"Today, however, You and Roblimo decided to post stuff about Katz. Now I ask you why?"
Your KatzFilter didn't catch this article because it is properly catagorized as an interview, it just happens that the interviewee is Katz.
Asking slashdot to give you the means to filter any news which mentions Katz is asking for too much. That's your job. Be your own filter. If you don't like that answer, you could always filter roblimo because he subjected you to this story.
"Today, right now, the law states you cannot make copies of DVDs. Period."
That's not true. The doctrine of fair use gives me the right to make copies of DVDs. Do a bit more research. You are simply spouting bullshit, making yourself look like a fool, and increasing the noise/signal ratio.
"DeCSS was designed from the word go to bootleg CDs."
Bootleging DVDs was possible before DeCSS. DeCSS was designed to make it possible to view DVDs. Again, you need to do a bit more research. Go away now. Come back later when you are more well informed.
Using your number, there would be 400 million coasters per year, and a saving of 30 million gallons of gas.
Consider the production costs and associated polution from processing the plastics and other materials (packaging, labels, price tags, jewel cases?, ink) needed to produce 400 million coasters.
Now increase that figure because those coasters need to be distributed to the stores in the first place, and the stores will want to keep a larger stock of coasters than they keep of movies because the response "that's out of stock, we just don't have it right now" has different implications from "that's checked out right now, but it will be back soon".
I wouldn't want the government coming to my company... and saying
Of course you wouldn't. MS doesn't want that either. The differance here is that it's looking like MS broke the law.
I wouldn't want the courts to take away the things I bought with that money I stole from the bank either.
The arguement would be that widely used, proprietary formats were gained as a result of MS's auti-competitive practices. Without these practices they wouldn't have been able to force a closed format on the market.
Handwriting recognition is a non-trivial task and frankly, the inventors deserve to profit from their inventions.
The problem seems to be that they failed to profit on it on their own, and they are asking that someone else (3Com), who was able to invent something simular on their own, implement it, market it, and sell enough of them to profit, should be forced to give them some money because Xerox happened to reach the PO first.
The patent system seems to be founded on the idea that inventions are rare, and well seperated in time. The high number of simular inventions in the last few years shows that these assumptions are no longer as true as they once were.
Xerox didn't do as good a job on this invention. They came up with something much less intuitive to learn. If they implemented it at all they certainly failed to market it as well. They haven't sold as many units.
However, simlpy because they shoved some paper in a box on 1995-10-26, they want to claim a part of someone elses work.
They don't deserve to profit. They deserve the oportunity to profit. They had as good a chance as 3Com, arguabbly better. They failed. Bummer, better luck next time.
...and any XXX material found outside a.adt site is prosecutable after a 24-hour warning.
This begs the question of a definition of 'XXX material'. Keep in mind that you need a definition that would be acceptable world wide.
And how would you prosecute? Do you apply the same laws to people in Iran, New Guinea, Tanzania, Burma, Alabama and Cuba? How to manage to get extradition treaties in place?
Your best solution is completely unworkable. Try again?
Looks like I'll have to throw my vote away on whichever of the libertarians gets nominated.
I'm not sure which state you live in, but I know that voting for Libertarians in New Mexico has had a positive effect. We're looking at gaining major party status, which would make it easier to get more people on the ballot, and give us a chance to hold primary elections. Both these things will draw more press coverage to the issues that Libertarians care about.
It doesn't even matter if Libertarians are elected. The press coverage will help sway the platforms of other parties toward Libertarian ideals.
Your vote isn't about being on the winning side. It is about helping others understand what you want in your representatives, now and in the future. Vote for whoever best reflects what you want. This will have some effect on the choices available next time. Take the long view.
It's not a horse race. There is no prize for voting for the candidate that happens to win.
In your scenario, Clinton would be getting votes for what? Is Clinton planning to run for some important office in the near future? I know he won't be running for his current office again.
Could you imagine, 100 million people flocking to stores, looting microsoft of $40billion.
No, I can't imagine every third of forth person pulling this off before MS realized the problem. That would require so many people working together so quickly, without a timely response from MS that the suggestion just boggles the mind.
We don't want microsoft dead.... Microsoft is a prime example of how products shouldn't be.
Your arguement seems to be that accepting a deal which favors you more than the other guy is unethical, or becomes unethical if the deal is sufficently unbalanced.
People make unbalanced deals all the time. Ideally each party thinks they are getting a slightly better deal than the other guy. Nothing wrong with that, right?
Other times one party thinks they are getting a really good deal and the other party thinks they are getting a good enough deal to go ahead with the trade. That seems to be what was happening. Then MS realized they were loosing money and stopped offering the deal.
Sometimes people will point out that a deal is unfair instead of taking advantage of it, but there is no ethical obligation to do so. It's just that sometimes people are nice to one another. This seems to happen more often between strangers or people who have had what they consider to be good trades with the other party. Few people are sympathic to MS. Bummer for MS. Next time they should do more homework.
... Microsoft is a publicly held company.... stole money... milllions of individuals...
Yeah, so what? If MSFT were to become a penny stock tomorrow the world would keep turning. If any Mutual Fund is so heavily invested in MSFT that the fund is dependant on MSFT doing well then the managers of that fund aren't doing their job. If an individual investor is betting everything they have on MSFT, they get what they get. It's been good for a while, but they should know by now that past perforance does not guarantee future success.
If that's the best arguement you can come up with, don't bother posting.
The reason MS canceled the offer instead of sueing a bunch of people is that they realized they were offering a deal which was better for the customer than for MS, at least in CA and OR.
One of the reasons I repect Harry Browne is that he is willing to put his opinions down on paper and stick to them. He has remained surprisingly consistant for a potential politician.
In Why Government Doesn't Work (which was written before his 1996 presidential bid), he gave detailed information on what he would do if elected president. This book is worth reading. Your local library probably has a copy.
If you don't want to vote, that's fine. You can just say you'd rather play quake or whatever, that you don't care who wins.
But claiming you won't vote because of the electoral college is a complete cop out.
First, there are other issues of the ballet, that are not decided by the electoral college. These are worth voting on.
Second, not voting is a show of support for the current system, with the duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans. They are currently enjoying the status quo, and will do nothing to change it.
The only way we will ever get rid of the electoral college is to shake things out of this rut, and topple the two parties currently in control.
If you really want to get rid of the electoral college, go out and vote for ANY third party. It won't help overnight, but it will help get us there sooner.
Third-party candidates have no chance of winning the Presidency;</FUD>
Go look up 'self-fulfilling prophecy'.
Now stop spouting that worn out fud. Get a grip. Each vote for a third party helps dispell the mindset which helps make third party votes more difficult to get.
There is nothing special about the Democratic or Republican parties. They are not enshrined in the constitution, they haven't always been around. And they both seem to be a bit long in the tooth.
Go outside sometime, and find a registered voter who belongs to one of these parties. Ask them if they agree with their party on all issues. They will say 'no'. Now ask them to give the party a rating on a scale of 1 to 10. Repeat this process a few times. You will find that very few people are happy with they two party system.
Can I be there? No. Would I like to be there? Yes. It would cost me a lot of money to get to CA in the next 24 hours. If I already lived nearby I would certainly make it to the hearing, but I cannot get there in time without spending gobs of money.
I was under the impression that you can put one in any directory to affect robot behaviour from there downwards. Is that correct, and if so, does eBay really have no robots.txt files anywhere on its server?
The robots.txt spec is very clear on that point. the robots.txt file must reside in the root directory for a particular server. If they have a robots.txt somewhere else, it's being completely ignored, and they meeting the spec. Placing a robots.txt somewhere else and expecting it to be used would be foolish.
The robots.txt spec allows the specification of different behavior based on the User-Agent. If they want to allow indexing by AltaVista and Yahoo!, but disallow to other bots, there is already a machanism to make it clear what they want.
This smacks of a last minute management descision, that they don't want to be indexed by some particular other group, but they didn't know they cared last week.
What is the connection between "creating life" and "playing god"?
As I understand them, the commandments need some common sense applied to them in order to mean anything. For instance, 'shalt not kill' must mean 'shalt not kill any humans', as it is clear that killing plants and animals for food is okay.
the CD writer they're selling makes an exact copy of a CD you have already. There is NO POSSIBLE PURPOSE for this device except for making copies and then distributing them illegally.
It would PREFECTLY LEGAL for me to make one copy of every music CD I own, so that I can keep the originals in the closet where they won't be scratched, and use the copies in the CD player in my living room.
This is the save 'fair use' that allows archival copies of software.
Slashdot Mirror
Your KatzFilter didn't catch this article because it is properly catagorized as an interview, it just happens that the interviewee is Katz.
Asking slashdot to give you the means to filter any news which mentions Katz is asking for too much. That's your job. Be your own filter. If you don't like that answer, you could always filter roblimo because he subjected you to this story.
That's not true. The doctrine of fair use gives me the right to make copies of DVDs. Do a bit more research. You are simply spouting bullshit, making yourself look like a fool, and increasing the noise/signal ratio.
"DeCSS was designed from the word go to bootleg CDs."
Bootleging DVDs was possible before DeCSS. DeCSS was designed to make it possible to view DVDs. Again, you need to do a bit more research. Go away now. Come back later when you are more well informed.
Too bad they can't be bothered to pick more secure default settings.
Unless there is some licencing issue with creating the media or some sillyness like that, we should expect the price of the media to fall.
Consider the production costs and associated polution from processing the plastics and other materials (packaging, labels, price tags, jewel cases?, ink) needed to produce 400 million coasters.
Now increase that figure because those coasters need to be distributed to the stores in the first place, and the stores will want to keep a larger stock of coasters than they keep of movies because the response "that's out of stock, we just don't have it right now" has different implications from "that's checked out right now, but it will be back soon".
Of course you wouldn't. MS doesn't want that either. The differance here is that it's looking like MS broke the law.
I wouldn't want the courts to take away the things I bought with that money I stole from the bank either.
The arguement would be that widely used, proprietary formats were gained as a result of MS's auti-competitive practices. Without these practices they wouldn't have been able to force a closed format on the market.
The problem seems to be that they failed to profit on it on their own, and they are asking that someone else (3Com), who was able to invent something simular on their own, implement it, market it, and sell enough of them to profit, should be forced to give them some money because Xerox happened to reach the PO first.
The patent system seems to be founded on the idea that inventions are rare, and well seperated in time. The high number of simular inventions in the last few years shows that these assumptions are no longer as true as they once were.
Xerox didn't do as good a job on this invention. They came up with something much less intuitive to learn. If they implemented it at all they certainly failed to market it as well. They haven't sold as many units.
However, simlpy because they shoved some paper in a box on 1995-10-26, they want to claim a part of someone elses work.
They don't deserve to profit. They deserve the oportunity to profit. They had as good a chance as 3Com, arguabbly better. They failed. Bummer, better luck next time.
There are significant differances between this stuff and grafiti, with grafiti having clear improvemnts in useabliity and intuitiveness.
I don't know when grafiti was developed.
This begs the question of a definition of 'XXX material'. Keep in mind that you need a definition that would be acceptable world wide.
And how would you prosecute? Do you apply the same laws to people in Iran, New Guinea, Tanzania, Burma, Alabama and Cuba? How to manage to get extradition treaties in place?
Your best solution is completely unworkable. Try again?
I'm not sure which state you live in, but I know that voting for Libertarians in New Mexico has had a positive effect. We're looking at gaining major party status, which would make it easier to get more people on the ballot, and give us a chance to hold primary elections. Both these things will draw more press coverage to the issues that Libertarians care about.
It doesn't even matter if Libertarians are elected. The press coverage will help sway the platforms of other parties toward Libertarian ideals.
Your vote isn't about being on the winning side. It is about helping others understand what you want in your representatives, now and in the future. Vote for whoever best reflects what you want. This will have some effect on the choices available next time. Take the long view.
It's not a horse race. There is no prize for voting for the candidate that happens to win.
Uhm, perhaps you can clearify your point a bit...
In your scenario, Clinton would be getting votes for what? Is Clinton planning to run for some important office in the near future? I know he won't be running for his current office again.
No, I can't imagine every third of forth person pulling this off before MS realized the problem. That would require so many people working together so quickly, without a timely response from MS that the suggestion just boggles the mind.
We don't want microsoft dead.... Microsoft is a prime example of how products shouldn't be.
No we don't. We've got Linux One for that. ;-}
People make unbalanced deals all the time. Ideally each party thinks they are getting a slightly better deal than the other guy. Nothing wrong with that, right?
Other times one party thinks they are getting a really good deal and the other party thinks they are getting a good enough deal to go ahead with the trade. That seems to be what was happening. Then MS realized they were loosing money and stopped offering the deal.
Sometimes people will point out that a deal is unfair instead of taking advantage of it, but there is no ethical obligation to do so. It's just that sometimes people are nice to one another. This seems to happen more often between strangers or people who have had what they consider to be good trades with the other party. Few people are sympathic to MS. Bummer for MS. Next time they should do more homework.
Yeah, so what? If MSFT were to become a penny stock tomorrow the world would keep turning. If any Mutual Fund is so heavily invested in MSFT that the fund is dependant on MSFT doing well then the managers of that fund aren't doing their job. If an individual investor is betting everything they have on MSFT, they get what they get. It's been good for a while, but they should know by now that past perforance does not guarantee future success.
If that's the best arguement you can come up with, don't bother posting.
The reason MS canceled the offer instead of sueing a bunch of people is that they realized they were offering a deal which was better for the customer than for MS, at least in CA and OR.
In Why Government Doesn't Work (which was written before his 1996 presidential bid), he gave detailed information on what he would do if elected president. This book is worth reading. Your local library probably has a copy.
If you don't want to vote, that's fine. You can just say you'd rather play quake or whatever, that you don't care who wins.
But claiming you won't vote because of the electoral college is a complete cop out.
First, there are other issues of the ballet, that are not decided by the electoral college. These are worth voting on.
Second, not voting is a show of support for the current system, with the duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans. They are currently enjoying the status quo, and will do nothing to change it.
The only way we will ever get rid of the electoral college is to shake things out of this rut, and topple the two parties currently in control.
If you really want to get rid of the electoral college, go out and vote for ANY third party. It won't help overnight, but it will help get us there sooner.
Go look up 'self-fulfilling prophecy'.
Now stop spouting that worn out fud. Get a grip. Each vote for a third party helps dispell the mindset which helps make third party votes more difficult to get.
There is nothing special about the Democratic or Republican parties. They are not enshrined in the constitution, they haven't always been around. And they both seem to be a bit long in the tooth.
Go outside sometime, and find a registered voter who belongs to one of these parties. Ask them if they agree with their party on all issues. They will say 'no'. Now ask them to give the party a rating on a scale of 1 to 10. Repeat this process a few times. You will find that very few people are happy with they two party system.
Try again with more 'don't care' boxes checked on the issues you don't feel as strongly about.
Can I be there? No. Would I like to be there? Yes. It would cost me a lot of money to get to CA in the next 24 hours. If I already lived nearby I would certainly make it to the hearing, but I cannot get there in time without spending gobs of money.
The robots.txt spec is very clear on that point. the robots.txt file must reside in the root directory for a particular server. If they have a robots.txt somewhere else, it's being completely ignored, and they meeting the spec. Placing a robots.txt somewhere else and expecting it to be used would be foolish.
This smacks of a last minute management descision, that they don't want to be indexed by some particular other group, but they didn't know they cared last week.
As I understand them, the commandments need some common sense applied to them in order to mean anything. For instance, 'shalt not kill' must mean 'shalt not kill any humans', as it is clear that killing plants and animals for food is okay.
It would PREFECTLY LEGAL for me to make one copy of every music CD I own, so that I can keep the originals in the closet where they won't be scratched, and use the copies in the CD player in my living room.
This is the save 'fair use' that allows archival copies of software.
You misunderstand. 'Social Darwinism' is still occuring, it's just that our society is now selecting for behaviours that most of us find repugnent.
More layers will lead to more lost dies, so the performance would have to be much better for someone to do that.