Do you think they would like one of those postcards in the back of the O'Reilly books? You know, the one with the cute bear on the front. I've got a hell of a lot of those.:)
True, but I think what would freak out the recording industry most with this is First Sale.
You could buy a used cd, get the files and then later sell it back and buy another one - keeping the files on your system.
While not the same as getting the music for free you would get it much cheaper than if you bought the cd from Camelot or even BestBuy. Even worse in the eyes of the RIAA is that they won't see a dime. First Sale would also ruin the idea of an id code keeping a lid on the number of times you could grab files. I purchased it, I now own it. Regardless of who the previous owner was I have a right to download my own files using this cd.
I'll throw in this wrinkle for what it's worth. Under patent law adding software to a computer qualifies as making it a device. Someone could get a patent approved that involves software which enables a computer to record sound thus making the pc a recording device.
If such a scenerio is possible under patent law I don't see a reason why AHRA's exception to computers would be valid. We allow one defination for IP but another for consumer rights? There are probably strong arguements on why my comparison is flawed but IANAL and simply musing.
Now I remember, Bush is the Republican candidate because he raised INSANE amounts of money before a single vote had been cast. Forget the primaries, Bush was anointed two years ago by the GOP Money Machine and The Media.
Couldn't agree with you more. Shame too. I was really looking forward to seeing Elizabeth Dole in the primaries.
I have to disagree with your proposal. The issue isn't whether people are smart enough. Information overload is the problem.
As Batta's post (#297) shows, even at the most local level it is difficult for the citizens to keep up to date on every little issue, make a decision, and then vote. People only have so much time in the day and as you expanded true democracy to the state and federal level the amount of effort to cast informed votes rises exponentially.
To compensate people would have to start taking in sound bites to make decisions and/or ignore issues that would take too much research to accurately comprehend. The WWW isn't going to improve that. And I, being a husband with a baby on the way and working 40+ hours, do not have the time to go over a 700+ page document on the need to protect wetlands v. the impact it will have on various industries.
btw, how do you propose to keep the citizens informed on everthing they have to vote on? Not everybody has access to the Internet. For a true democracy to work you have to provide equivalent information to everyone. That means finding out who doesn't have access and getting hardcopy out.
You talk about the tyrrany of the minority but again I ask you to examine Batta's post. Due to the inability of the populance to keep up on everything the tyrrany of the minority still exists. A true democracy is not going to be something better. It will be something different and imho somthing worse.
Eventually information overload will cause voters to elect and pay people to go over all this information and produce a recommendation. From there I wonder how long it would take them to re-implement a representative democracy.
Re:This is a very common sentiment...
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Should You Vote?
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Sure, they have a right to free speech and can bitch if they want. I may even agree with them. But that does not mitigate the fact that they did nothing to try and change things. And damn it, I don't know how it is in the rest of the country but where I live it doesn't take a lot of effort to get off my butt, drive to the station, get in line and cast my ballot. It's a half hour tops. People who don't vote are modern America's lotus eaters imho.
As for being stripped of rights, I'll say this. The right to vote is one of the most basic and most important ones. It comes with a responsibility to vote. By not taking the time to become involved and exercising this right you are essentially forfeiting it. And it is upon that slippery slope in which the rest of your rights get taken away.
Re:There's also an education issue
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Should You Vote?
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Sure its a viable solution. We could have a television station like CNN's Headline News doling out info on legislation in one minute sound-bites all paid for by political commercials from major corporations. And all our tvs will be connected to our computers via CueCats so we can instantly get "in-depth", all Flash animated web pages that will conveniently summarize why this is or isn't a good bill. Of course there will be the occassional political gaffe when somebody plays the site's version of the American Anthem backwards and hears a demonic voice bellowing "Don't vote for this! Freddy is the Devil!" but that's the price one pays for a true democracy.
Good grief. While I don't find much meat in the post myself, how in the world does the 3rd post on the board and the first on-topic post get modded as redundant?
Re:Every's Right: Unix not an OS by itself.
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Is UNIX An OS?
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No. DKE is choosing to use a lay defination of the term operating system vs. the technical defination which geeks and academics would, I assume, prefer to use.
The difference is DKE could find out next month that his current defination doesn't work for some point he's trying make and he could change it on a whim. Geeks and academics, otoh, would have to come up with a good reason to modify a textbook defination and convince the community at large to accept it.
DKE and every lay person out there can say unix isn't an os for whatever reason until they are blue in the face. It still doesn't change the fact that it is an os in the technical sense which is all that counts imho.
If they are going to charge anything for the file it had better be of much higher quality than a 128 kbs mp3. An mp3 is fine for casual use but if I like something enough to hear it over and over again I'll buy a cd.
I also have to wonder if time has anything to do with it. The music industry throwing millions of dollars into this is probably not as big a deal as getting a product to the consumers and establishing a distribution channel on the net. Their target market is now trained on services like Napster and good enough audio formats like mp3s. They have to get something out the door and soon.
Heck, SDMI probably isn't going to be their biggest problem. Providing a service that is easy to use and affordable will be of much greater importance. I remember one/. post that mentioned a music company that does have songs for sale on the net but charges ~2+ dollars a song.
That's going nowhere. I might pay 50 cents for one song that was at or very near cd quality but no more. I'm suppling the physical media now and it will be up to me to make sure that I get some form of backup system to protect my investment. Previously all I've had to do is properly store my cds. If I want to play these files on my better sounding stereo system I'll have to invest in more equipment when it finally comes out and go through the hassle of transfering the files to another system. Heck, maybe a quarter is a better price.
They can search for the Holy Grail of secure music all they want. What a shock it will be when they come back to find Camelot has been sacked.
Considering the President can veto legislation I consider him pretty significant. Now if only Clinton had vetoed the DMCA instead of musing that it would have to hashed out in the courts while he signed it....
As a citizen of America who was once proud of his nation before he saw what it was really like, I urge all right-thinking Americans to boycott the election and prepare to fight to regain control of the Government.
Well there is a contradiction in terms. You don't want to vote but are somehow able to "fight" and regain control of the government. Let me ask this. If only 10% of the population voted would that change who wins? No. Would it give any data on what the other 90% of the population wants the government to do? No.
The only answer is to vote. There are at least 11 presidential canidates running. If you don't like any of them and you can write-in vote "No confidence" or something do it. Examine your options and take a stand.
In most states, voter turnout isn't even 50 percent. This election is being predicted as close. Maybe even as close as Kennedy v. Nixon in which ~43,000 voters decided who was president. If someone says their vote means nothing they are wrong. And to you I can only say if you don't vote I, who will vote and take responsibility as a citizen, don't want you "fighting" to reclaim the government. Voting is not only a right but a responsibility. One which we get for free. You do not have to serve in the military, you will not get arrested for not voting, you will not be harrassed or killed for voting "wrong."
The country has lost its way because the majority walk the path of apathy.
has become the equivilent of a peep show. Must be kept at least 10 feet away from Ms. Pac-Man and behind a curtain. Oh, and if you are 17 you have to have mommy stand beside you so you can play. Yeah, as if mommy is going to wait on your sorry ass for two hours so you can finish a game. Oh, and it's not like playing Quake at home. See, you will run out of quarters and have to stop playing.
But the biggest joke is the judge comparing playing a violent video game to being trained as a sniper. Yeah right. Maybe someone has, but I haven't seen a game yet that includes a realistic sight, gives the gun actual recoil, weight, etc. Not to mention most of the shooters I've seen penalize you for killing innocents.
I no longer have a candidate to vote for. Bush talks the internet down to appeal to demographics. Gore thinks he owns the stupid thing. Liberman would like it if it grew on a tree. So, who can I vote for???
You must be kidding. There are at least 11 presidential canidates out there. Check out www.lp.org, www.votenader.org or a plethora of other voting sites. Investigate the issues and chose the canidate you prefer.
Unless of course you're asking the question "So, who can I vote for that has a chance to win?" which in my mind is wrong thinking. It's time people stopped fretting over who's going to win and start using their vote to voice their views. It is my firm belief that voting to "win" perpetuates the current status quo in government today.
For myself, I'm voting Nader this time around. I have never liked the Republican party and I feel the Democrats have abandoned issues I feel are important to avoid the "liberal" stigma so many people like to misuse. Do I agree with Nader's platform 100 percent. No. But he best fits my views on the direction I want this country to go.
More importantly, my vote along with everyone else's is going to be put in demographics and analyzed by the major parties. If I don't want Gore and vote Bush what does my vote tell the Democrats? Be more like the Republicans! But if I vote Nader when I would have voted Gore it tells the Democrats to rethink the direction they are taking. If enough of us did that we could effect true change.
While you can put a great deal of blame on ignorance another factor is the complexity and depth of information required to make an informed choice.
Remember when people boycotted Disney? How about if you wanted to protest a company like Phillip-Morris for being part of Big Tobacco. Would you know what not to buy if you walked into a grocery store or a department store? Do you know where to go to get this information and are you willing to spend the time to obtain it? Do you think an average consumer would?
Ideally, a free market would work with an informed population of consumers and ethical, competing corporations. But considering the amount of information overload a consumer would have to bear I don't think this is possible.
2 - What happens to the little guy who now can't afford the 20 year patent? Is he somehow less deserving than the multi-national that could afford this no matter what price you set? Multiple times over no less.
3 - The patent office can spend all the time they want on a patent but without enough qualified staff to properly examine the patent who cares if it is a short review or a long one.
4 - No matter what, I don't want dumb patents being issued. Not for 10 years, or 5, or even 1. It won't matter if the patent is expired. If someone feels that you infringed on their patent while it was valid they can sue. And you can bet your a** that if the holder didn't feel he made enough money he'll try to litigate to keep getting value out of his ip.
If the algorithm is used as part of a
physical process (such as the manufacture of rubber, as in Dehr,) or is part of a physical device (such as an electrocardiograph device, as in Arrhythmia), the invention is patentable subject matter.
Now where does the Amazon patent come under this criteria? Because it is used by a browser program running on a computer? Or that it runs through web software on a server? I simply don't buy that Amazon's patent is a good one and further down in the paper I found an example case which seems to support my view.
The Federal Circuit has, however, limited the patentability of algorithm claims in at least one recent case. In In re Schrader,[43] the court found unpatentable a claim to an invention for processing auction bids. The court
distinguished Abele and Arrhythmia based on the nature of the input to the algorithm. In Abele, the input was data from an X-ray CAT scan; in Arrhythmia, the input was data from a electrocardiograph. Both sources of input data, the Federal Circuit reasoned, involved "subject matter representative of or constituting physical activity or objects."[44] Bid data from auction bidders was mere "data gathering," according to the Schrader court, and thus was materially different from X-ray or heart-rate data.[45] The fact that the patent specification discussed displaying the resulting data on display screens did not affect patentability, nor did a
claim element for entering the bid data in a "record."[46]
One-click shopping is, imho, mere data gathering. The process takes a bunch of data for the sale and then stores the data for future reference to facilitate the one-click. Nothing physical is processed nor is the algorithm imbedded in a device. Whether this patent is obvious or not seems to be irrelevant.
Besides, it's always a good idea to have a few browsers installed since sites all too frequently don't work properly with one or the other.
Too true. What I find funny is the time I went to register for a MS certification test (don't laugh, work gives me more money if I have those and they pay for it) and IE was unable to get past the login. Fired up Netscape and flew through it. Having more than one browser is a good thing at this stage in the game.
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Do you think they would like one of those postcards in the back of the O'Reilly books? You know, the one with the cute bear on the front. I've got a hell of a lot of those. :)
You could buy a used cd, get the files and then later sell it back and buy another one - keeping the files on your system.
While not the same as getting the music for free you would get it much cheaper than if you bought the cd from Camelot or even BestBuy. Even worse in the eyes of the RIAA is that they won't see a dime. First Sale would also ruin the idea of an id code keeping a lid on the number of times you could grab files. I purchased it, I now own it. Regardless of who the previous owner was I have a right to download my own files using this cd.
If such a scenerio is possible under patent law I don't see a reason why AHRA's exception to computers would be valid. We allow one defination for IP but another for consumer rights? There are probably strong arguements on why my comparison is flawed but IANAL and simply musing.
What? We can't multitask? We've run out of threads? Activism on an issue eats 100% cpu?
Couldn't agree with you more. Shame too. I was really looking forward to seeing Elizabeth Dole in the primaries.
Oh great, I can just see it now.
I'm glad to say Mr. Vice President that you are "quasi-evil." The diet coke of evil. Just one calorie, not quite evil enough. You Sir, have my vote.
As Batta's post (#297) shows, even at the most local level it is difficult for the citizens to keep up to date on every little issue, make a decision, and then vote. People only have so much time in the day and as you expanded true democracy to the state and federal level the amount of effort to cast informed votes rises exponentially.
To compensate people would have to start taking in sound bites to make decisions and/or ignore issues that would take too much research to accurately comprehend. The WWW isn't going to improve that. And I, being a husband with a baby on the way and working 40+ hours, do not have the time to go over a 700+ page document on the need to protect wetlands v. the impact it will have on various industries.
btw, how do you propose to keep the citizens informed on everthing they have to vote on? Not everybody has access to the Internet. For a true democracy to work you have to provide equivalent information to everyone. That means finding out who doesn't have access and getting hardcopy out.
You talk about the tyrrany of the minority but again I ask you to examine Batta's post. Due to the inability of the populance to keep up on everything the tyrrany of the minority still exists. A true democracy is not going to be something better. It will be something different and imho somthing worse.
Eventually information overload will cause voters to elect and pay people to go over all this information and produce a recommendation. From there I wonder how long it would take them to re-implement a representative democracy.
As for being stripped of rights, I'll say this. The right to vote is one of the most basic and most important ones. It comes with a responsibility to vote. By not taking the time to become involved and exercising this right you are essentially forfeiting it. And it is upon that slippery slope in which the rest of your rights get taken away.
Sure its a viable solution. We could have a television station like CNN's Headline News doling out info on legislation in one minute sound-bites all paid for by political commercials from major corporations. And all our tvs will be connected to our computers via CueCats so we can instantly get "in-depth", all Flash animated web pages that will conveniently summarize why this is or isn't a good bill. Of course there will be the occassional political gaffe when somebody plays the site's version of the American Anthem backwards and hears a demonic voice bellowing "Don't vote for this! Freddy is the Devil!" but that's the price one pays for a true democracy.
Good grief. While I don't find much meat in the post myself, how in the world does the 3rd post on the board and the first on-topic post get modded as redundant?
The difference is DKE could find out next month that his current defination doesn't work for some point he's trying make and he could change it on a whim. Geeks and academics, otoh, would have to come up with a good reason to modify a textbook defination and convince the community at large to accept it.
DKE and every lay person out there can say unix isn't an os for whatever reason until they are blue in the face. It still doesn't change the fact that it is an os in the technical sense which is all that counts imho.
The last draft I saw of this treaty supplied a standard of 14 years old. I haven't gotten to look over the most recent draft.
If they are going to charge anything for the file it had better be of much higher quality than a 128 kbs mp3. An mp3 is fine for casual use but if I like something enough to hear it over and over again I'll buy a cd.
Heck, SDMI probably isn't going to be their biggest problem. Providing a service that is easy to use and affordable will be of much greater importance. I remember one /. post that mentioned a music company that does have songs for sale on the net but charges ~2+ dollars a song.
That's going nowhere. I might pay 50 cents for one song that was at or very near cd quality but no more. I'm suppling the physical media now and it will be up to me to make sure that I get some form of backup system to protect my investment. Previously all I've had to do is properly store my cds. If I want to play these files on my better sounding stereo system I'll have to invest in more equipment when it finally comes out and go through the hassle of transfering the files to another system. Heck, maybe a quarter is a better price.
They can search for the Holy Grail of secure music all they want. What a shock it will be when they come back to find Camelot has been sacked.
Considering the President can veto legislation I consider him pretty significant. Now if only Clinton had vetoed the DMCA instead of musing that it would have to hashed out in the courts while he signed it....
Well there is a contradiction in terms. You don't want to vote but are somehow able to "fight" and regain control of the government. Let me ask this. If only 10% of the population voted would that change who wins? No. Would it give any data on what the other 90% of the population wants the government to do? No.
The only answer is to vote. There are at least 11 presidential canidates running. If you don't like any of them and you can write-in vote "No confidence" or something do it. Examine your options and take a stand.
In most states, voter turnout isn't even 50 percent. This election is being predicted as close. Maybe even as close as Kennedy v. Nixon in which ~43,000 voters decided who was president. If someone says their vote means nothing they are wrong. And to you I can only say if you don't vote I, who will vote and take responsibility as a citizen, don't want you "fighting" to reclaim the government. Voting is not only a right but a responsibility. One which we get for free. You do not have to serve in the military, you will not get arrested for not voting, you will not be harrassed or killed for voting "wrong."
The country has lost its way because the majority walk the path of apathy.
But the biggest joke is the judge comparing playing a violent video game to being trained as a sniper. Yeah right. Maybe someone has, but I haven't seen a game yet that includes a realistic sight, gives the gun actual recoil, weight, etc. Not to mention most of the shooters I've seen penalize you for killing innocents.
Whatever. The law's a joke if you ask me.
You must be kidding. There are at least 11 presidential canidates out there. Check out www.lp.org, www.votenader.org or a plethora of other voting sites. Investigate the issues and chose the canidate you prefer.
Unless of course you're asking the question "So, who can I vote for that has a chance to win?" which in my mind is wrong thinking. It's time people stopped fretting over who's going to win and start using their vote to voice their views. It is my firm belief that voting to "win" perpetuates the current status quo in government today.
For myself, I'm voting Nader this time around. I have never liked the Republican party and I feel the Democrats have abandoned issues I feel are important to avoid the "liberal" stigma so many people like to misuse. Do I agree with Nader's platform 100 percent. No. But he best fits my views on the direction I want this country to go.
More importantly, my vote along with everyone else's is going to be put in demographics and analyzed by the major parties. If I don't want Gore and vote Bush what does my vote tell the Democrats? Be more like the Republicans! But if I vote Nader when I would have voted Gore it tells the Democrats to rethink the direction they are taking. If enough of us did that we could effect true change.
And I can just imagine the commercial playing "Hungry like the Wolf"....
Remember when people boycotted Disney? How about if you wanted to protest a company like Phillip-Morris for being part of Big Tobacco. Would you know what not to buy if you walked into a grocery store or a department store? Do you know where to go to get this information and are you willing to spend the time to obtain it? Do you think an average consumer would?
Ideally, a free market would work with an informed population of consumers and ethical, competing corporations. But considering the amount of information overload a consumer would have to bear I don't think this is possible.
This is from 9/22. Jon doesn't seem to be out of it yet.
1 - Requires new treaties.
2 - What happens to the little guy who now can't afford the 20 year patent? Is he somehow less deserving than the multi-national that could afford this no matter what price you set? Multiple times over no less.
3 - The patent office can spend all the time they want on a patent but without enough qualified staff to properly examine the patent who cares if it is a short review or a long one.
4 - No matter what, I don't want dumb patents being issued. Not for 10 years, or 5, or even 1. It won't matter if the patent is expired. If someone feels that you infringed on their patent while it was valid they can sue. And you can bet your a** that if the holder didn't feel he made enough money he'll try to litigate to keep getting value out of his ip.
Now where does the Amazon patent come under this criteria? Because it is used by a browser program running on a computer? Or that it runs through web software on a server? I simply don't buy that Amazon's patent is a good one and further down in the paper I found an example case which seems to support my view.
One-click shopping is, imho, mere data gathering. The process takes a bunch of data for the sale and then stores the data for future reference to facilitate the one-click. Nothing physical is processed nor is the algorithm imbedded in a device. Whether this patent is obvious or not seems to be irrelevant.
And how long will it take the Barney v.2 autopsy to be posted on the web?
Too true. What I find funny is the time I went to register for a MS certification test (don't laugh, work gives me more money if I have those and they pay for it) and IE was unable to get past the login. Fired up Netscape and flew through it. Having more than one browser is a good thing at this stage in the game.