The technology (intelligence) to stop ANYONE from imposing on your communication is there already. Ifyou want to be sure that people are not imposing on your communications the choice is yours (see GPG, pgpPhone, etc). Making this a law (violence) can only be harmful, the effort is better spend allowing the technologies to mature and proliferate.
This is actually quite elitist. I see what you're getting at, but this requires that you go to the effort to make sure that you're communications are private which assumes:
You know that it's a problem.
You know how to deal with it.
Now, that's two BIG assumptions and very little protection for the vast majority who simply don't think about this sort of thing and who are those at greatest need of protection. Far better to make this sort of thing illegal without very good reason - similar to search warrants in principle.
An interesting question re: whether this could be bypassed by getting foreign intelligence services to do the monitoring though. That's horribly against the spirit of the proposal, but a thought:
The original amendment only covered the US government and their agencies (to my eyes, anyway) simply as there wasn't a practical risk of them calling in (say) the Canadian police and getting them to perform the search. Even if they could legally without being authorised by the US police, at which point they'd come under their jurisdiction and regulations anway?
Anyway, this isn't the case with phones and it certainly isn't the case with the Internet. Could the amended amendment therefore be modified to:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, effects, and all personal communications, regardless of medium, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue or information gained by outside agents be acted upon, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This is getting rather chewy but it's my best effort at covering this one.
DISCLAIMER: I'm British, not a lawyer and don't automatically agree with all of the US constitution and its subsequent amendments. This one does make sense, though. I'm also happy if anyone wants to moan at me for interference in foreign politics, though I'd consider this a proposal for a similar law in the UK if we haven't already got one that I hadn't noticed.
Over here in the UK, there was some fun recently as Xiang Zemin was visiting. He'd let it be known when visiting Switzerland recently that he looked dimly on hosts allowing protesters against his governments human rights record - especially WRT Tibet - to get within his sight. So, the Police, apparently without request, forced back protesters and made sure that Xiang would be unaware of their existence by anything other than implication. Partly showing that Britain isn't fantastic, but China definitely isn't. You can guess what sort of press reaction there was to a protester who broke through the barriers and started running in his general direction waving a flag getting a soldier chasing him with a bayonet.
Two things to remember - China executes more per year than the rest of the world put together. And the USA frequently gets moaned at by Amnesty International about the death sentence, not least as many would feel that the reasons for the Supreme Court removing the death penalty all those years ago still exist.
Yes, that's corrrect. Taiwan and China are still one and the same country officially IIRC, but Taiwan is definitely not communist. IIRC, the old government fled there during the revolution, which meant that for quite some time afterwards, THEY held the Chinese seat at the UN, not mainland China...
I can't remember the precise details (sorry...) as I did this quite some time ago, but...
Fairly near the beginning of the war, we got the Polish codebreaking team to come across to the UK. They'd managed to work out a device which had a number of enigma machines - 4 or 5, I think - operating linked with some complicated extra doohickys, and _that_ gave them limited decryption facilities. I don't know how good it was, but that was the original Polish device.
I agree that, in many big ways, the current implementation sucks bigtime. I can't see the mp3.com business model taking over as it is right now simply as music's still too reliant on publicity for this to truly work. But it's a definite improvement. What I was arguing for, though, was the principle that you have a company who are paid to organise studio facilities, press and promote records and generally free the band up to play and write, though not necessarily in that order:) Right now there's too little music and too much business, but the general idea of that sort of company is a good one, which was my problem with the original poster.
[Semantics]
Yes, it does appear that IP is becoming a confised term:) I can't see it dropping out of use unfortunately as it's a lot shorter to type than copyright... Still, I would expect to see it defined as copyright rather than patent, hence my line of arguing. I'd have thought it was pretty clear from my argument, though, and I'd definitely have said our original poster was suggesting that copyright be removed from software, having the effect of making all software GPL to all intents and purposes, which I'd see as a Bad Thing.
It's definitely not trademarks:)
As an aside, I still support _some_ software patents (not many...) and would actually judge that we might get even bigger lawyers battles without them as we'd get some tortuous arguments trying to cover some of the same sort of thing with copyright. Which would be interesting...
For the one man and his dog who find this;) sorry it's a bit late - I've been AFK all weekend.
I like the idea of uprigth PDAs as I can (theoretically, at least!) use them on the move. As a pure machine, I much prefer Psion's 5 and Revo. But would I get one? No, because I'd have to put them down to use them, which substantally reduces the benefits of having a machine in my pocket.
... At which point you see my problem with this device. A wonderful idea, but I'd still have to put it down to use it. I might as well have bought a Psion after all.
However, look at that Revo again. It's tiny. Not as small as a Palm 5, but still tiny. Now, take the keyboard from that, but rotate it through 90 degrees so you don't have a qwerty keyboard but you've got a ^zaq1 keyboard. Move the keys around a little to make it easier to use and turn the decals round so it's easier to identify the keys, but you begin to get the idea. Now, something like that could easily enough be built in a format that would plug into the Palm's sync connector like this keyboard and then fold up over the screen as a lid. Give it a hinge stable enough that it all stays upright, and you've got a keyboard that can be easily used with a Palm while on the move.
People have been making great music for eons out of the pure love of making music. Many of the greatest composers and seminal musicians died dirt poor but loved making music. Making money is fine since you have to eat, but I don't believe that it is the only force at work when it comes to creative endeavors and quality workmanship. Innate curiosity and pride are just as important. For every AT&T and K&R, there is an RMS and Torvalds.
I love making music for my own entertainment too, but how many have heard it? Very few. Now, I'm not the best in the world by some margin, but would I have ever come across the works of so many of the artists I love if they weren't being paid to make music by their record companies, who then sold recordings? No way. And would their output have been so great? Unlikely, as they'd have had to find other ways of supporting themselves. Yes, there are examples of people being poor for their art, but why should they have to make the choice? Art should be valued and rewarded.
As for films, can you really see anyone being able to produce films on the scale of the Star Wars series, T2, Twelve Monkeys... for almost no financial reward? No way. I don't pretend that budget and quality are directly proportional, but I certainly appreciate the immersive qualities of well made modern drama.
If there is a real need for spreadsheet functionality that is was not being met with an existing product, more people would probably devote their energy to it. Conversely, if the concept of a spreadsheet could be made IP by a patent, then this limits competition and, hence the possibility of better products, since it allows the owner of the IP to improve his product at a snails pace or not at all without worrying about having to compete.
Note I'm not arguing in favour of software patents - as far as I'm concerned, the idea of patenting the concept of a spreadsheet would be entirely ludicrous, as with many patents that are unfortunately issued today. Patents have a place, but software is rarely it.
Simply put, I belive that the anti-competitive nature of software IP is bad for society since it allows sloppy implementations to go unchallenged.
Er, no. Software patents may allow sloppy implementations to go unchallenged - if someone were able to patent the spreadsheet, for example - but software IP does not. Software IP stops me from putting my Battlezone CD in my CD-ROM and a £1 CD-R disc in my CD-RW, copying one to the other and selling the copy, thus allowing me to deprive an artist (yes, I regard software, entertainment especially, as a work of art) of the reward they've earned. Removing IP from software would lead to exactly that scenario, instantly.
Regardless of the freedom of the underlying ideas, the person or company with the best implementations of the ideas in a product will be rewarded. And this is as it should be.
Which is my argument not yours, surely? I'm saying that software deserves reward and that IP (only very rarely patent) is the way to protect that reward. Whereas you're arguing for the removal of IP rights, making reward improbable at best. Perhaps you are confusing IP with patents?
Then take Windows. Much as I dislike it, too... Now, remove it. How many home PCs do you have?
Plenty. Without M$'s anticompetitive behavior, there would probably have been a much healthier mix. Better yet, if Apple didn't have so many GUI lawyers and supposed GUI IP, I'm sure we would be much further along now than we are.
I wouldn't dispute that Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviour has distorted the market unhealthily (ditto Apple with their claim on the IP of an idea they borrowed from Xerox who'd developed it from other systems anyway...) but you're missing the point by a mile here. Microsoft are merely the example that has succeeded. Remove IP from the equation and what you end up with is no-one able to afford to develop anything even remotely like Windows - which, much as I dislike it personally, was a big help to getting proper computers into the home. So, we'd perhaps have GNOME/KDE (assuming either had been developed in the first place wihich is a trifle unlikely without Windows as a target or the extra users and developers it brought into the market) and the mess they're currently in. Quite nice, but as good for the average user as Windows? No way. Nowhere near easy enough to use.
They will survive if they produce the best products! That is, if they produce a product that I need and cannot (or do not have time to) create myself. I'm not saying that they should all have to roll over and die and just give away their source, only that they shouldn't be able to sue their competitor out of business if he tries to make a better version of the product based on similar ideas - because, as a consumer, I'm going to want to buy that better version that would never had appeared if the IP lawyers had their way.
Again, you confuse IP (copyright) with patents. Two very different issues. Remove IP and they simply can't afford to develop the best software as R&D costs money so if they can't recoup that by sales as anyone can sell the fruit of their labours without giving them a penny - the result of removing IP. That situation would be horrible, to put it bluntly.
It is just plain silly that someone can claim to own an idea simply because they got to the patent office first!
With a large number of software patents, I agree wholeheartedly. But that wasn't what we were talking about.
I don't believe for a second that M$ would go out of business if they were unable to "enforce" their IP. They do, after all, have a pretty functional WYSIWYG word processor along with office and such. Even if anyone could violate M$'s "software patents", the would still have to come up with an implementation of the software which is better than M$'s - and that's a nontrivial task.
I don't dispute that, but they wouldn't have to complete this nontrivial task, they'd just be able to duplicate Word CDs and sell them themselves. This would cut prices due to the extra competition, but would send quality through the floor as there'd be no money for MS (and others) to develop the next version with, so we'd be stuck with insignificant, piecemeal upgrades whenever they happened to find a few coins around.
Bottom line - IP restricts competition. Competition is a good thing for society at large. It makes businesses work harder, but we all win because implementations of ideas are going to be better when more than one team can run with the idea.
NO. IP only restricts the right of competition in sales, which is entirely justifiable. Patents may restrict competition in development, but it depends on the patent concerned. Under certain conditions, a patent is entirely justifiable, even for software. If something's the product of years of research, that research costs money. Is the product something fundamentally new? If so, then they should be able to protect the results of their investment. Otherwise, you end up with others being able to ride on the back of their investment for free, therefore undercutting them and removing the incentive to research. Do I think all patents are justifiable? No, some are patently ludicrous and should never have been granted. But some are entirely legitimate.
This wasn't the issue, though. The issue was IP, copyright. Remove copyright with software and the media and, due to the non-trivial development costs but entirely trivial manufacturing and distribution costs, the business goes under and the world is poorer in many ways as no-one can afford to do the work they were doing.
Red Dwarf covered this one in another episode as well:)
Series V, 'Demons and Angels' IIRC. Lister had a spinal implant inserted by the bad crew, who then proceeded to remootely control him to try and wipe out the normal crew. Meant we get all sorts of wonderful lines like 'Look out, I'm going to kill you!' and the wonderful scene where Lister's trying desperately to shoot the crew but is warning them which was his next shot's going to go so that they can avoid it.
The end scene's the one I'd be worried about if I was Professor Warwick, though. He accidentally sits on the chip again after it's been removed, then Rimmer and the Cat use the remote control to make lister repeatedly slap himself...
Oh, why can't we all ignore him? Yes, he's interested in some things that sound potentially cool, but is this expecially serious research? No, it's a way of getting more funding for his department - his main skill, if we're going to be honest. Take his previous implant - not actually powerful enough to be of any use or to actually do what he said it could, but it sounded interesting so the press picked up on it.
I've actually had a few lectures from him as part of an introductory course to Cybernetics that I did in my first year (I'm a computer science student at Reading Uni, the first year crosses over a bit on the two courses). Did we learn anything? No way. He sat us down in front of videos about robots that could walk badly, juggle badly or kill each other. We got the occasional joke, a bit of self-publicity as (what a surprise!) an interview with him predicting that robots will take over the world fairly soon cropped up on one of the tapes. Does this sound like a serious scientist at the cutting edge of research to you?
This guy is a joke in his own department, with a reputation for embellishing the truth regarding his department's work and their abilities. Demos regularly get rigged to make it look like they're better than they are for the cameras. It was a running joke that the earlier implant was (lack of power ignored for humour purposes) a bit like an electronic tag for a criminal in its function - other staff wanted to be able to track him, make sure he wasn't in the wrong place and be able to avoid him.
Please, we have a publicist here, not a scientist. If we can stop reporting his every word as a new breakthrough, we might actually notice the genuine work out there.
As an aside, I'm very worried about any doctor who's prepared to put in such an implant. The idea of being able to montor his nervous impulses is an intriguing one and potentially useful, but where's the real attention here? The playback mode. Do we really know enough about the nervous system to say that it's truly safe to wire something into his nerves and then have it transmitting its own signals? This is just dangerous.
Didn't say they did, but the original poster was saying that we've all sniffed a bit of Freon, haven't we? Freon is not a recreational drug, it's a refrigerant. Hence, inhaling freon to try and get high is substance abuse.
I would personally regard using certain recreational drugs as substance abuse, and alcoholism is often regarded as a form of substance abuse and I certainly referred to that (albeit on a very low level). But Freon was the sbject and there there's no doubt.
If you want to kill practical computing for average users, this is a good way to do it. Ditto if you want to kill the music or film industries. Publishing is safe as long as people still like paper due to the non-trivial effort and cost to duplicate that, but it'd be stuffed as well as soon as e-books became widely accepted.
Why did George Lucas and Fox put down quite so much money and effort on producing the Star Wars films? Because they knew they could sell them. Why did Vertigo and Mettalica put so much time, effort and money into recording Load? Because they could sell it. And why did AT&T fund Bell Labs - specifically Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan in their development of Unix and C? Because they could - well, could then:) - sell the results. You can argue with my taste in films and music, but the point stands with other examples.
People, IP is good. Without IP anything becomes reproduceable and (in the case of the information market) entirely impossible to make money from, sue to the imbalance between R&D and manufacturing costs being the reverse of the norm elsewhere. You're using a PC? OK, you wouldn't have it. Lotus wouldn't have been able to develop 1-2-3, because that nice man down the street would have just copied the disks and undercut them. Microsoft wouldn't have been able to produce Windows - whether that's a bad thing or not depends on your perspective, but it encouraged a lot of people to buy PCs.
Now, let's imagine what would have happened without either of these products. Someone else would have developed a spreadsheet for the PC in all probability, but as powerful as 1-2-3 entirely for love? Unlikely. How about GPL development, someone's going to cry in all probability:) Go for it, try. Go and produce me a competitive spreadsheet, probably one of the dullest tasks out there for a programmer. Yes, I know there's a project out there happily cloning Excel, but that hits the nail on the head - they're doing this because they want a free-speech Excel, not because they want a spreadsheet. So, you've lost your speadsheet, which is widely accepted as the killer app for moving PCs into offices.
Then take Windows. Much as I dislike it, too, clueless wonder newbies who fold 5.25in disks to fit them in their new 3.5in drives like it. It's simpler to use than Linux for the vast majority of users. It's also a cohesive standard, which the Linux GUI market could sorely do with. Now, remove it. How many home PCs do you have? Really not all that many. So, the price goes through the roof and the performance through the floor as there's no real reason for any of the companies to push the boat out on making faster products for less. After all, there's so few sales that you just can't support the massive R&D needed to support the current effort. Moore's Law? That's as much market pressures as technological advancement.
I'm not a supporter of the FSF's aims myself, but I can understand the viewpoint of others who are. But we need IP if any business is going to be based around information and, if it's not, then we can watch everything go back to 'for the love of it' hobbyists, which I for one don't want to see. I mean, how are the software companies supposed to survive, support revenues? Do you really want a world where software companies have a financial incentive to make their products unstable and difficult to use? The only reason RedHat and others can survive off this at the moment is that their development costs are vastly lower than for comparable developers and their support rather more necessary due to the average user's unfamiliarity with the product. If Microsoft tried to survive on such a business mdoel it'd be chaos and software quality would go through the floor.
IP on information is good. Without it, we'd be a lot poorer.
The reason for region codes is very simple - they stagger the release of products across different regions to attempt to boost profits. Quite why they think this works is another matter, but you can see the sense in maintaining a certain relationship between the cinematic and video/DVD release, and we get films later in the UK as we use secondhand US prints in the main.
As for why it's worse with DVD than VHS, it's digital so a copy performs no worse than the original. Find a pirate VHS film under the counter at your local video rental store and see what the quality's like...
Personally (and his is probably very sad!) I actually like having a proper box on the shelf with the right artwork and all that. Hence I'll buy CDs even though I could easily make a CD-R copy from a friend, because it's just not the same. And I'll buy films even if I can just watch them on the TV. Only pretty cheap films as I'm currently holding back until DVD (or whatever its replacement ends up being, after this...) becomes a bit more sensible over here and I can afford the stuff <grin>, but I will buy films nonetheless.
And I hate to sound like the square many people no doubt think I am, but me neither. No gases, solvents, drugs or cigarettes. No crazy levels of drinking, either. And this is from a University student in the UK, so the drinking's entirely legal.
Not everyone goes through a phase of experimenting with substance abuse, y'know.
Sorry if this feels a little curt - I'd got a lovely reply written when I stopped concentrating for a moment and closed that window instead on another...
This sounds suspiciously similar to the Cookie Problem and so suffers from the same potential problem* as that for us lucky Europeans:) in that you can't collect personal data in the EU and then export it to a less severe jurisdiction to try and bypass data protection legislation.
If this is the case, which ZDNet UK News think it is - I promise I first hit reply to this article without having read their take on it, honest! - then this could get quite interesting. If the EU take this one to trial we could end up with this sort of practise made impractical for the whole net as it couldn't be legally used on a pretty large chunk of the users - I'm told we're currently predicted to be bigger than the USA on the net within 5 years, or something like that anyway. I haven't got the figures to hand, but that was the gist of it, OK?:)
And yes, I know that this article's talking about them releasing the patch and upgrading the privacy statement - but if the software isn't legal without the patch then it gets even nicer as they have to make that the default!
For those who are interested in the details, the UK law is here - as I understand it, other EU countries have roughly the same rules by agreement.
Greg
* Sorry to quote myself. It's just that I know I explained it and I can remember that quicker than I can find if anyone else gave a better explanation...
My apologies - I'm not a player, so I merely looked up their website and they didn't mention any single-player mode (which would require some form of AI) so I assumed there was none.
Could you have hit the nail on the head, albeit inadvertently? I mean, FreeCiv is GPL and, while it's multiplayer only, would it be truly impossible to build an AI module to allow computer players? Might get to the point where it needed an otherwise empty Vx to play it on, but...:)
I suppose you could make a multiplayer only version, but the idea of people having to gether round and keep their IR ports aligned while playing beggars belief!
Btw has C=s old CEO Mr ALI died yet? that <expletive deleted>, remember he was part of prudential which is the cause of amigas death.
Medhi Ali? As I understood it, he was Commodore staff, but never mind. No idea what he's doing now, but I think it's safe to say that most Amiga owners would happily have seen either him or Irving Gould out of the picture - not suggesting murder, my being a nice christian:)
Seriously, look back at '85 - way ahead of the competition. Apple were (by all accounts) absolutely terrified of this box, as it was just better than the Mac. Why did they relax? Because Commodore mismanaged the whole thing horribly.
I'd love to see if either of them (if still around) would have the guts to appear at an Amiga conference:)
The simple reason we don't want to let go (and this is coming from someone who basically has let go) is simple: there's just so many little things that we like that we can't get elsewhere. Yes, there outdated, but in many ways (the OS, almost entirely) the Amiga is still a wonderful little box. And if someone would only update it we'd all be happy again.
OK, maybe we're being a little unrealistic, but it's not entirely impossible and we can dream. So can't we just be left alone to quietly dream in the corner by ourselves, without getting insulted periodically for this?
Please contact the Wellcome Trust to indicate your support of them.
I'd love to (as would, I suspect, a pretty large number of the other posters here) but I've been scanning through their site for a little while now and they don't seem to be asking for people to contact them offering support, or even revealing an address where we could. Does anyone know the address where we can contact them, or is this just an (understandably) enthusiastic writer assuming they want support without checking?
A patent on a gene in general would seem to have a few billion problems with "prior art."
I wish that were the case...
What they're doing (as I understand - I'm not a biologist) is scanning the genes that are discovered for potential medical applications, then patenting the use of that gene for the specific medical application they believe it relevant to. What makes it even worse is that, as well as scanning the genes they sequence, they're scanning the genes that the academics are sequencing, and patenting their use, too.
I really hope that this gets struck down, but they seem to be able to do this right now...
The main reason is that I object to companies gathering this information so sneakily is that this information is MINE. Not theirs. So sayeth the Data Protection Act [UK law, 1984]
Same here, but this then raises the interesting question of whether this behaviour is legal in the EU or not. I'm no lawyer, but IIRC UK Data Protection law requires information stored on you to be:
Relevant
Accurate
Up-to-date, which includes destroying data you no longer need.
and, as I understand it, that's basically the case across Europe for all data held on computer.
Now, Abacus probably don't have too much information on EU citizens because of those provisions, but if they do somehow get the data, is this then illegal? After all, one of the provisions of this legislation is that you can't export the data to a country with less stringent data protection laws to get round this. So, would this sort of thing count as gathering the data within the EU (for EU citizens, that is) then exporting it?
If this one isn't already defined then I could see the lawyers having some wonderful fun arguing this one...
Sorry, but Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity. Although it's not particularly common, people can convert and become Jews, and people who are already Jews can change their religion (depending on what they're changing it to, of course...)
As I said, people can convert. Fundamentally, though, it's a racial thing. You're welcome to believe what you want, but you're defined as Jewish if you have a Jewish mother! Sure, there are Jews from all over, but they would all (except for those who've converted and their descendents, of course) claim descent from Abraham. To thoroughly invoke Godwin's Law, look back at Hitler, seeing as how this was where the whole discussion started from. Was he trying to eradicate the Jewish faith? NO. He was trying to eradicate the Jewish race.
I'm not disputing the right of Judaism to religion status, nor am I disputing that people can (and do) convert. But that is a rare event, and referring to someone as a Jew (while potentially offensive - sorry, I can't think of a better term here) is not referring to their faith but their parentage.
Please, if you're going to correct people, get it right...
Insightful? Why? I wouldn't consider it even slightly insightfrul and wouldn't have been surprised to see it moderated as flamebait. I've got no problem with people thinking that, as a Christian, I'm incapable of independent thought - they can think what they like, frankly. But to start asserting like that without backing it up is a fine example of religious intolerance.
We've got some fine moderators out there. Why do some have to spoil it for the rest, though?
Slashdot Mirror
This is actually quite elitist. I see what you're getting at, but this requires that you go to the effort to make sure that you're communications are private which assumes:
Now, that's two BIG assumptions and very little protection for the vast majority who simply don't think about this sort of thing and who are those at greatest need of protection. Far better to make this sort of thing illegal without very good reason - similar to search warrants in principle.
An interesting question re: whether this could be bypassed by getting foreign intelligence services to do the monitoring though. That's horribly against the spirit of the proposal, but a thought:
The original amendment only covered the US government and their agencies (to my eyes, anyway) simply as there wasn't a practical risk of them calling in (say) the Canadian police and getting them to perform the search. Even if they could legally without being authorised by the US police, at which point they'd come under their jurisdiction and regulations anway?
Anyway, this isn't the case with phones and it certainly isn't the case with the Internet. Could the amended amendment therefore be modified to:
This is getting rather chewy but it's my best effort at covering this one.
DISCLAIMER: I'm British, not a lawyer and don't automatically agree with all of the US constitution and its subsequent amendments. This one does make sense, though. I'm also happy if anyone wants to moan at me for interference in foreign politics, though I'd consider this a proposal for a similar law in the UK if we haven't already got one that I hadn't noticed.
Greg
You sure?
Over here in the UK, there was some fun recently as Xiang Zemin was visiting. He'd let it be known when visiting Switzerland recently that he looked dimly on hosts allowing protesters against his governments human rights record - especially WRT Tibet - to get within his sight. So, the Police, apparently without request, forced back protesters and made sure that Xiang would be unaware of their existence by anything other than implication. Partly showing that Britain isn't fantastic, but China definitely isn't. You can guess what sort of press reaction there was to a protester who broke through the barriers and started running in his general direction waving a flag getting a soldier chasing him with a bayonet.
Two things to remember - China executes more per year than the rest of the world put together. And the USA frequently gets moaned at by Amnesty International about the death sentence, not least as many would feel that the reasons for the Supreme Court removing the death penalty all those years ago still exist.
Greg
Yes, that's corrrect. Taiwan and China are still one and the same country officially IIRC, but Taiwan is definitely not communist. IIRC, the old government fled there during the revolution, which meant that for quite some time afterwards, THEY held the Chinese seat at the UN, not mainland China...
Greg
I can't remember the precise details (sorry...) as I did this quite some time ago, but...
Fairly near the beginning of the war, we got the Polish codebreaking team to come across to the UK. They'd managed to work out a device which had a number of enigma machines - 4 or 5, I think - operating linked with some complicated extra doohickys, and _that_ gave them limited decryption facilities. I don't know how good it was, but that was the original Polish device.
Greg
I'm no lawyer and I'm British, but IIRC you're granted an automatic apeal if you're given a death sentence. One reason so many are on Death Row.
Or have I got this one wrong?
Greg
[Record companies]
:) Right now there's too little music and too much business, but the general idea of that sort of company is a good one, which was my problem with the original poster.
:) I can't see it dropping out of use unfortunately as it's a lot shorter to type than copyright... Still, I would expect to see it defined as copyright rather than patent, hence my line of arguing. I'd have thought it was pretty clear from my argument, though, and I'd definitely have said our original poster was suggesting that copyright be removed from software, having the effect of making all software GPL to all intents and purposes, which I'd see as a Bad Thing.
:)
;) sorry it's a bit late - I've been AFK all weekend.
I agree that, in many big ways, the current implementation sucks bigtime. I can't see the mp3.com business model taking over as it is right now simply as music's still too reliant on publicity for this to truly work. But it's a definite improvement. What I was arguing for, though, was the principle that you have a company who are paid to organise studio facilities, press and promote records and generally free the band up to play and write, though not necessarily in that order
[Semantics]
Yes, it does appear that IP is becoming a confised term
It's definitely not trademarks
As an aside, I still support _some_ software patents (not many...) and would actually judge that we might get even bigger lawyers battles without them as we'd get some tortuous arguments trying to cover some of the same sort of thing with copyright. Which would be interesting...
For the one man and his dog who find this
Greg
I like the idea of uprigth PDAs as I can (theoretically, at least!) use them on the move. As a pure machine, I much prefer Psion's 5 and Revo. But would I get one? No, because I'd have to put them down to use them, which substantally reduces the benefits of having a machine in my pocket.
... At which point you see my problem with this device. A wonderful idea, but I'd still have to put it down to use it. I might as well have bought a Psion after all.
However, look at that Revo again. It's tiny. Not as small as a Palm 5, but still tiny. Now, take the keyboard from that, but rotate it through 90 degrees so you don't have a qwerty keyboard but you've got a ^zaq1 keyboard. Move the keys around a little to make it easier to use and turn the decals round so it's easier to identify the keys, but you begin to get the idea. Now, something like that could easily enough be built in a format that would plug into the Palm's sync connector like this keyboard and then fold up over the screen as a lid. Give it a hinge stable enough that it all stays upright, and you've got a keyboard that can be easily used with a Palm while on the move.
Anyone care to give it a try?
Greg
As for films, can you really see anyone being able to produce films on the scale of the Star Wars series, T2, Twelve Monkeys... for almost no financial reward? No way. I don't pretend that budget and quality are directly proportional, but I certainly appreciate the immersive qualities of well made modern drama.
Note I'm not arguing in favour of software patents - as far as I'm concerned, the idea of patenting the concept of a spreadsheet would be entirely ludicrous, as with many patents that are unfortunately issued today. Patents have a place, but software is rarely it.
Er, no. Software patents may allow sloppy implementations to go unchallenged - if someone were able to patent the spreadsheet, for example - but software IP does not. Software IP stops me from putting my Battlezone CD in my CD-ROM and a £1 CD-R disc in my CD-RW, copying one to the other and selling the copy, thus allowing me to deprive an artist (yes, I regard software, entertainment especially, as a work of art) of the reward they've earned. Removing IP from software would lead to exactly that scenario, instantly.
Which is my argument not yours, surely? I'm saying that software deserves reward and that IP (only very rarely patent) is the way to protect that reward. Whereas you're arguing for the removal of IP rights, making reward improbable at best. Perhaps you are confusing IP with patents?
I wouldn't dispute that Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviour has distorted the market unhealthily (ditto Apple with their claim on the IP of an idea they borrowed from Xerox who'd developed it from other systems anyway...) but you're missing the point by a mile here. Microsoft are merely the example that has succeeded. Remove IP from the equation and what you end up with is no-one able to afford to develop anything even remotely like Windows - which, much as I dislike it personally, was a big help to getting proper computers into the home. So, we'd perhaps have GNOME/KDE (assuming either had been developed in the first place wihich is a trifle unlikely without Windows as a target or the extra users and developers it brought into the market) and the mess they're currently in. Quite nice, but as good for the average user as Windows? No way. Nowhere near easy enough to use.
Again, you confuse IP (copyright) with patents. Two very different issues. Remove IP and they simply can't afford to develop the best software as R&D costs money so if they can't recoup that by sales as anyone can sell the fruit of their labours without giving them a penny - the result of removing IP. That situation would be horrible, to put it bluntly.
With a large number of software patents, I agree wholeheartedly. But that wasn't what we were talking about.
I don't dispute that, but they wouldn't have to complete this nontrivial task, they'd just be able to duplicate Word CDs and sell them themselves. This would cut prices due to the extra competition, but would send quality through the floor as there'd be no money for MS (and others) to develop the next version with, so we'd be stuck with insignificant, piecemeal upgrades whenever they happened to find a few coins around.
NO. IP only restricts the right of competition in sales, which is entirely justifiable. Patents may restrict competition in development, but it depends on the patent concerned. Under certain conditions, a patent is entirely justifiable, even for software. If something's the product of years of research, that research costs money. Is the product something fundamentally new? If so, then they should be able to protect the results of their investment. Otherwise, you end up with others being able to ride on the back of their investment for free, therefore undercutting them and removing the incentive to research. Do I think all patents are justifiable? No, some are patently ludicrous and should never have been granted. But some are entirely legitimate.
This wasn't the issue, though. The issue was IP, copyright. Remove copyright with software and the media and, due to the non-trivial development costs but entirely trivial manufacturing and distribution costs, the business goes under and the world is poorer in many ways as no-one can afford to do the work they were doing.
Greg
Red Dwarf covered this one in another episode as well :)
Series V, 'Demons and Angels' IIRC. Lister had a spinal implant inserted by the bad crew, who then proceeded to remootely control him to try and wipe out the normal crew. Meant we get all sorts of wonderful lines like 'Look out, I'm going to kill you!' and the wonderful scene where Lister's trying desperately to shoot the crew but is warning them which was his next shot's going to go so that they can avoid it.
The end scene's the one I'd be worried about if I was Professor Warwick, though. He accidentally sits on the chip again after it's been removed, then Rimmer and the Cat use the remote control to make lister repeatedly slap himself...
Greg
Oh, why can't we all ignore him? Yes, he's interested in some things that sound potentially cool, but is this expecially serious research? No, it's a way of getting more funding for his department - his main skill, if we're going to be honest. Take his previous implant - not actually powerful enough to be of any use or to actually do what he said it could, but it sounded interesting so the press picked up on it.
I've actually had a few lectures from him as part of an introductory course to Cybernetics that I did in my first year (I'm a computer science student at Reading Uni, the first year crosses over a bit on the two courses). Did we learn anything? No way. He sat us down in front of videos about robots that could walk badly, juggle badly or kill each other. We got the occasional joke, a bit of self-publicity as (what a surprise!) an interview with him predicting that robots will take over the world fairly soon cropped up on one of the tapes. Does this sound like a serious scientist at the cutting edge of research to you?
This guy is a joke in his own department, with a reputation for embellishing the truth regarding his department's work and their abilities. Demos regularly get rigged to make it look like they're better than they are for the cameras. It was a running joke that the earlier implant was (lack of power ignored for humour purposes) a bit like an electronic tag for a criminal in its function - other staff wanted to be able to track him, make sure he wasn't in the wrong place and be able to avoid him.
Please, we have a publicist here, not a scientist. If we can stop reporting his every word as a new breakthrough, we might actually notice the genuine work out there.
As an aside, I'm very worried about any doctor who's prepared to put in such an implant. The idea of being able to montor his nervous impulses is an intriguing one and potentially useful, but where's the real attention here? The playback mode. Do we really know enough about the nervous system to say that it's truly safe to wire something into his nerves and then have it transmitting its own signals? This is just dangerous.
Greg
Didn't say they did, but the original poster was saying that we've all sniffed a bit of Freon, haven't we? Freon is not a recreational drug, it's a refrigerant. Hence, inhaling freon to try and get high is substance abuse.
I would personally regard using certain recreational drugs as substance abuse, and alcoholism is often regarded as a form of substance abuse and I certainly referred to that (albeit on a very low level). But Freon was the sbject and there there's no doubt.
Greg
If you want to kill practical computing for average users, this is a good way to do it. Ditto if you want to kill the music or film industries. Publishing is safe as long as people still like paper due to the non-trivial effort and cost to duplicate that, but it'd be stuffed as well as soon as e-books became widely accepted.
:) - sell the results. You can argue with my taste in films and music, but the point stands with other examples.
:) Go for it, try. Go and produce me a competitive spreadsheet, probably one of the dullest tasks out there for a programmer. Yes, I know there's a project out there happily cloning Excel, but that hits the nail on the head - they're doing this because they want a free-speech Excel, not because they want a spreadsheet. So, you've lost your speadsheet, which is widely accepted as the killer app for moving PCs into offices.
Why did George Lucas and Fox put down quite so much money and effort on producing the Star Wars films? Because they knew they could sell them. Why did Vertigo and Mettalica put so much time, effort and money into recording Load? Because they could sell it. And why did AT&T fund Bell Labs - specifically Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan in their development of Unix and C? Because they could - well, could then
People, IP is good. Without IP anything becomes reproduceable and (in the case of the information market) entirely impossible to make money from, sue to the imbalance between R&D and manufacturing costs being the reverse of the norm elsewhere. You're using a PC? OK, you wouldn't have it. Lotus wouldn't have been able to develop 1-2-3, because that nice man down the street would have just copied the disks and undercut them. Microsoft wouldn't have been able to produce Windows - whether that's a bad thing or not depends on your perspective, but it encouraged a lot of people to buy PCs.
Now, let's imagine what would have happened without either of these products. Someone else would have developed a spreadsheet for the PC in all probability, but as powerful as 1-2-3 entirely for love? Unlikely. How about GPL development, someone's going to cry in all probability
Then take Windows. Much as I dislike it, too, clueless wonder newbies who fold 5.25in disks to fit them in their new 3.5in drives like it. It's simpler to use than Linux for the vast majority of users. It's also a cohesive standard, which the Linux GUI market could sorely do with. Now, remove it. How many home PCs do you have? Really not all that many. So, the price goes through the roof and the performance through the floor as there's no real reason for any of the companies to push the boat out on making faster products for less. After all, there's so few sales that you just can't support the massive R&D needed to support the current effort. Moore's Law? That's as much market pressures as technological advancement.
I'm not a supporter of the FSF's aims myself, but I can understand the viewpoint of others who are. But we need IP if any business is going to be based around information and, if it's not, then we can watch everything go back to 'for the love of it' hobbyists, which I for one don't want to see. I mean, how are the software companies supposed to survive, support revenues? Do you really want a world where software companies have a financial incentive to make their products unstable and difficult to use? The only reason RedHat and others can survive off this at the moment is that their development costs are vastly lower than for comparable developers and their support rather more necessary due to the average user's unfamiliarity with the product. If Microsoft tried to survive on such a business mdoel it'd be chaos and software quality would go through the floor.
IP on information is good. Without it, we'd be a lot poorer.
Greg
The reason for region codes is very simple - they stagger the release of products across different regions to attempt to boost profits. Quite why they think this works is another matter, but you can see the sense in maintaining a certain relationship between the cinematic and video/DVD release, and we get films later in the UK as we use secondhand US prints in the main.
As for why it's worse with DVD than VHS, it's digital so a copy performs no worse than the original. Find a pirate VHS film under the counter at your local video rental store and see what the quality's like...
Personally (and his is probably very sad!) I actually like having a proper box on the shelf with the right artwork and all that. Hence I'll buy CDs even though I could easily make a CD-R copy from a friend, because it's just not the same. And I'll buy films even if I can just watch them on the TV. Only pretty cheap films as I'm currently holding back until DVD (or whatever its replacement ends up being, after this...) becomes a bit more sensible over here and I can afford the stuff <grin>, but I will buy films nonetheless.
Greg
And I hate to sound like the square many people no doubt think I am, but me neither. No gases, solvents, drugs or cigarettes. No crazy levels of drinking, either. And this is from a University student in the UK, so the drinking's entirely legal.
Not everyone goes through a phase of experimenting with substance abuse, y'know.
Greg
Just a tiny little thing, but this was supposed to be a little more restrained - just didn't occurr to me to check it...
;)
The ! in the subject is a typo, honest. I'm not getting all hysterical about it
Greg
Sorry if this feels a little curt - I'd got a lovely reply written when I stopped concentrating for a moment and closed that window instead on another...
:) in that you can't collect personal data in the EU and then export it to a less severe jurisdiction to try and bypass data protection legislation.
:)
This sounds suspiciously similar to the Cookie Problem and so suffers from the same potential problem* as that for us lucky Europeans
If this is the case, which ZDNet UK News think it is - I promise I first hit reply to this article without having read their take on it, honest! - then this could get quite interesting. If the EU take this one to trial we could end up with this sort of practise made impractical for the whole net as it couldn't be legally used on a pretty large chunk of the users - I'm told we're currently predicted to be bigger than the USA on the net within 5 years, or something like that anyway. I haven't got the figures to hand, but that was the gist of it, OK?
And yes, I know that this article's talking about them releasing the patch and upgrading the privacy statement - but if the software isn't legal without the patch then it gets even nicer as they have to make that the default!
For those who are interested in the details, the UK law is here - as I understand it, other EU countries have roughly the same rules by agreement.
Greg
* Sorry to quote myself. It's just that I know I explained it and I can remember that quicker than I can find if anyone else gave a better explanation...
My apologies - I'm not a player, so I merely looked up their website and they didn't mention any single-player mode (which would require some form of AI) so I assumed there was none.
Sorry...
Greg
Could you have hit the nail on the head, albeit inadvertently? I mean, FreeCiv is GPL and, while it's multiplayer only, would it be truly impossible to build an AI module to allow computer players? Might get to the point where it needed an otherwise empty Vx to play it on, but... :)
I suppose you could make a multiplayer only version, but the idea of people having to gether round and keep their IR ports aligned while playing beggars belief!
Greg
Medhi Ali? As I understood it, he was Commodore staff, but never mind. No idea what he's doing now, but I think it's safe to say that most Amiga owners would happily have seen either him or Irving Gould out of the picture - not suggesting murder, my being a nice christian
Seriously, look back at '85 - way ahead of the competition. Apple were (by all accounts) absolutely terrified of this box, as it was just better than the Mac. Why did they relax? Because Commodore mismanaged the whole thing horribly.
I'd love to see if either of them (if still around) would have the guts to appear at an Amiga conference
Greg
The simple reason we don't want to let go (and this is coming from someone who basically has let go) is simple: there's just so many little things that we like that we can't get elsewhere. Yes, there outdated, but in many ways (the OS, almost entirely) the Amiga is still a wonderful little box. And if someone would only update it we'd all be happy again.
OK, maybe we're being a little unrealistic, but it's not entirely impossible and we can dream. So can't we just be left alone to quietly dream in the corner by ourselves, without getting insulted periodically for this?
Greg
Please contact the Wellcome Trust to indicate your support of them.
I'd love to (as would, I suspect, a pretty large number of the other posters here) but I've been scanning through their site for a little while now and they don't seem to be asking for people to contact them offering support, or even revealing an address where we could. Does anyone know the address where we can contact them, or is this just an (understandably) enthusiastic writer assuming they want support without checking?
Greg
A patent on a gene in general would seem to have a few billion problems with "prior art."
I wish that were the case...
What they're doing (as I understand - I'm not a biologist) is scanning the genes that are discovered for potential medical applications, then patenting the use of that gene for the specific medical application they believe it relevant to. What makes it even worse is that, as well as scanning the genes they sequence, they're scanning the genes that the academics are sequencing, and patenting their use, too.
I really hope that this gets struck down, but they seem to be able to do this right now...
Greg
Same here, but this then raises the interesting question of whether this behaviour is legal in the EU or not. I'm no lawyer, but IIRC UK Data Protection law requires information stored on you to be:
- Relevant
- Accurate
- Up-to-date, which includes destroying data you no longer need.
and, as I understand it, that's basically the case across Europe for all data held on computer.Now, Abacus probably don't have too much information on EU citizens because of those provisions, but if they do somehow get the data, is this then illegal? After all, one of the provisions of this legislation is that you can't export the data to a country with less stringent data protection laws to get round this. So, would this sort of thing count as gathering the data within the EU (for EU citizens, that is) then exporting it?
If this one isn't already defined then I could see the lawyers having some wonderful fun arguing this one...
Greg
Sorry, but Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity. Although it's not particularly common, people can convert and become Jews, and people who are already Jews can change their religion (depending on what they're changing it to, of course...)
As I said, people can convert. Fundamentally, though, it's a racial thing. You're welcome to believe what you want, but you're defined as Jewish if you have a Jewish mother! Sure, there are Jews from all over, but they would all (except for those who've converted and their descendents, of course) claim descent from Abraham. To thoroughly invoke Godwin's Law, look back at Hitler, seeing as how this was where the whole discussion started from. Was he trying to eradicate the Jewish faith? NO. He was trying to eradicate the Jewish race.
I'm not disputing the right of Judaism to religion status, nor am I disputing that people can (and do) convert. But that is a rare event, and referring to someone as a Jew (while potentially offensive - sorry, I can't think of a better term here) is not referring to their faith but their parentage.
Please, if you're going to correct people, get it right...
Greg
Insightful? Why? I wouldn't consider it even slightly insightfrul and wouldn't have been surprised to see it moderated as flamebait. I've got no problem with people thinking that, as a Christian, I'm incapable of independent thought - they can think what they like, frankly. But to start asserting like that without backing it up is a fine example of religious intolerance.
We've got some fine moderators out there. Why do some have to spoil it for the rest, though?
Greg