Whether something is good or bad isn't always clear cut, it more often than not depends on perspective. In this case I think one can make quite convincing arguments both ways. I was trying to point out that in the past other countries have made similar policy choices (to ignore foreign held patents, copyrights and similar) because they found that doing so would do more good than harm to the people of the country.
As for the US policy choice. To quote from Lessig's Free Culture: "for the first one hundred years of the American Republic, America did not honor foreign copyrights. We were born, in this sense, a pirate nation. It might therefore seem hypocritical for us to insist so strongly that other developing nations treat as wrong what we, for the first hundred years of our existence, treated as right."
Now, why did the US do this? It was done to encourage the development of a domestic publishing industry, to increase literacy by making sure books were available cheaply and to avoid draining the economy by paying licensing fees to other countries. Right or wrong? Most definately wrong if you asked the non-US authors (predominantly from the UK), which did not see a dime. Most definately right if you were a poor farmer's kid who learned to read and write because books were cheap enough for his father to buy them.
Now that the US is a net exporter of 'IP', the shoe is obviously on the other foot.
So, what I was trying to say with that single line was... Taiwan has made a policy choice with regards to 'intellectual property', as other countries have done in the past. I don't have a strong conviction whether it is good or bad and I'd have to look deeper before making a personal judgement in this case. But, as a sovereign nation Taiwan should have the right to make that policy choice.
What do you mean? The pharmaceutical company, operating in a free market, has already produced a treatment.
Depends on your definition of free market. Some would argue that it is not, due to the barriers to entry created by the government imposed patent system.
Pharma is an industry where R&D (and not to mention testing and approval for human use) is high cost and production costs are low. Patents is only one of several ways to make sure that the cost of R&D is recouped. An other way could be government funded R&D and the government getting a percentage back from companies producing and selling the drug.
So the Taiwanese government won't save its own citizens, and won't pay someone else to save its own citizens, but will gladly steal the results of someone else's work to save its own citizens. Doesn't it seem like Taiwan is behaving badly?
Are you saying that the government of other countries should be denied the same policy choice that the US made in the 1800s?
'Once the number three, being the third number be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.' MAYNARD: Amen. KNIGHTS: Amen. ARTHUR: Right! One!... Two!... Four! GALAHAD: Three, sir! ARTHUR: Three! [angels sing] [boom]
If someone were arrested and tried on the basis of this information, wouldn't the government have to provide to the defense the details of how it was done?
I'm very unclear on the details.
Information can be sealed (i.e., not shown in the public record of the case) and only made available to the prosecution and defendant's lawyers. Say, for example trade secrets in a business case.
In addition, the police has certain rights to withhold information regarding their investigative methods (even from the judge and the defendant's lawyer) if, say, making that information public could endanger someone's life or seriously hamper other investigations. I seem to recall a case a while ago where the FBI using a keylogger.. ah, Google to the rescue - Scarfo, the FBI wanted to keep the details of how the keylogger worked secret due to 'national security' but the judge didn't agree.
How do they connect the serial number to the user?
Warranty card as you mentioned, or through the store. I don't know how usual it is, but my local $we_sell_hardware has my entire purchase history on file, and the clerk scans the serial on items like harddisks and printers.
Suppose you have a contract whose watermark says it was printed after the date it was signed...
Of course, the fact that the watermarking is secret indicates that such uses weren't intended.
On the other hand, if the watermarking algorithm is known (and doesn't use some sort of unforgeable strong crypto signing) it is possible to fake the mark, thus making this kind of evidence weaker in court.
AT.. umm. I used to know a lot of them by heart, but it seems that my wetware is lossy. Wikipedia has an article though, if people feel the need to refresh.
In other news, Trumpet is unhappy about Microsoft's recent announcement that they will include a TCP/IP stack by default in the next version of Windows.
But the people who are currently being infected because they double-clicked on "sexy.jpg" which was really "sexy.jpg.exe" would have to go through a LOT more effort to accomplish the same on Linux.
I know I will get modded flamebait for this, but.. This is kind of like saying that Linux is safer because it is less user friendly.;-)
The reason you got modded flamebait is that you started your post with: They cant go "closed source". A statement like that is bound to make a lot of people disagree and hit reply or mod as flamebait without reading the rest of the post.
Oh great. So when Digital Locker goes bankrupt, I can't reinstall any of the software that I bought through the service? Some of the early online eBook and music download companies had a similar scheme.
Everyone else has commented on the WMG suit wanting a piece of MP3 player sales (which I hope is a typo or a mis-speak, it only makes sense if he ment iTunes instead). But whatever, if they don't make any money on iTunes why did they agree to the deal in the first place..
Shares of Apple were up $0.47 to $52.37 in recent trading, while shares of Warner Music Group were down a penny to $18.03.
Anyone know which journo introduced the meme that including stock quotes in a story is a good idea? It might be slightly interesting to see how moneypushers react to major news about a company, but come on... Does anyone know of a way to expedite the darwinization of a meme?
I don't think the nforce4 is normally capable of running 4 sticks faster than DDR333. Are those RAM sticks specifically certified for running 4*400 on that particular motherboard?
RSM would be running around shouting "It is GNU-LINUX-OS X!"
ESR would write a totally incomprehensible article claiming that "we won!". Again.
Linus would shrug and say 'whatever'.
There would be a flamewar on lkml between FOSS diehards and Apple engineers over their binary only drivers.
There would be frequent articles on/. about Apple forking the kernel. Not to mention questions about GPL compliance and the bi-monthly call for Apple to opensource more of their stuff.
In short, it would be a lot worse. Linux would be pulled in two directions and Steve Jobs and Linus would be in a hornet's nest of unherdable cats trying to calm down tempers and get things done.
Ah, cool. Someone that actually knows how this works.
Do you happen to know what kind of real world performance we might see from this equipment, given the inefficiencies required to play nicely with existing 802.11 gear? I seem to recall that RTS/CTS or CTS-self would be required, which would cut down quite a bit of available air time.
Also, do you know of any plans to ditch or improve the 802.11 MAC?.11a 54Mbps signalling gets somewhere around 60% effective throughput, and if I remember correctly that percentage will keep going down with higher signalling rates unless something is done with the MAC.
The 802.11 MAC is horribly inefficient. 802.11a and 11g in g-only mode has 30.5Mbps maximum theoretical UDP/IP data throughput. 19.5Mbps for 11g in 11b compatibility mode. Numbers for TCP/IP are lower. And this is before any problems caused by colissions or interference. Way below the signalling rate of 54Mbps.
A different MAC must be used if we are to see any dramatic benefits of faster modulation rates.
Because 54mbps is the speed you'd get under ideal circumstances
Nope.
54Mbps is the highest supported signalling rate when transmitting data frames. But unfortunately the 802.11 MAC (CSMA/CA) is braindead. You can't send data frames all the time, so the maximum throughput is a bit lower. Acually quite a bit lower if you use RTS/CTS and 802.11g equipment not in '11g only' mode.
I agree. The "40$ per chip" tagline is meaningless. The total cost per unit and the income required to fund the next generation of chips is certainly higher.
So whatever that $600 is paying for, even if pure profit, it's still not incentive enough to get people to start a new x86 compatible processor companies.
There are a couple hefty barriers to entry.
Which motherboards will your cpu plug into? I highly doubt that you can make the cpu plug-in compatible with any Intel or AMD sockets without entering a license or patent quagmire. AMD had the same problem when going beyond socket7/super7. To make your own socket you need to convince at least a couple of chipset and motherboard companies that your cpu is worth supporting.
Fabs. Even if you have the billions in funds to build one, you also need the know-how. Which probably means headhunting at places like Intel and TSMC.
then why do 30-60 year old songs/albums/movies sell for as much
Because people are willing to pay that much?
trying to legitimize the RIAA and MPAA by that analogy is pretty disgusting. not that you meant to.
Are we looking at the same post? I can't see where the grandparent post mentions any of the evil four letter acronyms, nor any attempt to legitimize them. Please explain.
Once you invested all that money to R&D, you would want to just sit and make a ton of those high margin products.
That line of thought has killed a lot of tech companies. Unless you invest in developing your next product / version while the money from the current one is flowing in, you're in big do-do if your product is in a competitive market. Commodore Amiga, anyone?
This may explain why Microsoft or other tech companies aren't always so keen on exploring new ideas.
MS is kind of a special case here, in that they can afford not to ship a new version every year because there are very few competitors in their core markets. Not to mention that software is even more skewed than CPUs with regards to development cost vs cost per additional unit shipped - once the R&D has been recouped each unit sold is close to pure profit.
The biggest threat to MS today is any technology that makes the operating system a commodity. For example Java.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't it seem like Taiwan is behaving badly?
Whether something is good or bad isn't always clear cut, it more often than not depends on perspective. In this case I think one can make quite convincing arguments both ways. I was trying to point out that in the past other countries have made similar policy choices (to ignore foreign held patents, copyrights and similar) because they found that doing so would do more good than harm to the people of the country.
As for the US policy choice. To quote from Lessig's Free Culture: "for the first one hundred years of the American Republic, America did not honor foreign copyrights. We were born, in this sense, a pirate nation. It might therefore seem hypocritical for us to insist so strongly that other developing nations treat as wrong what we, for the first hundred years of our existence, treated as right."
Now, why did the US do this? It was done to encourage the development of a domestic publishing industry, to increase literacy by making sure books were available cheaply and to avoid draining the economy by paying licensing fees to other countries. Right or wrong? Most definately wrong if you asked the non-US authors (predominantly from the UK), which did not see a dime. Most definately right if you were a poor farmer's kid who learned to read and write because books were cheap enough for his father to buy them.
Now that the US is a net exporter of 'IP', the shoe is obviously on the other foot.
So, what I was trying to say with that single line was... Taiwan has made a policy choice with regards to 'intellectual property', as other countries have done in the past. I don't have a strong conviction whether it is good or bad and I'd have to look deeper before making a personal judgement in this case. But, as a sovereign nation Taiwan should have the right to make that policy choice.
What do you mean? The pharmaceutical company, operating in a free market, has already produced a treatment.
Depends on your definition of free market. Some would argue that it is not, due to the barriers to entry created by the government imposed patent system.
Pharma is an industry where R&D (and not to mention testing and approval for human use) is high cost and production costs are low. Patents is only one of several ways to make sure that the cost of R&D is recouped. An other way could be government funded R&D and the government getting a percentage back from companies producing and selling the drug.
So the Taiwanese government won't save its own citizens, and won't pay someone else to save its own citizens, but will gladly steal the results of someone else's work to save its own citizens. Doesn't it seem like Taiwan is behaving badly?
Are you saying that the government of other countries should be denied the same policy choice that the US made in the 1800s?
Did I miss anything?
'Once the number three, being the third number be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'
MAYNARD: Amen.
KNIGHTS: Amen.
ARTHUR: Right!
One!...
Two!...
Four!
GALAHAD: Three, sir!
ARTHUR: Three!
[angels sing]
[boom]
If someone were arrested and tried on the basis of this information, wouldn't the government have to provide to the defense the details of how it was done?
I'm very unclear on the details.
Information can be sealed (i.e., not shown in the public record of the case) and only made available to the prosecution and defendant's lawyers. Say, for example trade secrets in a business case.
In addition, the police has certain rights to withhold information regarding their investigative methods (even from the judge and the defendant's lawyer) if, say, making that information public could endanger someone's life or seriously hamper other investigations. I seem to recall a case a while ago where the FBI using a keylogger.. ah, Google to the rescue - Scarfo, the FBI wanted to keep the details of how the keylogger worked secret due to 'national security' but the judge didn't agree.
How do they connect the serial number to the user?
Warranty card as you mentioned, or through the store. I don't know how usual it is, but my local $we_sell_hardware has my entire purchase history on file, and the clerk scans the serial on items like harddisks and printers.
5. FBI discovers that the watermarks contain dates earlier than the transaction log subpoenaed from eBay.
6. Enjoy your stay in Club Fed.
Suppose you have a contract whose watermark says it was printed after the date it was signed...
Of course, the fact that the watermarking is secret indicates that such uses weren't intended.
On the other hand, if the watermarking algorithm is known (and doesn't use some sort of unforgeable strong crypto signing) it is possible to fake the mark, thus making this kind of evidence weaker in court.
Apart from the ones you mention:
ATE0, ATE1 - echo off/on
AT.. umm. I used to know a lot of them by heart, but it seems that my wetware is lossy. Wikipedia has an article though, if people feel the need to refresh.
In other news, Trumpet is unhappy about Microsoft's recent announcement that they will include a TCP/IP stack by default in the next version of Windows.
But the people who are currently being infected because they double-clicked on "sexy.jpg" which was really "sexy.jpg.exe" would have to go through a LOT more effort to accomplish the same on Linux.
;-)
I know I will get modded flamebait for this, but.. This is kind of like saying that Linux is safer because it is less user friendly.
You must be new here. ;-)
The reason you got modded flamebait is that you started your post with: They cant go "closed source". A statement like that is bound to make a lot of people disagree and hit reply or mod as flamebait without reading the rest of the post.
inside a shell of delicious hardened maple syrup, in which I died doing what I loved
...and raw skin on his penis from over-masturbation
Me thinks you should switch to something with a bit less friction, like say K-Y.
Oh great. So when Digital Locker goes bankrupt, I can't reinstall any of the software that I bought through the service? Some of the early online eBook and music download companies had a similar scheme.
Everyone else has commented on the WMG suit wanting a piece of MP3 player sales (which I hope is a typo or a mis-speak, it only makes sense if he ment iTunes instead). But whatever, if they don't make any money on iTunes why did they agree to the deal in the first place..
Shares of Apple were up $0.47 to $52.37 in recent trading, while shares of Warner Music Group were down a penny to $18.03.
Anyone know which journo introduced the meme that including stock quotes in a story is a good idea? It might be slightly interesting to see how moneypushers react to major news about a company, but come on... Does anyone know of a way to expedite the darwinization of a meme?
I don't think the nforce4 is normally capable of running 4 sticks faster than DDR333. Are those RAM sticks specifically certified for running 4*400 on that particular motherboard?
LinosX? Let's see.
/. about Apple forking the kernel. Not to mention questions about GPL compliance and the bi-monthly call for Apple to opensource more of their stuff.
RSM would be running around shouting "It is GNU-LINUX-OS X!"
ESR would write a totally incomprehensible article claiming that "we won!". Again.
Linus would shrug and say 'whatever'.
There would be a flamewar on lkml between FOSS diehards and Apple engineers over their binary only drivers.
There would be frequent articles on
In short, it would be a lot worse. Linux would be pulled in two directions and Steve Jobs and Linus would be in a hornet's nest of unherdable cats trying to calm down tempers and get things done.
Ah, cool. Someone that actually knows how this works.
.11a 54Mbps signalling gets somewhere around 60% effective throughput, and if I remember correctly that percentage will keep going down with higher signalling rates unless something is done with the MAC.
Do you happen to know what kind of real world performance we might see from this equipment, given the inefficiencies required to play nicely with existing 802.11 gear? I seem to recall that RTS/CTS or CTS-self would be required, which would cut down quite a bit of available air time.
Also, do you know of any plans to ditch or improve the 802.11 MAC?
different modulation technique MUST be used
The 802.11 MAC is horribly inefficient. 802.11a and 11g in g-only mode has 30.5Mbps maximum theoretical UDP/IP data throughput. 19.5Mbps for 11g in 11b compatibility mode. Numbers for TCP/IP are lower. And this is before any problems caused by colissions or interference. Way below the signalling rate of 54Mbps.
A different MAC must be used if we are to see any dramatic benefits of faster modulation rates.
A network card operates at 240 megabits per second, but needs 240 retries
Get a new cable, you got water in it.
Because 54mbps is the speed you'd get under ideal circumstances
Nope.
54Mbps is the highest supported signalling rate when transmitting data frames. But unfortunately the 802.11 MAC (CSMA/CA) is braindead. You can't send data frames all the time, so the maximum throughput is a bit lower. Acually quite a bit lower if you use RTS/CTS and 802.11g equipment not in '11g only' mode.
Bonking Shannon on the head by exploiting multipath? Sounds much better than trying to get up close and personal with Shannon's limit.
I agree. The "40$ per chip" tagline is meaningless. The total cost per unit and the income required to fund the next generation of chips is certainly higher.
So whatever that $600 is paying for, even if pure profit, it's still not incentive enough to get people to start a new x86 compatible processor companies.
There are a couple hefty barriers to entry.
Which motherboards will your cpu plug into? I highly doubt that you can make the cpu plug-in compatible with any Intel or AMD sockets without entering a license or patent quagmire. AMD had the same problem when going beyond socket7/super7. To make your own socket you need to convince at least a couple of chipset and motherboard companies that your cpu is worth supporting.
Fabs. Even if you have the billions in funds to build one, you also need the know-how. Which probably means headhunting at places like Intel and TSMC.
then why do 30-60 year old songs/albums/movies sell for as much
Because people are willing to pay that much?
trying to legitimize the RIAA and MPAA by that analogy is pretty disgusting. not that you meant to.
Are we looking at the same post? I can't see where the grandparent post mentions any of the evil four letter acronyms, nor any attempt to legitimize them. Please explain.
Once you invested all that money to R&D, you would want to just sit and make a ton of those high margin products.
That line of thought has killed a lot of tech companies. Unless you invest in developing your next product / version while the money from the current one is flowing in, you're in big do-do if your product is in a competitive market. Commodore Amiga, anyone?
This may explain why Microsoft or other tech companies aren't always so keen on exploring new ideas.
MS is kind of a special case here, in that they can afford not to ship a new version every year because there are very few competitors in their core markets. Not to mention that software is even more skewed than CPUs with regards to development cost vs cost per additional unit shipped - once the R&D has been recouped each unit sold is close to pure profit.
The biggest threat to MS today is any technology that makes the operating system a commodity. For example Java.