A rocket engine is just a glorified tube. Without the explosives that go inside, it's not going to hurt anybody. It's those explosives that are tightly controlled.
I don't think that being immediately confrontational is good advice in any context. All it will do is piss off the other party and steel their resolve to bring as much harm to you as they can. This was an honest mistake -- the web designer (or his client) really was in violation of the law. If this goes to court, he (or his client) will almost certainly lose if the other party had even a modicum of sense to document the violation properly. They're not going to be intimidated out of pursuing this (especially not by the AC's ridiculous suggestion of threatening a countersuit for hacking... that's the silliest thing I've read in weeks, and I read a lot of slashdot). Given the circumstances, I think he was better off trying to placate them without litigation.
Still, it's probably not a good idea to take responsibility in writing before talking to the other party or their lawyer to determine how they're going to respond to it. If they are already resolved to absolutely demanding their $25k, then he'll really have no choice but to fight back and at that point, everything really better go through a lawyer.
Maybe he actually meant they "could care less." Just because they're running a despicable, heartless organization like the RIAA doesn't mean they don't have hopes, dreams, and feelings of their own! It hurts to be so hated! They sure could care less!
As someone closer to the middle between hardware and software, I want to echo what you said. For embedded systems and hardware work, knowing assembly and how it relates to the hardware you're using is very important. Quite likely you'll never need to implement anything computationally significant in it, but for bootstrapping, there's nothing more helpful than being able to step through the real source -- not the C source, the cycle by cycle opcodes that it compiled into. Especially if you have a modern compiler that thinks it's smarter than you are, there's no better way to see what your code is *really* doing.
It's also helpful when you have a brand new flavor of DSP on your board and even the manufacturer's own compiler gets things wrong... and then when it turns out there's a bug in the hardware, TOO. Not that that's happened to me... but it's a lot easier to get the engineers to take you seriously if you can tell them exactly what you're doing...
Did this really happen independently? If there was an arrangement to organize the various steps, then they're probably all guilty of conspiracy. It's hard to imagine this really happening in an even remotely plausible scenario. IMO, I think you'd be very hard pressed to claim that quoting ALL of the original was necessary and truly fair use, even in small pieces. I suspect that step one in your process would probably not fall under fair use. You almost never need to quote ALL of a every section to say what you want to say.
This is part of the reason that Congress would be foolish to try to specify quantitatively what constitutes fair use. You really have to judge in the context of the specific works involved. No, this is not as convenient as "X% of the work may be quoted," but I think it better serves justice in the long term.
That's why the courts respect precedent -- after a few cases get through the expensive system, a single interpretation will likely take hold and the landscape will be clearer.
Other than threats of physical violence or other illegal acts, I don't know that there's a problem. They're not in a position to advise you of your rights, you are responsible for your knowing those.
The way I see it, they basically say "We forbid you any rights to this material." They're not actually able to limit you any further than the law, but it's up to you to interpret the law correctly. If they disagree with your interpretation, they may well sue you. They're in a better position to get a conservative reading of your right to fair use because their statement advised you that they willingly grant you no rights. You therefore have the bare minimum allowed by law and can't claim , e.g., that they gave you implicit oral permission that you can't show a record of, or that your use was inadvertent under the mistaken good faith belief that the material was public domain.
Yeah, going to court over this would cost you money. That's a fact of life. In truth, though, their statement is meaningless if you obey copyright laws. You should be taking care to respect it with any material you use and run the risk of litigation any time you attempt fair use, or you'll get yourself into trouble.
The following is not meant to disagree with you (other than possibly on a small point, I can't tell from your post).
As far as I know, they're quite free to claim rights they don't actually have, so long as they don't actually take legally significant actions based on those statements. Similarly, I'm free to demand that you not take my picture while I'm standing in a public place. There's no legal requirement that I inform you that you are actually legally permitted to snap away (assuming you're not using my image for commercial purposes).
The law trumps their statement and it's up to the consumer to know his rights under the law. Their statement, perhaps sensibly, is stricter than what the law allows. They don't want you to be able to claim any rights to use their content beyond the bare minimum provided by law. Still, you are quite free to disregard any terms they've described that are stricter than the actual legal provisions. In the absence of a valid contract to the contrary, there simply is no mechanism for the NFL to add restrictions.
Of course, the DMCA take-down notices ARE legally significant. Making knowingly false statements means committing (IIRC) perjury. It's just possible that the original take-down notice may have been legitimate (although, honestly, no lawyer could possibly pass the bar and have a good faith belief that her use of the clip was in violation of the law, so even that is an EXTREMELY gracious statement). Once she filed her counter-notice, however, they can no longer claim this...
Umm, no, it's not pedantry. Although I'd argue that the DMCA is deeply flawed, this provision is one of the few palatable things about it. It provides a bit of balance -- the copyright holder can demand that the service provider immediately remove infringing content and the provider can escape liability by complying. This provision allows the person responsible for posting the allegedly infringing content to vouch for and take responsibility for the content. At this point, the safe harbor has served its purpose and the service provider need not worry about liability.
The question is now between the copyright holder and the person responsible. The only sensible next step is to take the question to a court or drop it. Allowing repeated demands that the content be taken down would give WAY too much power to the copyright holder. The law has served its purpose and prevented anonymous copyright violation since someone came forward and took responsibility by filing the notice of fair use with the service provider.
The penalties for violation of process are critical. It's unreasonable to expect YouTube or other service providers to do anything other than comply with a take-down notice since that is the only way they can really be sure of satisfying the safe harbor requirements. The penalty section of the law gives a legitimate fair-user a mechanism to prevent abuse.
This was CLEARLY fair use and it was CLEARLY abuse by the NFL. This law is bad enough; don't let it be made worse by allowing the few limits it DOES have to be ignored. Take-down notices are serious legal documents and should not be issued lightly/automatically. I hope this is prosecuted vigorously.
Also, it is significantly better to have as much oxygen as possible while preventing fire -- flooding the center with pure nitrogen would be deadly unless you stopped while there was still enough O2 to breathe. According to the warning signs on the doors of the labs where I work, two breaths of pure nitrogen will knock you unconscious without any warning at all. Death will follow quickly...
I'd not argue at all with the prospect if we could see the future, insurance wouldn't work. However, that's not what is meant by perfect information. You can have random factors in the future of perfect information. If everyone has perfect information, it simply means that the past and current state of the "game" (or market) is known to everyone -- that the seller can't trick the buyer into paying too much by, say, deceiving him about costs and probabilities.
Of course, if we knew exactly what medical procedures were going to be needed by each person, there'd be no way for insurance to work. The uncertainty makes it a viable business model. But it doesn't rely on imperfect information in the game theoretical sense, it merely relies on probabilities/standard deviations as the other poster pointed out. I think the odds that we limit those to the point where the business model falters in general are pretty slim.
Why can't it? It's trivially obvious that it's more expensive, on average, to have insurance than to pay costs out of pocket because the insurance companies have to profit somehow. However, most of us can't possibly afford the worst-case medical bills that could arise and be covered by insurance if we were unlucky enough to need it. Therefore, we don't pay extra for insurance because we're misinformed, we pay for it to spread the cost of unlikely expenses over a large number of people.
Hey, I just looked at the numbers you quoted. The distribution may not be uniform across markets, but it's an uphill battle to argue that the GC outperformed the Xbox from a game developer's point of view. The first-order analysis says its market share, overall, is smaller. If you want to claim that a more detailed analysis will show otherwise, you've got to have some evidence. Merely pointing out that it might possibly be that way isn't very convincing.
Your point about ratios is well taken. I don't think that 10% vs 2% changes things significantly, though. The GC still sold fewer units. Barring very special circumstances, it's hard to imagine this making it more attractive.
Anyway, I still maintain it's perfectly objective to refer to th GC as the third place console in this context (assuming your numbers were correct). That is not a loaded statement and does not mean "GC is teh suxxorz kekekekekeke w00t." It just reflects that it sold the fewest units of the three. On its face, that fact makes it less attractive to port games to.
There may be other considerations that can make up for this. As you point out, if a game is only intended for a market that the GC did well in, that's an exception. If a game is easier to develop on th GC hardware, that might offset the overall smaller market. Etc., etc. Still, I'm sure Nintendo would have preferred to have sold more units. Overall, they finished third.
Well, I don't actually have a problem paying a high (within reason) price if the service is actually good. I've been with Speakeasy DSL for the better part of 7 years now and have been very impressed with them. In addition to good service, they have a very open approach to their customers about maintenance issues and their policies are very much in the spirit of the Internet as a free medium for information exchange (not just as a download pipe). They're more expensive than other alternatives -- I am paying about $50 per month for 1.5M/384k, but I really feel it's worth it to reward an ISP who does the "I" and "S" parts right.
That's really been my issue with other ISPs, and I feel cable ISPs have been particularly bad about both service and about trying to prevent users from actually using their connection as a two-way pipe.
and (yes) computer upgrades to facilitate gaming (are there really any other kinds?)
Yeah, upgrades to do home video editing. That takes a butt load of disk space. That's going to be my next upgrade. Yes, I just answered your rhetorical question. Sorry... no offense intended..:-)
I don't think this is the same sonar that's causing animal problems. That is mostly due to large, extremely high-power long-range sonars. I can't imagine this system being useful over the kinds of ranges where you'd be blasting that much sonar power.
Well, according to TFA their policy of canceling you for "excessive" use is in the service agreement. If so, they're well within their rights to cancel the service of anyone who they consider to be using excessive bandwidth with only whatever notification is specified in that service agreement. According to others in this thread, they no longer advertise "unlimited" transfer, so there's really not much of an argument that they're under any obligation to have a specific cap. Personally, I'd bet that there really is no hard cap, but when someone (or someones) downloads enough to start impeding performance for other users on the subnet.
Of course, this kind of service crap is a big part of the reason I refuse to use their "service." I'm lucky to live in a place where there are viable alternatives. I'm not sure what I'd do if they were the only option.
Umm, what exactly is your point? It was the third place console. That means it sold fewer than the other two. More than 10% fewer than number two, by the numbers you cite. That's 10% fewer customers for a game, which is certainly significant to a game developer.
If you meant to cite the fact that the GC was more profitable to Nintendo since it was cheaper to manufacture, remember that a game developer doesn't care about that at all. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but that's really the only place I could see you post trying to go. Otherwise you're just challenging a simple fact as insignificant without much rationale. Given the obvious connection between number of consoles sold and audience size for a game, I think you need to do more than just assert insignificance.
(Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, we are looking at you).
Hey, I like to hate the Republicans as much as any slashdotter, but let's be fair. Everyone in the Senate except Russ Feingold and Mary Landrieu voted in favor of it -- and only Feingold voted against it. This one was actually a bipartisan clusterfuck.
It depends on the work. If a question can be answered in 30 seconds, that's true. If it takes 10 minutes, though, you might need longer just to do a couple. For elementary school it's more like the former, though advanced students toward the end of elementary school might have use of more complicated questions.
Slashdot Mirror
A rocket engine is just a glorified tube. Without the explosives that go inside, it's not going to hurt anybody. It's those explosives that are tightly controlled.
I think the gp means it's measured in logarithmic units (dBm = decibels relative to 1 milliWatt)
Hope you don't have kids... those little morons will eat anything.
I don't think that being immediately confrontational is good advice in any context. All it will do is piss off the other party and steel their resolve to bring as much harm to you as they can. This was an honest mistake -- the web designer (or his client) really was in violation of the law. If this goes to court, he (or his client) will almost certainly lose if the other party had even a modicum of sense to document the violation properly. They're not going to be intimidated out of pursuing this (especially not by the AC's ridiculous suggestion of threatening a countersuit for hacking... that's the silliest thing I've read in weeks, and I read a lot of slashdot). Given the circumstances, I think he was better off trying to placate them without litigation.
Still, it's probably not a good idea to take responsibility in writing before talking to the other party or their lawyer to determine how they're going to respond to it. If they are already resolved to absolutely demanding their $25k, then he'll really have no choice but to fight back and at that point, everything really better go through a lawyer.
Maybe he actually meant they "could care less." Just because they're running a despicable, heartless organization like the RIAA doesn't mean they don't have hopes, dreams, and feelings of their own! It hurts to be so hated! They sure could care less!
As someone closer to the middle between hardware and software, I want to echo what you said. For embedded systems and hardware work, knowing assembly and how it relates to the hardware you're using is very important. Quite likely you'll never need to implement anything computationally significant in it, but for bootstrapping, there's nothing more helpful than being able to step through the real source -- not the C source, the cycle by cycle opcodes that it compiled into. Especially if you have a modern compiler that thinks it's smarter than you are, there's no better way to see what your code is *really* doing.
It's also helpful when you have a brand new flavor of DSP on your board and even the manufacturer's own compiler gets things wrong... and then when it turns out there's a bug in the hardware, TOO. Not that that's happened to me... but it's a lot easier to get the engineers to take you seriously if you can tell them exactly what you're doing...
Did this really happen independently? If there was an arrangement to organize the various steps, then they're probably all guilty of conspiracy. It's hard to imagine this really happening in an even remotely plausible scenario. IMO, I think you'd be very hard pressed to claim that quoting ALL of the original was necessary and truly fair use, even in small pieces. I suspect that step one in your process would probably not fall under fair use. You almost never need to quote ALL of a every section to say what you want to say.
This is part of the reason that Congress would be foolish to try to specify quantitatively what constitutes fair use. You really have to judge in the context of the specific works involved. No, this is not as convenient as "X% of the work may be quoted," but I think it better serves justice in the long term.
That's why the courts respect precedent -- after a few cases get through the expensive system, a single interpretation will likely take hold and the landscape will be clearer.
Other than threats of physical violence or other illegal acts, I don't know that there's a problem. They're not in a position to advise you of your rights, you are responsible for your knowing those.
The way I see it, they basically say "We forbid you any rights to this material." They're not actually able to limit you any further than the law, but it's up to you to interpret the law correctly. If they disagree with your interpretation, they may well sue you. They're in a better position to get a conservative reading of your right to fair use because their statement advised you that they willingly grant you no rights. You therefore have the bare minimum allowed by law and can't claim , e.g., that they gave you implicit oral permission that you can't show a record of, or that your use was inadvertent under the mistaken good faith belief that the material was public domain.
Yeah, going to court over this would cost you money. That's a fact of life. In truth, though, their statement is meaningless if you obey copyright laws. You should be taking care to respect it with any material you use and run the risk of litigation any time you attempt fair use, or you'll get yourself into trouble.
Exactly.
The following is not meant to disagree with you (other than possibly on a small point, I can't tell from your post).
As far as I know, they're quite free to claim rights they don't actually have, so long as they don't actually take legally significant actions based on those statements. Similarly, I'm free to demand that you not take my picture while I'm standing in a public place. There's no legal requirement that I inform you that you are actually legally permitted to snap away (assuming you're not using my image for commercial purposes).
The law trumps their statement and it's up to the consumer to know his rights under the law. Their statement, perhaps sensibly, is stricter than what the law allows. They don't want you to be able to claim any rights to use their content beyond the bare minimum provided by law. Still, you are quite free to disregard any terms they've described that are stricter than the actual legal provisions. In the absence of a valid contract to the contrary, there simply is no mechanism for the NFL to add restrictions.
Of course, the DMCA take-down notices ARE legally significant. Making knowingly false statements means committing (IIRC) perjury. It's just possible that the original take-down notice may have been legitimate (although, honestly, no lawyer could possibly pass the bar and have a good faith belief that her use of the clip was in violation of the law, so even that is an EXTREMELY gracious statement). Once she filed her counter-notice, however, they can no longer claim this...
Umm, no, it's not pedantry. Although I'd argue that the DMCA is deeply flawed, this provision is one of the few palatable things about it. It provides a bit of balance -- the copyright holder can demand that the service provider immediately remove infringing content and the provider can escape liability by complying. This provision allows the person responsible for posting the allegedly infringing content to vouch for and take responsibility for the content. At this point, the safe harbor has served its purpose and the service provider need not worry about liability.
The question is now between the copyright holder and the person responsible. The only sensible next step is to take the question to a court or drop it. Allowing repeated demands that the content be taken down would give WAY too much power to the copyright holder. The law has served its purpose and prevented anonymous copyright violation since someone came forward and took responsibility by filing the notice of fair use with the service provider.
The penalties for violation of process are critical. It's unreasonable to expect YouTube or other service providers to do anything other than comply with a take-down notice since that is the only way they can really be sure of satisfying the safe harbor requirements. The penalty section of the law gives a legitimate fair-user a mechanism to prevent abuse.
This was CLEARLY fair use and it was CLEARLY abuse by the NFL. This law is bad enough; don't let it be made worse by allowing the few limits it DOES have to be ignored. Take-down notices are serious legal documents and should not be issued lightly/automatically. I hope this is prosecuted vigorously.
Hazzard pay? Is that what you get paid for running moonshine in the back of your stock car while avoiding Roscoe P. Coltrane and Boss Hogg?
Also, it is significantly better to have as much oxygen as possible while preventing fire -- flooding the center with pure nitrogen would be deadly unless you stopped while there was still enough O2 to breathe. According to the warning signs on the doors of the labs where I work, two breaths of pure nitrogen will knock you unconscious without any warning at all. Death will follow quickly...
I'd not argue at all with the prospect if we could see the future, insurance wouldn't work. However, that's not what is meant by perfect information. You can have random factors in the future of perfect information. If everyone has perfect information, it simply means that the past and current state of the "game" (or market) is known to everyone -- that the seller can't trick the buyer into paying too much by, say, deceiving him about costs and probabilities.
Of course, if we knew exactly what medical procedures were going to be needed by each person, there'd be no way for insurance to work. The uncertainty makes it a viable business model. But it doesn't rely on imperfect information in the game theoretical sense, it merely relies on probabilities/standard deviations as the other poster pointed out. I think the odds that we limit those to the point where the business model falters in general are pretty slim.
Why can't it? It's trivially obvious that it's more expensive, on average, to have insurance than to pay costs out of pocket because the insurance companies have to profit somehow. However, most of us can't possibly afford the worst-case medical bills that could arise and be covered by insurance if we were unlucky enough to need it. Therefore, we don't pay extra for insurance because we're misinformed, we pay for it to spread the cost of unlikely expenses over a large number of people.
Can you explain your statement further?
Hey, I just looked at the numbers you quoted. The distribution may not be uniform across markets, but it's an uphill battle to argue that the GC outperformed the Xbox from a game developer's point of view. The first-order analysis says its market share, overall, is smaller. If you want to claim that a more detailed analysis will show otherwise, you've got to have some evidence. Merely pointing out that it might possibly be that way isn't very convincing.
Your point about ratios is well taken. I don't think that 10% vs 2% changes things significantly, though. The GC still sold fewer units. Barring very special circumstances, it's hard to imagine this making it more attractive.
Anyway, I still maintain it's perfectly objective to refer to th GC as the third place console in this context (assuming your numbers were correct). That is not a loaded statement and does not mean "GC is teh suxxorz kekekekekeke w00t." It just reflects that it sold the fewest units of the three. On its face, that fact makes it less attractive to port games to.
There may be other considerations that can make up for this. As you point out, if a game is only intended for a market that the GC did well in, that's an exception. If a game is easier to develop on th GC hardware, that might offset the overall smaller market. Etc., etc. Still, I'm sure Nintendo would have preferred to have sold more units. Overall, they finished third.
Well, I don't actually have a problem paying a high (within reason) price if the service is actually good. I've been with Speakeasy DSL for the better part of 7 years now and have been very impressed with them. In addition to good service, they have a very open approach to their customers about maintenance issues and their policies are very much in the spirit of the Internet as a free medium for information exchange (not just as a download pipe). They're more expensive than other alternatives -- I am paying about $50 per month for 1.5M/384k, but I really feel it's worth it to reward an ISP who does the "I" and "S" parts right.
That's really been my issue with other ISPs, and I feel cable ISPs have been particularly bad about both service and about trying to prevent users from actually using their connection as a two-way pipe.
I don't think this is the same sonar that's causing animal problems. That is mostly due to large, extremely high-power long-range sonars. I can't imagine this system being useful over the kinds of ranges where you'd be blasting that much sonar power.
Well, according to TFA their policy of canceling you for "excessive" use is in the service agreement. If so, they're well within their rights to cancel the service of anyone who they consider to be using excessive bandwidth with only whatever notification is specified in that service agreement. According to others in this thread, they no longer advertise "unlimited" transfer, so there's really not much of an argument that they're under any obligation to have a specific cap. Personally, I'd bet that there really is no hard cap, but when someone (or someones) downloads enough to start impeding performance for other users on the subnet.
Of course, this kind of service crap is a big part of the reason I refuse to use their "service." I'm lucky to live in a place where there are viable alternatives. I'm not sure what I'd do if they were the only option.
Umm, what exactly is your point? It was the third place console. That means it sold fewer than the other two. More than 10% fewer than number two, by the numbers you cite. That's 10% fewer customers for a game, which is certainly significant to a game developer.
If you meant to cite the fact that the GC was more profitable to Nintendo since it was cheaper to manufacture, remember that a game developer doesn't care about that at all. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but that's really the only place I could see you post trying to go. Otherwise you're just challenging a simple fact as insignificant without much rationale. Given the obvious connection between number of consoles sold and audience size for a game, I think you need to do more than just assert insignificance.
It depends on the work. If a question can be answered in 30 seconds, that's true. If it takes 10 minutes, though, you might need longer just to do a couple. For elementary school it's more like the former, though advanced students toward the end of elementary school might have use of more complicated questions.