making a copy from your own media for your own personal use is legal in any decent society
Could you name one place where this is legal? In the USA, fair use means you can make backups, but I think you're asking for more than that. In countries with personal use levies there are tight restrictions on them, for example in Canada you can make copies of music but not books or movies.
I agree it's probably a reasonable rule, but I just don't think it really applies very many places that I'd call decent right now.
Do they have an account that people can take their money back from if they only listen to their own stuff? If not, it sounds JUST like charging the 'guilty' and 'innocent' alike.
No, and this is a general problem with taxes. You pay school taxes whether you have children or not, you pay for roads whether you drive on them or not, etc. User fees solve this to some extent, but frankly, I'd rather have toll-free roads and free music copying than have to pay small amounts all the time.
No, he's saying that Swedes have the right to put music on their player whether they bought it or not. This is the system in Canada, too.
Buying a copy of the CD gets you a good copy that will probably last longer than your homemade one, and gets you the cover art, booklet, etc, but it doesn't affect your right to make copies for personal use.
It depends where you live. I think in the USA such copying is illegal, but in Canada it's fine. In Canada it is irrelevant whether you bought a copy or not, you're allowed to make a copy for personal use. In the USA you're allowed to make backups, but you didn't, so you lose.
I don't know the Swedish law, but it sounds like the Canadian one. Unlike the US law, it is perfectly legal to make copies of copyrighted music for personal use. This isn't a tax on illegal activity, it's a payment for a collective license.
Obviously it's not perfectly fair: there are lots of people who use their MP3 players to make backups of their own files, and they shouldn't pay the tax. (Errr, sorry, that's the CDROM argument. What is the argument that someone should be allowed to make free copies of copyrighted material to put on their MP3 player?)
Have you bought the CDs, and then taken them back to the shop the next day as not suitable for the purpose for which sold (or whatever the correct legal phrase in Canada is)?
Canada has weak consumer protection laws in this area. Most music stores post a sign saying they won't give refunds, only replacements, and that is sufficient to allow them to refuse a refund.
On the other hand, Canada has strong consumer protection laws in respect to copyright. Canadians are legally allowed to make copies of music CDs for private use.
So the GP is right when he wonders what's in the mind of record companies that make it less attractive to buy and more attractive to copy. Buying is risky, copying is not.
Are there really people here that value their time at a couple pennies per minute?
Just curious, how much do you get paid to read Slashdot? Does your boss know that's what he's paying you to do?
Seriously, some people view complaining as entertainment. It's entertaining for them (okay, I admit it, for us), but not so entertaining for the company.
As an aside, your last assertion is wrong - in the US patents system, if you can prove you invented it first, you can get the patent overturned and/or transferred.
Isn't that what I said, that the patent goes to whoever does the inventing first?
The first iPod shipped October 23, 2001. I can't believe that Apple managed to design, prototype, test, mass produce, market and ship the iPod in 9 months.
They're good, aren't they?:-)
Seriously, they didn't develop the hardware, they bought it. They developed the software in a few months in 2001. And the patent is about the software.
The great problem I have with patents is that if you invent something, but it happens to have been patentented by someone, you can't use your invention without having to pay royalties to the patent holder. That goes against my sense of fairness, which I hold as a very important value.
That's more to do with borked implementation than the idea itself. In theory, if you invent something the patent should be yours.
I think you missed the point. If Creative invents something and patents it, then I come along and independently invent the same thing, it still falls under the Creative patent. The fact that I invent something doesn't give me the patent; that goes to whoever invents it *first*. (In theory. In reality, it seems to go to whoever applies.)
you can close a while loop with either end or endfor in MS Pascel IIRC.
I never used MS Pascal, but I'm reasonably sure this is not true. In Pascal while loops are followed by a single statement (which may be compound). You don't need special syntax to close them.
But you get a double wedgie for correcting pascal code.
Suppose you were in an arms race *against* the US. Would you worry that your conventional weapons in space would wipe out all the satellites up there? Most of them aren't yours, and your satellites would have already been disabled by the US.
While the raw maths is pretty simple by itself, when you factor in stereo image processing to see a ball, work out it's speed and trajectory, and move potentially hundreds of muscles into the correct position to catch the ball, you realise just how powerful the human brain is and how well it can adapt.
My dog is better at catching tennis balls than I am, and he does it in his mouth.
Does this mean that dogs have been secretly hiding the power of the canine brain? What are they planning? Oh my god...
The dust jacket of a book that was to be sold in-store was recently altered because a Tesco buyer did not like it.
That's a bit silly, really. It leads to bland stuff that has been toned down to not offend anybody. Sure, if it offends a whole bunch of people, it might make sense to alter it, but one person?
I think you misread the article. The Tesco buyer is a Tesco employee who buys for Tesco. It wasn't a customer buying from Tesco who complained.
What they have is a giant, ineffecient H2O splitter. The whole apparatus is not in the one place. It's likely that 90% of the heat generated is not directed where you want it, in the room. There are many good ways to direct heat into a room. This is not one of them.
Where did you get this from? The fireplace is just one big lump. The waste heat might escape through the floor or the wall you put it next to, but it's not in another room.
The price tag is $50000 though. That's a pretty expensive space heater.
So you're saying that the head of a publicly held company is required to cooperate with the paparazzi, regardless of his opinion of them? Is that some special US law?
In effect Eric Schmidt has said, "Because you published information about me, Google the corporation will not talk to you?"
Just curious: where did you get that from? The only information I can find is the little note in the linked CNet article: "Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story."
If I trusted this reporter, I might read it the way you do. But I really don't, and that sentence could mean that there are some representatives at Google who refuse to talk to some reporters at CNet, quite different from your interpretation.
I'd really like to hear something from Google about this. Have you seen anything else?
I think most people *do* have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The point is, that information on the web is not "freely" available. It takes time to aggregate it, and that effort is not free. Making the effort to aggregate all the information about someone on the web into one place, and then putting it in your online publication is an invasion of the privacy of that person.
Eric Schmidt is probably enough of a celebrity that he has less of a right to expect privacy than most people, but this was still an invasion of his privacy, and he has every right to refuse to cooperate with someone who violated it.
Comments were stressed just as much when I was taking programming courses ~30 years ago. The problem isn't that people aren't taught to write comments. There are lots of reasons that people don't write good comments:
- It's hard, and it's hard to know that you got it right: Getting code right means the program works. Getting the comments right and there might be a payoff months in the future.
- Lots of programmers aren't good writers. Comments are written for people to read.
Slashdot Mirror
making a copy from your own media for your own personal use is legal in any decent society
Could you name one place where this is legal? In the USA, fair use means you can make backups, but I think you're asking for more than that. In countries with personal use levies there are tight restrictions on them, for example in Canada you can make copies of music but not books or movies.
I agree it's probably a reasonable rule, but I just don't think it really applies very many places that I'd call decent right now.
Do they have an account that people can take their money back from if they only listen to their own stuff? If not, it sounds JUST like charging the 'guilty' and 'innocent' alike.
No, and this is a general problem with taxes. You pay school taxes whether you have children or not, you pay for roads whether you drive on them or not, etc. User fees solve this to some extent, but frankly, I'd rather have toll-free roads and free music copying than have to pay small amounts all the time.
No, he's saying that Swedes have the right to put music on their player whether they bought it or not. This is the system in Canada, too.
Buying a copy of the CD gets you a good copy that will probably last longer than your homemade one, and gets you the cover art, booklet, etc, but it doesn't affect your right to make copies for personal use.
It depends where you live. I think in the USA such copying is illegal, but in Canada it's fine. In Canada it is irrelevant whether you bought a copy or not, you're allowed to make a copy for personal use. In the USA you're allowed to make backups, but you didn't, so you lose.
I don't know the Swedish law, but it sounds like the Canadian one. Unlike the US law, it is perfectly legal to make copies of copyrighted music for personal use. This isn't a tax on illegal activity, it's a payment for a collective license.
Obviously it's not perfectly fair: there are lots of people who use their MP3 players to make backups of their own files, and they shouldn't pay the tax. (Errr, sorry, that's the CDROM argument. What is the argument that someone should be allowed to make free copies of copyrighted material to put on their MP3 player?)
Have you bought the CDs, and then taken them back to the shop the next day as not suitable for the purpose for which sold (or whatever the correct legal phrase in Canada is)?
Canada has weak consumer protection laws in this area. Most music stores post a sign saying they won't give refunds, only replacements, and that is sufficient to allow them to refuse a refund.
On the other hand, Canada has strong consumer protection laws in respect to copyright. Canadians are legally allowed to make copies of music CDs for private use.
So the GP is right when he wonders what's in the mind of record companies that make it less attractive to buy and more attractive to copy. Buying is risky, copying is not.
I wonder if it's still there in the Google cache? What about all the other search engines? What about the Wayback Machine?
Is it just me, or is there something particularly novel and innovative about a browser-based e-mail service?
It's just the trademark on the name that they are claiming.
Are there really people here that value their time at a couple pennies per minute?
Just curious, how much do you get paid to read Slashdot? Does your boss know that's what he's paying you to do?
Seriously, some people view complaining as entertainment. It's entertaining for them (okay, I admit it, for us), but not so entertaining for the company.
Today Fuel prices have reached 1.43 Euro / liter, this is about 7.9$ / gallon. Yes, driving is EXPENSIVE here.
According to Google, 1.43 (Euros per liter) = 6.77941513 U.S. dollars per US gallon, but the rest of your post was right on the mark.
As an aside, your last assertion is wrong - in the US patents system, if you can prove you invented it first, you can get the patent overturned and/or transferred.
Isn't that what I said, that the patent goes to whoever does the inventing first?
The first iPod shipped October 23, 2001. I can't believe that Apple managed to design, prototype, test, mass produce, market and ship the iPod in 9 months.
:-)
They're good, aren't they?
Seriously, they didn't develop the hardware, they bought it. They developed the software in a few months in 2001. And the patent is about the software.
At least that's the chronology on this page.
The great problem I have with patents is that if you invent something, but it happens to have been patentented by someone, you can't use your invention without having to pay royalties to the patent holder. That goes against my sense of fairness, which I hold as a very important value.
That's more to do with borked implementation than the idea itself. In theory, if you invent something the patent should be yours.
I think you missed the point. If Creative invents something and patents it, then I come along and independently invent the same thing, it still falls under the Creative patent. The fact that I invent something doesn't give me the patent; that goes to whoever invents it *first*. (In theory. In reality, it seems to go to whoever applies.)
Didn't Apple already have this interface for the iPod prior to the Zen? And if so why would the patent be awarded to Creative if there was prior art?
The patent application date was January, 2001. The iPod was developed and released after that.
you can close a while loop with either end or endfor in MS Pascel IIRC.
I never used MS Pascal, but I'm reasonably sure this is not true. In Pascal while loops are followed by a single statement (which may be compound). You don't need special syntax to close them.
But you get a double wedgie for correcting pascal code.
Ouch! I object! That wasn't Pascal code!
He remembers how to program in Pascal.
No he doesn't, he really messed up the while loop.
Suppose you were in an arms race *against* the US. Would you worry that your conventional weapons in space would wipe out all the satellites up there? Most of them aren't yours, and your satellites would have already been disabled by the US.
While the raw maths is pretty simple by itself, when you factor in stereo image processing to see a ball, work out it's speed and trajectory, and move potentially hundreds of muscles into the correct position to catch the ball, you realise just how powerful the human brain is and how well it can adapt.
My dog is better at catching tennis balls than I am, and he does it in his mouth.
Does this mean that dogs have been secretly hiding the power of the canine brain? What are they planning? Oh my god...
The dust jacket of a book that was to be sold in-store was recently altered because a Tesco buyer did not like it.
That's a bit silly, really. It leads to bland stuff that has been toned down to not offend anybody. Sure, if it offends a whole bunch of people, it might make sense to alter it, but one person?
I think you misread the article. The Tesco buyer is a Tesco employee who buys for Tesco. It wasn't a customer buying from Tesco who complained.
What they have is a giant, ineffecient H2O splitter. The whole apparatus is not in the one place. It's likely that 90% of the heat generated is not directed where you want it, in the room. There are many good ways to direct heat into a room. This is not one of them.
Where did you get this from? The fireplace is just one big lump. The waste heat might escape through the floor or the wall you put it next to, but it's not in another room.
The price tag is $50000 though. That's a pretty expensive space heater.
What would you think about a device so that students could submit written answers anonymously?
e.g. "I disagree with idea X because it would negatively impact Y's ability to..."
Or more likely,
"Fr1st p0st!"
Anonymity is important sometimes, but it rarely improves rational discussion.
So you're saying that the head of a publicly held company is required to cooperate with the paparazzi, regardless of his opinion of them? Is that some special US law?
In effect Eric Schmidt has said, "Because you published information about me, Google the corporation will not talk to you?"
Just curious: where did you get that from? The only information I can find is the little note in the linked CNet article: "Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story."
If I trusted this reporter, I might read it the way you do. But I really don't, and that sentence could mean that there are some representatives at Google who refuse to talk to some reporters at CNet, quite different from your interpretation.
I'd really like to hear something from Google about this. Have you seen anything else?
I agree with you (Windows is a reasonable OS), but did you read the article? It's a piece of trash.
"No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered." The next sentence mentions the Mac.
Then there's the tired old line about Windows only being a victim of hackers because it's so popular.
And it gets worse on the second page, believe it or not.
I think most people *do* have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The point is, that information on the web is not "freely" available. It takes time to aggregate it, and that effort is not free. Making the effort to aggregate all the information about someone on the web into one place, and then putting it in your online publication is an invasion of the privacy of that person.
Eric Schmidt is probably enough of a celebrity that he has less of a right to expect privacy than most people, but this was still an invasion of his privacy, and he has every right to refuse to cooperate with someone who violated it.
Comments were stressed just as much when I was taking programming courses ~30 years ago. The problem isn't that people aren't taught to write comments. There are lots of reasons that people don't write good comments:
- It's hard, and it's hard to know that you got it right: Getting code right means the program works. Getting the comments right and there might be a payoff months in the future.
- Lots of programmers aren't good writers. Comments are written for people to read.