Actually, making a permanent roadway will benefit only US and Chukotka, because
Chukotka itself has no reliable connections (no hard-surface roads, no railroads) with Russia
mainland.
Except there is no way you can build a permenant roadway over pack ice. The only way of doing it is by all terrain vehicles.
If the copyright is significantly limited, though, for example if copyright were limited to a period of 20 years, the copyright law that GPL'd software is based on would cause the GPL to crumble. GPL'd software would become public domain in 20 years.
Not really the GPL would work fine with just about any copyright term. Whilst it might mean that theoretically old GPL code could be asimilated into proprietary software (just as can happen now with BSD code which is "public domain" in all but name). In practice it would be the proprietary software industry which would be in trouble. Not for a while though, since computers 20 years ago came with a wealth of technical details you won't find with more recent ones.
A 20 year copyright would dramatically improve the situation. Removing copyright completely would do significant damage to the economy, and make it near-impossible for anyone who's work is copyrighted to make a living.
The latter isn't necessarily true. Remember that the concept of copyright is only a few hundred years old. It might make better sense to have the term length something more like twice the median amount of time a copyright holder will attempt to make money on the product. The alternative is registering every 3-5 years with an exponetially rising fee.
Adult children can "find their own damn way," but what about young children? Even unborn children, e.g., several of the children born after their fathers died on 9/11? In recent years, it's also been the source of funds for the old-age care of the surviving spouse.
Don't they have pensions and life insurance in the US?
I think the CDBTAAPGEHNASE or whatever the SSSCA is called these days will outlaw any hardware/software that does not implement a copyright management system approved by (read designed by) the RIAA/MPAA.
Do you really think they will approve anything they think might be used against them (e.g. a "demo tape" which is time limited and cannot be copied) or as part of someone setting up in direct competition to them?
The small documentary studio would not survive a dramatic increase in the cost of recording and reproduction technologies. And even if the startup band is able to afford recording at a licensed and approved studio, their costs of distribution would be higher and their available licenses would be restricted to the options pre-packaged by the studios in the technology.
Even if they wern't there would probably be no ability to use distribution channels which the RIAA & MPAA wern't using. Because they would have no licenced DRM available.
But, if this licensing scheme is put into wide use, it makes it trivial to implement a DRM management system that disallowed copying of files tagged with a restrictive license.
Actually this would be anything but trivial. You'd have to mandate that not onlt does everything which could be used to copy contain a DRM machine. But also that that DRMM include a AI which can understand software licencing and implied context.
Don't they understand that people like having atomic systems? Lots of little programs that each provide a separate service. Ever tried uninstalling IE from M$ Windows, or even M$ Messenger? I personally like AIM and Opera, and I can tell you that I needlessly have duplicate services installed.
With Windows partly it's because of Microsoft policy to "integrate" everthing. Microsoft don't want you to have such an "atomic system" because you can make it work the way you want it to... So other software for Windows follows the same kind of design. This may actually have some advantage with Windows, where since process creation is expensive multi-threading tends to be used as an alternative. Problem is that you then see these same monoliths appearing in unix systems. As either ports or clones of Windows applications.
1/ Support *all* inbound e-mail standards, pop, apop, pop over ssl, imap, imap over ssl, MicroSoft exchange (I don't want to run Outbreak^h^h^h^h^hlook), etc. I don't want to change e-mail clients to match up with whatever e-mail server is in use where I am working.
You missed the most often ignored catagory. Just opening files, including on network shares with Windows workstations.
2/ Support *all* outbound e-mail standards, smtp *and* the various authenticated smtp methods. Security matters.
Your probably also want proper SMTP as well as third party relaying. There is also simply sending the data to another program.
3/ Deal with *all* content standards, MIME, HTML, etc. and provied fine control over how they are viewed (e.g. no html, html without downloading images, etc.)
Maybe also sanitise HTML before rendering it if you want to effectivly feed it to a web browser. Or even give though to using an HTML rendering program with more limited capabilities.
5/ Message filters. Filter inbound mail, filter on demand, etc. Filter on any header or other part of the message. Filter using external programs like spamassassin, etc.
This may be more a part of a MTA than a MUA though.
I wouldn't count numbers five and six. Remember, there'a whole lot of zealots who insist we grew out of two people that were made from dirt.
Actually a few more of the questions are rather flawed.
Question 1: No technology currently exists to measure the core temperature of any planet, including Earth. Question 2: it's just as valid to say that all the oxygen we breath comes nuclear fusion Question 4: it sould probably contain "relative to each other". Otherwise they move quite a distance each second. Even then you are asking for a true/false about a theory which is imensly difficult to prove.
The Patent Office isn't charged with ensuring that the patents are valid.
Why bother with having a patent office at all, the applicants could just rubber stamp their own applications...
If you want the PO to ensure validity, you're going to need to give them a lot more funding than they get, since you need top-of-the-field experts in almost every domain to be hanging around.
Or there is the radical idea that the fee paid with the application is there to fund any validity checking which may be needed. You could possibly have both a non returnable fee and a deposit against friviolous or fraudulent applications.
The funniest part is the reciprocal patent license which you must agree without seeing the specs!
Actually the funniest bit is that if it is remotely enforcable all anyone would have to do is send Microsoft a letter saying "By reading this letter you hard irrevokably placed all your copyright material in the public domain and issued a licence to use all your patents in any way anyone sees fit".
but if someone takes some code that is GPL'ed and doesn't agree with the license, can that person than disregard the license and use the software anyone they seem fit?
They can use the software as they see fit, but if they want to distribute it they either follow the GPL or are a software pirate. The GPL is not an EULA.
Not in patent law. Microsoft has patented methods used to authenticate users in their networked file system. Microsoft can deny ANYONE the right to use this authentication mechanism using any terms they like.
Not quite they can only deny this where the patent has standing. Which would appear to be the US, they may be able to apply this against any US citizen too.
Secondly, this is a -- if not the -- prime example of what's wrong with the "intellectual property" faction of anti-GPL types. The GPL in no way inhibits intellectual property. It is simply a software license that imposes contractual conditions on the use of software. It is only unusual in that it does not require payment.
All that is required for a contract is "consideration". Which is simply something of value. There is literally thousands of years of case law behind this. Money is simply a common kind of consideration, but in the end money is no less an abstract concept than copyright.
Here's the argument that Microsoft and other anti-GPL nutballs are making: "You're not making any money off this, so we want to steal your intellectual property, violate the hell out of your license, and make money from our criminal activities."
Whilst at the same time Microsoft is prepared to pay their employees in stock options. Indeed Microsoft works hard not to make money so as not to pay taxes.
But there is a claim in there that a Microsoft *patent* must be licensed merely to distribute an implementation that complies with the reference! Microsoft hereby grants Company a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, personal, transferable, non-sublicensable, license under its Necessary Claims to (1) make, use, import, and (2) offer to sell, sell and distribute, directly or indirectly, to End Users, Company Implementations that fully comply with the Technical Reference.
This is self evidently nonsensical since it perports to grant a worldwide licence when software patents have no standing in most of the world. Further it cannot be "royalty-free" and make conditions about somone licences their copyrighted works. They are mutually exclusive.
As has been pointed out many times before: It depends upon how you define "IP-impairing". The GPL license requires you to open-source any software written that uses code from another GPL'd license. Indeed it enforces the rights of the original author of open-source code, by ensuring that no work can be created that simply rips off existing GPL'd code. In this respect, the GPL is IP-enforcing.
There is also the "Unamerican" claims. When if fact the GPL has a lot more in common with the US Constitution than just about anything the likes of Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, etc have ever come up with.
If I were to write an application that works on Linux, I am under no obligation to open my source code. On the other hand, if I write code that uses code from a GPL'd product, then I am using someone elses intellectual property, and - just as MS require you to abide by their license in order to use their IP - I am required to abide by the license under which the original codes author has licensed their work.
Not quite you can use GPL code in any way you see fit. The conditions of the GPL only take effect if you distribute it, regardless of if you are an individual or a megacorp. (If you were a megacorp you could use modified GPL software world wide with no obligation to tell anyone how you had changed it.) Microsoft will tend to want to tell you how you can and can't use the software.They may want to impose diffent conditions depending if you are a person or corporation. Also GPL tools are "non-viral" any original work you create using them is subject to whatever licence you may choose. Certain Microsoft tools attempt to impose on your copyright privileges.
What "code" this appears to be an attempt to impose a viral EULA onto a protocol specification.
It's an attempt by Microsoft to restrict what you can do with code you hold the copyright to based on having read a document that they have written. And that's not OK.
Since they are apparently attempting to impinge on other people copyright are they not in breach of the DMCA themselves?
Both the RIAA and the MPAA make products that are easy to replicate. The simple fact of the matter is that anybody can make a TV show, anybody can make a song, and anybody can publish it on the net. It wasn't like that 20 years ago, but it is like that today.
There were "garage bands" and amature film makers 20 years ago. However there is likely to come a time in the near future where such people can produce products of similar standard to the RIAA & MPAA but at lesser cost. Indeed this point has already been reached in some cases. It's with such things as CGI and other "special effects" where the established industry still has the edge, at the moment.
Step 1, consumers must throw out all existing digital appliances. Includes microwaves with digital clocks, watches, thermostats, TVs, stereos, and cars (yes, the whole car).
Step 2, businesses must throw out all existing digital infrastructure, such as cable, phone, DSL, radio, satellite. And all the digital appliances listed in step 1.
Step 3, businesses must build a new digital infrastructure, such as cable, phone, DSL, radio, and satellite, that has copy protection built in.
More likely the US would fall apart midway through steps 1 and 2. How can it possibly remain intact with no infrastructure? Even the sucessor nations with stable governments would simply retrive and update the systems they had in place before.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think Israel and Palastine would agree to such a game, and if so, what purpose would it serve?
Israel certainly wouldn't, in the real world they have complete military superiority. In a game they would probably have to face a more equal battle.
Actually, making a permanent roadway will benefit only US and Chukotka, because Chukotka itself has no reliable connections (no hard-surface roads, no railroads) with Russia mainland.
Except there is no way you can build a permenant roadway over pack ice. The only way of doing it is by all terrain vehicles.
If the copyright is significantly limited, though, for example if copyright were limited to a period of 20 years, the copyright law that GPL'd software is based on would cause the GPL to crumble. GPL'd software would become public domain in 20 years.
Not really the GPL would work fine with just about any copyright term. Whilst it might mean that theoretically old GPL code could be asimilated into proprietary software (just as can happen now with BSD code which is "public domain" in all but name). In practice it would be the proprietary software industry which would be in trouble.
Not for a while though, since computers 20 years ago came with a wealth of technical details you won't find with more recent ones.
A 20 year copyright would dramatically improve the situation. Removing copyright completely would do significant damage to the economy, and make it near-impossible for anyone who's work is copyrighted to make a living.
The latter isn't necessarily true. Remember that the concept of copyright is only a few hundred years old. It might make better sense to have the term length something more like twice the median amount of time a copyright holder will attempt to make money on the product.
The alternative is registering every 3-5 years with an exponetially rising fee.
no, it shouldn't expire the day you die. Someone may kill you in order to expire your copyrights.
There is already a way to deal with this. In criminal law.
There should be a time length after you die (something reasonable like 10 years).
In which case you can still be killed by a patient murderer. e.g. a corporation.
Adult children can "find their own damn way," but what about young children? Even unborn children, e.g., several of the children born after their fathers died on 9/11?
In recent years, it's also been the source of funds for the old-age care of the surviving spouse.
Don't they have pensions and life insurance in the US?
I think the CDBTAAPGEHNASE or whatever the SSSCA is called these days will outlaw any hardware/software that does not implement a copyright management system approved by (read designed by) the RIAA/MPAA.
Do you really think they will approve anything they think might be used against them (e.g. a "demo tape" which is time limited and cannot be copied) or as part of someone setting up in direct competition to them?
The small documentary studio would not survive a dramatic increase in the cost of recording and reproduction technologies. And even if the startup band is able to afford recording at a licensed and approved studio, their costs of distribution would be higher and their available licenses would be restricted to the options pre-packaged by the studios in the technology.
Even if they wern't there would probably be no ability to use distribution channels which the RIAA & MPAA wern't using. Because they would have no licenced DRM available.
But, if this licensing scheme is put into wide use, it makes it trivial to implement a DRM management system that disallowed copying of files tagged with a restrictive license.
Actually this would be anything but trivial. You'd have to mandate that not onlt does everything which could be used to copy contain a DRM machine. But also that that DRMM include a AI which can understand software licencing and implied context.
Don't they understand that people like having atomic systems? Lots of little programs that each provide a separate service. Ever tried uninstalling IE from M$ Windows, or even M$ Messenger? I personally like AIM and Opera, and I can tell you that I needlessly have duplicate services installed.
With Windows partly it's because of Microsoft policy to "integrate" everthing. Microsoft don't want you to have such an "atomic system" because you can make it work the way you want it to... So other software for Windows follows the same kind of design. This may actually have some advantage with Windows, where since process creation is expensive multi-threading tends to be used as an alternative.
Problem is that you then see these same monoliths appearing in unix systems. As either ports or clones of Windows applications.
1/ Support *all* inbound e-mail standards, pop, apop, pop over ssl, imap, imap over ssl, MicroSoft exchange (I don't want to run Outbreak^h^h^h^h^hlook), etc. I don't want to change e-mail clients to match up with whatever e-mail server is in use where I am working.
You missed the most often ignored catagory. Just opening files, including on network shares with Windows workstations.
2/ Support *all* outbound e-mail standards, smtp *and* the various authenticated smtp methods. Security matters.
Your probably also want proper SMTP as well as third party relaying. There is also simply sending the data to another program.
3/ Deal with *all* content standards, MIME, HTML, etc. and provied fine control over how they are viewed (e.g. no html, html without downloading images, etc.)
Maybe also sanitise HTML before rendering it if you want to effectivly feed it to a web browser. Or even give though to using an HTML rendering program with more limited capabilities.
5/ Message filters. Filter inbound mail, filter on demand, etc. Filter on any header or other part of the message. Filter using external programs like spamassassin, etc.
This may be more a part of a MTA than a MUA though.
I wouldn't count numbers five and six. Remember, there'a whole lot of zealots who insist we grew out of two people that were made from dirt.
Actually a few more of the questions are rather flawed.
Question 1: No technology currently exists to measure the core temperature of any planet, including Earth.
Question 2: it's just as valid to say that all the oxygen we breath comes nuclear fusion
Question 4: it sould probably contain "relative to each other". Otherwise they move quite a distance each second. Even then you are asking for a true/false about a theory which is imensly difficult to prove.
The Patent Office isn't charged with ensuring that the patents are valid.
Why bother with having a patent office at all, the applicants could just rubber stamp their own applications...
If you want the PO to ensure validity, you're going to need to give them a lot more funding than they get, since you need top-of-the-field experts in almost every domain to be hanging around.
Or there is the radical idea that the fee paid with the application is there to fund any validity checking which may be needed. You could possibly have both a non returnable fee and a deposit against friviolous or fraudulent applications.
A Treaty overrides the USA constitution.
No it dosn't. A constitution is the highest law of a nation state. A treaty is an agreement between 2 or more nation states.
You are appologizing for things without knowing all the facts (the many treaties USA is signing into).
Indeed the US is notorious for ignoring treaties, even when there is no conflict with the US Constitution.
The funniest part is the reciprocal patent license which you must agree without seeing the specs!
Actually the funniest bit is that if it is remotely enforcable all anyone would have to do is send Microsoft a letter saying "By reading this letter you hard irrevokably placed all your copyright material in the public domain and issued a licence to use all your patents in any way anyone sees fit".
but if someone takes some code that is GPL'ed and doesn't agree with the license, can that person than disregard the license and use the software anyone they seem fit?
They can use the software as they see fit, but if they want to distribute it they either follow the GPL or are a software pirate.
The GPL is not an EULA.
Not in patent law. Microsoft has patented methods used to authenticate users in their networked file system. Microsoft can deny ANYONE the right to use this authentication mechanism using any terms they like.
Not quite they can only deny this where the patent has standing. Which would appear to be the US, they may be able to apply this against any US citizen too.
Secondly, this is a -- if not the -- prime example of what's wrong with the "intellectual property" faction of anti-GPL types. The GPL in no way inhibits intellectual property. It is simply a software license that imposes contractual conditions on the use of software. It is only unusual in that it does not require payment.
All that is required for a contract is "consideration". Which is simply something of value. There is literally thousands of years of case law behind this. Money is simply a common kind of consideration, but in the end money is no less an abstract concept than copyright.
Here's the argument that Microsoft and other anti-GPL nutballs are making: "You're not making any money off this, so we want to steal your intellectual property, violate the hell out of your license, and make money from our criminal activities."
Whilst at the same time Microsoft is prepared to pay their employees in stock options. Indeed Microsoft works hard not to make money so as not to pay taxes.
But there is a claim in there that a Microsoft *patent* must be licensed merely to distribute an implementation that complies with the reference!
Microsoft hereby grants Company a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, personal, transferable, non-sublicensable, license under its Necessary Claims to (1) make, use, import, and (2) offer to sell, sell and distribute, directly or indirectly, to End Users, Company Implementations that fully comply with the Technical Reference.
This is self evidently nonsensical since it perports to grant a worldwide licence when software patents have no standing in most of the world. Further it cannot be "royalty-free" and make conditions about somone licences their copyrighted works. They are mutually exclusive.
Hell have a friend agree to the terms, read it, then TELL you how they do what
Or they could write a parody of it or even pick someone under 18 to do this.
As has been pointed out many times before: It depends upon how you define "IP-impairing". The GPL license requires you to open-source any software written that uses code from another GPL'd license. Indeed it enforces the rights of the original author of open-source code, by ensuring that no work can be created that simply rips off existing GPL'd code. In this respect, the GPL is IP-enforcing.
There is also the "Unamerican" claims. When if fact the GPL has a lot more in common with the US Constitution than just about anything the likes of Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, etc have ever come up with.
If I were to write an application that works on Linux, I am under no obligation to open my source code. On the other hand, if I write code that uses code from a GPL'd product, then I am using someone elses intellectual property, and - just as MS require you to abide by their license in order to use their IP - I am required to abide by the license under which the original codes author has licensed their work.
Not quite you can use GPL code in any way you see fit. The conditions of the GPL only take effect if you distribute it, regardless of if you are an individual or a megacorp. (If you were a megacorp you could use modified GPL software world wide with no obligation to tell anyone how you had changed it.) Microsoft will tend to want to tell you how you can and can't use the software.They may want to impose diffent conditions depending if you are a person or corporation.
Also GPL tools are "non-viral" any original work you create using them is subject to whatever licence you may choose. Certain Microsoft tools attempt to impose on your copyright privileges.
This isn't about licensing code, however.
What "code" this appears to be an attempt to impose a viral EULA onto a protocol specification.
It's an attempt by Microsoft to restrict what you can do with code you hold the copyright to based on having read a document that they have written. And that's not OK.
Since they are apparently attempting to impinge on other people copyright are they not in breach of the DMCA themselves?
This looks like pretty much the same deal. Both are obfuscated to make them look more complex, I think.
Isn't this this usually the case with "patent fraud"? Use highly obfuscated language so patent examiners think it is "original" and "innovative".
Actually the "Dune" miniseries followed the book pretty closely. I guess as close a a movie can.
A miniseries is rather longer than the average movie. Dune is rather longer than the average length novel too.
Both the RIAA and the MPAA make products that are easy to replicate. The simple fact of the matter is that anybody can make a TV show, anybody can make a song, and anybody can publish it on the net. It wasn't like that 20 years ago, but it is like that today.
There were "garage bands" and amature film makers 20 years ago. However there is likely to come a time in the near future where such people can produce products of similar standard to the RIAA & MPAA but at lesser cost. Indeed this point has already been reached in some cases. It's with such things as CGI and other "special effects" where the established industry still has the edge, at the moment.
Step 1, consumers must throw out all existing digital appliances. Includes microwaves with digital clocks, watches, thermostats, TVs, stereos, and cars (yes, the whole car).
Step 2, businesses must throw out all existing digital infrastructure, such as cable, phone, DSL, radio, satellite. And all the digital appliances listed in step 1.
Step 3, businesses must build a new digital infrastructure, such as cable, phone, DSL, radio, and satellite, that has copy protection built in.
More likely the US would fall apart midway through steps 1 and 2. How can it possibly remain intact with no infrastructure?
Even the sucessor nations with stable governments would simply retrive and update the systems they had in place before.