First, it is 70 years, not 75. Second, here's the real issue: in 1978, the law was changed to extend copyright terms to 50 years after the death of the author. In 1998, the law was changed to extend copyright terms an additional 20 years. What happens if in 2018 the law is changed to extend copyright terms an additional 20 years? Then the idea behind "limited" terms is completely abandoned. That's the grounds for getting this law thrown out.
Exactly. If the Supreme Court has a brain (or brains), they'll see these two facts:
Congress has the sole power to set the limits on copyright (subject to the Constitution).
However, one of the limits implicit in the Constitution is that these limits can only apply to future works.
Don't forget, they ought to take responsibility not only for determining whether the current limit is short enough to be Constitutional but also whether adding twenty years to the limit every twenty years is still "limited" enough to be Constitutional.
In the current situation, you're starting to get into ex post facto legislation. The ruling the Court should hand down (IMHO) is:
The particular act is constitutional. Current limits apply to all currently extant publications.
However, Congress does not have the power to extend copyright terms for pre-existing works, only for works published after a certain date sufficiently after the signing date.
I view this is a good, and Constitutional compromise.
Konq and Opera are both excellent browsers and neither has succeeded in killing Moz/Netscape on Linux. I don't know why people use Moz anyway, probably fear of change. Same reason people don't use Opera on Windows I imagine (it's faster than IE, as I mentioned further down in this thread)
Another problem is Opera must play catch-up when new versions of distros come out. For instance, on Mandrake 8.2beta2, Opera has issues with libpng (namely because Mandrake uses libpng3 which is somewhat incompatible with libpng2). Mozilla doesn't have this issue, as the Mandrake developers can build it for the proper libs.
This is essentially the only reason that I use Mozilla on my Mandrake 8.2beta box. Once Opera fixes those issues, I'll go back.
You'll note with a bit of research that there is no "law" that makes the movie industry rate movies, or makes movie theaters allow access based on age. It is instead a voluntary industry standard. Perhaps if they had not instituted this standard, their would be laws regarding who may view a particular film, based on it's charecteristics. As of this moment though, I have no knowledge of such a law
In the 1960s, communities began establishing their own film censorship offices. The MPAA took a look at this trend and saw disaster: if a film was banned in some places, re-edited in others, and shown uncut elsewhere, marketing would be a nightmare. So they essentially designed the rating system to head this off. Each studio agreed not to release unrated movies (theatrically... they never extended this to videos) and that such rating must appear in all promotional material (which itself must be approved by the MPAA).
They succeeded in holding off censorship. The last of the film censorship offices closed in 1991, in Dallas.
I'm not sure how many Slashdot readers are aware of how the ratings are assigned. The MPAA has a pool of volunteer reviewers. The only requirement is that you be a parent of a child under 17. From this pool, reviewers are chosen randomly to watch the film and afterwards give their rating. These are tallied and (I believe) the median rating is what's assigned to the film. If the distributor dislikes the rating, they can resubmit it until they get a rating they like.
I guess the main thing is, if you're a parent in SoCal who hates the rating system, you do have an option: you can go to the MPAA and try (I'm not sure how you get into the pool... the MPAA web site is down) to get in the pool. You'll also get to see uncut movies before they're released...
It is the choice of a mail admin who is fed up with spam to try to block open relays. For that, he informs himself at a blacklist maintainer, but he still makes the decision himself.
He may make the initial decision. But since I have yet to meet a DB that opened the list for examination. There has to be someway of ascertaining the list, without DOS'ing the DB's website (sending 2^32 queries to their server is probably something that is not appreciated by anyone).
And how would anybody find out how much of the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater?
You are 100% correct. However, I think that it's the responsibility of the sysadmin who subscribes to a blackhole list to keep the database current and to make sure that the list has a decent policy for removal from the list.
If I were to use an OR database, I'd require a few things:
Mail is sent to an administrative account at the mail-server (or at least to common addresses like abuse@[mail-server], root@[mail-server]. Making admins manually subscribe does not satisfy this requirement.
Related to the above, such mail must contain a full itemized list of tests performed (or at least any and all items which were failed). The point of these lists is not to punish admins, but to educate them and make a better internet.
There must be a period of sufficient length (24 hours sounds good to me) to allow the admin to fix the problem, before the host is added to the list.
There must be a free means of checking the lists.
The current database of blocked addresses must be available for use and editing by myself.
If IP blocking is enabled, it must possible to disengage, on a per-host basis.
It must be possible to obtain a list of hosts which came off the list without re-downloading the entire list.
Probably some other requirements, which I have forgotten.
Any IP address which submits a list of open relays must be banned from submitting more relays for a reasonable period of time (3 years, maybe?) if one, when tested, is found to be adequate. Otherwise, these DBs are just DDOS attacks waiting to happen.
I should note that neither DB in your post is acceptable to me.
I think that the database approach is not the solution to the problem. The better approach may be to define a mail header that compliant webservers may attach saying that the mail was sent using open relay. This could then be blocked by destination servers using their own rules.
Moreover, since KDE is based on an outstanding graphical toolkit called Qt, and since Qt is also available for Windows, the new Mac OS X, as well as embedded devices (such as Sharp's new Zaurus), KDE has the potential to become a familiar environment deployed in a broad array of heterogeneous environments.
How difficult would it be to write a Windows Explorer-replacement that was a port of KDE? If it can be done, I think that it should be pursued. After all, if you could first get people into using KDE under Windows, then I think it would make moving them to Linux much easier, as the GUI is already down pat (and if you toss cygwin in there, the shell (or some portion of it) is known also).
The Illuminati got to him. Through their cooperation with the Grays, and the secret rich elite, they have pressured Linus into compliance. They hate MS as much as we do, after all MS is a threat to their power.
Just coincidental that Windows XP drops default Java support.
Some kinda troll, but I'll bite.
I'm not a Microsoft apologist by nature, but the real reason that Microsoft dropped support for Java in XP was Sun's refusal to open up Java (as in "open to a standards body"). Microsoft quite simply isn't willing to use a standard that could be changed at any moment without their software being ready. On the whole, I can't blame them.
Sun has made more than enough money off of Java. They ought to do the honorable thing (a la AT&T wrt C and C++) and submit the language and libraries for standards review.
Google's "sponsored links" seem like a valid business model to me. Search on something generic like computers [google.com] and you'll see pastel links pop up with advertisements. I imagine people pay a nice chunk of change for those.
Google runs on two business models: the Sponsored Links model (and the Google Sponsored Links are much more effective than any other online advertising out there) and the sale of search services (to Yahoo!, Washington Post, et al).
Fact is, Google's already profitable. Why? Because they didn't make the moronic mistakes that the other dot-coms did. Have you seen a Google Super Bowl ad? Have you seen a Google ad anywhere? Exactly. The Google model is, quite simply, you run a lean and mean ship that gets the job done well, and you make money.
...would be hacking the kernel to transmit remote control waves. Imagine the possibilities:
cron scripts to change the TV to certain channels every day at a specified time.
if you hate the guy in the building across the street, just aim the transceiver at his TV and watch for when his s.o. comes through the door and change the channel to hardcore pr0n channel.
And if that doesn't work, you could always use it as a spare heat lamp (very desirable when running an overclocked system...)
I wonder how much of the RIAA's decrease ended up increasing the game industry? People have limited funds, and if they're spending more money on one form of entertainment, they're going to be spending less on another.
No, you fool! The RIAA's decreased sales are solely due to KaZaA et al. The crap that is being put out, and the fact that it sucks compared to video games has nothing to do with it. It's P2P all the way!
Maybe the re-education camps are where you belong.
The problem with this is that in order to log to a remote server, you need a user space process to do it. All user space processes were all killed to get to a "halted" state.
Of course, there's nothing stopping you from hacking the kernel to move the syslog functionality into kernel space.
that is such a great idea.. I often wondered how hard it would be to make such a program ever since I first started seeing those photo mosaics at the store where I work a few years ago. it should actually be pretty easy to do to.. You would just have to make sure you have images of the same size or if you didnt youd have to puzzle fit them all together some how..
There was a really neat article in Dr. Dobbs Journal a few (October? November?) months ago about making photomosaics. As long as you can scale the photos to the same size, it works fine (granted with possible stretching...)
Also, Nimda and Code Red would have been shut down quicker if they realized that a huge bill was coming out of that mess.
You're right. Some retard runs unpatched Win 2k on his cable modem and catches Nimda. He doesn't realize it (after all, he's a retard and doesn't check security sites) and, bam! he gets a bill for $100. He calls ISP, and they say, "you've got {insert Win2k exploit here}. Microsoft sold you a defective product which you were too stupid to patch." Retard turns around files $60 claim in small claims court against Microsoft. Multiply by 1000's per month, and M$ is at the very least slightly distracted.
You just miss one little point, most users use there internet connection the same time. If you look at private costumers the big rate is between 17:00 and 20:00 (at least in sweden). So during this time you will have almost all users online the same time. So to give a decent service you have to provide bandwith for say about 40% of your users at the same time downloading.
However, what percentage of those customers who are on at peak times are just browsing the web? The web does not benefit from broadband. Even if a page loads in 1 second instead of ten, you're still going to spend c.10 seconds (or more) reading it. During that 10 seconds, your connection is essentially idle. So 91% of the time, when your browsing the web, your connection is idle. The same is true of e-mail. To a lesser extent, IRC/AIM/et al are the same way. AFAICT, the only broadband applications that results in consistent connection use are file transfer and streaming media.
My answer might be to charge extra using this formula: if your usage is more than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean usage during that minute, the meter starts running. I'd give every subscriber a "grace period" of 900 such minutes a month, but after that, if you want to run a KaZaA server while other people want the network, then you pay. If it's 3 AM and no one else is on, then do whatever you want.
The only way to finance a movie in this new world is to sell the eyeballs that are watching the movie for other purposes. Already theaters make about half of their money on concessions, for example. The two other obvious ways of making money on the film is ancillary merchandise (toys, etc.) and product placement (advertising) within the film.
Wrt to the theaters, that's been true for decades. Think about it. For the average new release, the percentages work out thusly:
1st week of release: studio/distributor take 70% (sometimes more) of the gross.
2nd week of release: studio/distributor take c.60% of gross
3rd week and thereafter: s/d take c. 50% of gross
This has a few effects:
It forces small theaters out of business. Since the best deal is if the theater keeps the movie in rotation for 3+ weeks, a 1-screen theater can't do that, except with exceptional films (The Lord of the Rings comes to mind).
Since 50% of the average film's gross is in the first two weeks, theaters make enough off the average ticket sale to pay the employees and maybe some utilities.
OTOH, concessions are pure profit. Last time I checked (some 5 years ago) a 50-lb bag of popcorn kernels sells for about $3. How many $5 servings of popcorn are in that bag?
I meant that it's not a surprise that Sony's not backing D-VHS, considering their investment in DVD. Time Warner is probably not backing this for the same reason.
I'm glad to see that Warner Bros (who coincidentally were the first to back DVD) and Columbia TriStar aren't getting in this race.
How much has Sony sunk into DVD development over the years? They're not going to jump into soething that obviates that with so little benefit, even in the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. If the Supreme Court has a brain (or brains), they'll see these two facts:
In the current situation, you're starting to get into ex post facto legislation. The ruling the Court should hand down (IMHO) is:
I view this is a good, and Constitutional compromise.
Another problem is Opera must play catch-up when new versions of distros come out. For instance, on Mandrake 8.2beta2, Opera has issues with libpng (namely because Mandrake uses libpng3 which is somewhat incompatible with libpng2). Mozilla doesn't have this issue, as the Mandrake developers can build it for the proper libs.
This is essentially the only reason that I use Mozilla on my Mandrake 8.2beta box. Once Opera fixes those issues, I'll go back.
In the 1960s, communities began establishing their own film censorship offices. The MPAA took a look at this trend and saw disaster: if a film was banned in some places, re-edited in others, and shown uncut elsewhere, marketing would be a nightmare. So they essentially designed the rating system to head this off. Each studio agreed not to release unrated movies (theatrically... they never extended this to videos) and that such rating must appear in all promotional material (which itself must be approved by the MPAA).
They succeeded in holding off censorship. The last of the film censorship offices closed in 1991, in Dallas.
I'm not sure how many Slashdot readers are aware of how the ratings are assigned. The MPAA has a pool of volunteer reviewers. The only requirement is that you be a parent of a child under 17. From this pool, reviewers are chosen randomly to watch the film and afterwards give their rating. These are tallied and (I believe) the median rating is what's assigned to the film. If the distributor dislikes the rating, they can resubmit it until they get a rating they like.
I guess the main thing is, if you're a parent in SoCal who hates the rating system, you do have an option: you can go to the MPAA and try (I'm not sure how you get into the pool... the MPAA web site is down) to get in the pool. You'll also get to see uncut movies before they're released...
He may make the initial decision. But since I have yet to meet a DB that opened the list for examination. There has to be someway of ascertaining the list, without DOS'ing the DB's website (sending 2^32 queries to their server is probably something that is not appreciated by anyone).
And how would anybody find out how much of the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater?
Yeah, and spam is as serious as child molestation....
You are 100% correct. However, I think that it's the responsibility of the sysadmin who subscribes to a blackhole list to keep the database current and to make sure that the list has a decent policy for removal from the list.
If I were to use an OR database, I'd require a few things:
I should note that neither DB in your post is acceptable to me.
I think that the database approach is not the solution to the problem. The better approach may be to define a mail header that compliant webservers may attach saying that the mail was sent using open relay. This could then be blocked by destination servers using their own rules.
...this brief from the KDE League sparked a question. The relevant passage:
How difficult would it be to write a Windows Explorer-replacement that was a port of KDE? If it can be done, I think that it should be pursued. After all, if you could first get people into using KDE under Windows, then I think it would make moving them to Linux much easier, as the GUI is already down pat (and if you toss cygwin in there, the shell (or some portion of it) is known also).
Mandrake includes ALSA as well.
And where do the Freemasons stand on this issue?
Some kinda troll, but I'll bite.
I'm not a Microsoft apologist by nature, but the real reason that Microsoft dropped support for Java in XP was Sun's refusal to open up Java (as in "open to a standards body"). Microsoft quite simply isn't willing to use a standard that could be changed at any moment without their software being ready. On the whole, I can't blame them.
Sun has made more than enough money off of Java. They ought to do the honorable thing (a la AT&T wrt C and C++) and submit the language and libraries for standards review.
The only thing horrifying about Shakespeare in Love was my girlfriend's Joseph Fiennes obsession that lasted about a year after she saw it.
I see that behavior in Opera 6 for Windows. However, right-clicking and selecting Open in New Window gives proper behavior.
Google runs on two business models: the Sponsored Links model (and the Google Sponsored Links are much more effective than any other online advertising out there) and the sale of search services (to Yahoo!, Washington Post, et al).
Fact is, Google's already profitable. Why? Because they didn't make the moronic mistakes that the other dot-coms did. Have you seen a Google Super Bowl ad? Have you seen a Google ad anywhere? Exactly. The Google model is, quite simply, you run a lean and mean ship that gets the job done well, and you make money.
...would be hacking the kernel to transmit remote control waves. Imagine the possibilities:
And if that doesn't work, you could always use it as a spare heat lamp (very desirable when running an overclocked system...)
But it's a firewall. The flames can't go outside the box!
No, you fool! The RIAA's decreased sales are solely due to KaZaA et al. The crap that is being put out, and the fact that it sucks compared to video games has nothing to do with it. It's P2P all the way!
Maybe the re-education camps are where you belong.
Sheesh!
Of course, there's nothing stopping you from hacking the kernel to move the syslog functionality into kernel space.
I've found that, miracle of miracles, the retractable coffee-cup holder can read CD's. I'm amazed at this innovative use of computer hardware.
There was a really neat article in Dr. Dobbs Journal a few (October? November?) months ago about making photomosaics. As long as you can scale the photos to the same size, it works fine (granted with possible stretching...)
You're right. Some retard runs unpatched Win 2k on his cable modem and catches Nimda. He doesn't realize it (after all, he's a retard and doesn't check security sites) and, bam! he gets a bill for $100. He calls ISP, and they say, "you've got {insert Win2k exploit here}. Microsoft sold you a defective product which you were too stupid to patch." Retard turns around files $60 claim in small claims court against Microsoft. Multiply by 1000's per month, and M$ is at the very least slightly distracted.
You know, I like...
However, what percentage of those customers who are on at peak times are just browsing the web? The web does not benefit from broadband. Even if a page loads in 1 second instead of ten, you're still going to spend c.10 seconds (or more) reading it. During that 10 seconds, your connection is essentially idle. So 91% of the time, when your browsing the web, your connection is idle. The same is true of e-mail. To a lesser extent, IRC/AIM/et al are the same way. AFAICT, the only broadband applications that results in consistent connection use are file transfer and streaming media.
My answer might be to charge extra using this formula: if your usage is more than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean usage during that minute, the meter starts running. I'd give every subscriber a "grace period" of 900 such minutes a month, but after that, if you want to run a KaZaA server while other people want the network, then you pay. If it's 3 AM and no one else is on, then do whatever you want.
Wrt to the theaters, that's been true for decades. Think about it. For the average new release, the percentages work out thusly:
- 1st week of release: studio/distributor take 70% (sometimes more) of the gross.
- 2nd week of release: studio/distributor take c.60% of gross
- 3rd week and thereafter: s/d take c. 50% of gross
This has a few effects:I think you misread my post.
I meant that it's not a surprise that Sony's not backing D-VHS, considering their investment in DVD. Time Warner is probably not backing this for the same reason.
How much has Sony sunk into DVD development over the years? They're not going to jump into soething that obviates that with so little benefit, even in the long term.