I applaud the spirit of this lawsuit, especially in light of such bright government ideas as this that are coming our way, but it misses one crucial point: the ID requirement is not attached to allowing people to travel, it's attached to allowing them into a position to get control of a powerful guided missile. From a security standpoint, the fact that the plane is actually going anywhere is incidental. The writers of the Constitution were opposed to people's movements being restricted, which to them pretty much meant stopping people on the road. I don't think they would have seen an airplane ride in exactly the same way, but we'll never know.
Planes are also are private property, and although the government appears in this case to be the prime mover, it wouldn't be unconstitutional for the airlines themselves, or say, a movie theater, to require photo ID for admission. It is an uncomfortable thought, but we live in the world we live in. I know, people who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither, but how often do you run red lights or drive in the wrong lane to feel like you are more free?
If you want to protect your freedom, fight things like corporate lobbyism, which has turned democracy into government-by-bribery. And have a safe trip!
"Forgent and a national law firm, who has made and continues to make a significant investment to develop Forgent's IP licensing program, are the sole beneficiaries of the patent license revenue."
Hmmm, notice that the law firm is not named. Maybe anonymity is in its contract with Forgent. Just in case you feel compelled to comment to Forgent, here's the contact info on their page:
Forgent Media Relations: Hedy Baker, 512/437-2789 hedy_baker@forgent.com
Some of the other patents mentioned as references are either a good laugh or a sad commentary on our patent system, depending on what mood you're in:
5366276 - delivering music over the Internet. 5944790 - localization. 5930474 - using clickable maps as a UI.
Patents like the above are free money for bottom-third-of-their-class lawyers. Patent searches used to mean something, but obviously a software patent search is almost wasted effort nowadays. I wonder why the software industry as a body hasn't raised hell by this time? If a few of the bigger companies kicked in the missing $33 million or whatever with no strings attached, they would probably save themselves many times that in nuisance litigation.
Or, how about funding the Patent Office with a royalty system? Say the gubmint gets a 1% royalty on every patent they grant? Sure, more big brother, but it would give the Patent Office itself financial incentive to investigate and determine infringement, and to become more capable at determining which patents are enforceable. Both things would automatically benefit legitimate patent holders.
Depicting advertising in the future is not all that uncommon in sci-fi; it's a good way to make social commentary. But it's hard to tell if Minority Report was done in that spirit, or if the whole movie was engineered from scratch as the perfect product placement platform.
When somebody yells, "I AM NOT YELLING!!!" it might be funny, but they're still yelling.
When the tv industry, which has a history of being hyper-cautious about alienating viewers, is willing to do something this utterly annoying, it's very revealing. They must be pretty damn close to the end if they are desperate enough to pull crap like this.
Remember, television viewers are not customers, they are product. The television industry's customers are advertisers. You can pretty much convince human beings to buy crap, because we've been conditioned to spend money to raise our self esteem. But you can't do that with advertisers. They emotionlessly buy raw numbers of eyeballs.
Just as the banner ad business model didn't pan out on the web; now we have ads that march out in front of the content. After decades with little or no in-home media competition, television is finally facing the same problem with its banners. The sheer volume of alternatives is going to drive people away in both cases. It's an interesting time in history. Like the recording industry, TV is a sleeping giant, awakening to find that the nice cool ice it's been sleeping on has gotten too thin to stand on.
Wow! This is great news! Think of the vast sea of unknown music as Open Source, and the tiny-by-comparison but hugely more hyped body of popular music as Closed Source. There are many parallels. Wider exposure for local musicians is the kind of the thing the Internet was supposed to be all about. And it's a necessary step toward eradicating the music industry.
Whenever I read about another complex taxation scheme, I like to work out some numbers. Kind of like asking a charity how much of your contribution actually does the good you have in mind, vs hiring more people to annoy you with phone calls.
Transport for London, the gov't agency responsible for the fee plan, says on their website that about 250,000 people drive into the designated area daily. Their plan is to reduce this traffic by 10-15% and generate "up to" L130 million for public transit.
Okay, if traffic drops 15%, that leaves 212,500 commuters paying the L5/day fee. With about 250 working days/year this should bring in 212,500 * L5 * 250 = L265,625,000 in revenue per year. Nice chunk of change, my dad would say. That's if everybody just pays the L5 and not the L120 fine for cheating.
So they have to take in more than L260 million to end up with L130 million in usable cash? That means every L5 fee costs more than L2.50 to collect. Is this a worthwhile way to collect taxes?
Distributing offline media - like SPAM?
on
Net-Nexus Seoul
·
· Score: 2
Bandwidth capital of the world, eh? Maybe that explains why I had to resort to filtering EVERYTHING from.kr out of my email. No, I didn't read the article, but I just love the quote, "American media companies were just using online capacity to distribute offline media."
Jesus Christ! Look at the amount of information on that screen. I hope I never run into this guy in heavy traffic while he's talking on his cell phone and scrolling through his Jimmy Eat World tracks.
Taking a copyright on silence seriously, or taking silence as art seriously. Either one is a joke. I wish people could just have a nice laugh and move on, without adding crap like this to an already abused court system. I'm picking my nose right now. I hereby copyright it. If you also are picking your nose right now, I order you to cease and desist!
The music industry is certainly a wacky bunch of madcap zanies. It pains me that eventually they and their kind are pretty much going to OWN your computer, everything you put on it, and your right to put anything on it that they don't own. We lived through a golden age (the 90's), but it's end is near.
Interesting article, good coverage of the history of this particular rock and similar cases, but the main reason I read to the end of the thing was to understand how in the hell a ROCK can be the defendant in a court case. No explanation of that wacky concept at all.
Okay, we've all bitched about it. So now, what are the alternatives? I'm ignorant of generic media players other than "the" Media Player. What are the good ones that will run under Windows? There must be a way to uninstall or disable Media Player and still run Windows. I don't see it in Add/Remove Programs, but have not yet checked Windows Setup. How about hacking the registry, or a stub that replaces Media Player so you can pretend to leave it in place? These things are a bit beyond my experience. What about it, Win hackers?
The Music Industry is only hanging on because they have legally enforceable contracts which musicians continue to sign. The Industry currently performs two functions: promotion, and making copies for people who can't do it themselves (or are afraid to). As more bands promote themselves on the Internet, and these kiosks take over the copy-making function, there will eventually be no reason for a musician to sign one of those contracts.
This might be a naive viewpoint, but I don't think NPR can own anything any more than NASA owns space pictures. I like their programming but they tend to be quite self-righteous, and I think what we're seeing is that same mentality that whatever they say is so. Just ignore it.
Somewhat off topic, I apologize in advance... Following various Lem links just now, I read some description of one of his stories, His Master's Voice, which were not what I expected. I thought His Master's Voice was a story about genetically intelligent dogs who serve as research assistants for human scientists. In the story I am thinking of, one particularly bright dog spends most of the time piecing together some vital information for his under-appreciative master. If anybody remembers this story I would love to know the title and author.
What's happening to musicians is a return to the way life used to be for all the centuries before recording technology, when the lucky ones who got paid at all got paid to perform, and that was it. There was this one century when people who owned expensive machinery could make tons of money cranking out copies of music and dribbling out a tiny percentage to musicians. Very few musicians got rich from these dribbles. Most continues to make money entirely, or nearly so, from performing. In the current century the copy-cranking industry is becoming obsolete, and the extra dribbles are going away. The first musicians to make this transition are going to be the ones whose fans are most aware of non-dribble technology.
A year or two ago somebody wrote in to Ask Slashdot to get ideas for a project that involved giving handhelds to hundreds or maybe thousands of kids all over the world, and seeing what they did with them. Anybody know what happened to that? Did it happen yet?
Re:Replication or Recreation -- not an easy questi
on
Laser Beam Teleported
·
· Score: 2
Another thought -- it's very possible that location is a quantum effect, and "normal" movement is subatomic particles popping out of existence and reappearing a distance-quantum away. If that turns out to be the case, then what we call teleportation is the same thing as normal movement, just covering a larger distance with each jump.
Replication or Recreation -- not an easy question
on
Laser Beam Teleported
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The blueprint analogy shows a lack of understanding of entanglement. There is no blueprint at the receiving end, and no measurement and communication of instructions to replicate the properties of the sending photon. What happens is a seemingly spontaneous change in the properties of the receiving photon.
Whether this is teleportation or replication is more of a philosophical question, or maybe a matter of semantics. Is an object (or a laser beam) equal to the sum of its properties? If you can make the sum total of an object's quantum properties disappear from one place and reappear in another place, have you merely copied the object or have you moved it?
I think you've moved it, but questions like these deserve more than offhanded answers.
Slashdot Mirror
I applaud the spirit of this lawsuit, especially in light of such bright government ideas as this that are coming our way, but it misses one crucial point: the ID requirement is not attached to allowing people to travel, it's attached to allowing them into a position to get control of a powerful guided missile. From a security standpoint, the fact that the plane is actually going anywhere is incidental. The writers of the Constitution were opposed to people's movements being restricted, which to them pretty much meant stopping people on the road. I don't think they would have seen an airplane ride in exactly the same way, but we'll never know.
Planes are also are private property, and although the government appears in this case to be the prime mover, it wouldn't be unconstitutional for the airlines themselves, or say, a movie theater, to require photo ID for admission. It is an uncomfortable thought, but we live in the world we live in. I know, people who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither, but how often do you run red lights or drive in the wrong lane to feel like you are more free?
If you want to protect your freedom, fight things like corporate lobbyism, which has turned democracy into government-by-bribery. And have a safe trip!
Read their page and you'll know:
"Forgent and a national law firm, who has made and continues to make a significant investment to develop Forgent's IP licensing program, are the sole beneficiaries of the patent license revenue."
Hmmm, notice that the law firm is not named. Maybe anonymity is in its contract with Forgent. Just in case you feel compelled to comment to Forgent, here's the contact info on their page:
Forgent Media Relations:
Hedy Baker, 512/437-2789
hedy_baker@forgent.com
Some of the other patents mentioned as references are either a good laugh or a sad commentary on our patent system, depending on what mood you're in:
5366276 - delivering music over the Internet.
5944790 - localization.
5930474 - using clickable maps as a UI.
Patents like the above are free money for bottom-third-of-their-class lawyers. Patent searches used to mean something, but obviously a software patent search is almost wasted effort nowadays. I wonder why the software industry as a body hasn't raised hell by this time? If a few of the bigger companies kicked in the missing $33 million or whatever with no strings attached, they would probably save themselves many times that in nuisance litigation.
Or, how about funding the Patent Office with a royalty system? Say the gubmint gets a 1% royalty on every patent they grant? Sure, more big brother, but it would give the Patent Office itself financial incentive to investigate and determine infringement, and to become more capable at determining which patents are enforceable. Both things would automatically benefit legitimate patent holders.
Depicting advertising in the future is not all that uncommon in sci-fi; it's a good way to make social commentary. But it's hard to tell if Minority Report was done in that spirit, or if the whole movie was engineered from scratch as the perfect product placement platform.
When somebody yells, "I AM NOT YELLING!!!" it might be funny, but they're still yelling.
When the tv industry, which has a history of being hyper-cautious about alienating viewers, is willing to do something this utterly annoying, it's very revealing. They must be pretty damn close to the end if they are desperate enough to pull crap like this.
Remember, television viewers are not customers, they are product. The television industry's customers are advertisers. You can pretty much convince human beings to buy crap, because we've been conditioned to spend money to raise our self esteem. But you can't do that with advertisers. They emotionlessly buy raw numbers of eyeballs.
Just as the banner ad business model didn't pan out on the web; now we have ads that march out in front of the content. After decades with little or no in-home media competition, television is finally facing the same problem with its banners. The sheer volume of alternatives is going to drive people away in both cases. It's an interesting time in history. Like the recording industry, TV is a sleeping giant, awakening to find that the nice cool ice it's been sleeping on has gotten too thin to stand on.
Self destructing big media. I like it!
Wow! This is great news! Think of the vast sea of unknown music as Open Source, and the tiny-by-comparison but hugely more hyped body of popular music as Closed Source. There are many parallels.
Wider exposure for local musicians is the kind of the thing the Internet was supposed to be all about. And it's a necessary step toward eradicating the music industry.
Whenever I read about another complex taxation scheme, I like to work out some numbers. Kind of like asking a charity how much of your contribution actually does the good you have in mind, vs hiring more people to annoy you with phone calls.
Transport for London, the gov't agency responsible for the fee plan, says on their website that about 250,000 people drive into the designated area daily. Their plan is to reduce this traffic by 10-15% and generate "up to" L130 million for public transit.
Okay, if traffic drops 15%, that leaves 212,500 commuters paying the L5/day fee. With about 250 working days/year this should bring in 212,500 * L5 * 250 = L265,625,000 in revenue per year. Nice chunk of change, my dad would say. That's if everybody just pays the L5 and not the L120 fine for cheating.
So they have to take in more than L260 million to end up with L130 million in usable cash? That means every L5 fee costs more than L2.50 to collect. Is this a worthwhile way to collect taxes?
Bandwidth capital of the world, eh? Maybe that explains why I had to resort to filtering EVERYTHING from .kr out of my email. No, I didn't read the article, but I just love the quote, "American media companies were just using online capacity to distribute offline media."
Jesus Christ! Look at the amount of information on that screen. I hope I never run into this guy in heavy traffic while he's talking on his cell phone and scrolling through his Jimmy Eat World tracks.
Taking a copyright on silence seriously, or taking silence as art seriously. Either one is a joke. I wish people could just have a nice laugh and move on, without adding crap like this to an already abused court system. I'm picking my nose right now. I hereby copyright it. If you also are picking your nose right now, I order you to cease and desist!
The music industry is certainly a wacky bunch of madcap zanies. It pains me that eventually they and their kind are pretty much going to OWN your computer, everything you put on it, and your right to put anything on it that they don't own. We lived through a golden age (the 90's), but it's end is near.
Daughter of William P. Lear, inventor of the jet autopilot and of course the Learjet.
Interesting article, good coverage of the history of this particular rock and similar cases, but the main reason I read to the end of the thing was to understand how in the hell a ROCK can be the defendant in a court case. No explanation of that wacky concept at all.
Okay, we've all bitched about it. So now, what are the alternatives? I'm ignorant of generic media players other than "the" Media Player. What are the good ones that will run under Windows? There must be a way to uninstall or disable Media Player and still run Windows. I don't see it in Add/Remove Programs, but have not yet checked Windows Setup. How about hacking the registry, or a stub that replaces Media Player so you can pretend to leave it in place? These things are a bit beyond my experience. What about it, Win hackers?
DOH!!
...Ick?"
But they can't install DRM software without my knowledge, can they? Or does MediaPlayer now contain stealthware?
"Hey Ick, you were just kidding about it exploding, right?
I don't think so!
Or would a more realistic question be what didn't they threaten them with?
The Music Industry is only hanging on because they have legally enforceable contracts which musicians continue to sign. The Industry currently performs two functions: promotion, and making copies for people who can't do it themselves (or are afraid to). As more bands promote themselves on the Internet, and these kiosks take over the copy-making function, there will eventually be no reason for a musician to sign one of those contracts.
Poof.
This might be a naive viewpoint, but I don't think NPR can own anything any more than NASA owns space pictures. I like their programming but they tend to be quite self-righteous, and I think what we're seeing is that same mentality that whatever they say is so. Just ignore it.
Somewhat off topic, I apologize in advance... Following various Lem links just now, I read some description of one of his stories, His Master's Voice, which were not what I expected. I thought His Master's Voice was a story about genetically intelligent dogs who serve as research assistants for human scientists. In the story I am thinking of, one particularly bright dog spends most of the time piecing together some vital information for his under-appreciative master. If anybody remembers this story I would love to know the title and author.
What's happening to musicians is a return to the way life used to be for all the centuries before recording technology, when the lucky ones who got paid at all got paid to perform, and that was it. There was this one century when people who owned expensive machinery could make tons of money cranking out copies of music and dribbling out a tiny percentage to musicians. Very few musicians got rich from these dribbles. Most continues to make money entirely, or nearly so, from performing. In the current century the copy-cranking industry is becoming obsolete, and the extra dribbles are going away. The first musicians to make this transition are going to be the ones whose fans are most aware of non-dribble technology.
Makes sense to me.
Whenever a company comes up with something like this, I have to wonder if somebody really is putting LSD in our water supply.
A year or two ago somebody wrote in to Ask Slashdot to get ideas for a project that involved giving handhelds to hundreds or maybe thousands of kids all over the world, and seeing what they did with them. Anybody know what happened to that?
Did it happen yet?
Another thought -- it's very possible that location is a quantum effect, and "normal" movement is subatomic particles popping out of existence and reappearing a distance-quantum away. If that turns out to be the case, then what we call teleportation is the same thing as normal movement, just covering a larger distance with each jump.
The blueprint analogy shows a lack of understanding of entanglement. There is no blueprint at the receiving end, and no measurement and communication of instructions to replicate the properties of the sending photon. What happens is a seemingly spontaneous change in the properties of the receiving photon.
Whether this is teleportation or replication is more of a philosophical question, or maybe a matter of semantics. Is an object (or a laser beam) equal to the sum of its properties? If you can make the sum total of an object's quantum properties disappear from one place and reappear in another place, have you merely copied the object or have you moved it?
I think you've moved it, but questions like these deserve more than offhanded answers.