really about positive portrayals of sex, then people would actually be complaining about the lack of that. Not complaining about sex, period. Just "bad" sex. That's not the message I get from those who complain the loudest. It's always about the dangers of children coming across sexually explicit material.
"Grand Theft Auto" is a major crime, not the act of playing a game called Grand Theft Auto. The point was the game is named after a major crime, and rated for adult use only. How can a parent not get more clues that this might not be right for their fragile children?
In case you aren't aware, Hillary Clinton is planning a Presidential run.
I did actually mention that;)
She has been talking about abortion as a "sad, tragic choice" that should happen "only in very rare circumstances"
In my experience, that's what most people agree with, and I'm one of them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is the Senator's actual position. Support for the right has never implied support for the act. It's a falacy promoted by the media and extreme right that anyone who's pro-choice is pro-abortion.
Nonetheless, if the GTA "outrage" is bogus, then she's fundamentally being dishonest, whipping up hysteria regardless of the victims of the hysteria. I cannot support any politician that does that.
...some of us are tired of characterizations of us liberals as meddlers in issues that should be a matter of personal responsibility. You seem to be doing all you can to persuade everyone otherwise.
If a parent allows a child to play a game named "Grand Theft Auto" (a major crime), with a clearly visible rating that clearly identifies it as being for adults, then it's hard to see how this is any fault of the publisher or anyone else but the parent concerned.
It's also hard to see the obsession with preventing children from seeing anything "sexual" while, apparently, being unconcerned about children coming across something violent. Here's a major clue for you, speaking as someone who was a child for 12 years of my life, and a teenager for about eight: children think stuff to do with sex is icky anyway. As for teenagers, on the other hand, they'll find something sexual in a church newsletter. Hidden scenes in stupid video games aren't going to make a major difference.
A second issue you may not realise is that sex is, fundamentally, neutral. It can be used for good and for bad. It is not inherently evil and to be used only under extreme circumstances, such as when bad things threaten you. In fact, it's actually, usually, a beautiful thing. This is not true of violence. So why people like yourself give a stuff about the former but not the latter will... god, am I really pointing this out? I must be the 912,291th person on Slashdot *alone* to have pointed out this rather obvious fact.
Seriously. I appreciate that you, Senator, as someone born at the tender age of 21, probably do not realise any of this and so have some screwed up views on the subject. They may or may not be distantly connected with people close to you. For all I know, a night in bed with Bill is worse than five rounds with Muhammed Ali. Nevertheless, please do us all a favour and shut the f--- up. You do not know what you're talking about. You are meddling in a way that gives those of us that would otherwise support you a bad name. If this is part of your presidential ambitions, I think I speak for most of the liberals on Slashdot when I say: Kerry '08.
Learn to do your own research and be careful who you trust.
Well, as you clearly engage in hyperbole or you can't understand a simple English paragraph, I don't trust you, not without a cite anyway.
It's completely fair characterization. You advocate changing the laws from protecting people's rights to protecting rather than punishing those who wish to violate those rights.
No, it isn't. I didn't advocate doing away with copyright law, I merely said that in a small set of circumstances concerning a specific instance (where copyright law interferes with legitimate historical inquiry and our ability to preserve information) where something is clearly in the public interest, people doing whatever it is that's in the public interest should be able to do that by default until a copyright holder actually objects. Nobody has a "right" to prevent that, they merely, at present, have the legal means to do so.
Your characterization is utterly extreme. As I said, it means anyone advocating the outlawing of murder would be described as outlawing anyone from doing anything. My comment was extremely narrow, aimed at reducing the legal headaches for a specific, clearly in the public interest, application.
As you're either a troll or an imbecile (or some extremist supporter of copyright in its present form to the point that you refuse to believe that any activity at all can be considered higher than an author's right to sue over any use of their work anywhere), I'll foe you. I'm quite sure you'll not care, but be aware the more often you post as you have above, the more foes you'll get, and the less people will read your comments.
Yes, but the fact that a copy has to be made doesn't mean that all authorization is given to all copying. It's legal to run a computer program (one without an EULA) or play a CD, despite the fact both cause a temporary image to be put in memory. The law, so far as I can see, already takes these things into account. Certain types of copying are necessary, and therefore have implied permission to occur, to use something for the purpose it was provided.
It is therefore legal for my webbrowser to initiate a copy of media on CNN's website to copy it temporarily to several routers between my machine and it, and for that copy to then be stored on my computer while my web browser converts it from HTML to a displayable form, ultimately as a bitmap, that I can view.
However, anything beyond that isn't legal unless it's fair use or authorized. I probably, though not definitely, have the right to save the CNN story to my own disk as I'm "spaceshifting" something for my own personal use. Even that, however, is open to question.
Libraries don't have the problem because they just don't do the copying as a function of being a library. They buy a copy of a newspaper and lend it people. That's it.
The law is fairly clear on this, and if people deliberately choose forms of media requiring that they make copies as a part of using something, then they do, unfortunately, suffer more restrictions in practice than someone with, say, a book. The degree to which they're impacted depends on the media. If it's entirely digital (ie, stored as bits inside your computer), then the legal restrictions can be draconian as the mere act of transfering it to someone else implies copying. If it's on a disk, like a DVD, then laws like the DMCA can affect how you use the content. If it's distributed in a form the body can readily interpret, like a book, then obviously the restrictions are minimal.
Does this mean we probably could do with some degree of dilution of copyright laws? Answer, most probably. It's ironic that the format with the most potential is also the one that, often accidentally, is the one copyright law most cripples.
Completely incorrect. There are only two ways for material to enter the public domain - 1) by explicitly stating that you release the material into the public domain, or 2) expiration of the copyright period.
Do you have a source for this? I ask because my comment came from a source I do trust, and I don't know you from anyone.
That paragraph can be written much more simply: I don't like laws that protect other peoples rights. They should be changed.
That wouldn't exactly be a fair characterisation of the paragraph though would it? That'd be like me rewording a comment "I think murder should be illegal" as "I don't think people should be able to do anything."
Are you going for a troll moderation, or are you just obnoxious?
IANAL, but I know two things. First, libraries generally have a certain amount of legal backing. Librarians are some of the most careful people I know when it comes to avoiding copyright infringement.
Secondly, copyright infringment concerns copying things. A library doesn't have to engage in copying to store a newspaper and lend it to people. Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine does have to do exactly that. On a technical level, the two institutions are performing entirely different operations.
Comparing the two might (*might* - I don't think it would though) allow you to compare the morality of both, but it doesn't compare the legality of both.
I suspect the mere presense of robots.txt can be used to indicate some degree of consent for certain types of activity that would otherwise be considered copyright infringement. If robots.txt has a valid format, and was created by the copyright owner or an authorized representative, then the website is giving explicit permission for the site to appear in search engines, for the words to be archived and used as the basis of searches, etc, as long as the rules of robots.txt are followed.
The solution, short term, probably lies in extending robots.txt so that other permissions can be given. Of the websites on Archive.org, I suspect the vast majority have no problem with the situation. Does Apple care that someone can find out what they were selling in June 1998? Does Fred Jones, who put a rant about Monica Lewinsky on his academic website in February 1997, really want all access to his page to be stopped simply because he's not at University any more? Only a handful of sites actually trade in archived content they've produced. These sites, obviously, need some protection according to the aims principles of copyright.
I'd also argue that the definition "an invaluable public service" doesn't need to limited to the arguments for copyright. The Internet is a living field, and information appears and disappears as time goes on. Additionally, from a historical perspective, there's no equivalent to, say, a library's newspaper and magazine archive at the moment. Being able to go back and work out what was happening at a certain point in time is important to understanding why decisions were made, how people viewed the world, etc. This is where copyright law can conflict with the public interest and where it loses credibility if it is too draconian.
I see this as fairly straightfoward to solve: we need to enhance robots.txt, with archive websites honouring the contents, and we need archive websites to honour direct requests to remove content from legitimate copyright holders. It doesn't need registries of archive websites or anything like that.
In all but a small minority of cases, which I don't believe apply here, it's against the law to redistribute someone else's content without the copyright holder's consent. So the answer to your question, rephrased as "It's against the law to not follow robots.txt, in the absence of any other permissions granted by the copyright holder", is, usually, yes.
Alas copyright law and laws of tresspass are essentially two different branches. Analogies don't really work because different parts of the law are quite deliberately designed to work in different ways. It'd be like me comparing putting peanut oil into a car to reading pornography from a floppy disk, or me comparing your analogy to the one I just made.
Here's the deal, and it's not very good. If the Wayback Machine doesn't have permission (implied or otherwise) to archive websites and serve copies of them, it's technically breaking copyright law except in a very small number of cases. I believe in some cases, if you fail to assert your copyright and (and yes, there's an "and" in there) you distribute your content to all-comers for free, it's considered public domain. Asserting your copyright is as simple a matter as putting a copyright notice on your content. I've heard of, albeit third hand, by word of mouth, and IANAL, cases in some juristictions where leaflets pushed in mailboxes without some form of copyright notice were considered public domain.
That's the best I can think of in terms of defenses for the IA. The IA doesn't honour expiry dates on webpages (if it did, it'd be useless.) It doesn't quote small portions in the context of a review.
So why hasn't it been more widely sued? Well, I think it's largely because (a) most people consider the Wayback Machine to be an invaluable public service, including most of the websites whose content they archive. and (b) because the Wayback Machine has an honourable record of removing content whose owners don't want displayed. And given (a) and (b), the costs of litigation, the fact that it doesn't appear (to me) to make any money from the operation (and so, as I understand it, is guilty of a civil offense only), people are reluctant to sue.
My personal opinion? The law needs to be changed to protect groups who do exactly this. This is one of many areas where copyright law needs to be diluted in order to remain credible. If people performing what is obviously a public service, who do make best-efforts to honour the wishes of those who do not consent to be a part of what they're doing, need to worry about the legality of doing so, the law is wrong and liable to fall into disrepute.
PostScript and PCL would significantly increase the cost of inkjet printers, which would suddenly need enough RAM to buffer the pages they're displaying. Additionally, they're kind of the "wrong languages" for printing photos which, at a guess, is the primary use of most inkjets.
Not that a standardized printer language is a bad thing in general, it's just this isn't really an approach which works for everything.
With Free Software implementations of PostScript and PDF readily available (GhostScript, for example), it's surprising that most page-printers (lasers, etc) do not generally come with PS compatability out of the box.
I'm sorry you made the assumption that I was even referring to warez (applications or games).
Nobody had to assume anything, that's pretty much what you said. Someone responded to a story about the closure of warez sites criticising those who propose that "copyright infringement is their god given right screaming how evil these corporations are for not giving out their intellectual property for free."
You responded with this:
Cue the hordes of anonymous cowards who don't have the balls to admit they can't tell the difference between fair use (archiving or format shifting) and copyright infringement. At least use your name so we know you're an idiot.
You were explicitly claiming that the AC was talking about fair use applications, and the AC was clearly talking about the subject of the article. What's worse, the rest of the comment I'm responding to is deliberately trying to invent a meaning in the original AC comment that clearly wasn't there. There's nothing whatsoever in "copyright infringement is their god given right screaming how evil these corporations are for not giving out their intellectual property for free" that implies "if you ever make a copy of anything, for any reason, you're a pirate" or will come across as that to a reasonable person.
If you weren't refering to warez, then you should have kept your mouth shut. You flamed someone for criticizing warez and those who attempt to justify it with whines at the copyright system. Unless you're proposing that someone just set up the browser for you, hit the Reply button on your behalf, and put whiteout on the screen so you wouldn't be able to see the "'Operation Site Down' Closes 8 Warez Servers", you have absolutely no excuse.
Just apologise, and engage your brain next time you flame someone.
but John Tierney's doesn't mention anything that might indicate he tends towards sarcasm or whimsy
Erm, yes it does:
Author of The Best-Case Scenario Handbook (a 2002 parody of the popular Worst-Case Scenario Handbook series)
I took the article as whimsy too, FWIW.
other than that he's libertarian
It doesn't really say he's a libertarian either. It says he writes from a conservative point of view, though has exhibited some signs of libertarianism.
So what this boils down to is. "I played Doom 3. It sucks. There are, like, monsters that hide behind doors and other unfair things. Therefore, ergo, one can deduce from this that the entire technology behind Doom 3 is a complete catastrophe and it's no wonder Unreal 3 is so popular."
I don't really get it. The observations don't really match the conclusions. I mean, it could well be that Unreal 3 will be better than Doom 3. I don't know. It's just, well, criticising the Doom 3 engine on the basis that the game wasn't set up fairly is like blaming cardboard for Ludo.
Carbon's supported in Windows, funnily enough. Well, most of it. The Windows QuickTime environment supposedly contains most of Carbon. The story goes that Carbon was originally written as a compatibility layer to make it easier to port QT to Windows and then ported back to Mac OS/Mac OS X.
FWIW, I find grouping C and C++ hard to stomach sometimes. C and C++ have as much in common as C and Objective C. I know C is the root of both languages, but they're not, generally, languages you'd use in the same way. They are unrelated except in origin. (ObException: I notice that Darwin's kernel contains a lot of C++ code. Surprising that. Of course, there's not much preventing it from containing Objective C code given the latter merely requires the static linking of two or three C functions, I think it's just that C++ is faster.)
So "most (...) development continues to be in C and C++" seems, to me, to be almost as strange as "most (...) development continues to be in FORTH and SmallTalk" (if that were true). You wouldn't talk about one successor to both languages, you'd talk about one successor to FORTH, and another to SmallTalk.
As far as C++ goes though, I think it has two competing successors, Java and C#, and I think the former is already eating C++'s lunch. While it's true a handful of application types are still using C++ (largely games), a quick look at the corporate world reveals where Java is being used (and where I suspect C# will find equal use.) C++ was beginning to take over from COBOL as enterprises migrated their old mainframe apps to Windows-type architectures, but that was pretty much shot down when Sun started to come up with credible versions of Java in the very late nineties.
Ok, but the point is you can't blow up a building just by using a conventional "truck bomb" (if there is such a thing as a conventional truck bomb.) The Oklahoma situation destroyed a large part of a building and killed and injured many people, but the building was clearly there afterwards. Unlike, say, 9/11.
Slashdot Mirror
In August, they'll be announcing the new range of PowerBooks. These will be powered by 2.5GHz ARM CPUs. And in September, the new Xserve 65816s will be launched, running the latest generation 6502s. SPARC based iMacs will follow in November.
Finally, in January, you'll see the first Intel based Mac. While some will consider a 4.77MHz 8088* a little slow in today's computing environment, there's little doubt that the power savings alone will make the switchover worthwhile.
* Note, selected models will feature the NEC V20, depending on availability and demand.
OS/2 1.x, which came out in the late eighties, not early nineties, was targetted at the 80286 and probably did have significant portions written in assembler.
By the time OS/2 2.0 came out, a large amount had clearly been rewritten in a higher level language, presumably C, as it had gone from being targetted to the 80286 to the 80386, and there's little reason to believe that IBM had done this retargetting by rewriting significant portions in 80386 assembler, which just about everyone would have seen as bone-headed.
More to the point, by the early nineties, IBM was demonstrating PowerPC versions of OS/2 in public.
I find it improbable that the bulk of OS/2 is written in assembler today. I suspect large portions of the kernel may be, but, well, replacing the kernel isn't exactly difficult, given there are so many portable, optimized, kernels in existance that could form the basis of a replacement.
Take you fat, pointy-haired self, off this website, and go study for your MBA or something.
Anyway, ignoring your flagrant violation of the word "literally", again this is quoting statistics without making much of an argument one way or another. Let's address this after your next point:
Quite simply, that's false. The reason Nuclear Power has an excellent safety record is the same as the reason why the airline industry has an excellent safety record: they're both so remarkably dangerous that they're under far, far, stricter regulations and scrutiny than their rivals. If we built cars with the same degree of care as we do planes, trained drivers the same way, had road traffic control systems designed to prevent two vehicles from being within a few hundred feet of one another, etc, you can bet road safety would be better than air safety. The tailgate falling off my motor vehicle is a minor problem, it falling off an airliner can be catastrophic.It's much the same thing with Nuclear. When these "safety statistics" are quoted, it's rarely acknowledging that the issues aren't comparable. We don't put as much effort into containment of coal waste as we do radiation from Nuclear reactors, for example.
To be honest though, I think the major problem we have at the moment is nobody has come up with a real solution to the Nuclear waste issue, and it's one that tends to get the most outrageous solutions proposed by the Nuclear advocates, who usually claim one of (a) it doesn't matter, because we'll find a solution in 20 years if we just start using Nuclear for everything now, (b) There's perfectly simple ways of dealing with the problem, it's just there's a giant conspiracy between the US government and Greenpeace to keep the Nuclear man down!, or (c) who cares? It's not my mountain it's buried under; or they just launch into generic attacks on Nuclear opponents, normally by misrepresenting opinions as well as lumping everyone together.
Is it kooky to whine that environmentalists are hypocritical by opposing both greenhouse gas emissions and Nuclear energy, when actually the environmentalists who do oppose both are usually into conservation, as the kook normally knows full well? Is it kooky to whine about this as if the only alternatives to greenhouse emissions are Nuclear ones, and as if people supporting other forms of energy are opposed to them too? You bet.
And that's why I used the term. I read Slashdot enough to know that the majority (I don't know you, if the above doesn't apply to you then obviously You Are Not A Kook, not for that reason anyway) of pro-Nuclear advocates here speak that way. And so, as I said in the beginning, it's hard to take the pro-Nuclear argument very seriously, as by and large, the argument is coming from people who, well, are kooky.
As I said, I'm not in favour of putting all of our eggs in one basket. I think we agree on that.The peak oil theory is not a claim that "we'll be out of oil by XXX", it's that oil production will peak in a certain number of years. "Never mind that proven oil reserves are larger now than when I first heard this nonsense", in this context, is entirely fitting, indeed, the theory wouldn't make any sense if oil production wasn't higher today than at any time in the past.
(a) How is this a "new idea"?(b) How is it relevent to the peak oil theory, which claims the exact opposite?
Ethanol strikes me as a reasonable way to store energy generated by other means for use in internal combustion engines. If it costs 50% more to make than the power it gives, then it appears to be around 60-70% efficient as a storage medium. It may be hydrogen is better, I don't know, there are storage issues with hydrogen, in theory.
There are probably better solutions. But there's also no reason to keep all one's eggs in one basket, especially when the people who are most vocal in hyping a particular solution to all mankind's energy needs, the pro-nukers, seem to be a bunch of kooks for the most part, usually promoting technologies that have never been implemented, and assuming that very real issues that affect us today will be solved in twenty years if we just ramp up our use of Nuclear "solutions".
In particular, you have the right to not go to prison for the limited situation of making a copy of a TV programme as it airs. However, you do not have the right to not go to prison for producing equipment that circumvents an access control mechanism enveloping that content. You see, while SCOTUS ruled it's not illegal to time shift TV programmes, they didn't rule anything beyond that. They didn't even rule that you have any right to do so. And the law has changed several times since that ruling anyway.
So far as I've seen, the DMCA has withstood challenges to that particular part of the law.
What we need is a bill of rights for content users. And while a large proportion of those demanding such rights are those who enthused about blatent anti-content-makers systems such as the original Napster, we don't have a lot of credibility right now, whereas Hollywood does every time they're able to get a few million people to watch their latest movie.
If this was really about positive portrayals of sex, then people would actually be complaining about the lack of that. Not complaining about sex, period. Just "bad" sex. That's not the message I get from those who complain the loudest. It's always about the dangers of children coming across sexually explicit material.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Nonetheless, if the GTA "outrage" is bogus, then she's fundamentally being dishonest, whipping up hysteria regardless of the victims of the hysteria. I cannot support any politician that does that.
If a parent allows a child to play a game named "Grand Theft Auto" (a major crime), with a clearly visible rating that clearly identifies it as being for adults, then it's hard to see how this is any fault of the publisher or anyone else but the parent concerned.
It's also hard to see the obsession with preventing children from seeing anything "sexual" while, apparently, being unconcerned about children coming across something violent. Here's a major clue for you, speaking as someone who was a child for 12 years of my life, and a teenager for about eight: children think stuff to do with sex is icky anyway. As for teenagers, on the other hand, they'll find something sexual in a church newsletter. Hidden scenes in stupid video games aren't going to make a major difference.
A second issue you may not realise is that sex is, fundamentally, neutral. It can be used for good and for bad. It is not inherently evil and to be used only under extreme circumstances, such as when bad things threaten you. In fact, it's actually, usually, a beautiful thing. This is not true of violence. So why people like yourself give a stuff about the former but not the latter will... god, am I really pointing this out? I must be the 912,291th person on Slashdot *alone* to have pointed out this rather obvious fact.
Seriously. I appreciate that you, Senator, as someone born at the tender age of 21, probably do not realise any of this and so have some screwed up views on the subject. They may or may not be distantly connected with people close to you. For all I know, a night in bed with Bill is worse than five rounds with Muhammed Ali. Nevertheless, please do us all a favour and shut the f--- up. You do not know what you're talking about. You are meddling in a way that gives those of us that would otherwise support you a bad name. If this is part of your presidential ambitions, I think I speak for most of the liberals on Slashdot when I say: Kerry '08.
Your characterization is utterly extreme. As I said, it means anyone advocating the outlawing of murder would be described as outlawing anyone from doing anything. My comment was extremely narrow, aimed at reducing the legal headaches for a specific, clearly in the public interest, application.
As you're either a troll or an imbecile (or some extremist supporter of copyright in its present form to the point that you refuse to believe that any activity at all can be considered higher than an author's right to sue over any use of their work anywhere), I'll foe you. I'm quite sure you'll not care, but be aware the more often you post as you have above, the more foes you'll get, and the less people will read your comments.
It is therefore legal for my webbrowser to initiate a copy of media on CNN's website to copy it temporarily to several routers between my machine and it, and for that copy to then be stored on my computer while my web browser converts it from HTML to a displayable form, ultimately as a bitmap, that I can view.
However, anything beyond that isn't legal unless it's fair use or authorized. I probably, though not definitely, have the right to save the CNN story to my own disk as I'm "spaceshifting" something for my own personal use. Even that, however, is open to question.
Libraries don't have the problem because they just don't do the copying as a function of being a library. They buy a copy of a newspaper and lend it people. That's it.
The law is fairly clear on this, and if people deliberately choose forms of media requiring that they make copies as a part of using something, then they do, unfortunately, suffer more restrictions in practice than someone with, say, a book. The degree to which they're impacted depends on the media. If it's entirely digital (ie, stored as bits inside your computer), then the legal restrictions can be draconian as the mere act of transfering it to someone else implies copying. If it's on a disk, like a DVD, then laws like the DMCA can affect how you use the content. If it's distributed in a form the body can readily interpret, like a book, then obviously the restrictions are minimal.
Does this mean we probably could do with some degree of dilution of copyright laws? Answer, most probably. It's ironic that the format with the most potential is also the one that, often accidentally, is the one copyright law most cripples.
Are you going for a troll moderation, or are you just obnoxious?
Secondly, copyright infringment concerns copying things. A library doesn't have to engage in copying to store a newspaper and lend it to people. Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine does have to do exactly that. On a technical level, the two institutions are performing entirely different operations.
Comparing the two might (*might* - I don't think it would though) allow you to compare the morality of both, but it doesn't compare the legality of both.
The solution, short term, probably lies in extending robots.txt so that other permissions can be given. Of the websites on Archive.org, I suspect the vast majority have no problem with the situation. Does Apple care that someone can find out what they were selling in June 1998? Does Fred Jones, who put a rant about Monica Lewinsky on his academic website in February 1997, really want all access to his page to be stopped simply because he's not at University any more? Only a handful of sites actually trade in archived content they've produced. These sites, obviously, need some protection according to the aims principles of copyright.
I'd also argue that the definition "an invaluable public service" doesn't need to limited to the arguments for copyright. The Internet is a living field, and information appears and disappears as time goes on. Additionally, from a historical perspective, there's no equivalent to, say, a library's newspaper and magazine archive at the moment. Being able to go back and work out what was happening at a certain point in time is important to understanding why decisions were made, how people viewed the world, etc. This is where copyright law can conflict with the public interest and where it loses credibility if it is too draconian.
I see this as fairly straightfoward to solve: we need to enhance robots.txt, with archive websites honouring the contents, and we need archive websites to honour direct requests to remove content from legitimate copyright holders. It doesn't need registries of archive websites or anything like that.
In all but a small minority of cases, which I don't believe apply here, it's against the law to redistribute someone else's content without the copyright holder's consent. So the answer to your question, rephrased as "It's against the law to not follow robots.txt, in the absence of any other permissions granted by the copyright holder", is, usually, yes.
Here's the deal, and it's not very good. If the Wayback Machine doesn't have permission (implied or otherwise) to archive websites and serve copies of them, it's technically breaking copyright law except in a very small number of cases. I believe in some cases, if you fail to assert your copyright and (and yes, there's an "and" in there) you distribute your content to all-comers for free, it's considered public domain. Asserting your copyright is as simple a matter as putting a copyright notice on your content. I've heard of, albeit third hand, by word of mouth, and IANAL, cases in some juristictions where leaflets pushed in mailboxes without some form of copyright notice were considered public domain.
That's the best I can think of in terms of defenses for the IA. The IA doesn't honour expiry dates on webpages (if it did, it'd be useless.) It doesn't quote small portions in the context of a review.
So why hasn't it been more widely sued? Well, I think it's largely because (a) most people consider the Wayback Machine to be an invaluable public service, including most of the websites whose content they archive. and (b) because the Wayback Machine has an honourable record of removing content whose owners don't want displayed. And given (a) and (b), the costs of litigation, the fact that it doesn't appear (to me) to make any money from the operation (and so, as I understand it, is guilty of a civil offense only), people are reluctant to sue.
My personal opinion? The law needs to be changed to protect groups who do exactly this. This is one of many areas where copyright law needs to be diluted in order to remain credible. If people performing what is obviously a public service, who do make best-efforts to honour the wishes of those who do not consent to be a part of what they're doing, need to worry about the legality of doing so, the law is wrong and liable to fall into disrepute.
Not that a standardized printer language is a bad thing in general, it's just this isn't really an approach which works for everything.
With Free Software implementations of PostScript and PDF readily available (GhostScript, for example), it's surprising that most page-printers (lasers, etc) do not generally come with PS compatability out of the box.
You responded with this:
You were explicitly claiming that the AC was talking about fair use applications, and the AC was clearly talking about the subject of the article. What's worse, the rest of the comment I'm responding to is deliberately trying to invent a meaning in the original AC comment that clearly wasn't there. There's nothing whatsoever in "copyright infringement is their god given right screaming how evil these corporations are for not giving out their intellectual property for free" that implies "if you ever make a copy of anything, for any reason, you're a pirate" or will come across as that to a reasonable person.If you weren't refering to warez, then you should have kept your mouth shut. You flamed someone for criticizing warez and those who attempt to justify it with whines at the copyright system. Unless you're proposing that someone just set up the browser for you, hit the Reply button on your behalf, and put whiteout on the screen so you wouldn't be able to see the "'Operation Site Down' Closes 8 Warez Servers", you have absolutely no excuse.
Just apologise, and engage your brain next time you flame someone.
Which is not quite the same thing.
I don't really get it. The observations don't really match the conclusions. I mean, it could well be that Unreal 3 will be better than Doom 3. I don't know. It's just, well, criticising the Doom 3 engine on the basis that the game wasn't set up fairly is like blaming cardboard for Ludo.
Carbon's supported in Windows, funnily enough. Well, most of it. The Windows QuickTime environment supposedly contains most of Carbon. The story goes that Carbon was originally written as a compatibility layer to make it easier to port QT to Windows and then ported back to Mac OS/Mac OS X.
So "most (...) development continues to be in C and C++" seems, to me, to be almost as strange as "most (...) development continues to be in FORTH and SmallTalk" (if that were true). You wouldn't talk about one successor to both languages, you'd talk about one successor to FORTH, and another to SmallTalk.
As far as C++ goes though, I think it has two competing successors, Java and C#, and I think the former is already eating C++'s lunch. While it's true a handful of application types are still using C++ (largely games), a quick look at the corporate world reveals where Java is being used (and where I suspect C# will find equal use.) C++ was beginning to take over from COBOL as enterprises migrated their old mainframe apps to Windows-type architectures, but that was pretty much shot down when Sun started to come up with credible versions of Java in the very late nineties.
Ok, but the point is you can't blow up a building just by using a conventional "truck bomb" (if there is such a thing as a conventional truck bomb.) The Oklahoma situation destroyed a large part of a building and killed and injured many people, but the building was clearly there afterwards. Unlike, say, 9/11.