There wouldn't be any room on the drive even for non-infringing, DRM-laden files.
I suppose if your only goal is to prevent copyright infringement with the device, you could effectively accomplish that by turning the device into a paperweight, but that's not a particularly bright idea, even for Microsoft.
I'm a little curious about how the law is written. Could the MPAA in theory, having won the judgment against TorrentSpy, also go after the trackers and everybody who seeds the torrents and get similar judgments against each of them?
It allows the content owner to use technical means to prevent copying. It makes it illegal to have, distribute, or even discuss means of circumventing copy protection. Thus, even after the copyright theoretically expires, you still can't copy it. The the effective copyright extends beyond the actual copyright, and actually extends forever.
3: The iPod only has DRM on it because Apple new they would get sued to fuck if they didn't, or if they went around allowing direct circumvention. By allowing copying to audio cd they avoid this via the fair use claim. Please cite at least 1 example of a company being sued for creating a device that allows people to play MP3s. It's not a lawsuit that's the threat. The threat is the labels refusing to allow their music to be sold through the iTunes store.
Almost everything on youtube is copyrighted by *SOMEONE*. Of course, in the vast majority of cases, the copyright owner is more than happy for people to copy it and watch it wherever and whenever they damn well please. How can MS possibly distinguish these videos from videos whose copyright owners would want to restrict them?
Of course, GP's "hash" idea is obviously a non-starter. YouTube comprises a very small percentage of the copyrighted audio and video files found on the internet. What is MS going to do, create a hash of every file on the internet and upload that list to your Zune in every update? Anybody care to hazard a guess as to the size of such a list? I think it's pretty safe to say it would exceed the memory capacity of the Zune.
Spending cuts, sure. (Might have been nice to stay out of this trillion-dollar war in Iraq.) But at any given level of spending, cutting today's taxes just means raising tomorrow's taxes.
It also means putting upward pressure on interest rates, which makes mortgages more expensive, makes it more expensive for businesses to raise capital, etc.
If McCain is President, the legislation or lack thereof will be irrelevant. He'll do what he damn well pleases, and use the "National Security depends on executive action being hidden from the prying eyes of the public" excuse to block discovery and effectively prevent litigation. Just like W.
Or even taking it a step further and standardizing on some kind of networked multiplayer video game so that even machines need not be destroyed, just bits in memory. That sounds like a delicious Taste of Armageddon.
Now we have a weapons manufacturer dictating medical procedure and reporting. Taser isn't dictating jack. They're trying to get a court to dictate, and if the evidence is on their side, more power to them.
Don't break the law and don't screw with the police, and you won't have anything to worry about. Wait... Did you actually just say that? On/., no less?
If people are dying after having a Taser used on them and it cannot be shown that these persons would have probably died anyway, then Taser should be financially responsible. Wait a second, you want to put the burden of proof on Taser to show that their device was not the cause of death?
Shouldn't that be the other way around? Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the plaintiff claiming that the Taser was the cause of death?
The vast majority of cops are people who were the bullies in high school, haven't been to college, have very little knowledge of what the law is, and who think that putting on a badge entitles them to respect. "What do you mean I don't know what the law is? I am the law!"
Most of us have met that guy at least once, or know somebody who has.
Tasers should be banned until we either start hiring officers who have good judgment and some measure of compassion or there are strict guidelines for use and jail sentences for every officer who uses them inappropriately. You don't see this as a bit of an overreaction?
Yes, some cops are a little too trigger happy with the devices.
Maybe they have contributed to a small number of deaths; that issue is still being debated.
On balance, I think it's obvious that the good they do far outweighs the evil they do. Banning them would not be in the public's best interests.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for ways to improve hiring and training practices, of course.
You shouldn't sue Google, you should sue the company misrepresenting themselves. I don't know about the actual facts of this case, but...
What if there are thousands upon thousands of advertisers engaging in such deceptive practices? And what if Google's business and technical models make this kind of abuse easy, and even encourage it? And what if there are precautions that Google could take to curb this kind of abuse, but they're not? Then wouldn't Google share some of the responsibility?
No one has ever said that being free to say something means that you shouldn't be held to account if what you said caused damage. The issue isn't what he said, but how he said it. The statute is content-neutral. (From TFA: "it prohibits anonymous unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech.")
The First Amendment doesn't protect broadcasting through a loud public address system in a residential neighborhood at 3:00 in the morning, it doesn't protect hacking into somebody's cable to transmit your own content instead of the content transmitted by the cable company, it doesn't protect spray painting your message on somebody else's property, it doesn't protect stalking somebody and continually shouting your message in their ear, it doesn't protect hacking somebody's website to replace their front page with your own, and I don't think it protects unsolicited bulk e-mail either. These are all antisocial activities, regardless of the content.
Can somebody explain the legal theory according to which the widow incurred an obligation to pay for the search?
She didn't force the state to conduct this search. She never entered into any contract in which she agreed to pay for the cost of the search if the state would conduct the search
The state took it upon itself to conduct the search. Just because they want somebody else to pay for that search doesn't mean she is under any legal obligation to do so.
If I go visit Nevada and explore the state in the hope of stumbling across the wreckage, can I bill the widow for the cost of my vacation? If not, what right does the state have to do the same thing?
If they ignore it, others are likely to follow Psystar (after a long enough time to see that Apple doesn't go after them). Apple probably will ignore it. From reading TFA and the other Slashdot comments, the Pystar looks like a piece of crap. So if Apple ignores it, they send this message:
"You're free to try to clone the Mac, so long as you don't produce anything that any sane person might consider purchasing instead of a real Mac. Of course, if you somehow manage to produce something that has a snowball's chance in hell of actually competing with us, we reserve the right to go after you."
We should be able to tell, depending on what the "running code" looks like. If it has DNA and RNA and all of that, with the same handedness, I would lean towards a common origin. If the Martian version of the trilobite has DNA and left-handed aminos and all that (though I'm not sure how we'd be able to determine that from a fossil), it would point to a common unicellular ancestor, but the evolution from unicellular life to trilobite-complexity life would still have to have occurred independently on the two planets, thus showing that at least that part of the evolutionary path is "easy," and eliminating a number of candidates for the Great Filter.
1) What if they already mapped our solar system a billion years ago, and it just wasn't to their taste. You assume there is something great about our solar system that they'd want to hang around. What if they like 7G's of gravity with a methane atmosphere and liquid water surface? We don't might not have any planets that are to their particular taste, so they moved on from this wasteland of a solar system. Sure, that might explain why a particular spacefaring civilization hasn't shown up in our neighborhood.
But the question we have to ask isn't "Why hasn't spacefaring civilization X set up shop in our neighborhood?"
The question is "Why is it that, out of the hundreds of billions of solar systems that exist or have existed since the beginning of the Milky Way, not a single one has produced a spacefaring civilization with a detectable presence in our corner of the galaxy?" Are all spacefaring civilizations interested exclusively in planets with 7Gs of gravity and methane atmospheres? If so, that demands some kind of explanation.
As to your other points of the form "It takes resources to...", keep in mind that we're talking about civilizations that are billions of years more advanced than we are. As far as they're concerned, the kind of resource requirements you're talking about are, for all intents and purposes, zero.
Mars is too close to us to say much about exobiology IMHO. The Earth and Mars have been exchanging tons of biologically active material for their entire existence (large meteor strikes cause material to be ejected to escape velocity, and some small fraction of that will be treated gently enough not to kill any bacteria).
So, there is is likely to be life on Mars, and it is likely to be pretty similar to some life on Earth, proving nothing on the big question of where is everybody.
That depends on what we discover.
If we discover evidence of prokaryotic life on Mars, that would not prove that abiogenesis occurred independently on the two planets. As you point out, some bacteria could have taken a ride on a rock from one planet to the other.
But what if we discover evidence of ancient Martian life on a scale and complexity comparable to a trilobite (but, obviously, not something specifically found in the Terran fossil record)? That's not something that could easily be explained away as a Terran life form that travelled to Mars on a meteorite. I would interpret such a discovery as strong evidence that the evolution from unicellular life to trilobite-complexity life occurred independently on the two planets.
Slashdot Mirror
There wouldn't be any room on the drive even for non-infringing, DRM-laden files.
I suppose if your only goal is to prevent copyright infringement with the device, you could effectively accomplish that by turning the device into a paperweight, but that's not a particularly bright idea, even for Microsoft.
I'm a little curious about how the law is written. Could the MPAA in theory, having won the judgment against TorrentSpy, also go after the trackers and everybody who seeds the torrents and get similar judgments against each of them?
Brennan didn't win that case. He just avoided a default judgment. No precedent has been set regarding final rulings.
$30,000 per infringement? Do our Congressmen honestly think this is reasonable?
How is it nonsense?
It allows the content owner to use technical means to prevent copying. It makes it illegal to have, distribute, or even discuss means of circumventing copy protection. Thus, even after the copyright theoretically expires, you still can't copy it. The the effective copyright extends beyond the actual copyright, and actually extends forever.
Obviously, the Constitutional guarantee that copyrights be for "a limited time" was effectively rescinded by the DMCA.
I don't know why this issue alone hasn't been enough to get the courts to tell Congress to go fuck itself.
Of course, GP's "hash" idea is obviously a non-starter. YouTube comprises a very small percentage of the copyrighted audio and video files found on the internet. What is MS going to do, create a hash of every file on the internet and upload that list to your Zune in every update? Anybody care to hazard a guess as to the size of such a list? I think it's pretty safe to say it would exceed the memory capacity of the Zune.
We don't need tax cuts with an $8 trillion debt.
Spending cuts, sure. (Might have been nice to stay out of this trillion-dollar war in Iraq.) But at any given level of spending, cutting today's taxes just means raising tomorrow's taxes.
It also means putting upward pressure on interest rates, which makes mortgages more expensive, makes it more expensive for businesses to raise capital, etc.
Voting against our Commander in Chief? Traitors!
If McCain is President, the legislation or lack thereof will be irrelevant. He'll do what he damn well pleases, and use the "National Security depends on executive action being hidden from the prying eyes of the public" excuse to block discovery and effectively prevent litigation. Just like W.
Shouldn't that be the other way around? Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the plaintiff claiming that the Taser was the cause of death?
Most of us have met that guy at least once, or know somebody who has.
Yes, some cops are a little too trigger happy with the devices.
Maybe they have contributed to a small number of deaths; that issue is still being debated.
On balance, I think it's obvious that the good they do far outweighs the evil they do. Banning them would not be in the public's best interests.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for ways to improve hiring and training practices, of course.
What if there are thousands upon thousands of advertisers engaging in such deceptive practices? And what if Google's business and technical models make this kind of abuse easy, and even encourage it? And what if there are precautions that Google could take to curb this kind of abuse, but they're not? Then wouldn't Google share some of the responsibility?
The First Amendment doesn't protect broadcasting through a loud public address system in a residential neighborhood at 3:00 in the morning, it doesn't protect hacking into somebody's cable to transmit your own content instead of the content transmitted by the cable company, it doesn't protect spray painting your message on somebody else's property, it doesn't protect stalking somebody and continually shouting your message in their ear, it doesn't protect hacking somebody's website to replace their front page with your own, and I don't think it protects unsolicited bulk e-mail either. These are all antisocial activities, regardless of the content.
Wasn't the right to implement compatible systems established with Compaq's clean-room IBM BIOS clone back in the 80's?
Can somebody explain the legal theory according to which the widow incurred an obligation to pay for the search?
She didn't force the state to conduct this search. She never entered into any contract in which she agreed to pay for the cost of the search if the state would conduct the search
The state took it upon itself to conduct the search. Just because they want somebody else to pay for that search doesn't mean she is under any legal obligation to do so.
If I go visit Nevada and explore the state in the hope of stumbling across the wreckage, can I bill the widow for the cost of my vacation? If not, what right does the state have to do the same thing?
"You're free to try to clone the Mac, so long as you don't produce anything that any sane person might consider purchasing instead of a real Mac. Of course, if you somehow manage to produce something that has a snowball's chance in hell of actually competing with us, we reserve the right to go after you."
But the question we have to ask isn't "Why hasn't spacefaring civilization X set up shop in our neighborhood?"
The question is "Why is it that, out of the hundreds of billions of solar systems that exist or have existed since the beginning of the Milky Way, not a single one has produced a spacefaring civilization with a detectable presence in our corner of the galaxy?" Are all spacefaring civilizations interested exclusively in planets with 7Gs of gravity and methane atmospheres? If so, that demands some kind of explanation.
As to your other points of the form "It takes resources to...", keep in mind that we're talking about civilizations that are billions of years more advanced than we are. As far as they're concerned, the kind of resource requirements you're talking about are, for all intents and purposes, zero.
That depends on what we discover.
If we discover evidence of prokaryotic life on Mars, that would not prove that abiogenesis occurred independently on the two planets. As you point out, some bacteria could have taken a ride on a rock from one planet to the other.
But what if we discover evidence of ancient Martian life on a scale and complexity comparable to a trilobite (but, obviously, not something specifically found in the Terran fossil record)? That's not something that could easily be explained away as a Terran life form that travelled to Mars on a meteorite. I would interpret such a discovery as strong evidence that the evolution from unicellular life to trilobite-complexity life occurred independently on the two planets.