Technically, they can. Legally, they can't (unless they'd be willing to give the community a good laugh by opening the Windows source).
I suspect that "piracy" is not that uncommon with proprietary software. Because it can be difficult to catch.
Now, while some small company could probably get away with using OS source in their projects, you can bet your rear that anything MS creates would be under VERY close observation.
What matters is probably more an issue of what is done...
Happened before, when some router manufacturer (ain't sure who it was and I don't want to accuse the wrong one) used Linux as the OS for their Router. They had to open the source.
There's rather a difference between trying to pirate an entire Operating System and "borrowing" bits of code.
The problem is, as stated before, the balance. Please realize that removing the copyright altogether would hurt the artist by far more than the distributor.
Where would you find hard data on this, rather than just opinion? Which countries, here and now, do not have copyright...
Copyright is a meme invented by sentient beings. It is not itself a sentient being, thus has no rights.
When someone creates something, he puts time and money behind it, develops it and he should have a chance to earn money that way.
In that case the relevent questions are along the lines of "what form (and term) of copyright is of most help for the creator?"
If you take this possibility away, the looser would be the artist who is already getting ripped by the studios. Studios wouldn't sign contracts with him anymore.
Which may not be a bad thing, since most of the "ripping off" appears to be tied to the terms of the contracts in question.
Or they wait for him to spend his own money to press a few CDs, rip those CDs, hype it, and sell it as their own.
In which what's needed is possibly something more like a trademark. Assuming they actually care and don't take the view of "all publicity is good".
There is still a matter of some movies not being availalbe in some parts of the world or being delayed for months or worse.
Which for many movies is actually the norm. For reasons including global companies just not being geared up to deal with a global audience and governments insisting that films must be dubbed into a "local language", even when plenty of people there understand the "foreign language" originally used. (As well as it being perfectly possible do quite a bit of dubbing/subtitling as part of the production in the first place.) There are quite a few situations, e.g. fan subbed anime, where "pirates" are providing services which are clearly in demand, but not available for sale...
That said, I feel like I'm in the same exact situation. I've expressed my dissatisfaction with the Sonny Bono Indefinite Copyright Extension nastiness. The retro-active part makes me particularly furious... that's the piece I consider to be the material breach.
It's a complete nonsense that this can possibly be in accordance with the US Constitution. Not only is ipso post facto legislation not ment to be allowed but extending the copyright term of already existing works cannot possibly encourage their initial creation and publication (even if the creator is still alive.)
Cost of manufacture and distribution of the disc is peanuts. Don't forget, however, that the film on it wasn't free to make. For old films and those that have already recopued their costs the production cost is immaterial, but for newer ones that have yet to break even (they don't all manage to at the box office) it's definitely a factor.
Even in the case of a film which hasn't made back all its costs through the box office the relevent figure would be cost minus Box office profit. Things are difficult to work out, since MPAA (like RIAA) members use all sorts of accounting tricks. Mainly to keep money away from actual creative talent involved. However these companies appear to be making quite healthy (by some measurements very healthy) profits.
For me visiting, I wanted the quality so I bought dozens of real DVDs (and some pirated ones when I couldn't find the real ones), but the vast majority of locals buy the pirated ones. Remember these are the people that download DiVx and think the quality is OK.
For many people the technical quality of the picture just isn't an issue. Plenty of people will watch broadcast television which is hardly viewable or audible.
My bet is that if you had DVDs priced at 1.5$, film copyright infringement would end as we know it,
You'd also need to get away from the idea of "staggered release". Given a choice between download a pirate copy now or wait months/years for the legitimate version to come along many people will go with the former. Also there needs to be one price, rather than something like 1.5USD or £1.5 or 1.5, etc.
Add to that the release of DVDs on the same day of first screening (sell the things as people exits the cinema), and you have the film distribution model of the future. Big-screen film watching is a fundamentally different experience than DVD watching, and there is but little market cannibalising between the two of them. Film distributors should start to know that.
If the image on the "big screen" were to come from a DVD then issues about lack of film prints become rather irrelevent too.
But history doesn't support that there's a problem with society. It's not uncommon throughout all of human history for 13-15 year old girls to get married (with all the nighttime activities that entail). To say that the age of 18 is the age of "sexual maturity" is bullshit. Biologicly, most females are able to get pregnant in the mid teens,
Historically the age of sexual maturity has been falling in many societies at the same time that the age of "legal adulthood" has been rising. Thus having a group of sexually mature people who are legally "children" is something which has only happened fairly recently.
yet mental maturity for the average human is reached in the mid 20s. So 18 means... what? It's an arbitry time, with no actual meaning.
A simple comparison of ages of consent will show exactly this...
Wouldn't it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that.... no wait, theye're too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
You probably wouldn't want want the DHS doing it either. Maybe set up a special agency to do it, but to save costs just jail anyone who applies for a job there.
Well what ARE you more concerned about? Your privacy, or the safety of America's children? I won't judge your answer, but for many people, one IS more important then the other, and for the other people, the other option is more important.
Ignoring that the argument is a false dicotamy anyway...
What needs to be done is a REAL investigation on how effective these measures would truly be.
Including the possibility that they may actually turn out to be "worst than useless"...
Then if it's enacted, a study after a trial period to determine how effective the new laws really have been, and how much they've been used against other cases.
Just as important is where they fail to be used in apparently relevent cases.
Consider that the average human conception has about three dangerous mutations even without Chernobyl. Why aren't we oatmeal? Because a goodly percentage of conceptions never make it past the blastocyst stage due to excessive nasty chromosomal damage, while we lucky survivors had fewer.
Mutations themselves are random, but their effect is very much non random. Some are complete "show stoppers", to the extent that even getting as far as the blastocyst stage is unlikely. I doubt that the figure of 3 dangerous mutations per conception is likely to vary much for any placental mammal too.
Actually, we have already discovered DNA repairing abilities. Virtually all organisms have some DNA repair ability.
Also the contamination now is not the same as the contamination 20 years ago. e.g. the article refers to horses being killed by radioactive iodine. This, along with any other short lived isotopes, is long gone from the environment.
When promoting hate speech rules the people behind them will always use the most extreme examples of speech they can find. Yet when applied it never ceases to amaze me what gets branded under the category.
It's just as significent what doesn't get called "hate speach". People (and organisations) rarely attempt to censor positions they agree with, no matter how extreme. Another thing that can happen is that such terms are used to attempt to bar certain speakers regardless of what they are actually saying.
The key thing here, for me, is that American judges are blocking the attempts of an American corporation to dodge round a foreign law.
There's a popular belief in Europe, particularly in anti-American circles, that the US refuses to acknowledge that any non-US law could ever apply to a US-based entity.
It's not clear if this is a case of US courts recognising "foreign courts" or rejecting Microsoft's requests because they have no standing to make them under US law...
Do you send a letter to the company after purchase saying "my use of this program is subject to included terms and conditions?"
Also including "By opening the (sealed) envelope you have agreed to these terms and conditions". Which is the same mechanism many EULAs claim for validity.
Why waste your time for a little benifit, and minimul damage to the offending companies? Go for the gusto! Go for the Class Action Lawsuit! IANAL, so I cannot actually say if this is a potentil case for class action.
That might be exactly what $BIG_COMPANY wants you to do. Since in the former case they have to fight many lawsuits (in many jurisdictions) as opposed to only one.
Morse code to portable radios is WW I and field radios would qualify as a message over wireless to a portable device.
"Portable" radios were probably around for quite a while before. WWI simply encouraged them to be developed to be more rugged and easily portable. Wars tend to have this effect on any technology useful in fighting a war.
I mean, email was invented first, and I am sure someone has a patent for that.
Wrong tense, email (in a form recognisable as that which we use now) was invented over 30 years ago. A patent from then would have expired, even if patents did last that long telegrams and telex messages predate "email" and rely on electrical/electronic telecommunications.
Just because the transport medium is wireless instead of over a wire, is there any validity in a patent for "wireless" email?
There's also the issue of why "wireless" should be of any relevence anyway. Electronic telecommunication systems often are hybrids of various wired (including fibre optic) and wireless connections. This has been the case for over a century with telephone networks, with no easy way for the end user to know how their connection is actually being made.
Who invented Morse code over wireless? Morse code with signal lights?
What kind of lights? e.g. should using LEDs vs incandscent lamps mean a different patent? Does it matter which colour light is used? What about using non-visible light...
The way things are at the moment you could probably get a patent on sending Morse code by waving a flag (so long as nobody else beats you to the patent office.)
I get steamed when people suggest that every new combination of communications channel and message format is an invention. A new communications channel is an invention, and a new communication format is an invention, but merely thinking "hey, we could do that over this"?
Even then a new "invention" only really deserves a patent if it is sufficently different from what has gone before. e.g. using frequency modulated light to carry information probably shouldn't get a patent. But a frequency modulator for light might well be deserving of one.
You're describing one methodology of tropical design, which does make sense and work. Another way of doing it is to have really heavy walls/roof, and basically insulate the hell out of it so that the temperature never has a chance to warm up that much during the day.
As long as the water table is low enough one of the easiest ways to do this is to put the entire building in a big hole in the ground or inside a hill.
As a comparison, there are heaterless homes built in Gothenburg, Sweden. The only heating needed comes from the inhabitants and their appliances (fridge, TV, computer(s), stove etc), the insulation is good enough to keep the house warm with the help of ventilation air heat exchangers.
As another comparison, I've heard that a modern office building in Kiruna (northernmost town in Sweden) needs cooling 90% of the year...
Office buildings tend to have a higher density of people than houses. Per person heat output is non trivial.
you would be wise to consider compact flourescent as they last VASTLY longer and use significantly less energy. And that "bad light" and "flicker that makes people sick" is pretty much an artifact of the past. Newer tubes and bulbs have much cleaner light.
IIRC flourescent lamps are more efficent at producing light when run on RF AC compared with AF AC. You are also most unlikely to notice any flickering (or stroboscopic effect) at a few hundred kHz
I've had a closer look at some fluorescents and they have something like 7 or 8 different dyes. You can look at the spectrum by reflection from a CD, for example. There's a clear difference between the continuous spectrum of incandescent bulbs and the discrete one of fluorescents.
For one thing the latter is throwing off quite a bit of light energy you are never going to see.
This three-component LED sounds even worse; on the other hand, the component spectra might be relatively wide.
You do realise that the device you used to write this on uses "component spectra". Also that the human eye works in just this way...
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Technically, they can. Legally, they can't (unless they'd be willing to give the community a good laugh by opening the Windows source).
I suspect that "piracy" is not that uncommon with proprietary software. Because it can be difficult to catch.
Now, while some small company could probably get away with using OS source in their projects, you can bet your rear that anything MS creates would be under VERY close observation.
What matters is probably more an issue of what is done...
Happened before, when some router manufacturer (ain't sure who it was and I don't want to accuse the wrong one) used Linux as the OS for their Router. They had to open the source.
There's rather a difference between trying to pirate an entire Operating System and "borrowing" bits of code.
The problem is, as stated before, the balance. Please realize that removing the copyright altogether would hurt the artist by far more than the distributor.
Where would you find hard data on this, rather than just opinion? Which countries, here and now, do not have copyright...
Copyright has its right to exist.
Copyright is a meme invented by sentient beings. It is not itself a sentient being, thus has no rights.
When someone creates something, he puts time and money behind it, develops it and he should have a chance to earn money that way.
In that case the relevent questions are along the lines of "what form (and term) of copyright is of most help for the creator?"
If you take this possibility away, the looser would be the artist who is already getting ripped by the studios. Studios wouldn't sign contracts with him anymore.
Which may not be a bad thing, since most of the "ripping off" appears to be tied to the terms of the contracts in question.
Or they wait for him to spend his own money to press a few CDs, rip those CDs, hype it, and sell it as their own.
In which what's needed is possibly something more like a trademark. Assuming they actually care and don't take the view of "all publicity is good".
There is still a matter of some movies not being availalbe in some parts of the world or being delayed for months or worse.
Which for many movies is actually the norm. For reasons including global companies just not being geared up to deal with a global audience and governments insisting that films must be dubbed into a "local language", even when plenty of people there understand the "foreign language" originally used. (As well as it being perfectly possible do quite a bit of dubbing/subtitling as part of the production in the first place.)
There are quite a few situations, e.g. fan subbed anime, where "pirates" are providing services which are clearly in demand, but not available for sale...
That said, I feel like I'm in the same exact situation. I've expressed my dissatisfaction with the Sonny Bono Indefinite Copyright Extension nastiness. The retro-active part makes me particularly furious ... that's the piece I consider to be the material breach.
It's a complete nonsense that this can possibly be in accordance with the US Constitution. Not only is ipso post facto legislation not ment to be allowed but extending the copyright term of already existing works cannot possibly encourage their initial creation and publication (even if the creator is still alive.)
Cost of manufacture and distribution of the disc is peanuts. Don't forget, however, that the film on it wasn't free to make. For old films and those that have already recopued their costs the production cost is immaterial, but for newer ones that have yet to break even (they don't all manage to at the box office) it's definitely a factor.
Even in the case of a film which hasn't made back all its costs through the box office the relevent figure would be cost minus Box office profit.
Things are difficult to work out, since MPAA (like RIAA) members use all sorts of accounting tricks. Mainly to keep money away from actual creative talent involved. However these companies appear to be making quite healthy (by some measurements very healthy) profits.
There is no such thing as the intrinsic value of a product. (At least not in a sufficiently free market.)
For something like a DVD the intrinsic value is the the cost of making and transporting that DVD.
If you think a movie is worth 50 bucks, it means you'd rather have the movie than fifty bucks
Except that you don't get "The Movie" you get one of a fairly large number of copies of a movie.
For me visiting, I wanted the quality so I bought dozens of real DVDs (and some pirated ones when I couldn't find the real ones), but the vast majority of locals buy the pirated ones. Remember these are the people that download DiVx and think the quality is OK.
For many people the technical quality of the picture just isn't an issue. Plenty of people will watch broadcast television which is hardly viewable or audible.
My bet is that if you had DVDs priced at 1.5$, film copyright infringement would end as we know it,
You'd also need to get away from the idea of "staggered release". Given a choice between download a pirate copy now or wait months/years for the legitimate version to come along many people will go with the former. Also there needs to be one price, rather than something like 1.5USD or £1.5 or 1.5, etc.
Add to that the release of DVDs on the same day of first screening (sell the things as people exits the cinema), and you have the film distribution model of the future. Big-screen film watching is a fundamentally different experience than DVD watching, and there is but little market cannibalising between the two of them. Film distributors should start to know that.
If the image on the "big screen" were to come from a DVD then issues about lack of film prints become rather irrelevent too.
But history doesn't support that there's a problem with society. It's not uncommon throughout all of human history for 13-15 year old girls to get married (with all the nighttime activities that entail). To say that the age of 18 is the age of "sexual maturity" is bullshit. Biologicly, most females are able to get pregnant in the mid teens,
Historically the age of sexual maturity has been falling in many societies at the same time that the age of "legal adulthood" has been rising. Thus having a group of sexually mature people who are legally "children" is something which has only happened fairly recently.
yet mental maturity for the average human is reached in the mid 20s. So 18 means... what? It's an arbitry time, with no actual meaning.
A simple comparison of ages of consent will show exactly this...
Wouldn't it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that.... no wait, theye're too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
You probably wouldn't want want the DHS doing it either.
Maybe set up a special agency to do it, but to save costs just jail anyone who applies for a job there.
Well what ARE you more concerned about? Your privacy, or the safety of America's children? I won't judge your answer, but for many people, one IS more important then the other, and for the other people, the other option is more important.
Ignoring that the argument is a false dicotamy anyway...
What needs to be done is a REAL investigation on how effective these measures would truly be.
Including the possibility that they may actually turn out to be "worst than useless"...
Then if it's enacted, a study after a trial period to determine how effective the new laws really have been, and how much they've been used against other cases.
Just as important is where they fail to be used in apparently relevent cases.
Consider that the average human conception has about three dangerous mutations even without Chernobyl. Why aren't we oatmeal? Because a goodly percentage of conceptions never make it past the blastocyst stage due to excessive nasty chromosomal damage, while we lucky survivors had fewer.
Mutations themselves are random, but their effect is very much non random. Some are complete "show stoppers", to the extent that even getting as far as the blastocyst stage is unlikely.
I doubt that the figure of 3 dangerous mutations per conception is likely to vary much for any placental mammal too.
Actually, we have already discovered DNA repairing abilities. Virtually all organisms have some DNA repair ability.
Also the contamination now is not the same as the contamination 20 years ago. e.g. the article refers to horses being killed by radioactive iodine. This, along with any other short lived isotopes, is long gone from the environment.
When promoting hate speech rules the people behind them will always use the most extreme examples of speech they can find. Yet when applied it never ceases to amaze me what gets branded under the category.
It's just as significent what doesn't get called "hate speach". People (and organisations) rarely attempt to censor positions they agree with, no matter how extreme. Another thing that can happen is that such terms are used to attempt to bar certain speakers regardless of what they are actually saying.
The key thing here, for me, is that American judges are blocking the attempts of an American corporation to dodge round a foreign law.
There's a popular belief in Europe, particularly in anti-American circles, that the US refuses to acknowledge that any non-US law could ever apply to a US-based entity.
It's not clear if this is a case of US courts recognising "foreign courts" or rejecting Microsoft's requests because they have no standing to make them under US law...
Do you send a letter to the company after purchase saying "my use of this program is subject to included terms and conditions?"
Also including "By opening the (sealed) envelope you have agreed to these terms and conditions". Which is the same mechanism many EULAs claim for validity.
Why waste your time for a little benifit, and minimul damage to the offending companies? Go for the gusto! Go for the Class Action Lawsuit! IANAL, so I cannot actually say if this is a potentil case for class action.
That might be exactly what $BIG_COMPANY wants you to do. Since in the former case they have to fight many lawsuits (in many jurisdictions) as opposed to only one.
Morse code to portable radios is WW I and field radios would qualify as a message over wireless to a portable device.
"Portable" radios were probably around for quite a while before. WWI simply encouraged them to be developed to be more rugged and easily portable. Wars tend to have this effect on any technology useful in fighting a war.
I mean, email was invented first, and I am sure someone has a patent for that.
Wrong tense, email (in a form recognisable as that which we use now) was invented over 30 years ago. A patent from then would have expired, even if patents did last that long telegrams and telex messages predate "email" and rely on electrical/electronic telecommunications.
Just because the transport medium is wireless instead of over a wire, is there any validity in a patent for "wireless" email?
There's also the issue of why "wireless" should be of any relevence anyway. Electronic telecommunication systems often are hybrids of various wired (including fibre optic) and wireless connections. This has been the case for over a century with telephone networks, with no easy way for the end user to know how their connection is actually being made.
Who invented Morse code over wireless? Morse code with signal lights?
What kind of lights? e.g. should using LEDs vs incandscent lamps mean a different patent? Does it matter which colour light is used? What about using non-visible light...
The way things are at the moment you could probably get a patent on sending Morse code by waving a flag (so long as nobody else beats you to the patent office.)
I get steamed when people suggest that every new combination of communications channel and message format is an invention. A new communications channel is an invention, and a new communication format is an invention, but merely thinking "hey, we could do that over this"?
Even then a new "invention" only really deserves a patent if it is sufficently different from what has gone before. e.g. using frequency modulated light to carry information probably shouldn't get a patent. But a frequency modulator for light might well be deserving of one.
You're describing one methodology of tropical design, which does make sense and work. Another way of doing it is to have really heavy walls/roof, and basically insulate the hell out of it so that the temperature never has a chance to warm up that much during the day.
As long as the water table is low enough one of the easiest ways to do this is to put the entire building in a big hole in the ground or inside a hill.
As a comparison, there are heaterless homes built in Gothenburg, Sweden. The only heating needed comes from the inhabitants and their appliances (fridge, TV, computer(s), stove etc), the insulation is good enough to keep the house warm with the help of ventilation air heat exchangers.
As another comparison, I've heard that a modern office building in Kiruna (northernmost town in Sweden) needs cooling 90% of the year...
Office buildings tend to have a higher density of people than houses. Per person heat output is non trivial.
you would be wise to consider compact flourescent as they last VASTLY longer and use significantly less energy. And that "bad light" and "flicker that makes people sick" is pretty much an artifact of the past. Newer tubes and bulbs have much cleaner light.
IIRC flourescent lamps are more efficent at producing light when run on RF AC compared with AF AC. You are also most unlikely to notice any flickering (or stroboscopic effect) at a few hundred kHz
I've had a closer look at some fluorescents and they have something like 7 or 8 different dyes. You can look at the spectrum by reflection from a CD, for example. There's a clear difference between the continuous spectrum of incandescent bulbs and the discrete one of fluorescents.
For one thing the latter is throwing off quite a bit of light energy you are never going to see.
This three-component LED sounds even worse; on the other hand, the component spectra might be relatively wide.
You do realise that the device you used to write this on uses "component spectra". Also that the human eye works in just this way...