Yeah, just remind them that if they DO win that they can't go back and ask for those insane damages again- you can't have your cake and eat it too; and neither should they.
If it's excessive for them, it's going to be excessive for whomever gets nailed by their shenanigans.
Nope. What happens with the Quadro drivers more than anything else is that they do combining and optimization of immediate mode rendering requests, namely doing "write this poly, now write this one, now write this one, etc..." which is the easier way to do CAD software rendering. It can only be "sped up" by a little bit, taking advantage of the fragment shader path in a minimal manner. Games, on the other hand, present a command list to the engine and then say "Go render this pool of commands, come back to me when you're done" to it. Major speed boosts are obtained because the stuff's running in the host's memory, running in parallel on the host (in immediate mode you ask the chip to render and come back to you before issuing the next command, meaning the stream processor's WAITING most of the time for you...). If you combine all the immediate mode rendering requests that occur between a glBegin and a glEnd call, remove redundant operations, and then reorder operations so that the card will not waste steps, you end up with a fairly massive speed boost with things like CAD software when using the special drivers.
What you're paying for is effectively a "dynarec" core driver for CAD operations to speed up the rendering on select GPUs.
Heh... There's some extra silicon in the Quadros and little extra in the FireGL lineup. To be sure, it's not needed, but nice.
However, the difference in the drivers is that they've got a combine and optimize operation layer in the workstation drivers that dramatically accelerates immediate mode operations. CAD, by it's nature, will be difficult to code for the mode of rendering that games use- and it's difficult to accelerate past a point the immediate mode operations without some help. So, they provide a special driver that does combining and optimization (dropping off of unknowingly done redundant ops, etc...) and hands it off to the fast path rendering mode that games use.
If you want to gain most of the speed, skip using the stuff unlicensed- all someone needs to see a good portion of the speed would be to write an intercept DLL or LD_PRELOAD.so that does at least the combining of immediate mode ops. Now, this is making it sound vastly easier than it would be to do (Writing it and getting it right is NOT simple or easy- period...) but it IS doable and it explains why they ask a larger price for the workstation cards than they do for consumer parts more than anything else.
How could he have believed ANYTHING? He didn't verify whether or not it was an infringing item or if it breached a circumvention measure. This isn't a mistake of a nature that would have been viewed kindly by a Court in the old way of doing things.
If you don't know if it does or not, you're taking a 50-50 chance on it being perjury or not.
In and of itself, that's something that'd get you in trouble in a Court if it was anything other than this stupid crap, which shouldn't be around in the first place.
Before the DMCA, you had to file an infringement case, go before a Judge in a hearing on the matter, and get an injunction to get the same effect. With the DMCA, they don't have to bother with that. With the DMCA, they only have to send takedown letters to the appropriate parties to get a result. There's no Judge in the middle, determining whether they, in fact, have a case or not- they don't even have to face any music for being wrong and doing it frivolously unless the person they do it to is flush with cash and pursues the counter hard. With the old way, you had to go to the trouble of filing a suit- and if you got it wrong, there was decent chances of the lawyer and the plaintiff being sanctioned for the sillybuggers we see these days.
There's a reason the stuff was the way it was before the DMCA. Congress was foolishly led to believe that the rights holders with standing needed a "quicker" way of fixing things and to treat ways of circumventing "protections" as criminal acts.
The DMCA wasn't intended to be used for this situation. It just gets used that way.
There was no copyright being broken. There was no circumvention of protection measures.
However, it was used to pull down a site and a project for a time- for no other reason than a company stating that either were going on.
Sure, it's working as it's intended- but it's not what should be allowed. You shouldn't have the ability to willy-nilly do things like this and then maybe, just maybe, face the music of your actions after the fact after you've screwed up like this. Other things in the civil space typically require an injunction which takes time and usually requires more actual effort on the part of the party asking for it to get things to stop. With the DMCA, you don't need any of that crap- not even a Judge to determine if you're even full of crap or not. With the DMCA, you get to send a legal looking, nasty letter filed with a court and sent to the people in question, stating under of penalty of perjury that this is so and that they have to remove it or face possibly being held actionable along with the "infringing party". If you're wrong with the old way, you could face sanctions amongst other things- with the DMCA, it's really cheap in comparison.
Sure, it's working as "intended"- but the problem is, that "as intended" is the very problem everyone's up in arms about. There's less legal consequences for a screwup of this nature. There's less consequences for someone going around and doing it for things like printer cartridges where the company's trying to use it to keep people from refilling the expensive ink on them- and to keep buying the wasteful expensive ink cartridges. The DMCA's busted.
I'm cutting them a small bit of slack- because it's an unusual thing to see a company DO that sort of thing. It doesn't get them a 'get out of jail free' card, though- what they did was quite a bit inexcusable.
Unfortunately for CoreCodec, they reached for the DMCA before actually finding out what was going on and whether or not what they claimed in the filing was even TRUE or not. They used the DMCA in an inappropriate way that smacked of quelling competition, even though they claim it wasn't that.
It's how they screwed up that's as much the problem as the what they screwed up on.
Heh... I was cackling for quite a bit when I read the transcript yesterday- co-workers also got a bit of a chuckle when they wondered what in the heck I was ROFLMAO over...
It was bound to happen at some point all the same- but it's very, very stupid to blurt out what Darl did.
This is true. However, he has been caught having either lied on the 10Q in a manner he had to have known about- or he just committed perjury on an item that's very much material and germane to the case- and then stupidly implied that he may have done so before the court right after the act in question.
Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us they can't go there. It would invalidate THEIR licensing as well to do that- especially in the case of the GPL. It's a standard derivative works license at it's core. There's nothing there for someone to safely "make illegal" that wouldn't fubar up the cartel's postions.
Heh... I know a few law firms like that. Would rather I'd not have come to know of them, but it can't be avoided now. As for the rest...
As a non-Lawyer, based on what I read from the decision, I'd gather they don't have those niggling little details sufficient to prove contributory- or at least they don't have an easy, slam-dunk case on that either like they thought they had going into this.
Providing for download doesn't provide any traction for Distribution infringement. You're not distributing.
According to the decision, you're not even replicating.
The most the person providing the copy could be held actionable would be contributory infringement- enabling replication or distribution.
Downloading 10 times won't give them anything to go on there. The Judge clearly stated that they had to actually prove replication occurred by more than just themselves, which sets the bar quite a bit higher than just downloading it a bunch of times, considering the design nature of the system in question.
And in this decision, the Court found that the person providing it isn't doing anything other than Contributory Infringement. Direct infringement is being done by the downloader- which gets the whole picture right for a change.
Furthermore, the decision indicates that they have to prove that the provider actually DID provide the content to be infringed- with the file sharing programs, that may prove difficult; no logs and you have to be guilty of violating other laws to find out that they did provide content to others.
Actually, they can't just download it themselves by themselves. The decisions clearly calls that one out. By and of itself, the Rights Holder or one of their agents, in this instance, can't download the files and prove anything other than they intended to commit contributory infringement- they have to prove that it actually occurred to make it stick.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, their facts are tenuous at best- as we all know. They don't have anything that can pin Direct Infringement on the defendant, and don't appear to have anything that would pin Contributory Infringement on him either, if I'm reading this decision right.
It's why we called it Scrotus Goats! I desperately need to NOT be drinking a hot cup of tea while reading this stuff...damn near had to buy a new flatpanel there... >:-)
Wait, does that mean a Microsoft product is actually better? "Better" is something of a relative concept. Notes, at least a while back, actually managed to best Outlook on Exchange for poor quality. Having said this, Exchange and Outlook (or is that Look-OUT!) are pretty Craptacular themselves to administer.
It's still not an excuse for what the Whitehouse IT staff are handing to us. That's lame excuse territory, considering the requirements they have to operate under- you're supposed to make sure the mail server MEETS those requirements out of the gate before rolling over to a new system.
Actually, they're losing to the AMDs of the world. AMD's in that same league as NVidia- they're just hampered in many ways by their closed drivers. The drivers are gelling a bit quicker than I'd thought they would and AMD thought they would on the FOSS front. When they do, you're going to see a driver that supports most of AMD's R300 and up lineup at pretty much full speed.
No proprietary drivers needed.
What's NVidia going to do then?
Moreover, Intel's changing their story as well. If Larabee turns out as well as the reports are making it, they just jumped into that same space as AMD is in.
What will NVidia do if that pans out like it's turning out to be?
If it's anything like the stuff I've seen going on over the last handful of years, the answer would be that if you don't provide that FOSS support in an open manner, you may find yourself high and dry.
There's several reasons why AMD and Intel have opened up the technical information and bankrolled development of drivers for their GPUs. This would be one of the main ones. The OEMs have been quietly leaning on vendors for at least Linux support if not full-on open tech data or drivers for at least the last 2-3 years now.
I can only hope that the likes of Dell and Lenovo tell companies like Broadcom "No open drivers, no sale..." real soon here.
This depends on how LONG it lasts or if they don't get the Yahoo! bid. If it goes much longer or they miss on what's effectively a hostile takeover of another company- the stock market, whose majority are comprised really of daytraders, will show how really fickle they really are and paste them further on their stock price- if it goes too shallow, they lose their edge in that area and can't keep funneling money into things like they do. This isn't helping them at all and it's not as rosy as you're making it out to be.
Heh...that's because we don't have the monopoly on arrogance; haven't for some time now. I do find it funny, though, that there's people that appear or claim to be from elsewhere resorting to such naked arrogance as the GGP post resorted to- I used to think we had the market cornered on that stuff...;-)
Because Congress, as a whole (Senate and House, though not all members, obviously...) are as guilty as he- which would be problematic having the House proceed on Impeachment on him at this time. They're trying to cover up the whole mess so they and the President aren't shown to be guilty and the whole lot being placed in a worse situation than they already are.
Slashdot Mirror
But only for another year or so on the lifeline for XP.
The next Windows release? Heh, if it's anything like the last handful of them, you'll see at least 3-4 years from NOW before it goes into beta.
Yeah, just remind them that if they DO win that they can't go back and ask for those insane damages again- you can't have your cake and eat it too; and neither should they.
If it's excessive for them, it's going to be excessive for whomever gets nailed by their shenanigans.
Nope. What happens with the Quadro drivers more than anything else is that they do combining and optimization of immediate mode rendering
requests, namely doing "write this poly, now write this one, now write this one, etc..." which is the easier way to do CAD software rendering. It can
only be "sped up" by a little bit, taking advantage of the fragment shader path in a minimal manner. Games, on the other hand, present a command list to
the engine and then say "Go render this pool of commands, come back to me when you're done" to it. Major speed boosts are obtained because the stuff's
running in the host's memory, running in parallel on the host (in immediate mode you ask the chip to render and come back to you before issuing the next
command, meaning the stream processor's WAITING most of the time for you...). If you combine all the immediate mode rendering requests that occur between
a glBegin and a glEnd call, remove redundant operations, and then reorder operations so that the card will not waste steps, you end up with a fairly
massive speed boost with things like CAD software when using the special drivers.
What you're paying for is effectively a "dynarec" core driver for CAD operations to speed up the rendering on select GPUs.
Heh... There's some extra silicon in the Quadros and little extra in the FireGL lineup. To be sure, it's not needed, but nice.
.so that does at least the combining of immediate mode ops. Now, this is
However, the difference in the drivers is that they've got a combine and optimize operation layer in the workstation drivers
that dramatically accelerates immediate mode operations. CAD, by it's nature, will be difficult to code for the mode of rendering
that games use- and it's difficult to accelerate past a point the immediate mode operations without some help. So, they provide
a special driver that does combining and optimization (dropping off of unknowingly done redundant ops, etc...) and hands it off
to the fast path rendering mode that games use.
If you want to gain most of the speed, skip using the stuff unlicensed- all someone needs to see a good portion of the speed
would be to write an intercept DLL or LD_PRELOAD
making it sound vastly easier than it would be to do (Writing it and getting it right is NOT simple or easy- period...) but
it IS doable and it explains why they ask a larger price for the workstation cards than they do for consumer parts more than
anything else.
How could he have believed ANYTHING? He didn't verify whether or not it was an infringing item or if it breached a circumvention measure. This isn't a mistake of a nature that would have been viewed kindly by a Court in the old way of doing things.
If you don't know if it does or not, you're taking a 50-50 chance on it being perjury or not.
In and of itself, that's something that'd get you in trouble in a Court if it was anything other than this stupid crap, which shouldn't be around in the first place.
Before the DMCA, you had to file an infringement case, go before a Judge in a hearing on the matter, and get an injunction to get the same effect. With the DMCA, they don't have to bother with that. With the DMCA, they only have to send takedown letters to the appropriate parties to get a result. There's no Judge in the middle, determining whether they, in fact, have a case or not- they don't even have to face any music for being wrong and doing it frivolously unless the person they do it to is flush with cash and pursues the counter hard. With the old way, you had to go to the trouble of filing a suit- and if you got it wrong, there was decent chances of the lawyer and the plaintiff being sanctioned for the sillybuggers we see these days.
There's a reason the stuff was the way it was before the DMCA. Congress was foolishly led to believe that the rights holders with standing needed a "quicker" way of fixing things and to treat ways of circumventing "protections" as criminal acts.
You don't know the whole of it.
The DMCA wasn't intended to be used for this situation. It just gets used that way.
There was no copyright being broken.
There was no circumvention of protection measures.
However, it was used to pull down a site and a project for a time- for no other reason than a company stating that either were going on.
Sure, it's working as it's intended- but it's not what should be allowed. You shouldn't have the ability to willy-nilly do things like this and then maybe, just maybe, face the music of your actions after the fact after you've screwed up like this. Other things in the civil space typically require an injunction which takes time and usually requires more actual effort on the part of the party asking for it to get things to stop. With the DMCA, you don't need any of that crap- not even a Judge to determine if you're even full of crap or not. With the DMCA, you get to send a legal looking, nasty letter filed with a court and sent to the people in question, stating under of penalty of perjury that this is so and that they have to remove it or face possibly being held actionable along with the "infringing party". If you're wrong with the old way, you could face sanctions amongst other things- with the DMCA, it's really cheap in comparison.
Sure, it's working as "intended"- but the problem is, that "as intended" is the very problem everyone's up in arms about. There's less legal consequences for a screwup of this nature. There's less consequences for someone going around and doing it for things like printer cartridges where the company's trying to use it to keep people from refilling the expensive ink on them- and to keep buying the wasteful expensive ink cartridges. The DMCA's busted.
I'm cutting them a small bit of slack- because it's an unusual thing to see a company DO that sort of thing. It doesn't get them a 'get out of jail free' card, though- what they did was quite a bit inexcusable.
Unfortunately for CoreCodec, they reached for the DMCA before actually finding out what was going on and whether or not what they claimed in the filing was even TRUE or not. They used the DMCA in an inappropriate way that smacked of quelling competition, even though they claim it wasn't that.
It's how they screwed up that's as much the problem as the what they screwed up on.
Heh... I was cackling for quite a bit when I read the transcript yesterday- co-workers also got a bit of a chuckle when they wondered what in the heck I was ROFLMAO over...
It was bound to happen at some point all the same- but it's very, very stupid to blurt out what Darl did.
This is true. However, he has been caught having either lied on the 10Q in a manner he had to have known about- or he just committed perjury on an item that's very much material and germane to the case- and then stupidly implied that he may have done so before the court right after the act in question.
Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us they can't go there. It would invalidate THEIR licensing as well to do that- especially in the case of the GPL. It's a standard derivative works license at it's core. There's nothing there for someone to safely "make illegal" that wouldn't fubar up the cartel's postions.
Heh... I know a few law firms like that. Would rather I'd not have come to know of them, but it can't be avoided now. As for the rest...
As a non-Lawyer, based on what I read from the decision, I'd gather they don't have those niggling little details sufficient to prove contributory- or at least they don't have an easy, slam-dunk case on that either like they thought they had going into this.
You didn't read the decision...
Providing for download doesn't provide any traction for Distribution infringement. You're not distributing.
According to the decision, you're not even replicating.
The most the person providing the copy could be held actionable would be contributory infringement- enabling replication or distribution.
Downloading 10 times won't give them anything to go on there. The Judge clearly stated that they had to actually prove replication occurred by more than just themselves, which sets the bar quite a bit higher than just downloading it a bunch of times, considering the design nature of the system in question.
Well, as a Lawyer, you have to agree that "picky, picky..." is very important to how the case goes down in the first place... >;-)
And in this decision, the Court found that the person providing it isn't doing anything other than Contributory Infringement. Direct infringement is being done by the downloader- which gets the whole picture right for a change.
Furthermore, the decision indicates that they have to prove that the provider actually DID provide the content to be infringed- with the file sharing programs, that may prove difficult; no logs and you have to be guilty of violating other laws to find out that they did provide content to others.
Actually, they can't just download it themselves by themselves. The decisions clearly calls that one out. By and of itself, the Rights Holder or one of their agents, in this instance, can't download the files and prove anything other than they intended to commit contributory infringement- they have to prove that it actually occurred to make it stick.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, their facts are tenuous at best- as we all know. They don't have anything that can pin Direct Infringement on the defendant, and don't appear to have anything that would pin Contributory Infringement on him either, if I'm reading this decision right.
It's still not an excuse for what the Whitehouse IT staff are handing to us. That's lame excuse territory, considering the requirements they have to operate under- you're supposed to make sure the mail server MEETS those requirements out of the gate before rolling over to a new system.
Not with Dell machines selling storefront in places like Wal-Mart, they're not.
Actually, they're losing to the AMDs of the world. AMD's in that same league as NVidia- they're just hampered in many ways by their closed drivers. The drivers are gelling a bit quicker than I'd thought they would and AMD thought they would on the FOSS front. When they do, you're going to see a driver that supports most of AMD's R300 and up lineup at pretty much full speed.
No proprietary drivers needed.
What's NVidia going to do then?
Moreover, Intel's changing their story as well. If Larabee turns out as well as the reports are making it, they just jumped into that same space as AMD is in.
What will NVidia do if that pans out like it's turning out to be?
If it's anything like the stuff I've seen going on over the last handful of years, the answer would be that if you don't provide that FOSS support in an open manner, you may find yourself high and dry.
There's several reasons why AMD and Intel have opened up the technical information and bankrolled development of drivers for their GPUs. This would be one of the main ones. The OEMs have been quietly leaning on vendors for at least Linux support if not full-on open tech data or drivers for at least the last 2-3 years now.
I can only hope that the likes of Dell and Lenovo tell companies like Broadcom "No open drivers, no sale..." real soon here.
This depends on how LONG it lasts or if they don't get the Yahoo! bid. If it goes much longer or they miss on what's effectively a hostile takeover of another company- the stock market, whose majority are comprised really of daytraders, will show how really fickle they really are and paste them further on their stock price- if it goes too shallow, they lose their edge in that area and can't keep funneling money into things like they do. This isn't helping them at all and it's not as rosy as you're making it out to be.
Heh...that's because we don't have the monopoly on arrogance; haven't for some time now. I do find it funny, though, that there's people that appear or claim to be from elsewhere resorting to such naked arrogance as the GGP post resorted to- I used to think we had the market cornered on that stuff... ;-)
(Obligatory Princess Bride Mis-quote...) "Bill, you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means..."
Because Congress, as a whole (Senate and House, though not all members, obviously...) are as guilty as he- which would be problematic having the House proceed on Impeachment on him at this time. They're trying to cover up the whole mess so they and the President aren't shown to be guilty and the whole lot being placed in a worse situation than they already are.