Strange...I tested Mozilla with captions and it displayed the text just fine. You aren't referring to ALT attributes on IMG tags, are you? ALT attributes are not meant to be used as captions, you know. For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, [ALT] specifies alternate text. Yes, IE will display a tool tip with the ALT content when you hover over an image, but that is NOT a standard implementation or use of an ALT tag. A decent screenreader should know how to interpert ALT tags in pages.
What do you mean, IE has a better UI than Netscape 6.1? I'd prefer Mozilla's UI to IE's any day. Netscape 6.1 is not much different. UI is a subjective thing...what you really mean is that you like IE's UI better...;)
Just got around to finally upgrading my home machine from 0.9. I've been using 0.9.4 at work, but I didn't upgrade my home version because I had some problems with text box focus in 0.9.3 and I wanted to wait till they fixed 'em (they did;) ).
0.9.5 seems to start a little faster and run a little faster than 0.9, though it's still slower than Netscape 4.77. What decided it for me, though, was that the annoying "right click disables keyboard" bug is no longer happening in 0.9.5. That bug was the primary reason that I didn't use Mozilla much from home (I use the context menu all the time and for some reason, the bug, which supposedly happens when you "double right click", was being invoked about 75% of the time I used the context menu...). For some reason, the bug didn't affect my work install on Win2K. Now that 0.9.5 doesn't have the bug, I think I'll be using it as my primary browser from now on, unless something well-hidden but very annoying somehow pops up...;)
Can't say much for the tabs or the gesture module, because I don't use 'em and don't plan to. I only used Opera once because at the time I tried it, the tabbed layout was the only choice, and I hated it. I already have a taskbar. I don't need two of 'em taking up unneccesary space...;) Maybe I'll play with the gestures one day, but I'm not all that interested..."type'n'click" works just fine for me, thanks.;)
A note to that fellow who wants Mozilla to include tons of extra "bundled" apps...bundling is not the best method of software design and distribution. Small and specialized is better, to a certain point. A modular design is the best way to go, because it lets those who want to add all sorts of features and extra stuff, while those who don't want them don't have to bother with them. Why would I want to waste the time, disk space, and RAM downloading, storing, and running "bundled" programs and apps I have no use for? When I want to do a task, I know exactly what program I want to use to do it. MP3 files? Play 'em in Winamp. Instant messages? ICQ99b. Watch MPEG movies? WMP 6.4 works fine for me. Check my email? Pegasus, of course. Sure, if I run all this stuff at the same time, it takes up more RAM than an integrated program would...but not that much more. And when I'm not running all these at the same time (which is 95% of the time, BTW), the ones I'm not using are not running at all. If they were "integrated" into my browser, they would be running all the time, wasting precious resources, even when I'm not using them. Not to mention the fact that, since I already HAVE software that does all of the above and I have no desire to switch to other software, if Mozilla came bundled with all that stuff, it would be a complete waste of space and resources for me, because I'd never use it. I've always been an advocate of keeping software seperated. If it's a web browser, let it browse the web. If it's a chat program, let it chat. If it's a media player, let it play media files. There's no need for all three of them to do everything. Is it cool if they can interact with each other? Sure...but that can be done easily without making them integral parts of each other. It seems to me that modularity is the best design for software, because it allows the most freedom and the best experience for the end user, since they get (almost) exactly what they want or need, whether it's a barebones utility or a full-fledged suite.
BTW, just a note for you browser warriors...I'm sure Konq is a great browser, but it has one small flaw...it only runs on one platform. Mozilla runs on my Windows machines as well as it does on your *nix boxes;-D Not everyone uses Linux, ya know...though I'm fairly sure I will be using it more often as soon as I move to a bigger place and have room to set up more than one computer. (I can't give up Win98 because many of the games I'm addicted to aren't ported and wouldn't run right in an emulator...but I do not plan to upgrade to a newer version of Windows in the forseeable future, so it looks like it's gonna be Linux or bust for me in a few years.;) )
I play a lot of games in my spare time. My favorites are NASCAR Heat and various FPS mods. Being poor, I have no steering wheel, so I use a Sidewider Precision Pro for Heat, and I use my trusty Kensington optical mouse for FPS. I can tell you that, after playing Heat for two hours with a Sidewinder, my hand, wrist, and arm hurt a *hell* of a lot worse than they do after two hours of Quake or UT. Most of the strain comes from keeping my arm elevated instead of being able to rest my wrist on the desk and my elbow on the arm of my chair.
I know I'll develop carpal tunnel syndrome eventually, but I'll live with it. I live, work, and breate computers and don't plan to give it up anytime soon, so I guess it's a small price to pay for all the enjoyment I get out of them.
I do have one possible advantage over most other users I know...my odd method of typing. I never learned to touch type. I type with my hands elevated and first two finger joints held vertically, and use a lot more arm and wrist motion while typing than touch typers do. I primarily use my middle fingers to hit keys, though sometimes I use my left index finger when it is convinient. I do type without looking at the keyboard and can average 40-50 WPM, BTW...not bad for just using three fingers.;) Still, I think I might be better off than many touch typers who are often straining their fingers to reach the keys. I know I can type for several hours at a time with no noticeable discomfort. Mousing is what causes me the most trouble, and it's usually pretty minor and comes after many hours of computer use.
Trust their customers? Haha! Guess they forgot to mention their little crusade back in the days before the Napster filters, when they encoded watermarks into all of their MP3 files and then got users who were trading them on Napster banned...
BTW, most of the MP3s in my collection are 128k. That seems to be the most popular format for trading, since it fits decent quality into a very reasonable file size (something slightly less than 1MB/min.). Yeah, I know you "purists" out there will mod me down, but I just don't have the hard drive space to store 320k MP3s of all my music, and 128k sounds fine to me on my system. Not as good as higher rates, of course...if I were burning to a CD or something, I'd want better quality, but for listening on my computer, I'd rather have twice as much music at 128k quality than what I could fit on my drive at 320k. And since my CD player's busted...;-D
Also BTW, I've found many great artists through MP3.com...Blue Cyberia, Amethystium, 303Infinity, Egan, Higgins, and my favorite, GNOMUSY. All excellent music that probably won't ever see the light of day on a RIAA-produced medium. If you find an artist you like, buy one of their CDs for $10 or so.
If they were actually filtering *traffic* based on content, that might leave them liable for all kinds of fun lawsuits. But in this case, they are not filtering traffic, they're just refusing to offer some newsgroups on their own news server. Essentially, they're only changing what content they are offering on their own server, not what kind of content passes over their lines...and no matter what the reasons, that should not affect (legally) their responsibility for general traffic. I'd guess PacBell/SBC customers can use any other news servers out there and still be able to access groups that aren't carried on Prodigy's.
Thank goodness RoadRunner still offers most, if not "all", of the alt.binaries.* tree...;)
Legos are probably the most robust toys I've seen, but they can still get damaged if ya smash them around too much. Usually, what happens is that you get dents and dings in the bottoms and corners of the bricks and pieces, and then they don't fit together anymore because lumps are sticking out in the wrong places. I've never actually managed to break a Lego before. The worst damage I've done to one was when I gave my gerbil a red 2x4 brick (a Tyco, too, not the good stuff) and he ate half the damn thing. Come to think of it, he died not to long after that, too...hmm...
OK...how bout me? It took me a week to figure out how to use my software to burn an audio CD...;)
Seriously, I've burned two music CDs since I got my burner. One was from tracks I ripped myself from my CD collection. The other was from MP3s that I downloaded, but of songs that are on a cassette tape I own. That's simply space-shifting; no matter where I'm getting the music from, it is not illegal if I already have a licensed copy.
Everything else I've burned to CD is data, for backup purposes. Invoking the rights granted me by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, I hereby decline to discuss exactly what sort of data I've been backing up...;-) Suffice to say that they do not play in my CD player. Then again, most CDs don't play in my CD player anymore, either...anyone wanna loan a poor deprived music lover a few hundred smackers?;-)
1) Mozilla's user agent string is easily changed in user.js:
user_pref("general.useragent.override","(insert user agent string here...)");
2) I have never had any problems with the plugins I use. If a plugin doesn't "recognize" Moz, keep an install of Netscape 4 around and copy the plugin files from Communicator/Program/plugins to Mozilla's plugin directory. Works like a charm for QuickTime at least, and I haven't found any other plugins I have a use for yet...;)
The point is not that we don't WANT the plugins, but that we have enough technical know-how to install the ones we want (and only the ones we want) all by ourselves. This gives Mozilla greater flexibility for users who might not want everything but the kitchen sink installed with their browser.
No, it's more like "I bought a new car with that cool keyless entry system. Of course, the button doesn't do anything unless the key is actually in the door...";)
DennyK
Actually, the Npower Server comes with a 600MHz or 733MHz Intel XScale RISC CPU. That ought to be fast enough for ya, but I shudder to think of the cost. There's also the briQ with a PowerPC G3 or G4 processor. Although I don't know the PPC chips well enough to tell you the speed from the model number, it's probably a wee bit faster than 350MHz...;) This one has a price tag, though...'bout $2,500 for starters. Kinda pricey for a DivX;-) player...;)
Went to see Jurassic Park III the other day (yeah, it was a waste of time, but it was a free ticket...;) ). Before the movie started, we were subjected to FOUR extra-long commercials and at least seven trailers. The posted movie start time was 3:05PM, but the opening credits didn't roll until after 3:30. People paid $7 a pop to sit there and watch a half hour of commercials before an 80-minute movie. Ridiculous... I don't mind a trailer or two before the movie starts, since it's often interesting to see what new movies are coming out soon, but I'm really getting sick of the commercials, and seven trailers is way, way too many. And they cannot use the excuse that cable TV has, that the advertising subsidizes much of the cost and gives us cable for ~$50/mo instead of several hundred dollers. Movie tickets prices have gone nowhere but up in the last twenty years, and it's not that much more expensive to show a movie now than it was in 1980.
I like the idea of booing all of the ads, but unfortunatly, it won't do any good...who's going to know? Nobody from the companies running the ads is going to be anywhere near your local theater, and if you're lucky enough to get a glimpse of an actual theater employee during the show, it's gonna be the 15-year-old kid who's being paid $5.15/hr to pick up trash and make sure the patrons aren't having sex or knifing each other to death in the back rows. You could call those handy-dandy 800 numbers for "Questions and comments," I guess, but it's not hard to figure out what their reasoning will be... "Wow, if we stop running the ads for BigMegaCorp's multimillion-dollar ad campaign in our theaters, we might make this small handful of people happy enough to shell out a whole $7 to watch a movie along with the rest of the $7 sheep who don't give a damn that they have to watch five minutes of ads for every ten minutes of movie..." Hmm, wonder what their response would be?;)
Most people who have "outside" domains will also have outside SMTP mail servers to use. Only those people with those forwarding address services, etc. will really be affected. I almost never use my ISP's email service anyway...;)
There is an interesting potential issue here, however...lately, another "anti-spam" trick ISPs have been using is to block outbound requests on port 25. This prevents their customers from using outside SMTP servers (and really causes a hassle for us web hosting companies trying to figure out why people can't send mail with their account's servers...). You have to wonder if an ISP will ever try to implement both the From: field restriction and the blocking of port 25, all in the name of "preventing spam..." Perhaps this could be a way for ISPs to more effectively enforce those stupid TOS clauses about not using your Internet connection for business purposes? Do you think enough people would drop an ISP who did this to make it a really bad idea, or do some of these ISPs have enough mindless zombies as clients that they could get away with it? I can't see it working, because there are too many people out there now who do have mail at their own web sites or from other services, but you never know...you wouldn't think so many people would put up with the crap that AOL throws at it's users, but they're still the biggest "sort-of-ISP" out there...
DennyK
Re:Is the law really meant 2 be understood by laym
on
IANAL
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I like the Wiccan Rede myself...basically, it says "Do what you want, as long as it harms no one." Seems like a pretty good approach to me.
How quickly we forget? Some days the mob mentality on Slashdot gets ridiculous. Less than a month ago folks were fishing for moderation points by saying "We need to go out and buy Easy CD Creator to support Roxio" (for switching to freedb). Now we have to [insert favorite action expletivehere] them?
So does this mean all the folks who claimed they were going to go out to buy a copy should now burn/sledgehammer their CD?
I had the same thought when I read this article... "Roxio good! No, wait, Roxio evil! No, Roxio good! No, evil! Good! Evil! Ow! My head hurts...";)
For me, this is an awesome idea. If I can download and burn individual songs (at a realistic "per song" price) then I don't have to pay for the entire album. I like the idea of singles (since often the rest of an album is not very appealing); however, with singles you have this useless CD with like 3 copies of the SAME song on it plus a slightly bloated price. If I can pay to DL it and create my own CD of "this month's favorites" then I don't have this annoying stack of CD's sitting in my closet.
I agree...that would be nice, if the record companies were really interested in selling their hit single tracks for BYO CDs for a fair price. Unfortunatly, I doubt that that is going to happen under the current system. Why not? Think about this...today, a record company can rake in about $18 per purchase for a hit single, or maybe two. All the Top 40 groups usually have CDs with one or two good songs and a bunch of crap. Most people who buy those CDs are buying them for those one or two songs. If all of those songs were available individually for sale for a "fair" price (which I would define as $1.50 US or less per track, since the "average" CD has about 12 tracks and costs about $18), now what's going to happen? Well, the record company will probably sell just as many, if not more, copies of Boy Band's Big Hit as they would with a premade album...but now they're only taking in a buck or two per sale. Even if there are two or three "hit" tracks in an album, that's still only about $1-$2 for each track, so even the people who buy all three are only spending $3-$6. Very few people are going to waste their time and money on the other nine or ten crap songs that would normally be in an album.
Now, if the band has gone the traditional method of making an entire album with two good songs and ten crappy songs, the record company has paid them to make music that isn't going to sell under this new distribution method. And if the band or record company decides to forego the "crap" since it's no longer neccesary to fill an album with the new single-track purchase system, well, this band might turn out, say, half a dozen good songs in their lifetime, just like they would if they were using the traditional method, but now the record company is only making $1-$2 per sale on each hit instead of the $9-$18 per sale that they would get per hit by selling albums with one or two of those hit songs on them. This sucks for the record companies, because it's much easier (and cheaper) to squeeze a one-week "Top 20" hit song or two out of a random boy-band or girl group than it is to find and cultivate a group with real talent who can produce a lot of good music. And no matter how the hits fall, the record company's profit per hit has still been cut by a huge percentage.
I've always figured that this is another reason the record companies don't like Napster, et. al. Now, any potential buyer can go online and download the full tracks from an album, and then find out that only one or two are good. And since they probably don't feel like paying $18 to get the one song they really want, they'll just download it from Napster and live with the lower quality of MP3.
This is why the record companies are going to make their pay online music services so limited. Since they might be losing those profits on each hit song, they're going to make up for it by forcing users to "rent" the music by only letting them play the songs they download if they keep paying their monthly fees. This continuous income stream makes up for the profit lost because they are selling fewer $18 CDs with one good song.
Ballmer: "The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
There is just so much wrong with that handful of sentences that I don't know where to start. Let's see...
- "...if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source..." No, no, NO! If you use any open-source software released *under the GPL*, you must make your software open-source. Open Source != GPL Software. I don't know if Ballmer is incredibly obtuse or if he's just doing the usual M$ FUD dance (I'd guess the latter), but I'm really getting tired of hearing him and the rest of the Micro$oft spokesgerbils acting like all open source software is GPL'd.
- "Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies." Wrong again. Open source software is available to everyone...even GPL software like Linux. There's no rule or law that says commercial companies can't use it in their products. Yes, they have to comply with the license the open-source software was released under, and if that was the GPL, then they will have to release the source code of their product, but that is not preventing them from using the code if they really want to.
Ballmer is really whining about the fact that Microsoft can't swipe government-funded GPL code and then "innovatively" incorporate it into their own proprietary Rent-an-Application suite, which they then re-"sell" for the low, low price of only $599 per year. Boo hoo hoo. Sorry, Ballmer, but I don't think that the intent behind the open release of government-funded projects was to let corporations take that code developed with the taxpayers' money and sell it back to them with an obscene markup. I know the sight of all those free, open GPL projects out there that you can't steal, buy out, sue to death, or exploit for your own profit is probably giving you ulcers, but I guess you'll just have to "innovate" something else on your own instead.;)
You definatly have a good point, but when I was talking about "P2P file sharing", I was referring to the widespread, open P2P networks like Napster and Gnutella. The basic "peer-to-peer" technology is old and has many uses, but it's these new widespread "file trading" networks that the RIAA and other "anti-piracy" advocates are really concerned about.
The P2P system has been around for a while, but mostly or entirely on small, local, closed networks. Napster et. al. is the first widespread application of this technology over the Internet as a whole and connecting thousands of users at once, as far as I know.
(BTW, if ya wanna get really nitpicky and technical, FTP is not really a P2P system, it's a client-server system. While you can send files and data in both directions, you still have a designated "client" (you) and "server" (the FTP server you're connected to). In a true P2P network, every node plays the role of both a client and a server. But I still see what you're talking about...;) )
their case for public good is quite a strong one:
protecting the livings of musicians. I know the musicians get a unfairly small slice of the pie but thats a different issue. The fact is that if everyone could get music for free the musicians dont get any money, so they dont make music. No music != public good.
Now if someone can show P2P operating with the orginators of the music getting money then this case goes away. Napster hasnt done that (saying 'oh.. err, well how about if we add subscriptions?' doesnt seem to have cut it) and thats why napster is dead.
The trouble is, the RIAA will never let such a system exist unless it's under their control. That, in a large part, is why we have yet to see a successful, profit-making online music system. Everything that has come along has been killed, crippled, or bought out by the record companies. Even Napster's subscription model could have been a success...sure, they would have lost a large portion of their user base, but they might have been able to retain enough users to make a profit and pay the artists. That's probably not the case any longer, with the droves of users who have already abandoned the almost worthless file sharing system for other P2P networks.
The only pay music networks that we're going to see will be the ones owned by the labels, and on those, the consumer is going to be paying absurd fees for music they can't burn to a CD, transfer to their Rio, or even move to another PC. And they won't even be buying this music...that would be far too unfair to the record companies. No, we only get to rent it for a short time. If we want to keep it longer, we pay more.
A point to make here is that CDRs werent banned when people started copying CDs with them. Why should it be easier to ban a non-physical medium which.could. be used for piracy?
There's a difference between CDRs and P2P systems...CDRs have a very obvious, proveable, legitimate use as a data storage medium. As much as the RIAA would probably like to use their legal clout to restrict CDRs, they haven't figured out a way around that legitimate use. P2P file sharing networks, on the other hand, are a new technology, and, unfortunatly, no one has really come up with a useful, widespread, 100%-legitimate use for them. There are probably many, many legitimate purposes for which P2P could be used, but we just haven't figured out what they are or how to apply P2P file sharing technology to them. Unfortunatly, with our legal system, that makes the entire P2P file sharing concept a target, because the precedent seems to be that you must prove something can be used for a "substantial legitimate purpose," or else it is automatically considered illegitimate if it could contribute in any way to something illegal.
I think it's a great alternative to simply asking for donations. They would still be getting capital from the people who like the company and want to help them out, but those people would be getting a little something in return: their own little piece of the company (even if it's not neccecarily a profitable piece).
I'm a little strapped for cash right now, but if I had the money to spare, I'd definatly be interested in purchasing some of their stock. I'm not an experienced programmer or developer, so I can't contribute to the open-source community in the traditional way. This would be a great way for me and others like me to give a little back, and even for you guys who can contribute code and programming effort to give a little extra.
I've NEVER purchased anything on the Internet via a banner ad. I think I've clicked on maybe ten or twelve banner ads over the course of my entire online life, and most of those were back in the mid-90's, when many ads actually lead you to interesting sites without trying to track you, spy on you, or steal your personal information. These days, I rarely see banner ads, and I never see those from the major ad networks. I've fiddled with various blocking tools over the last year or two. My favorite has been The Proxomitron but with my cable modem, the real-time processing of most web pages makes the speed of my browsing unbearably slow. I finally settled on using the Windows hosts file to block most known ad servers, and Edexter to serve up fake images so Netscape doesn't crap out trying to download a nonexistant banner ad on every page I visit. It doesn't catch everything, and it doesn't block the other annoyances that The Proxomitron can be programmed to catch, but it also doesn't affect the speed of my browser.
See http://www.smartin-designs.com/ for a great prewritten hosts file and plenty of advice for using it. If you do use the hosts file to block banners, be sure to use eDexter as well, especially if you use Netscape.
...is not whether cheating is OK or not, or whether these drivers make it easier for script kiddies to cheat. If someone wants to cheat in a multiplayer game, there are more than enough neatly boxed, plug-n-play cheats out there to keep them happy for a long time.
I think the real problem with what Asus did is that they are a graphics hardware company. One of their biggest markets is the gaming community, a commumity that is almost unilaterally opposed to cheating in multiplayer games. To officially publicly release these "see-thru" drivers and encourage their users to cheat with them shows extreme disrespect for one of their largest customer bases. At the least, it was a very stupid marketing decision...but even more than that, it's insulting to us gamers who abhor cheaters.
If the drivers had been programmed by some third party or leaked accidentally, and not in an official company release, that would have been a different situation entirely. The problem is, Asus is encouraging gamers to cheat...and what's more, by their actions, it would seem that they believe that a large number of us gamers *are* cheaters...at least enough to make those drivers a worthwhile marketing tool. To me, that seems a little insulting...;)
...What possible legal objection could they have to the FreeDB project? FreeDB used a *GPL* version of the CDDB system (released by Mr. Scherf under the GPL as described in the readme which accompanied the release), started their system with data that was freely distributed with the GPL CDDB code, and supplemented it with data freely contributed by individual users. Maybe I'm just blind, but I cannot see anything that could even remotely be considered infringement of patent, copyright, or any other Gracenote IP. They can patent all they want to, but that does not retroactively invalidate the prior GPL releases of their system.
FreeDB is not copying Gracenote's current code. They are not stealing Gracenote's current data. They are not using Gracenote's network infrastructure. Therefore, they are doing nothing wrong...and thus, Roxio cannot be guilty of any sort of "contributory infringement" because there is no infringement occuring in the first place.
The only possible legal basis I can see for this lawsuit would be some sort of clause in Roxio's contract that forbids them from going to a compteting system. If that is the case, however, it's really their own fault for not reading the contract thoroughly before signing it. Yeah, it's a sleazy clause, but Roxio's legal team should have been more on the ball...
Besides, with most computer databases these days, the entity *accessing* the database decides on the layout of the data when it is presented. The stuff inside the database isn't really stored in any sort of "presentable" format anyway, since the raw database file is not worked with manually. A software interface (i.e. SQL) requests certain information from the database, gets the results of its query, and can then return the data to the user in any order, layout, format, or style the author of the querying program saw fit to implement. It makes no difference how the data is physically "laid out" in the database itself.
This brings up an interesting question, actually...just what is the copyrightable entity being called "the database," anyway? Is it simply the sum of all the information in the database? But that isn't copyrightable, as the above court case shows. Is it the layout of the raw database file itself? But what is that "layout", even? The raw binary code? The physical layout on the storage media? But none of that really matters...the physical "layout" could almost never be duplicated, and the sequence of bits in the binary code bears no direct relationship to the data itself (it only has meaning when translated by the software that *created* the database in a particular way), so I don't know if it can be considered a "layout" of the data. The "order" of the "records" in the virtual "table" that the database holds? Well, possibly...but then again, that order has no bearing on how the data is presented to the end user. A different company could store their records "backwards" in their database and still create a presentation that's identical to the one their competitor's software produces. So is it that layout that is presented to the user itself? But that's impossible in this case, because Gracenote holds no copyrights or patents and has no control over what the layout the end user sees looks like (beyond the single requirement that their logo be present somewhere, and even that gives them no control over how that logo is integrated into the rest of the layout). The individual companies themselves would hold any IP rights for the look and layout of their database front ends. (If this were the case here, in essence, Gracenote would be suing Roxio because Roxio "copied" Roxio's own copyrighted interface...;) )
So, what do we have here? Well, we've established the following, I think:
A. The data itself in a list or other "logical ordering of items" is not copyrightable, as established in FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., INC.
B. The layout and presentation of that data, however, can be copyrighted, AFAIK. I've never seen any evidence to the contrary, at least.
C. A computer database has no inherent "layout" that is visible to the end user. Entities accessing the database can do so independent of any physical layout. Thus, this raw database would not be copyrightable, under point A.
D. The company which creates a program to access a database is the one who creates the eventual layout which the end user will see. Thus, this company can file a patent or copyright, but only on the manner in which they *present* the data, as per point B. They cannot copyright the data itself, only the layout in which it is presented.
E. Gracenote "owns" the raw database, which is uncopyrightable. They also "own" their own interface (their web site's search system), which has a unique layout and form of presentation. This form of presentation *is* copyrightable...but in this case, no one is violating this copyright, since Roxio's presentation of the information they read from the freedb.org database system is not anything like the layout of Gracenote's interface.
Seems to me like Gracenote has no case here. They can't copyright the raw, abstract "data," and even if they could, freedb has compiled their own database on their own, independent of Gracenote. They have used a copy of the CDDB database that was released *under the GPL* (which cannot be retroactively revoked) and user submissions which were given freely, and, by being placed in the freedb database, were immediatly released under the GPL as well. The software that freedb is using to run the freedb servers was also developed from a version of the CDDB software that was released under the GPL. (Looking in the source code file they distribute, you'll find the original readme which states that the author, Mr. Scherf, distributed this version under the GPL.) Their submission software was written by them. It's pretty simple, and there would have been no need for them to "reverse-engineer" any proprietary software from Gracenote...all they had to do was write a simple script that took the data from a user's app and formatted it properly for the database. Nothing that violates any patents there, as far as I can see. So, we have freedb.org:
- using a GPL version of the CDDB software,
- adding initial data which was itself released with the CDDB software under the GPL
- supplementing that data with other data which is (a) public knowledge, and (b) being freely provided by users using freedb's own code for submitting the data
- storing and accessing that data using an algorithm which was part of the GPL release of the CDDB software they are using, and
- giving the public free access to this data.
As far as I can see, they have not infringed on any Gracenote patents throughout this process. Gracenote *cannot* retroactively patent an algorithm that has been implemented previously in code that was released under the GPL. They can whine and complain and make all the scary noises they want to, but the fact remains that the CDDB software was once released under the GPL, and freedb used that GPL release of CDDB to build their system. The CDDB database was released at the same time under the GPL, and freedb used this data in their system. The rest of the data was not stolen from Gracenote's post-GPL databases; it was contributed freely by users of freedb's system. So...how exactly is freedb infringing on Gracenote's rights?
If freedb is doing nothing wrong, then all of Gracenote's claims against Roxio are nothing but BS, except possibly the "breach of contract" claim (we'd have to see the license agreement between Roxio and Gracenote to know for sure...).
Sorry, Gracenote, but if my neighbor is charging $5 a glass for lemonade at his stand, and I start handing it out for free in my driveway, he can't sue my "customers" because I bought the same lemonade concentrate and the same brand of paper cups that he did...
Well, how does the Microsoft (Windows) CD Player work? When I stick a music CD into my CD-ROM drive, Windows doesn't know anything about it. It simply labels it as an "Audio CD" and reads the starting point of each track. But if I run the MS CD Player and enter the track information, it will be stored, and when I stick the same CD in the drive later, the CD Player will recognize it and load the appropriate info from its plain text INI file where it stores all the track data, which is, in fact, technically a database.
The only differences I can see between the CD Player and a CDDB-enabled app are:
- The CD player references track lists by volume serial numbers. (I do not know if the CD player would recognize a second copy of a CD it already had in its file, but I don't think it would if it does use only the serial numbers it records.)
- The CD Player's info is being entered or manually compiled on one machine, not over a network.
- The CD Player does not have network connectivity and cannot access a remote file via an Internet URL to look up CD track information.
Of all these, it seems like the first one, the method of identifying a CD, would be the most questionable as far as patents are concerned. However...does anyone know of any other CD players which stored self-entered track info by some other index, like a hash based on track length? If so, that would probably be a pretty darn good example of prior art, even without the network connectivity.
Better yet, does anyone know the specific patent(s) that Gracenote is claiming?
Sorry, gotta disagree with you on a couple of points. MP3s are not "Bad Things." MP3s are compressed sound files. If that compressed sound file happens to be an illegal copy of a copyrighted work, that might qualify as a "bad thing." (though not as "bad" as the RIAA would have everyone believe...;) ). Warez would probably also fall under the "bad" category, since they are illegal by definition.
Bomb making instructions are simply information, and I am 100% against any sort of external control on anything that is simply informational. Doesn't matter whether it's a recipie for pie or instructions on making a pipe bomb (or writing a software program to decrypt a certain encryption scheme...;) ), if it's information, it's dissemination should not be restricted by external controls. Should it be filtered by voluntary parental control systems? Sure. I don't really care what those filter, since they are being installed or enabled by the choice of the parents who are using the system, to protect their own children. But it should never be actively censored by any type of government or legal controls, because to do so completely undermines the First Amendment. If telling someone how to make a bomb becomes illegal today, how long would it be before saying something negative about the government becomes illegal, because bad-mouthing of the government has "no legitimate purpose" and threatens the stability of the nation. (Think that scenario is silly paranoia talk? Just look at China...)
I do agree that AOL's system is great, for any 100% *voluntary* filtering system. So long as users (of legal age, of course) can choose not to use the filtering system and still have access to any information they want, I have no problem with it, and I think it would be a far better and more effective system than the secretive "lists" and lousy AI systems on the market now. I'd really like to see a third party filtering system (like NetNanny, et. al.) start marketing something like this, so it would be available to concerned parents outside of AOL. It's still no substitute for parental supervision, but it's a good supplemental tool for parents to use to protect their kids.
Slashdot Mirror
Strange...I tested Mozilla with captions and it displayed the text just fine. You aren't referring to ALT attributes on IMG tags, are you? ALT attributes are not meant to be used as captions, you know. For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, [ALT] specifies alternate text. Yes, IE will display a tool tip with the ALT content when you hover over an image, but that is NOT a standard implementation or use of an ALT tag. A decent screenreader should know how to interpert ALT tags in pages.
;)
What do you mean, IE has a better UI than Netscape 6.1? I'd prefer Mozilla's UI to IE's any day. Netscape 6.1 is not much different. UI is a subjective thing...what you really mean is that you like IE's UI better...
DennyK
Just got around to finally upgrading my home machine from 0.9. I've been using 0.9.4 at work, but I didn't upgrade my home version because I had some problems with text box focus in 0.9.3 and I wanted to wait till they fixed 'em (they did ;) ).
;)
;) Maybe I'll play with the gestures one day, but I'm not all that interested..."type'n'click" works just fine for me, thanks. ;)
;-D Not everyone uses Linux, ya know...though I'm fairly sure I will be using it more often as soon as I move to a bigger place and have room to set up more than one computer. (I can't give up Win98 because many of the games I'm addicted to aren't ported and wouldn't run right in an emulator...but I do not plan to upgrade to a newer version of Windows in the forseeable future, so it looks like it's gonna be Linux or bust for me in a few years. ;) )
0.9.5 seems to start a little faster and run a little faster than 0.9, though it's still slower than Netscape 4.77. What decided it for me, though, was that the annoying "right click disables keyboard" bug is no longer happening in 0.9.5. That bug was the primary reason that I didn't use Mozilla much from home (I use the context menu all the time and for some reason, the bug, which supposedly happens when you "double right click", was being invoked about 75% of the time I used the context menu...). For some reason, the bug didn't affect my work install on Win2K. Now that 0.9.5 doesn't have the bug, I think I'll be using it as my primary browser from now on, unless something well-hidden but very annoying somehow pops up...
Can't say much for the tabs or the gesture module, because I don't use 'em and don't plan to. I only used Opera once because at the time I tried it, the tabbed layout was the only choice, and I hated it. I already have a taskbar. I don't need two of 'em taking up unneccesary space...
A note to that fellow who wants Mozilla to include tons of extra "bundled" apps...bundling is not the best method of software design and distribution. Small and specialized is better, to a certain point. A modular design is the best way to go, because it lets those who want to add all sorts of features and extra stuff, while those who don't want them don't have to bother with them. Why would I want to waste the time, disk space, and RAM downloading, storing, and running "bundled" programs and apps I have no use for? When I want to do a task, I know exactly what program I want to use to do it. MP3 files? Play 'em in Winamp. Instant messages? ICQ99b. Watch MPEG movies? WMP 6.4 works fine for me. Check my email? Pegasus, of course. Sure, if I run all this stuff at the same time, it takes up more RAM than an integrated program would...but not that much more. And when I'm not running all these at the same time (which is 95% of the time, BTW), the ones I'm not using are not running at all. If they were "integrated" into my browser, they would be running all the time, wasting precious resources, even when I'm not using them. Not to mention the fact that, since I already HAVE software that does all of the above and I have no desire to switch to other software, if Mozilla came bundled with all that stuff, it would be a complete waste of space and resources for me, because I'd never use it. I've always been an advocate of keeping software seperated. If it's a web browser, let it browse the web. If it's a chat program, let it chat. If it's a media player, let it play media files. There's no need for all three of them to do everything. Is it cool if they can interact with each other? Sure...but that can be done easily without making them integral parts of each other. It seems to me that modularity is the best design for software, because it allows the most freedom and the best experience for the end user, since they get (almost) exactly what they want or need, whether it's a barebones utility or a full-fledged suite.
BTW, just a note for you browser warriors...I'm sure Konq is a great browser, but it has one small flaw...it only runs on one platform. Mozilla runs on my Windows machines as well as it does on your *nix boxes
Dennyk
That mouse looks painful to use...
;) Still, I think I might be better off than many touch typers who are often straining their fingers to reach the keys. I know I can type for several hours at a time with no noticeable discomfort. Mousing is what causes me the most trouble, and it's usually pretty minor and comes after many hours of computer use.
I play a lot of games in my spare time. My favorites are NASCAR Heat and various FPS mods. Being poor, I have no steering wheel, so I use a Sidewider Precision Pro for Heat, and I use my trusty Kensington optical mouse for FPS. I can tell you that, after playing Heat for two hours with a Sidewinder, my hand, wrist, and arm hurt a *hell* of a lot worse than they do after two hours of Quake or UT. Most of the strain comes from keeping my arm elevated instead of being able to rest my wrist on the desk and my elbow on the arm of my chair.
I know I'll develop carpal tunnel syndrome eventually, but I'll live with it. I live, work, and breate computers and don't plan to give it up anytime soon, so I guess it's a small price to pay for all the enjoyment I get out of them.
I do have one possible advantage over most other users I know...my odd method of typing. I never learned to touch type. I type with my hands elevated and first two finger joints held vertically, and use a lot more arm and wrist motion while typing than touch typers do. I primarily use my middle fingers to hit keys, though sometimes I use my left index finger when it is convinient. I do type without looking at the keyboard and can average 40-50 WPM, BTW...not bad for just using three fingers.
DennyK
Trust their customers? Haha! Guess they forgot to mention their little crusade back in the days before the Napster filters, when they encoded watermarks into all of their MP3 files and then got users who were trading them on Napster banned...
;-D
BTW, most of the MP3s in my collection are 128k. That seems to be the most popular format for trading, since it fits decent quality into a very reasonable file size (something slightly less than 1MB/min.). Yeah, I know you "purists" out there will mod me down, but I just don't have the hard drive space to store 320k MP3s of all my music, and 128k sounds fine to me on my system. Not as good as higher rates, of course...if I were burning to a CD or something, I'd want better quality, but for listening on my computer, I'd rather have twice as much music at 128k quality than what I could fit on my drive at 320k. And since my CD player's busted...
Also BTW, I've found many great artists through MP3.com...Blue Cyberia, Amethystium, 303Infinity, Egan, Higgins, and my favorite, GNOMUSY. All excellent music that probably won't ever see the light of day on a RIAA-produced medium. If you find an artist you like, buy one of their CDs for $10 or so.
DennyK
If they were actually filtering *traffic* based on content, that might leave them liable for all kinds of fun lawsuits. But in this case, they are not filtering traffic, they're just refusing to offer some newsgroups on their own news server. Essentially, they're only changing what content they are offering on their own server, not what kind of content passes over their lines...and no matter what the reasons, that should not affect (legally) their responsibility for general traffic. I'd guess PacBell/SBC customers can use any other news servers out there and still be able to access groups that aren't carried on Prodigy's.
;)
Thank goodness RoadRunner still offers most, if not "all", of the alt.binaries.* tree...
DennyK
Legos are probably the most robust toys I've seen, but they can still get damaged if ya smash them around too much. Usually, what happens is that you get dents and dings in the bottoms and corners of the bricks and pieces, and then they don't fit together anymore because lumps are sticking out in the wrong places. I've never actually managed to break a Lego before. The worst damage I've done to one was when I gave my gerbil a red 2x4 brick (a Tyco, too, not the good stuff) and he ate half the damn thing. Come to think of it, he died not to long after that, too...hmm...
DennyK
OK...how bout me? It took me a week to figure out how to use my software to burn an audio CD... ;)
;-) Suffice to say that they do not play in my CD player. Then again, most CDs don't play in my CD player anymore, either...anyone wanna loan a poor deprived music lover a few hundred smackers? ;-)
Seriously, I've burned two music CDs since I got my burner. One was from tracks I ripped myself from my CD collection. The other was from MP3s that I downloaded, but of songs that are on a cassette tape I own. That's simply space-shifting; no matter where I'm getting the music from, it is not illegal if I already have a licensed copy.
Everything else I've burned to CD is data, for backup purposes. Invoking the rights granted me by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, I hereby decline to discuss exactly what sort of data I've been backing up...
DennyK
1) Mozilla's user agent string is easily changed in user.js:
;)
user_pref("general.useragent.override","(insert user agent string here...)");
2) I have never had any problems with the plugins I use. If a plugin doesn't "recognize" Moz, keep an install of Netscape 4 around and copy the plugin files from Communicator/Program/plugins to Mozilla's plugin directory. Works like a charm for QuickTime at least, and I haven't found any other plugins I have a use for yet...
DennyK
The point is not that we don't WANT the plugins, but that we have enough technical know-how to install the ones we want (and only the ones we want) all by ourselves. This gives Mozilla greater flexibility for users who might not want everything but the kitchen sink installed with their browser.
DennyK
No, it's more like "I bought a new car with that cool keyless entry system. Of course, the button doesn't do anything unless the key is actually in the door..." ;)
DennyK
Actually, the Npower Server comes with a 600MHz or 733MHz Intel XScale RISC CPU. That ought to be fast enough for ya, but I shudder to think of the cost. There's also the briQ with a PowerPC G3 or G4 processor. Although I don't know the PPC chips well enough to tell you the speed from the model number, it's probably a wee bit faster than 350MHz... ;) This one has a price tag, though...'bout $2,500 for starters. Kinda pricey for a DivX ;-) player... ;)
DennyK
Went to see Jurassic Park III the other day (yeah, it was a waste of time, but it was a free ticket... ;) ). Before the movie started, we were subjected to FOUR extra-long commercials and at least seven trailers. The posted movie start time was 3:05PM, but the opening credits didn't roll until after 3:30. People paid $7 a pop to sit there and watch a half hour of commercials before an 80-minute movie. Ridiculous... I don't mind a trailer or two before the movie starts, since it's often interesting to see what new movies are coming out soon, but I'm really getting sick of the commercials, and seven trailers is way, way too many. And they cannot use the excuse that cable TV has, that the advertising subsidizes much of the cost and gives us cable for ~$50/mo instead of several hundred dollers. Movie tickets prices have gone nowhere but up in the last twenty years, and it's not that much more expensive to show a movie now than it was in 1980.
;)
I like the idea of booing all of the ads, but unfortunatly, it won't do any good...who's going to know? Nobody from the companies running the ads is going to be anywhere near your local theater, and if you're lucky enough to get a glimpse of an actual theater employee during the show, it's gonna be the 15-year-old kid who's being paid $5.15/hr to pick up trash and make sure the patrons aren't having sex or knifing each other to death in the back rows. You could call those handy-dandy 800 numbers for "Questions and comments," I guess, but it's not hard to figure out what their reasoning will be... "Wow, if we stop running the ads for BigMegaCorp's multimillion-dollar ad campaign in our theaters, we might make this small handful of people happy enough to shell out a whole $7 to watch a movie along with the rest of the $7 sheep who don't give a damn that they have to watch five minutes of ads for every ten minutes of movie..." Hmm, wonder what their response would be?
DennyK
Most people who have "outside" domains will also have outside SMTP mail servers to use. Only those people with those forwarding address services, etc. will really be affected. I almost never use my ISP's email service anyway... ;)
There is an interesting potential issue here, however...lately, another "anti-spam" trick ISPs have been using is to block outbound requests on port 25. This prevents their customers from using outside SMTP servers (and really causes a hassle for us web hosting companies trying to figure out why people can't send mail with their account's servers...). You have to wonder if an ISP will ever try to implement both the From: field restriction and the blocking of port 25, all in the name of "preventing spam..." Perhaps this could be a way for ISPs to more effectively enforce those stupid TOS clauses about not using your Internet connection for business purposes? Do you think enough people would drop an ISP who did this to make it a really bad idea, or do some of these ISPs have enough mindless zombies as clients that they could get away with it? I can't see it working, because there are too many people out there now who do have mail at their own web sites or from other services, but you never know...you wouldn't think so many people would put up with the crap that AOL throws at it's users, but they're still the biggest "sort-of-ISP" out there...
DennyK
I like the Wiccan Rede myself...basically, it says "Do what you want, as long as it harms no one." Seems like a pretty good approach to me.
DennyK
How quickly we forget? Some days the mob mentality on Slashdot gets ridiculous. Less than a month ago folks were fishing for moderation points by saying "We need to go out and buy Easy CD Creator to support Roxio" (for switching to freedb). Now we have to [insert favorite action expletivehere] them?
;)
So does this mean all the folks who claimed they were going to go out to buy a copy should now burn/sledgehammer their CD?
I had the same thought when I read this article... "Roxio good! No, wait, Roxio evil! No, Roxio good! No, evil! Good! Evil! Ow! My head hurts..."
For me, this is an awesome idea. If I can download and burn individual songs (at a realistic "per song" price) then I don't have to pay for the entire album. I like the idea of singles (since often the rest of an album is not very appealing); however, with singles you have this useless CD with like 3 copies of the SAME song on it plus a slightly bloated price. If I can pay to DL it and create my own CD of "this month's favorites" then I don't have this annoying stack of CD's sitting in my closet.
I agree...that would be nice, if the record companies were really interested in selling their hit single tracks for BYO CDs for a fair price. Unfortunatly, I doubt that that is going to happen under the current system. Why not? Think about this...today, a record company can rake in about $18 per purchase for a hit single, or maybe two. All the Top 40 groups usually have CDs with one or two good songs and a bunch of crap. Most people who buy those CDs are buying them for those one or two songs. If all of those songs were available individually for sale for a "fair" price (which I would define as $1.50 US or less per track, since the "average" CD has about 12 tracks and costs about $18), now what's going to happen? Well, the record company will probably sell just as many, if not more, copies of Boy Band's Big Hit as they would with a premade album...but now they're only taking in a buck or two per sale. Even if there are two or three "hit" tracks in an album, that's still only about $1-$2 for each track, so even the people who buy all three are only spending $3-$6. Very few people are going to waste their time and money on the other nine or ten crap songs that would normally be in an album.
Now, if the band has gone the traditional method of making an entire album with two good songs and ten crappy songs, the record company has paid them to make music that isn't going to sell under this new distribution method. And if the band or record company decides to forego the "crap" since it's no longer neccesary to fill an album with the new single-track purchase system, well, this band might turn out, say, half a dozen good songs in their lifetime, just like they would if they were using the traditional method, but now the record company is only making $1-$2 per sale on each hit instead of the $9-$18 per sale that they would get per hit by selling albums with one or two of those hit songs on them. This sucks for the record companies, because it's much easier (and cheaper) to squeeze a one-week "Top 20" hit song or two out of a random boy-band or girl group than it is to find and cultivate a group with real talent who can produce a lot of good music. And no matter how the hits fall, the record company's profit per hit has still been cut by a huge percentage.
I've always figured that this is another reason the record companies don't like Napster, et. al. Now, any potential buyer can go online and download the full tracks from an album, and then find out that only one or two are good. And since they probably don't feel like paying $18 to get the one song they really want, they'll just download it from Napster and live with the lower quality of MP3.
This is why the record companies are going to make their pay online music services so limited. Since they might be losing those profits on each hit song, they're going to make up for it by forcing users to "rent" the music by only letting them play the songs they download if they keep paying their monthly fees. This continuous income stream makes up for the profit lost because they are selling fewer $18 CDs with one good song.
DennyK
Ballmer: "The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
;)
There is just so much wrong with that handful of sentences that I don't know where to start. Let's see...
- "...if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source..." No, no, NO! If you use any open-source software released *under the GPL*, you must make your software open-source. Open Source != GPL Software. I don't know if Ballmer is incredibly obtuse or if he's just doing the usual M$ FUD dance (I'd guess the latter), but I'm really getting tired of hearing him and the rest of the Micro$oft spokesgerbils acting like all open source software is GPL'd.
- "Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies." Wrong again. Open source software is available to everyone...even GPL software like Linux. There's no rule or law that says commercial companies can't use it in their products. Yes, they have to comply with the license the open-source software was released under, and if that was the GPL, then they will have to release the source code of their product, but that is not preventing them from using the code if they really want to.
Ballmer is really whining about the fact that Microsoft can't swipe government-funded GPL code and then "innovatively" incorporate it into their own proprietary Rent-an-Application suite, which they then re-"sell" for the low, low price of only $599 per year. Boo hoo hoo. Sorry, Ballmer, but I don't think that the intent behind the open release of government-funded projects was to let corporations take that code developed with the taxpayers' money and sell it back to them with an obscene markup. I know the sight of all those free, open GPL projects out there that you can't steal, buy out, sue to death, or exploit for your own profit is probably giving you ulcers, but I guess you'll just have to "innovate" something else on your own instead.
DennyK
You definatly have a good point, but when I was talking about "P2P file sharing", I was referring to the widespread, open P2P networks like Napster and Gnutella. The basic "peer-to-peer" technology is old and has many uses, but it's these new widespread "file trading" networks that the RIAA and other "anti-piracy" advocates are really concerned about.
;) )
The P2P system has been around for a while, but mostly or entirely on small, local, closed networks. Napster et. al. is the first widespread application of this technology over the Internet as a whole and connecting thousands of users at once, as far as I know.
(BTW, if ya wanna get really nitpicky and technical, FTP is not really a P2P system, it's a client-server system. While you can send files and data in both directions, you still have a designated "client" (you) and "server" (the FTP server you're connected to). In a true P2P network, every node plays the role of both a client and a server. But I still see what you're talking about...
DennyK
their case for public good is quite a strong one: protecting the livings of musicians. I know the musicians get a unfairly small slice of the pie but thats a different issue. The fact is that if everyone could get music for free the musicians dont get any money, so they dont make music. No music != public good.
.could. be used for piracy?
Now if someone can show P2P operating with the orginators of the music getting money then this case goes away. Napster hasnt done that (saying 'oh.. err, well how about if we add subscriptions?' doesnt seem to have cut it) and thats why napster is dead.
The trouble is, the RIAA will never let such a system exist unless it's under their control. That, in a large part, is why we have yet to see a successful, profit-making online music system. Everything that has come along has been killed, crippled, or bought out by the record companies. Even Napster's subscription model could have been a success...sure, they would have lost a large portion of their user base, but they might have been able to retain enough users to make a profit and pay the artists. That's probably not the case any longer, with the droves of users who have already abandoned the almost worthless file sharing system for other P2P networks.
The only pay music networks that we're going to see will be the ones owned by the labels, and on those, the consumer is going to be paying absurd fees for music they can't burn to a CD, transfer to their Rio, or even move to another PC. And they won't even be buying this music...that would be far too unfair to the record companies. No, we only get to rent it for a short time. If we want to keep it longer, we pay more.
A point to make here is that CDRs werent banned when people started copying CDs with them. Why should it be easier to ban a non-physical medium which
There's a difference between CDRs and P2P systems...CDRs have a very obvious, proveable, legitimate use as a data storage medium. As much as the RIAA would probably like to use their legal clout to restrict CDRs, they haven't figured out a way around that legitimate use. P2P file sharing networks, on the other hand, are a new technology, and, unfortunatly, no one has really come up with a useful, widespread, 100%-legitimate use for them. There are probably many, many legitimate purposes for which P2P could be used, but we just haven't figured out what they are or how to apply P2P file sharing technology to them. Unfortunatly, with our legal system, that makes the entire P2P file sharing concept a target, because the precedent seems to be that you must prove something can be used for a "substantial legitimate purpose," or else it is automatically considered illegitimate if it could contribute in any way to something illegal.
DennyK
I think it's a great alternative to simply asking for donations. They would still be getting capital from the people who like the company and want to help them out, but those people would be getting a little something in return: their own little piece of the company (even if it's not neccecarily a profitable piece).
I'm a little strapped for cash right now, but if I had the money to spare, I'd definatly be interested in purchasing some of their stock. I'm not an experienced programmer or developer, so I can't contribute to the open-source community in the traditional way. This would be a great way for me and others like me to give a little back, and even for you guys who can contribute code and programming effort to give a little extra.
DennyK
I've NEVER purchased anything on the Internet via a banner ad. I think I've clicked on maybe ten or twelve banner ads over the course of my entire online life, and most of those were back in the mid-90's, when many ads actually lead you to interesting sites without trying to track you, spy on you, or steal your personal information. These days, I rarely see banner ads, and I never see those from the major ad networks. I've fiddled with various blocking tools over the last year or two. My favorite has been The Proxomitron but with my cable modem, the real-time processing of most web pages makes the speed of my browsing unbearably slow. I finally settled on using the Windows hosts file to block most known ad servers, and Edexter to serve up fake images so Netscape doesn't crap out trying to download a nonexistant banner ad on every page I visit. It doesn't catch everything, and it doesn't block the other annoyances that The Proxomitron can be programmed to catch, but it also doesn't affect the speed of my browser.
See http://www.smartin-designs.com/ for a great prewritten hosts file and plenty of advice for using it. If you do use the hosts file to block banners, be sure to use eDexter as well, especially if you use Netscape.
DennyK
...is not whether cheating is OK or not, or whether these drivers make it easier for script kiddies to cheat. If someone wants to cheat in a multiplayer game, there are more than enough neatly boxed, plug-n-play cheats out there to keep them happy for a long time.
;)
I think the real problem with what Asus did is that they are a graphics hardware company. One of their biggest markets is the gaming community, a commumity that is almost unilaterally opposed to cheating in multiplayer games. To officially publicly release these "see-thru" drivers and encourage their users to cheat with them shows extreme disrespect for one of their largest customer bases. At the least, it was a very stupid marketing decision...but even more than that, it's insulting to us gamers who abhor cheaters.
If the drivers had been programmed by some third party or leaked accidentally, and not in an official company release, that would have been a different situation entirely. The problem is, Asus is encouraging gamers to cheat...and what's more, by their actions, it would seem that they believe that a large number of us gamers *are* cheaters...at least enough to make those drivers a worthwhile marketing tool. To me, that seems a little insulting...
DennyK
...What possible legal objection could they have to the FreeDB project? FreeDB used a *GPL* version of the CDDB system (released by Mr. Scherf under the GPL as described in the readme which accompanied the release), started their system with data that was freely distributed with the GPL CDDB code, and supplemented it with data freely contributed by individual users. Maybe I'm just blind, but I cannot see anything that could even remotely be considered infringement of patent, copyright, or any other Gracenote IP. They can patent all they want to, but that does not retroactively invalidate the prior GPL releases of their system.
FreeDB is not copying Gracenote's current code. They are not stealing Gracenote's current data. They are not using Gracenote's network infrastructure. Therefore, they are doing nothing wrong...and thus, Roxio cannot be guilty of any sort of "contributory infringement" because there is no infringement occuring in the first place.
The only possible legal basis I can see for this lawsuit would be some sort of clause in Roxio's contract that forbids them from going to a compteting system. If that is the case, however, it's really their own fault for not reading the contract thoroughly before signing it. Yeah, it's a sleazy clause, but Roxio's legal team should have been more on the ball...
DennyK
Besides, with most computer databases these days, the entity *accessing* the database decides on the layout of the data when it is presented. The stuff inside the database isn't really stored in any sort of "presentable" format anyway, since the raw database file is not worked with manually. A software interface (i.e. SQL) requests certain information from the database, gets the results of its query, and can then return the data to the user in any order, layout, format, or style the author of the querying program saw fit to implement. It makes no difference how the data is physically "laid out" in the database itself.
;) )
This brings up an interesting question, actually...just what is the copyrightable entity being called "the database," anyway? Is it simply the sum of all the information in the database? But that isn't copyrightable, as the above court case shows. Is it the layout of the raw database file itself? But what is that "layout", even? The raw binary code? The physical layout on the storage media? But none of that really matters...the physical "layout" could almost never be duplicated, and the sequence of bits in the binary code bears no direct relationship to the data itself (it only has meaning when translated by the software that *created* the database in a particular way), so I don't know if it can be considered a "layout" of the data. The "order" of the "records" in the virtual "table" that the database holds? Well, possibly...but then again, that order has no bearing on how the data is presented to the end user. A different company could store their records "backwards" in their database and still create a presentation that's identical to the one their competitor's software produces. So is it that layout that is presented to the user itself? But that's impossible in this case, because Gracenote holds no copyrights or patents and has no control over what the layout the end user sees looks like (beyond the single requirement that their logo be present somewhere, and even that gives them no control over how that logo is integrated into the rest of the layout). The individual companies themselves would hold any IP rights for the look and layout of their database front ends. (If this were the case here, in essence, Gracenote would be suing Roxio because Roxio "copied" Roxio's own copyrighted interface...
So, what do we have here? Well, we've established the following, I think:
A. The data itself in a list or other "logical ordering of items" is not copyrightable, as established in FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., INC.
B. The layout and presentation of that data, however, can be copyrighted, AFAIK. I've never seen any evidence to the contrary, at least.
C. A computer database has no inherent "layout" that is visible to the end user. Entities accessing the database can do so independent of any physical layout. Thus, this raw database would not be copyrightable, under point A.
D. The company which creates a program to access a database is the one who creates the eventual layout which the end user will see. Thus, this company can file a patent or copyright, but only on the manner in which they *present* the data, as per point B. They cannot copyright the data itself, only the layout in which it is presented.
E. Gracenote "owns" the raw database, which is uncopyrightable. They also "own" their own interface (their web site's search system), which has a unique layout and form of presentation. This form of presentation *is* copyrightable...but in this case, no one is violating this copyright, since Roxio's presentation of the information they read from the freedb.org database system is not anything like the layout of Gracenote's interface.
Seems to me like Gracenote has no case here. They can't copyright the raw, abstract "data," and even if they could, freedb has compiled their own database on their own, independent of Gracenote. They have used a copy of the CDDB database that was released *under the GPL* (which cannot be retroactively revoked) and user submissions which were given freely, and, by being placed in the freedb database, were immediatly released under the GPL as well. The software that freedb is using to run the freedb servers was also developed from a version of the CDDB software that was released under the GPL. (Looking in the source code file they distribute, you'll find the original readme which states that the author, Mr. Scherf, distributed this version under the GPL.) Their submission software was written by them. It's pretty simple, and there would have been no need for them to "reverse-engineer" any proprietary software from Gracenote...all they had to do was write a simple script that took the data from a user's app and formatted it properly for the database. Nothing that violates any patents there, as far as I can see. So, we have freedb.org:
- using a GPL version of the CDDB software,
- adding initial data which was itself released with the CDDB software under the GPL
- supplementing that data with other data which is (a) public knowledge, and (b) being freely provided by users using freedb's own code for submitting the data
- storing and accessing that data using an algorithm which was part of the GPL release of the CDDB software they are using, and
- giving the public free access to this data.
As far as I can see, they have not infringed on any Gracenote patents throughout this process. Gracenote *cannot* retroactively patent an algorithm that has been implemented previously in code that was released under the GPL. They can whine and complain and make all the scary noises they want to, but the fact remains that the CDDB software was once released under the GPL, and freedb used that GPL release of CDDB to build their system. The CDDB database was released at the same time under the GPL, and freedb used this data in their system. The rest of the data was not stolen from Gracenote's post-GPL databases; it was contributed freely by users of freedb's system. So...how exactly is freedb infringing on Gracenote's rights?
If freedb is doing nothing wrong, then all of Gracenote's claims against Roxio are nothing but BS, except possibly the "breach of contract" claim (we'd have to see the license agreement between Roxio and Gracenote to know for sure...).
Sorry, Gracenote, but if my neighbor is charging $5 a glass for lemonade at his stand, and I start handing it out for free in my driveway, he can't sue my "customers" because I bought the same lemonade concentrate and the same brand of paper cups that he did...
DennyK
Well, how does the Microsoft (Windows) CD Player work? When I stick a music CD into my CD-ROM drive, Windows doesn't know anything about it. It simply labels it as an "Audio CD" and reads the starting point of each track. But if I run the MS CD Player and enter the track information, it will be stored, and when I stick the same CD in the drive later, the CD Player will recognize it and load the appropriate info from its plain text INI file where it stores all the track data, which is, in fact, technically a database.
The only differences I can see between the CD Player and a CDDB-enabled app are:
- The CD player references track lists by volume serial numbers. (I do not know if the CD player would recognize a second copy of a CD it already had in its file, but I don't think it would if it does use only the serial numbers it records.)
- The CD Player's info is being entered or manually compiled on one machine, not over a network.
- The CD Player does not have network connectivity and cannot access a remote file via an Internet URL to look up CD track information.
Of all these, it seems like the first one, the method of identifying a CD, would be the most questionable as far as patents are concerned. However...does anyone know of any other CD players which stored self-entered track info by some other index, like a hash based on track length? If so, that would probably be a pretty darn good example of prior art, even without the network connectivity.
Better yet, does anyone know the specific patent(s) that Gracenote is claiming?
DennyK
Sorry, gotta disagree with you on a couple of points. MP3s are not "Bad Things." MP3s are compressed sound files. If that compressed sound file happens to be an illegal copy of a copyrighted work, that might qualify as a "bad thing." (though not as "bad" as the RIAA would have everyone believe... ;) ). Warez would probably also fall under the "bad" category, since they are illegal by definition.
;) ), if it's information, it's dissemination should not be restricted by external controls. Should it be filtered by voluntary parental control systems? Sure. I don't really care what those filter, since they are being installed or enabled by the choice of the parents who are using the system, to protect their own children. But it should never be actively censored by any type of government or legal controls, because to do so completely undermines the First Amendment. If telling someone how to make a bomb becomes illegal today, how long would it be before saying something negative about the government becomes illegal, because bad-mouthing of the government has "no legitimate purpose" and threatens the stability of the nation. (Think that scenario is silly paranoia talk? Just look at China...)
Bomb making instructions are simply information, and I am 100% against any sort of external control on anything that is simply informational. Doesn't matter whether it's a recipie for pie or instructions on making a pipe bomb (or writing a software program to decrypt a certain encryption scheme...
I do agree that AOL's system is great, for any 100% *voluntary* filtering system. So long as users (of legal age, of course) can choose not to use the filtering system and still have access to any information they want, I have no problem with it, and I think it would be a far better and more effective system than the secretive "lists" and lousy AI systems on the market now. I'd really like to see a third party filtering system (like NetNanny, et. al.) start marketing something like this, so it would be available to concerned parents outside of AOL. It's still no substitute for parental supervision, but it's a good supplemental tool for parents to use to protect their kids.
DennyK