Using the pharmaceutical industry as an example of "IP protection encourages innovation by promoting R&D spending" is specious, because (as you already hinted):
Pharmaceutical companies spend vastly more on marketing than they do on R&D
But I agree, that in many areas and especially in software development, patent durations need to be much shorter. The ultimate aim of IP protection is (or at least, was originally) to benefit the public and the nation through the sharing of new inventions. The monopoly granted to "innovators" is supposed to be temporary, recognising that incentives may be required to encourage lots of invention, but ultimately, IP protection is supposed to be about providing benefit to everybody, not just the few IP "owners".
cf Jonas Salk, creator of the polio vaccine, famous for answering the question "who owns this vaccine" with "The people own it. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" (although granted, the likes of Jack Valenti probably would love to have IP ownership of everything and anything).
I seem to recall reading many years ago about testing on a bus that had a flywheel for regenerative breaking (in Scandinavia IIRC). The main problem with it was the gyroscope effect - trying to turn left or right creates a force at ninety degrees (ie up or down) and this proved too much for the suspension to deal with. Guess it's less of an issue with a subway train...?
When an executive can declare in all seriousness that not watching commercials is stealing, then it's pretty clear that the advertising industry is in desperate trouble and large parts of it are unsustainable. In a rapidly evolving environment where old business models are redundant, the industry has reacted by declaring war on the public.
It couldn't be more clear that the audience for "content" is the product; the consumer is the ad-industry and its clients. Unfortunately, the product is getting a bit out of control, refusing to look at what it's been told to and using technology to enjoy content in ways that can't be controlled. A shoddy product fetches a lower price [link to graph of banner ad rates over last 3 years]. If the ad industry continues its escalation in annoyance, I don't see how they can fail to irritate their way to oblivion.
can you really expect them to always keep *every* user with an open-relay off of their network? Even if they hired whole teams of people...
Absolutely I expect this, or close to it. Rather than hiring hordes of staff to perform the task, why don't they [gasp] use a computer to track and monitor open relays? It works for ORDB
Michelle Bergman, the Disney spokeswoman : ``We respect viewer privacy and the order we obtained respects that important right. We are simply protecting our copyrighted content''
Translation : What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too.
You can create a CA yourself fairly easily (see OpenCA for one example). The real problem is how to get your root certificate onto users' machines. In a "closed" environment, it's simple to install the root cert on all machines that may need it; in the more general case, even though it is simple to create a link that will install the root cert, persuading Joe User to push on past the scary messages is a different matter.
Ireland is a good example - piss-poor 20-30 years back, now a thriving technology centre trading off the intelligence of its workforce
Not quite. The dramatic change in Ireland's economy is almost entirely due to its "special region" status within the EU and the consequent billions it has received from central funds. Now that it no longer has this status and the money flow is reducing, the economic growth is likewise muted. I've got nothing against Ireland and the tremendous change they've made, but recognise that this has happened because billions of (other people's) euros have been spent on the infrastructure. It's got nothing to do with globalisation and everything to do with government intervention.
I mean that it's a Bad Thing to require (for "security" or any other reason) that the source IP address must remain constant across separate http requests. Think about what happens if you're behind a firewall-type device doing dynamic source address NAT - it's quite valid (as far as http goes) for the burst of requests that make up a single page to all be sourced from different addresses.
would confine it to a few friends who... all have the same apparent IP address (ie be behind the same firewall/NATing router, etc)
What, like that handful of AOL users whose connections source from one of a handful of IP addresses? Using IP address in the way you suggest will fail - http is stateless and any system that attempts to use information like IP address across separate http requests will break.
The entire point of the Escape is that it's a signal that the next bit(s) of information are not to be treated as part of the data stream. The escape is in the data stream, therefore it's in-band. Likewise the html codes for bold in this post - I didn't phone up slashdot and ask them to embolden certain characters (an out of band signal), I entered them in the comment field along with the rest of the data. They are in-band.
...the company's ongoing endeavor to combat digital piracy...
Blah blah piracy blah. "Ongoing" is right, and digital rights infringment is becoming more a media battle of language than a discussion of our constitutional rights. Meanwhile, Philips are at least one corporation who appear to be on the side of John Normal. Thanks to Philips challenging the legal right for these copy inhibited products to be called CDs, and carrying the associated logos, the way is open for these issues to be subjected to rigorous legal examination. If you want to do something other than whinge on/., then support Philips by buying their products, in favour of other manufacturers, and then tell both Philips and their competitors that you did this and why. We live in a consumer society. The least we can do is make use of it.
Try any of the "live" broadcasts and you'll find that CBC have suspended their web broadcasts entirely, until February 24th. The IOC enforcing srict rules over "their content" is one thing; forcing a public broadcaster to roll over and muzzle their entire output is quite another.
Gratuitous comments about the power & corruption of the IOC too obvious to even bother with...
...now that there's an exploit for it? Microsoft usually don't do anything about a software flaw unless they can be shown it can be exploited. Well, the MyParty worm uses exactly this "begin[spc][spc]" vulnerability.
On a related note, anyone else a bit suspicious about the timing of these two events? No, I'm not saying Moffitt had anything to do with the creation of MyParty. But it's at least quite something of a coincidence when a furore over an Outlook bug is quickly followed up by an exploit for the very same.
The argument here is that broadcasters are custodians of a public resource -- the part of the broadcasting spectrum used for television, and need to make whatever they pump into that spectrum available to everyone.
If this were really true, how come the company that took these public resources and made them more widely available still was so summarily shut down?
Slashdot Mirror
gettit
...but how did it make it past the lameness filter?
Using the pharmaceutical industry as an example of "IP protection encourages innovation by promoting R&D spending" is specious, because (as you already hinted):
Pharmaceutical companies spend vastly more on marketing than they do on R&D
But I agree, that in many areas and especially in software development, patent durations need to be much shorter. The ultimate aim of IP protection is (or at least, was originally) to benefit the public and the nation through the sharing of new inventions. The monopoly granted to "innovators" is supposed to be temporary, recognising that incentives may be required to encourage lots of invention, but ultimately, IP protection is supposed to be about providing benefit to everybody, not just the few IP "owners".
cf Jonas Salk, creator of the polio vaccine, famous for answering the question "who owns this vaccine" with "The people own it. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" (although granted, the likes of Jack Valenti probably would love to have IP ownership of everything and anything).
I seem to recall reading many years ago about testing on a bus that had a flywheel for regenerative breaking (in Scandinavia IIRC). The main problem with it was the gyroscope effect - trying to turn left or right creates a force at ninety degrees (ie up or down) and this proved too much for the suspension to deal with. Guess it's less of an issue with a subway train...?
...is the sound of Jon Postel spinning in his grave.
When an executive can declare in all seriousness that not watching commercials is stealing, then it's pretty clear that the advertising industry is in desperate trouble and large parts of it are unsustainable. In a rapidly evolving environment where old business models are redundant, the industry has reacted by declaring war on the public.
It couldn't be more clear that the audience for "content" is the product; the consumer is the ad-industry and its clients. Unfortunately, the product is getting a bit out of control, refusing to look at what it's been told to and using technology to enjoy content in ways that can't be controlled. A shoddy product fetches a lower price [link to graph of banner ad rates over last 3 years]. If the ad industry continues its escalation in annoyance, I don't see how they can fail to irritate their way to oblivion.
Absolutely I expect this, or close to it. Rather than hiring hordes of staff to perform the task, why don't they [gasp] use a computer to track and monitor open relays? It works for ORDB
Um, surely you mean vulnerability ?
"Supposed to" is right, but it's not like their track record is spotless.
Translation : What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too.
You can create a CA yourself fairly easily (see OpenCA for one example). The real problem is how to get your root certificate onto users' machines. In a "closed" environment, it's simple to install the root cert on all machines that may need it; in the more general case, even though it is simple to create a link that will install the root cert, persuading Joe User to push on past the scary messages is a different matter.
Not quite. The dramatic change in Ireland's economy is almost entirely due to its "special region" status within the EU and the consequent billions it has received from central funds. Now that it no longer has this status and the money flow is reducing, the economic growth is likewise muted. I've got nothing against Ireland and the tremendous change they've made, but recognise that this has happened because billions of (other people's) euros have been spent on the infrastructure. It's got nothing to do with globalisation and everything to do with government intervention.
Well no wonder it didn't work out - you don't get far in Albertan politics by being sober
I mean that it's a Bad Thing to require (for "security" or any other reason) that the source IP address must remain constant across separate http requests. Think about what happens if you're behind a firewall-type device doing dynamic source address NAT - it's quite valid (as far as http goes) for the burst of requests that make up a single page to all be sourced from different addresses.
What, like that handful of AOL users whose connections source from one of a handful of IP addresses? Using IP address in the way you suggest will fail - http is stateless and any system that attempts to use information like IP address across separate http requests will break.
I'd nominate the AC first post that got modded to +5 Funny and was on-topic.
The entire point of the Escape is that it's a signal that the next bit(s) of information are not to be treated as part of the data stream. The escape is in the data stream, therefore it's in-band. Likewise the html codes for bold in this post - I didn't phone up slashdot and ask them to embolden certain characters (an out of band signal), I entered them in the comment field along with the rest of the data. They are in-band.
Or HIJBT?
Blah blah piracy blah. "Ongoing" is right, and digital rights infringment is becoming more a media battle of language than a discussion of our constitutional rights. Meanwhile, Philips are at least one corporation who appear to be on the side of John Normal. Thanks to Philips challenging the legal right for these copy inhibited products to be called CDs, and carrying the associated logos, the way is open for these issues to be subjected to rigorous legal examination. If you want to do something other than whinge on /., then support Philips by buying their products, in favour of other manufacturers, and then tell both Philips and their competitors that you did this and why. We live in a consumer society. The least we can do is make use of it.
Try any of the "live" broadcasts and you'll find that CBC have suspended their web broadcasts entirely, until February 24th. The IOC enforcing srict rules over "their content" is one thing; forcing a public broadcaster to roll over and muzzle their entire output is quite another.
Gratuitous comments about the power & corruption of the IOC too obvious to even bother with...
...now that there's an exploit for it? Microsoft usually don't do anything about a software flaw unless they can be shown it can be exploited. Well, the MyParty worm uses exactly this "begin[spc][spc]" vulnerability.
On a related note, anyone else a bit suspicious about the timing of these two events? No, I'm not saying Moffitt had anything to do with the creation of MyParty. But it's at least quite something of a coincidence when a furore over an Outlook bug is quickly followed up by an exploit for the very same.
As an aside, note that the MyParty worm currently doing the rounds uses the "begin" bug to carry the payload.
Isn't this already happening in Asia?
If this were really true, how come the company that took these public resources and made them more widely available still was so summarily shut down?