The FBI won't want to waste money/time/resources/etc in surveying the activities of a law abiding citizen.
Now there is a problem with this view. Two problems, really.
First, there is no such thing as a law-abiding citizen anymore. There are enough laws, and enough conflicting laws, that I no longer believe it is possible to live without violating laws. (Frankly, I have a problem with this. I *like* having respect for the law, but this encourages disrespect for the law. There is a slippery slope here too... Once one law is stupid, moving to "all laws are stupid" as a blanket generality is no longer unimaginable.)
Second, collecting information is NEVER a wasted activity. There is no such thing as too much data, so long as you have the ability to sort, collate, and cross-reference it, or may have that ability in the future.
It doesn't matter what information you are collecting, or who it concerns. It may have use later, and government is very good at taking a long view on collecting information.
USENET is not a binary file forum. It is for text/plain messages, and works best as such.
Hmm...
You don't use email for sending attachments, do you? After all, email is for text/plain messages also, and works est as such.
USENET is made to send data. It doesn't care what kind of data, so long as it falls within a specific bit range. 8-bit data with values between, what, 32 and 102? (Been a while since I looked at an ASCII chart.) Beyond that, it doesn't really care.
USENET did not go downhill because of binary posts. It dropped to its current quality because of MAKE MONEY FAST posts. Binary posts are generally well segregated. The spam is everywhere, and annoying to filter out.
Look at the date this case started. This was begun in the early 90s. Contracts with freelance writers included electronic reproduction rights such as covered in this case by 1995, no later.
This was always a case about old articles (1980s and earlier), not current ones.
You're confusing the DoD with the DoN. The US Navy recently setup a contract for all Navy and Marine Corp computing needs, with very few exceptions. The prime contract winner was EDS, and it is called the Navy Marine Corp Intranet (NMCI).
You can check this out at http://www.eds.com/nmci
This is primarily for Intel platform computers running MS Windows with MS Office. Primary PC hardware supplier is Dell.
However, there might be a case made for extracting large amounts of energy: after all, when I go to the gym, I am deliberately trying to expend energy and get my heart rate up. Tapping into that for recharging a battery could be helpful for that.
This is already being done in gyms. Take a look at the (electronic) cross-trainer machines and exercise bikes in there. LED and 7-segment displays, and no power cords. Hook up a generator to the pedals, and the person powers the equipment.
Some machines do this, some don't. The stair climbers seem not to for some reason. It's interesting to be working out when a power outage hits, and seeing some machines still lit up, and some suddenly lose power.
Have you looked at the ingredients list for most "fruit juice" drinks lately? The first 2 things on there are water (makes sense, from concentrate, after all) and SUGAR. Then you get the fruit part.
If it doesn't say "100% fruit juice" on it, you don't want your kids drinking a lot of it. And frankly, for the cost difference betwen the flavored sugar water and real fruit juice, do you really want to guess which most schools have?
Yes, you are confused. Not because you misunderstand MS's message, but because you misunderstand the audience.
MS isn't pitching this message to techies. They aren't pitching it to home users (right now). They are pitching it to MBAs, the CEO/CIO/CFO of major corporations. You know, the people that don't say "give me a budget for new servers" but instead say "give me a budget for new Microsoft servers".
Microsoft is very aware of who their audience is, and how to communicate with that audience. And they do it very well.
Simply having consumer and civil rights representatives present is not by itself sufficient. Remember, there were plenty of such representatives at the NUCCUSL meetings that came up with UCITA. (Yes, my UCITA url shows my bias.)
If you don't have equal power, representation is meaningless.
Okay, tracking items thru the supply chain is a nice use for this stuff, yes, and so long as it is desables when it leaves the store, it sounds like a good thing.
Look at it in a slightly different way. Copyrights started off as a limited temporary thing, yes. How were they temporary? Well, they started as about, what, 6 or 12 years? (I don't remember exaclty. I'll say 12.)
Look at that as a percentage. In the mid 1700s, when a normal life span was about 45 years, a 12 year copyright was about 20% of the total lifespan of the copyright holder, or, probably, about half of the remaining life of the holder.
Welcome to the age of "corporations are people too!" How long does a corporation live? Well, we've got a bunch that are over 100 years, and some rare few that are over 300 years, and showing no signs of ending any time soon. Could you make a compelling case for a corporation "living" forever? Spend some time, you probably could.
Okay... 20% of infinity is what? Infinity, right? Or if you want a physics-based answer, how about 12 billion years, the universe is supposed to end around then, isn't it? So 20% of 12 billion years is about 2.5 billion years. (As far as I'm concerned, that's still effectively infinity.)
Ahh... we now know where this "temporary" copyright is going. And we have a justification for it, too.
1) Never doubt the power of government(s) making something illegal. It would only take a couple of major governments together (the US, the EU, AU/NZ, and Japan) declaring that all A/V file formats MUST support digital rights management, possibly implemented under WIPO so countries have very little choice in passing laws to support it, for this format to be declared wiped from all servers. And when your shoices are A) Delete it or B) 5 years in jail... Lots of people will choose A. If it is not listed on US/EU search engines, it will drop off the public radar fairly quickly, and only be available on slower offshore servers. Still there if you search for it, but much less easily available.
2) Ditto with #1, declare the format illegal, and you cannot manufacture or import devices that support that format in(to) the country. Without a device to buy, consumers will find something else that fulfills the same basic purpose. There are 2 or 3 competing audio file formats that are suitable for consumer devices, and support DRM.
3) Frankly, businesses are more concerned with controlling what consumers want, through marketting/PR and other means, and selling controlled products, than in creating new markets... Large entrenched businesses, at least. Why do you think the first MP3 player wasn't from Sony?
The CeBit organizers are people that depend on the goodwill of the major electronics/entertainment industry firms. This means that when most of the big members of an organization like the MPAA or RIAA says "Don't support this format" the trade show organizers will listen. No overt threats, no bribery, just a large powerful organization making known its wishes.
This actually raises a point I've wondered about...
In households with more than just one tv watcher, with starkly different tastes, such as parents and their children, how does (will?) the Tivo keep track of who is watching what? Does it make assumptions about "no one watches both Barney and NYPD Blue, so these must be different people" and related stuff? How about Barney, NYPD Blue, and a Discovery Channel special on Panthers? Who is watching what? This makes targetted ads VERY difficult.
Are we really going to have to start logging in to our TVs in the not so distant future? Oh, I know... sensors on the frontpanel that will detect and classify people.
Seriously, how does the Tivo tell when different people are watching the same TV?
McDonalds has written rules for the temperature coffee should be when sold. Their own rules, made before the lawsuit, state that coffee should be sold at a temp between 140 and 160 degrees Farenheit. The coffee served was at a temp of about 180F. This had been happening for quite a while, and was, quite simply, due to improperly functioning equipment. They knew this before the accident, having received earlier complaints that the coffee was too hot, and hadn't fixed it. (Had they tried to fix it and been unsuccessful, or had they simply not bothered fixing it yet? Don't know.)
Note that it supports HDTV output, max resolution of 1920x1080.
Of course, this raises a separate issue... Since this will be released late-2001, when most people still won't have a tv/cable/broadcast reason to buy an HDTV set... are you really going to buy a $4000 HDTV set to hook up to your $300 XBox?!?! (Or are they only $2000 now? I haven't looked recently.)
Please, don't talk about bare numbers with tech support calls to prove a point. Talk about percentage of tech support calls for that products, related to percentage of sales of that product.
If you get 2 tech support calls per week for the 5000 model, out of (pulling a number out of the air) 100 (20 per day?), then you have a rate of 2%. In numbers shipped (not dollars) how does this 2% compare to the sales of model 5000 laptops? Based on numbers sold, does the model 5000 still compare well? Does it compare well for it's audience? (Percentage of machines sold to that class of user, whether power user, generic business user, or whatever.)
Do you only do laptops, or do you do tech support for all Dell PC products? This will also affect how valid your data point is.
If you don't have this information, that's okay, but presenting a bare number and pretending it has significance without knowing context and how it relates to sales figures... well, that's how bad statistics are made.:)
Now, I can see where you object to this as possibly making using an IP-Masq server a violation.
My concern is on a different interpretation. This seems to state that running a VPN client from home, to securely connect to your work LAN, is now a violation of the @Home TOS.
Am I interpretting this correctly?
If so, this does not sound like it relates to sellings additional IPs, but more to just making a useful broadband connection much less useful to working professionals.:(
I read thru a good number of these posts, and I noticed something. They seem to be in 2 basic categories. 1) This would be crazy, it would only work once, and we'd build/install needed infrastructure within a week to fix it. (Note I'm in the US, so I'm probably excluded from that "we".) 2) Lots of traffic goes thru the US now because it has the infrastructure to support it.
I'm going to ignore 2, and ask a question concerning 1 here... This is highly dependent on *why* the US disappears from the internet, but...
How much non-internet communications goes through the US? If the US disappears from the internet, what would happen with worldwide long-distance telephone networks? Anyone working in telecomm willing to say what percentage of international calls that don't start or end in the US still go thru US links?
Basically, what I'm asking here is, assuming the US disappeared from the internet, would the infrastructure exist to coordinate bulding/installing the necessary links to get back up and running again in this assumed less-than-2-week period?
I don't know, but I'm curious. And that category 2 I mentioned above makes me wonder about this...
Generally, most people here agree the DMCA is a bad law. Most will (probably) also agree that DeCSS violates this law.
Kaplan is looking at this from a very narrow interpretation of "Does DeCSS violate this law?" and I think this is a good thing. We'll get through this section of the trial quite quickly. Kaplan will hand down a decision saying basically "Yes, DeCSS violates the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA."
Then we move to the Appellate Court, where Constitutional issues are more properly decided. (Maybe to the Supremes after that, I don't know.)
This is where we want to go. The faster we move to the Appellate level, the better.
You remember when you first found out about it? Ha! I'll do you one better than that.
I went to Auckland on travel for work, abot 6-8 weeks after that mess started over there. They were still having problems while I was there. (Yes, it interfered with the meeting a little bit, but not as much as I'd expected.)
It did a couple things for me. First, it impressed me a *great* deal with how well the New Zealanders' can adapt to trying conditions. They went through some seriously difficult times, and kept a good attitude.
Second, it marked the first time I'd ever gone out to a restaurant and had a candle-lit dinner with 7 other guys. Laughed about that for months afterwards.
If protection of a copyright is not attempted, a copyright holder may lose the copyright to the material in question.
Sorry, that's wrong. This is true for trademarks, and I believe true for patents (not sure about that one). But for copyrights, you have no legal requirement to pursue all violators. You can be as selective in enforcing your copyright as you like, and you won't lose your copyright.
Bear in mind, I am not a doctor, so take this as uninformed advice. I looked into this once (my wrists are beginning to get to me too) and came to an interesting conclusion.
The surgery is really only a temporary solution. It will help, but will bring permanent relief only if you change your habits to remove whatever caused your CTS in the first place. For this group, this generally means give up computers, or at least cut _way_ back on using them. (Or finding a fully-functional voice recognition package, good luck.)
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't want to know what you do in your bedroom, do I?
Now there is a problem with this view. Two problems, really.
First, there is no such thing as a law-abiding citizen anymore. There are enough laws, and enough conflicting laws, that I no longer believe it is possible to live without violating laws. (Frankly, I have a problem with this. I *like* having respect for the law, but this encourages disrespect for the law. There is a slippery slope here too... Once one law is stupid, moving to "all laws are stupid" as a blanket generality is no longer unimaginable.)
Second, collecting information is NEVER a wasted activity. There is no such thing as too much data, so long as you have the ability to sort, collate, and cross-reference it, or may have that ability in the future.
It doesn't matter what information you are collecting, or who it concerns. It may have use later, and government is very good at taking a long view on collecting information.
You don't use email for sending attachments, do you? After all, email is for text/plain messages also, and works est as such.
USENET is made to send data. It doesn't care what kind of data, so long as it falls within a specific bit range. 8-bit data with values between, what, 32 and 102? (Been a while since I looked at an ASCII chart.) Beyond that, it doesn't really care.
USENET did not go downhill because of binary posts. It dropped to its current quality because of MAKE MONEY FAST posts. Binary posts are generally well segregated. The spam is everywhere, and annoying to filter out.
(You know, the GNU Photoshop equivalent...)
Hmm, no trademark issues there... You know, there's probably a lesson there.
Yes, I sometimes think sarcasm is wasted, but I keep trying.
Look at the date this case started. This was begun in the early 90s. Contracts with freelance writers included electronic reproduction rights such as covered in this case by 1995, no later.
This was always a case about old articles (1980s and earlier), not current ones.
You're confusing the DoD with the DoN. The US Navy recently setup a contract for all Navy and Marine Corp computing needs, with very few exceptions. The prime contract winner was EDS, and it is called the Navy Marine Corp Intranet (NMCI).
You can check this out at http://www.eds.com/nmci
This is primarily for Intel platform computers running MS Windows with MS Office. Primary PC hardware supplier is Dell.
This is already being done in gyms. Take a look at the (electronic) cross-trainer machines and exercise bikes in there. LED and 7-segment displays, and no power cords. Hook up a generator to the pedals, and the person powers the equipment.
Some machines do this, some don't. The stair climbers seem not to for some reason. It's interesting to be working out when a power outage hits, and seeing some machines still lit up, and some suddenly lose power.
Have you looked at the ingredients list for most "fruit juice" drinks lately? The first 2 things on there are water (makes sense, from concentrate, after all) and SUGAR. Then you get the fruit part.
If it doesn't say "100% fruit juice" on it, you don't want your kids drinking a lot of it. And frankly, for the cost difference betwen the flavored sugar water and real fruit juice, do you really want to guess which most schools have?
Yes, you are confused. Not because you misunderstand MS's message, but because you misunderstand the audience.
MS isn't pitching this message to techies. They aren't pitching it to home users (right now). They are pitching it to MBAs, the CEO/CIO/CFO of major corporations. You know, the people that don't say "give me a budget for new servers" but instead say "give me a budget for new Microsoft servers".
Microsoft is very aware of who their audience is, and how to communicate with that audience. And they do it very well.
If you don't have equal power, representation is meaningless.
But this is far from new stuff.
How Stuff Works had an article on anti-shoplifting measures that include paper tags like these.
If memory serves, I first saw this article from a url posted here at slashdot several months back. Interesting how this place recycles stories.
Tim
Look at it in a slightly different way. Copyrights started off as a limited temporary thing, yes. How were they temporary? Well, they started as about, what, 6 or 12 years? (I don't remember exaclty. I'll say 12.)
Look at that as a percentage. In the mid 1700s, when a normal life span was about 45 years, a 12 year copyright was about 20% of the total lifespan of the copyright holder, or, probably, about half of the remaining life of the holder.
Welcome to the age of "corporations are people too!" How long does a corporation live? Well, we've got a bunch that are over 100 years, and some rare few that are over 300 years, and showing no signs of ending any time soon. Could you make a compelling case for a corporation "living" forever? Spend some time, you probably could.
Okay... 20% of infinity is what? Infinity, right? Or if you want a physics-based answer, how about 12 billion years, the universe is supposed to end around then, isn't it? So 20% of 12 billion years is about 2.5 billion years. (As far as I'm concerned, that's still effectively infinity.)
Ahh... we now know where this "temporary" copyright is going. And we have a justification for it, too.
Sound about right?
In reply to your points:
1) Never doubt the power of government(s) making something illegal. It would only take a couple of major governments together (the US, the EU, AU/NZ, and Japan) declaring that all A/V file formats MUST support digital rights management, possibly implemented under WIPO so countries have very little choice in passing laws to support it, for this format to be declared wiped from all servers. And when your shoices are A) Delete it or B) 5 years in jail... Lots of people will choose A. If it is not listed on US/EU search engines, it will drop off the public radar fairly quickly, and only be available on slower offshore servers. Still there if you search for it, but much less easily available.
2) Ditto with #1, declare the format illegal, and you cannot manufacture or import devices that support that format in(to) the country. Without a device to buy, consumers will find something else that fulfills the same basic purpose. There are 2 or 3 competing audio file formats that are suitable for consumer devices, and support DRM.
3) Frankly, businesses are more concerned with controlling what consumers want, through marketting/PR and other means, and selling controlled products, than in creating new markets... Large entrenched businesses, at least. Why do you think the first MP3 player wasn't from Sony?
The CeBit organizers are people that depend on the goodwill of the major electronics/entertainment industry firms. This means that when most of the big members of an organization like the MPAA or RIAA says "Don't support this format" the trade show organizers will listen. No overt threats, no bribery, just a large powerful organization making known its wishes.
This actually raises a point I've wondered about...
In households with more than just one tv watcher, with starkly different tastes, such as parents and their children, how does (will?) the Tivo keep track of who is watching what? Does it make assumptions about "no one watches both Barney and NYPD Blue, so these must be different people" and related stuff? How about Barney, NYPD Blue, and a Discovery Channel special on Panthers? Who is watching what? This makes targetted ads VERY difficult.
Are we really going to have to start logging in to our TVs in the not so distant future? Oh, I know... sensors on the frontpanel that will detect and classify people.
Seriously, how does the Tivo tell when different people are watching the same TV?
Fair warning, numbers are from memory...
McDonalds has written rules for the temperature coffee should be when sold. Their own rules, made before the lawsuit, state that coffee should be sold at a temp between 140 and 160 degrees Farenheit. The coffee served was at a temp of about 180F. This had been happening for quite a while, and was, quite simply, due to improperly functioning equipment. They knew this before the accident, having received earlier complaints that the coffee was too hot, and hadn't fixed it. (Had they tried to fix it and been unsuccessful, or had they simply not bothered fixing it yet? Don't know.)
Tim
Have you looked at the XBox specs?
Note that it supports HDTV output, max resolution of 1920x1080.
Of course, this raises a separate issue... Since this will be released late-2001, when most people still won't have a tv/cable/broadcast reason to buy an HDTV set... are you really going to buy a $4000 HDTV set to hook up to your $300 XBox?!?! (Or are they only $2000 now? I haven't looked recently.)
Tim
Please, don't talk about bare numbers with tech support calls to prove a point. Talk about percentage of tech support calls for that products, related to percentage of sales of that product.
:)
If you get 2 tech support calls per week for the 5000 model, out of (pulling a number out of the air) 100 (20 per day?), then you have a rate of 2%. In numbers shipped (not dollars) how does this 2% compare to the sales of model 5000 laptops? Based on numbers sold, does the model 5000 still compare well? Does it compare well for it's audience? (Percentage of machines sold to that class of user, whether power user, generic business user, or whatever.)
Do you only do laptops, or do you do tech support for all Dell PC products? This will also affect how valid your data point is.
If you don't have this information, that's okay, but presenting a bare number and pretending it has significance without knowing context and how it relates to sales figures... well, that's how bad statistics are made.
Now, I can see where you object to this as possibly making using an IP-Masq server a violation.
:(
My concern is on a different interpretation. This seems to state that running a VPN client from home, to securely connect to your work LAN, is now a violation of the @Home TOS.
Am I interpretting this correctly?
If so, this does not sound like it relates to sellings additional IPs, but more to just making a useful broadband connection much less useful to working professionals.
Tim
I read thru a good number of these posts, and I noticed something. They seem to be in 2 basic categories.
1) This would be crazy, it would only work once, and we'd build/install needed infrastructure within a week to fix it. (Note I'm in the US, so I'm probably excluded from that "we".)
2) Lots of traffic goes thru the US now because it has the infrastructure to support it.
I'm going to ignore 2, and ask a question concerning 1 here... This is highly dependent on *why* the US disappears from the internet, but...
How much non-internet communications goes through the US? If the US disappears from the internet, what would happen with worldwide long-distance telephone networks? Anyone working in telecomm willing to say what percentage of international calls that don't start or end in the US still go thru US links?
Basically, what I'm asking here is, assuming the US disappeared from the internet, would the infrastructure exist to coordinate bulding/installing the necessary links to get back up and running again in this assumed less-than-2-week period?
I don't know, but I'm curious. And that category 2 I mentioned above makes me wonder about this...
Look at it from this point of view...
Generally, most people here agree the DMCA is a bad law. Most will (probably) also agree that DeCSS violates this law.
Kaplan is looking at this from a very narrow interpretation of "Does DeCSS violate this law?" and I think this is a good thing. We'll get through this section of the trial quite quickly. Kaplan will hand down a decision saying basically "Yes, DeCSS violates the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA."
Then we move to the Appellate Court, where Constitutional issues are more properly decided. (Maybe to the Supremes after that, I don't know.)
This is where we want to go. The faster we move to the Appellate level, the better.
Kaplan may not like us, but he is helping us.
Nifty, huh?
You remember when you first found out about it? Ha! I'll do you one better than that.
I went to Auckland on travel for work, abot 6-8 weeks after that mess started over there. They were still having problems while I was there. (Yes, it interfered with the meeting a little bit, but not as much as I'd expected.)
It did a couple things for me. First, it impressed me a *great* deal with how well the New Zealanders' can adapt to trying conditions. They went through some seriously difficult times, and kept a good attitude.
Second, it marked the first time I'd ever gone out to a restaurant and had a candle-lit dinner with 7 other guys. Laughed about that for months afterwards.
Tim
Bear in mind, I am not a doctor, so take this as uninformed advice. I looked into this once (my wrists are beginning to get to me too) and came to an interesting conclusion.
The surgery is really only a temporary solution. It will help, but will bring permanent relief only if you change your habits to remove whatever caused your CTS in the first place. For this group, this generally means give up computers, or at least cut _way_ back on using them. (Or finding a fully-functional voice recognition package, good luck.)
I doubt you like this answer any more than I did.
Tim