Meanwhile, Slashdot editors drool over... a stupid studio fight, among other things.
yes, the fight between two movie studios over the title of a movie is trivial and frivolous, but this story is a good example of how ridiculous copyright law has become. it would be extremely hard in this case to argue that copyright law is being used to provide incentive for other authors to create. mgm is doing nothing but trying to protect their own assets, and that's a stretch, as i don't see how austin powers is a threat to james bond. the point of the article is that copyright has been taken over and used as a tool to protect studios and not artists as it was intended. unfortunately, the course copyright law is headed on is not trivial and frivolous, and that's why this story is important.
if your university doesn't have wireless internet access in at least the student common areas, you could look into it. on a larger scale you can use the money to investigate a campus wide wireless setup. this involves some non-obvious costs such as researching building materials that block/channel signals so you can use the buildings as antennas and shields.
In previous digital DJ solutions, there has been a problem where you don't get a visual indication of where breakdowns occur in songs. When you spin with vinyl, if you look closely at a track the grooves look different during a breakdown, giving you a visual indication of how much time you have to finish/start a mix. One reason for Final Scratch's success is being able to see on your laptop screen where the breakdowns are, just as if you had the vinyl in front of you.
Actually, Richie Hawtin has been using this setup for a year now. If one of the most innovative, important and infuential djs in the world has been using it for this long, I would hardly call it vaporware.
Sonicblue: Hi, Tivo, we were thinking you might want to license this patent from us for $X.
Tivo: But that's not a valid patent, we've been doing that for years.
Sonicblue: Well, you can fight us if you'd like. I'm sure your lawyers will only charge you 10-100 times $X.
Tivo: hmmmm... okay, where do we send the money. We can always pass the cost on to the customer anyhow
and this is what sonicblue will want tivo to do. tivo raises the price per unit by x dollars. sonicblue can then raise their price by.5x dollars and still have a cheaper unit than tivo (assuming all else equal). in the end sonicblue ends up making 1.5x more than before.
Anyone can GIVE money/computers/software/twinkies/milk to these schools.
Yes, this is true. Anyone can also give money/computers/software/twinkies/milk to anyone besides schools. But they don't.
The point is they are undercutting competition with price segmentation disguised as a good deed. This normally isn't an illegal move, but if done by a monopoly it turns into a monopolistic action which is illegal. It is extremely naive to think that this is really a move to benefit schools. If MS wanted to benefit the 14,000 poorest districts they would donate 1.1B to improve the foundations of the educational system, not throw their product at the problem.
We've all seen this punishment before in old movies, it's bound to work. Remember when 12 year old William got caught smoking a cigarette? His dad made him smoke more cigarettes until he was sick to his stomach and would never touch a cigarette again.
Well, Microsoft got caught creating a monopoly, so the obvious answer is to hand them more users. And not just any users, the most impressionable ones we can find. If we grow the monopoly for them, Microsoft will surely get tired of no competition and correct their ways.
Seriously, if Microsoft did this out of context of a settlement people would be jumping all over them. It's a move intended to create a foothold in a market by undercutting competition. I don't think I could imagine a more obvious monopolistic action. I will admit though, it is a pretty genius move.
Nobody ever said many to many relationships in XML were hard. The orginal comment said that mm relationships were hard in hierarchical databases, not hierarchical structures. a straightforward explanation of why many to many is hard in a hierarchical db can be found here.
if you don't have an insider at a bank or if years of jailtime scare you, there's a few of the 4758 cards on ebay. and there will probably be more posted after this;) if i wasn't a poor college student i'd pick one up to try this out in the safety of my own room.
A lot of viruses are industrial terrorism. Some are created with the intent of intimidating or coercing an industry. But should an industrial terrorist be put in the same category as a terrorist?
Lets say that some MS bully punched me the other day for running Linux. Can I call him a personal terrorist because he was trying to intimidate me into using Windows? And since he is now a terrorist can I have the government punish him the same as they would somebody who brings down buildings?
does cloudscape go to IBM as well? i have not played with it much, but on the surface it seems to be a good product. hopefully it will go somewhere with IBM's interest in java.
Slashdot Mirror
Meanwhile, Slashdot editors drool over... a stupid studio fight, among other things.
yes, the fight between two movie studios over the title of a movie is trivial and frivolous, but this story is a good example of how ridiculous copyright law has become. it would be extremely hard in this case to argue that copyright law is being used to provide incentive for other authors to create. mgm is doing nothing but trying to protect their own assets, and that's a stretch, as i don't see how austin powers is a threat to james bond. the point of the article is that copyright has been taken over and used as a tool to protect studios and not artists as it was intended. unfortunately, the course copyright law is headed on is not trivial and frivolous, and that's why this story is important.
if your university doesn't have wireless internet access in at least the student common areas, you could look into it. on a larger scale you can use the money to investigate a campus wide wireless setup. this involves some non-obvious costs such as researching building materials that block/channel signals so you can use the buildings as antennas and shields.
In previous digital DJ solutions, there has been a problem where you don't get a visual indication of where breakdowns occur in songs. When you spin with vinyl, if you look closely at a track the grooves look different during a breakdown, giving you a visual indication of how much time you have to finish/start a mix. One reason for Final Scratch's success is being able to see on your laptop screen where the breakdowns are, just as if you had the vinyl in front of you.
Actually, Richie Hawtin has been using this setup for a year now. If one of the most innovative, important and infuential djs in the world has been using it for this long, I would hardly call it vaporware.
Sonicblue: Hi, Tivo, we were thinking you might want to license this patent from us for $X.
.5x dollars and still have a cheaper unit than tivo (assuming all else equal). in the end sonicblue ends up making 1.5x more than before.
Tivo: But that's not a valid patent, we've been doing that for years.
Sonicblue: Well, you can fight us if you'd like. I'm sure your lawyers will only charge you 10-100 times $X.
Tivo: hmmmm... okay, where do we send the money. We can always pass the cost on to the customer anyhow
and this is what sonicblue will want tivo to do. tivo raises the price per unit by x dollars. sonicblue can then raise their price by
Anyone can GIVE money/computers/software/twinkies/milk to these schools.
Yes, this is true. Anyone can also give money/computers/software/twinkies/milk to anyone besides schools. But they don't.
The point is they are undercutting competition with price segmentation disguised as a good deed. This normally isn't an illegal move, but if done by a monopoly it turns into a monopolistic action which is illegal. It is extremely naive to think that this is really a move to benefit schools. If MS wanted to benefit the 14,000 poorest districts they would donate 1.1B to improve the foundations of the educational system, not throw their product at the problem.
We've all seen this punishment before in old movies, it's bound to work. Remember when 12 year old William got caught smoking a cigarette? His dad made him smoke more cigarettes until he was sick to his stomach and would never touch a cigarette again.
Well, Microsoft got caught creating a monopoly, so the obvious answer is to hand them more users. And not just any users, the most impressionable ones we can find. If we grow the monopoly for them, Microsoft will surely get tired of no competition and correct their ways.
Seriously, if Microsoft did this out of context of a settlement people would be jumping all over them. It's a move intended to create a foothold in a market by undercutting competition. I don't think I could imagine a more obvious monopolistic action. I will admit though, it is a pretty genius move.
Nobody ever said many to many relationships in XML were hard. The orginal comment said that mm relationships were hard in hierarchical databases, not hierarchical structures. a straightforward explanation of why many to many is hard in a hierarchical db can be found here.
if you don't have an insider at a bank or if years of jailtime scare you, there's a few of the 4758 cards on ebay. and there will probably be more posted after this ;) if i wasn't a poor college student i'd pick one up to try this out in the safety of my own room.
Lets say that some MS bully punched me the other day for running Linux. Can I call him a personal terrorist because he was trying to intimidate me into using Windows? And since he is now a terrorist can I have the government punish him the same as they would somebody who brings down buildings?
does cloudscape go to IBM as well? i have not played with it much, but on the surface it seems to be a good product. hopefully it will go somewhere with IBM's interest in java.