/joking of course, please don't kill anyone... just break their hands.
But if you feel you MUST kill them, then at least take them all out at roughly the same time so that there's no mistake about what pattern of behavior was responsible for their fates.... *grin*
Yeah, she's pretty much what killed it for me, too. But for me, it was mostly because she was "Superwoman". She was like Kirk, Picard, Spock and Scotty all combined into one. A know-it-all captain that basically needed no crew to operate her ship got to be pretty boring after a while. Maybe if they had given her some basic strengths and weaknesses (and a few character flaws), it would have been a little more entertaining.
And the best series of the franchise, DS9, was produced after he died.
Oddly enough, I found DS9 to be the least enjoyable, followed closely by Voyager. DS9 was the most "realistic" (I use the term very loosely), but that's part of what made it boring for me.
First, my comment was not meant as an affront - it was merely a followup to your comment. If you took it personally, it was never meant to be that way, and I apologize.
I didn't take it personally. I just took it as an opportunity to respond because I read lots of posts about bad parenting and wanted to make a statement. If it came off stand-offish, I should be the one to apologize. I didn't intend it to sound that way. I had some damage to my house over the weekend from a severe wind storm, and I was typing that message while the insurance adjustor was walking around checking things, so I didn't examine it with as much care as I normally would.;)
Heck, email is worse - 10 years old or 50, if you have an email account you're gonna get spam.
Yeah, I didn't even THINK to use that as an example. It would have been a very very good example.
This points out the main point though - what good will MORE government regulation do?
Absolutely none.;)
Sigh... it's all so complicated, and just as work and life seem to be getting faster and more complicated all the time, so does raising children. The more positive there is available to children, like the internet or certain forms of entertainment, the more likely it is that they will be exposed to an abuse of that particular enhancement.
Agreed. I wish I had better answers, but I don't. We do have a channel on digital cable that has no commercials (Noggin), but my son is really getting too old for it. For now, the correct internet solution is to restrict the locations he's allowed to go to a short list that we approve of, but you and I both know that's not going to fly in a couple more years.
So we do the best we can, but I'd rather not have Bush over my shoulder telling me that I could do better.
As I said earlier, I don't really think this has much to do with pr0n. This approach just isn't logical when a five-minute demonstration would accomplish the same thing. I don't have the strong resentment for Bush that some do, but I don't want him (or anybody else for that matter) breathing down my neck.;)
First off, let me point out that I wasn't agreeing with the government's position. I was just stating the rationale that they are using. I think it's nutty that they feel the need to subpoena the logs to prove a point that's incredibly obvious to anyone who has ever used a search engine. You and I both know that they want that information for something potentially more sinister....
I'm so tired of this "won't someone please think of the children" scenario. This is a parental issue through and through. If parents haphazardly allow their youngsters onto computers without knowing jack about them, it's like allowing your child to watch TV without any idea as to the content of the programming.
Although I'm not falling for this as a "think of the children" kind of thing, as a parent I would like to point out to you the some of the issues you may not be aware of (or maybe just don't care about). Let's use TV as an example. When we let our children watch TV, we always make sure we know exactly what program they are watching. Even though we have no premium channels, we still have locks setup on the cable box by both content rating and also channel. In our case, it's not so much "adult situations" we're worried about, but more some of the imagery (violence, horror, language) that can be a bit distressing to young children. We diligently check the programming before and after what our children want to watch. Most of the time, we are in the same room with them so that we can monitor what's going. What we don't have control over are the commercials. I can tell you that many of the advertisements are worse for children than some of the programs we wouldn't let them watch. And this kind of junk comes onto the TV right in the middle of children's programming. I call this a peripheral hazard. Even if I am sitting there watching the program with them, there is nothing I can do to stop a 20 second blurb of imagery that I don't think they should see. The only thing I could do aside from not letting them watch TV is record everything and either blank out the commercials or watch the whole thing through to see if there's anything bad. There's no way on earth that anybody has the time to do this. Thinking that a parent can and should take such dramatic measures is nothing short of naive. What I have managed to do is roughly determine which channels are more likely to insert such crap during children's programming and I now avoid them. Now let's go to the internet. The peripheral hazards on the internet abound. If you use a search engine at all, you have a very good opportunity to stumble across pr0n and other elements that aren't appropriate for children. Another poster indicated that you can't do this by accident. I strongly disagree. There are plenty of search results that yield useful information, but have advertisements on the margins of the target site that are completely inappropriate. Filter programs help a lot, but they don't solve everything. Those filter programs that work better are extremely restrictive -- they prevent the use of search engines completely. For smaller children, this isn't a problem, but as they get a little older and have to use the internet for research, it starts to become more than just annoying. Even a parent looking over their shoulder isn't really enough.
Now don't misunderstanding me. I don't think any of this is a reason to remove all the pr0n from the internet. I just want you to understand that it's not so simple being a parent and dealing with these kinds of things. In some cases, yeah, parents don't want responsibility. But that's not always the case. It's a real challenge for parents to bring their children into the "real world" slowly, and it becomes more difficult as technology provides us with more "vices".
When did Google start asking for your age along with your query? How are they going to tie queries to ages?
I don't think the government is trying to tie ages to queries. They are just trying to prove that it is easy for anyone (including a minor) to find pr0n on the internet. Although I don't agree with this attempt at massive violation of privacy, the government is correct in its assertion that finding pr0n is childishly simple (pun intended). All you have to do is a Google image search with no filters on the results. Type in pretty much anything and you are almost guaranteed to get nude or hardcore photos somewhere in your results.
How do you see where the money is coming from in a corporation?
OK, so you can't be 100 percent sure where the money is coming from in a corporation, but a publicly held company must document its revenue and expenses, and generally they break the source of revenue down by product type or area of business. These filings are required by the SEC (in the US), and even more detailed information is provided in the prospectus that is normally examined by stockholders. Failure to meet these guidelines will result in heavy fines from the SEC, loss of confidence by investors, and perhaps revocation of business license -- The whole Enron scandal has helped to make it much more difficult to deceive investors. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but in case you haven't noticed, most scandals you hear about lately have only been going on for a short time, as opposed to the multi-year buildup of deceit at Enron. -- In contrast, the controls put in place for a non-profit organization are much less rigorous, particularly one which includes government involvement.
And on the whole, I'd feel safer with a government run search engine than with a profit motivated one.
Uh, I hate to tell you this, but it is almost certain that any government-run project will also be, in some way, profit motivated. And unlike the corporate-run project, it won't be readily apparent exactly what the objectives are because you can't easily see where the profit is going (or coming from, for that matter).
I agree with you on the 'innoncent view of the world' statement.
I won't bother to respond to the AC, but since you appear to agree with him/her, let me provide you with more details. I don't have an innocent view of the world. I think the RIAA, MPAA and organizations like them are money-grubbing morons. I would take great pleasure in watching them succumb to federal racketeering charges. However, in the case of trying to protect screener copies of new movies, I really can't fault them. The AC parent to your post feels that the 5,000+ BAFTA members are "customers", but I strongly disagree. I think they more closely resemble employees. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think BAFTA members pay for their screener copies. Instead, they are part of the "system" that decides which movies are good and which are bad. As such, the media organizations should feel free to use whatever methods they deem appropriate to keep the members from leaking screener copies to the general public, particularly for any movies that haven't hit the theaters yet. Now, once DVDs are sold to the real paying customers, it's just pure insanity to put all kinds of restrictions on fair use through encryption, licensing agreements, etc. So, I ask you, why exactly is it that you think I'm naive?
This really doesn't have anything significant to do with the new DRM they're using on screener copies. This is about the *old* DRM that people have been contending with on DVDs for years: region coding.
Sorry for not responding earlier. Part of what I took my thoughts from was the following:
The problem, it appears, was partly down to teething troubles with the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies. Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe.
I realize that region encoding has been around for a while, and I find it funny that this old annoying thing came back to bite them. However, the big issue was in the "new" DVD players. These were mentioned early last year and were a direct response to piracy coming from leaked screener copies, the idea being that only people with one of these limited edition players would be able to use the screener copies, and therefore leaking them would be more difficult. So, since most of the folks outside of the US have region-free players, there wouldn't have been a problem if it hadn't been for the newly encrypted DVDs and the new players.
Now, I hope he's prepared to not work there anymore because I imagine the rest of his career is going to be fairly cold with people treating him like a snitch.
The article states that he already no longer works there. He was terminated before the middle of last year. Although he claims the reasons for his termination were the standard ones given over people that don't agree with the administration and are whistleblowers, the whole thing actually throws some doubt over his claims. Therefore, don't get too enamoured with him yet. It could be that much of what he is telling the news media (and Congress) are lies or exaggerations.
Also, don't leap to conclusions that he's not going to go to jail. Although he may not have revealed any material that was marked as classified, there could very well be some provisions in his contract about methods of operation being classified. Just revealing how and what the NSA is doing could actually land him in jail.
An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers.
This has almost nothing to do with the DRM battle between media and consumers. These people aren't consumers. These are screener copies used in the awards process. I have absolutely no problem with whatever kinds of DRM they want to use on screener copies, as these have already been found to be a genuine source of piracy. This is EXACTLY the kind of target that the media companies should pursue. The only problem is that they goofed on their first attempt at using some of their new strategies. Other than that, nothing to see here.
The way I see it, Sony breached a contract. This is easily resolved in court, and anyone who had their contract breached by Sony should go ahead and file an independent lawsuit (not a class action lawsuit). You can hire a local attorney and move forward.
Just for the record, I agree with the rest of your post. However, this isn't a mere violation of contract. You see, a contract was never made. In this case, the user refused to "sign" the "contract" (although I'm not really agreeing that a EULA is a valid contract...). Despite the fact that the user did not enter into a contract, Sony still "trespassed" on their system. Honestly, this case could be prosecuted in a myriad of ways in a criminal court. It could be considered trespassing, vandalism, espionage, deceptive trade practices, and several more outlandish violations of the law.
If Blackberry's major market was offering non-techie CEOs an easy to use device, I guess it works fine.
It isn't just for non-techie CEOs. It's pretty much for ANY non-techies. That includes Salespeople and middle management.
The Blackberry with T-mobile doesn't even use T-mobiles GPRS Internet plan, they want me to get some Blackberry plan.
This is most likely because the BlackBerry really shines when connected to the push email server (via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server). If memory serves, T-Mobile has their own BES servers, and that's what the special plan is for. Also, I don't think older BlackBerries had their own TCP stack, so the BES server would be required for data transfer. The newer OS allows you to completely bypass the BES servers, so you might actually be able to use one with normal GPRS Internet... until they catch you.
Do many users here use their Blackberry and like it? I've been using PDAs since before the original Newton, and this device is just hokey. I feel like I have a trophy wife that looks nice but doesn't actually do anything. What am I missing?
If you were looking for the BlackBerry to replace your PDA, you will almost certainly be disappointed. It doesn't have nearly the power or software library that a Pocket PC offers. But for what it was designed for, it does far better than its competitors. It was designed for basic PIM, email and messaging. And the phone is an add-on. That means that if you are using it for email, calendar, task list and instant messaging, it's a great device. Compared to Pocket PC it's very stable and has a much, much longer battery life. My BlackBerry regularly goes for five or six days between charges, which includes moderate use as a phone. The push email provides more or less instant access to messages as they come in, and these days I wouldn't be caught dead without it. Oh, and with respect to the thumbwheel, you get used to it. For reading emails, it's much better than a stylus. You can do the whole thing one-handed.
Up until recently, there has been little or no competition for the BlackBerry infrastructure (which provides push email among other things). This is starting to change, and I predict that within the next year that Research In Motion will have to do something stunning to keep their hold on the market.
teenagers get asked if they *already have the player* in which case they get, instead of a new player, a card with a download URI on it for the next section of the file.
Erm...how many teenagers would be caught dead ordering a Happy Meal?
A cheap, easy cure for cancer? No. It's Patented. It'll still be horribly expensive.
Could somebody please point me to the article where it says the virus is patented. Most of the original links have expired, and I couldn't find it in the two or three links that were working. While I can understand perhaps patenting the process for producing large enough quantities of the virus, it really doesn't make sense to patent something that already exists in nature.... Yeah, I know. It's the USP&TO we're talking about here....
Evidently TV is still only downloadable at the US iTunes store.
Even though I live in the US and have access to the TV shows, I avoid downloading them. Due to the DRM, there doesn't seem to be any way to burn the episodes to a DVD so that I can watch them on my TV without having to drag the computer over and connect it.
This is just some lame excuse to invade what was normaly considerd private.
Not really. We all know that the government is just looking for a new source of revenue. Think about it. As you already mentioned, we pay at the pump, and the DMV and when we buy new tires. Don't forget that we also pay local taxes, part of which are supposed to be used for upkeep of the local roads. You can bet that NONE of those taxes would go away if a per mile tax was instituted. The real goal is just to milk the taxpayers for even more money in a way that they would have trouble arguing against. Personally, I think implementation of this idea would be very dangerous for whatever government mandates it. At the very least, whatever political party was in force would most likely find themselves looking for work at the next election. And at the worst, the normally peaceful privacy advocates would stop being so peaceful.
I suspect that the outcome of this "review" will be my descendants owning this post long after I am dead.
My question is, what viewpoint does Mr. Gowers hold regarding current copyright law? I couldn't glean that information from the article. If he thinks print publications are outdated and that publishers should start taking advantage of and learning to work with digital publication, that could mean either he is in favor of lengthening copyright terms and strengthening the law, or he could also be in favor of shortening copyright terms and perhaps just making the law more clear. Does anybody have more information on him?
AFAIK, Weir was never implicated in this. Everything I've read has been very fuzzy about specifically which members of the band were involved - can you cite something more authoritative?
I can't find anything more authoritative, but from the article in the original posting...
Despite Live Music Archive's mea culpa, there were members of the band who wanted the free downloads pulled. According to onetime Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, the move was initiated by singer-guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe that all but one of those patents has been ruled invalid by the USPTO.
But if you feel you MUST kill them, then at least take them all out at roughly the same time so that there's no mistake about what pattern of behavior was responsible for their fates.... *grin*
Yeah, she's pretty much what killed it for me, too. But for me, it was mostly because she was "Superwoman". She was like Kirk, Picard, Spock and Scotty all combined into one. A know-it-all captain that basically needed no crew to operate her ship got to be pretty boring after a while. Maybe if they had given her some basic strengths and weaknesses (and a few character flaws), it would have been a little more entertaining.
Oddly enough, I found DS9 to be the least enjoyable, followed closely by Voyager. DS9 was the most "realistic" (I use the term very loosely), but that's part of what made it boring for me.
I didn't take it personally. I just took it as an opportunity to respond because I read lots of posts about bad parenting and wanted to make a statement. If it came off stand-offish, I should be the one to apologize. I didn't intend it to sound that way. I had some damage to my house over the weekend from a severe wind storm, and I was typing that message while the insurance adjustor was walking around checking things, so I didn't examine it with as much care as I normally would. ;)
Heck, email is worse - 10 years old or 50, if you have an email account you're gonna get spam.
Yeah, I didn't even THINK to use that as an example. It would have been a very very good example.
This points out the main point though - what good will MORE government regulation do?
Absolutely none. ;)
Sigh... it's all so complicated, and just as work and life seem to be getting faster and more complicated all the time, so does raising children. The more positive there is available to children, like the internet or certain forms of entertainment, the more likely it is that they will be exposed to an abuse of that particular enhancement.
Agreed. I wish I had better answers, but I don't. We do have a channel on digital cable that has no commercials (Noggin), but my son is really getting too old for it. For now, the correct internet solution is to restrict the locations he's allowed to go to a short list that we approve of, but you and I both know that's not going to fly in a couple more years.
So we do the best we can, but I'd rather not have Bush over my shoulder telling me that I could do better.
As I said earlier, I don't really think this has much to do with pr0n. This approach just isn't logical when a five-minute demonstration would accomplish the same thing. I don't have the strong resentment for Bush that some do, but I don't want him (or anybody else for that matter) breathing down my neck. ;)
I'm so tired of this "won't someone please think of the children" scenario. This is a parental issue through and through. If parents haphazardly allow their youngsters onto computers without knowing jack about them, it's like allowing your child to watch TV without any idea as to the content of the programming.
Although I'm not falling for this as a "think of the children" kind of thing, as a parent I would like to point out to you the some of the issues you may not be aware of (or maybe just don't care about). Let's use TV as an example. When we let our children watch TV, we always make sure we know exactly what program they are watching. Even though we have no premium channels, we still have locks setup on the cable box by both content rating and also channel. In our case, it's not so much "adult situations" we're worried about, but more some of the imagery (violence, horror, language) that can be a bit distressing to young children. We diligently check the programming before and after what our children want to watch. Most of the time, we are in the same room with them so that we can monitor what's going. What we don't have control over are the commercials. I can tell you that many of the advertisements are worse for children than some of the programs we wouldn't let them watch. And this kind of junk comes onto the TV right in the middle of children's programming. I call this a peripheral hazard. Even if I am sitting there watching the program with them, there is nothing I can do to stop a 20 second blurb of imagery that I don't think they should see. The only thing I could do aside from not letting them watch TV is record everything and either blank out the commercials or watch the whole thing through to see if there's anything bad. There's no way on earth that anybody has the time to do this. Thinking that a parent can and should take such dramatic measures is nothing short of naive. What I have managed to do is roughly determine which channels are more likely to insert such crap during children's programming and I now avoid them. Now let's go to the internet. The peripheral hazards on the internet abound. If you use a search engine at all, you have a very good opportunity to stumble across pr0n and other elements that aren't appropriate for children. Another poster indicated that you can't do this by accident. I strongly disagree. There are plenty of search results that yield useful information, but have advertisements on the margins of the target site that are completely inappropriate. Filter programs help a lot, but they don't solve everything. Those filter programs that work better are extremely restrictive -- they prevent the use of search engines completely. For smaller children, this isn't a problem, but as they get a little older and have to use the internet for research, it starts to become more than just annoying. Even a parent looking over their shoulder isn't really enough.
Now don't misunderstanding me. I don't think any of this is a reason to remove all the pr0n from the internet. I just want you to understand that it's not so simple being a parent and dealing with these kinds of things. In some cases, yeah, parents don't want responsibility. But that's not always the case. It's a real challenge for parents to bring their children into the "real world" slowly, and it becomes more difficult as technology provides us with more "vices".
Agreed, and that's my primary beef with what the government is doing. There's something else here that can't be seen by casual observation.
I don't think the government is trying to tie ages to queries. They are just trying to prove that it is easy for anyone (including a minor) to find pr0n on the internet. Although I don't agree with this attempt at massive violation of privacy, the government is correct in its assertion that finding pr0n is childishly simple (pun intended). All you have to do is a Google image search with no filters on the results. Type in pretty much anything and you are almost guaranteed to get nude or hardcore photos somewhere in your results.
OK, so you can't be 100 percent sure where the money is coming from in a corporation, but a publicly held company must document its revenue and expenses, and generally they break the source of revenue down by product type or area of business. These filings are required by the SEC (in the US), and even more detailed information is provided in the prospectus that is normally examined by stockholders. Failure to meet these guidelines will result in heavy fines from the SEC, loss of confidence by investors, and perhaps revocation of business license -- The whole Enron scandal has helped to make it much more difficult to deceive investors. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but in case you haven't noticed, most scandals you hear about lately have only been going on for a short time, as opposed to the multi-year buildup of deceit at Enron. -- In contrast, the controls put in place for a non-profit organization are much less rigorous, particularly one which includes government involvement.
Uh, I hate to tell you this, but it is almost certain that any government-run project will also be, in some way, profit motivated. And unlike the corporate-run project, it won't be readily apparent exactly what the objectives are because you can't easily see where the profit is going (or coming from, for that matter).
I won't bother to respond to the AC, but since you appear to agree with him/her, let me provide you with more details. I don't have an innocent view of the world. I think the RIAA, MPAA and organizations like them are money-grubbing morons. I would take great pleasure in watching them succumb to federal racketeering charges. However, in the case of trying to protect screener copies of new movies, I really can't fault them. The AC parent to your post feels that the 5,000+ BAFTA members are "customers", but I strongly disagree. I think they more closely resemble employees. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think BAFTA members pay for their screener copies. Instead, they are part of the "system" that decides which movies are good and which are bad. As such, the media organizations should feel free to use whatever methods they deem appropriate to keep the members from leaking screener copies to the general public, particularly for any movies that haven't hit the theaters yet. Now, once DVDs are sold to the real paying customers, it's just pure insanity to put all kinds of restrictions on fair use through encryption, licensing agreements, etc. So, I ask you, why exactly is it that you think I'm naive?
Sorry for not responding earlier. Part of what I took my thoughts from was the following:
I realize that region encoding has been around for a while, and I find it funny that this old annoying thing came back to bite them. However, the big issue was in the "new" DVD players. These were mentioned early last year and were a direct response to piracy coming from leaked screener copies, the idea being that only people with one of these limited edition players would be able to use the screener copies, and therefore leaking them would be more difficult. So, since most of the folks outside of the US have region-free players, there wouldn't have been a problem if it hadn't been for the newly encrypted DVDs and the new players.And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Perhaps you disagreed with what I wrote?
The article states that he already no longer works there. He was terminated before the middle of last year. Although he claims the reasons for his termination were the standard ones given over people that don't agree with the administration and are whistleblowers, the whole thing actually throws some doubt over his claims. Therefore, don't get too enamoured with him yet. It could be that much of what he is telling the news media (and Congress) are lies or exaggerations.
Also, don't leap to conclusions that he's not going to go to jail. Although he may not have revealed any material that was marked as classified, there could very well be some provisions in his contract about methods of operation being classified. Just revealing how and what the NSA is doing could actually land him in jail.
This has almost nothing to do with the DRM battle between media and consumers. These people aren't consumers. These are screener copies used in the awards process. I have absolutely no problem with whatever kinds of DRM they want to use on screener copies, as these have already been found to be a genuine source of piracy. This is EXACTLY the kind of target that the media companies should pursue. The only problem is that they goofed on their first attempt at using some of their new strategies. Other than that, nothing to see here.
Just for the record, I agree with the rest of your post. However, this isn't a mere violation of contract. You see, a contract was never made. In this case, the user refused to "sign" the "contract" (although I'm not really agreeing that a EULA is a valid contract...). Despite the fact that the user did not enter into a contract, Sony still "trespassed" on their system. Honestly, this case could be prosecuted in a myriad of ways in a criminal court. It could be considered trespassing, vandalism, espionage, deceptive trade practices, and several more outlandish violations of the law.
It isn't just for non-techie CEOs. It's pretty much for ANY non-techies. That includes Salespeople and middle management.
The Blackberry with T-mobile doesn't even use T-mobiles GPRS Internet plan, they want me to get some Blackberry plan.
This is most likely because the BlackBerry really shines when connected to the push email server (via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server). If memory serves, T-Mobile has their own BES servers, and that's what the special plan is for. Also, I don't think older BlackBerries had their own TCP stack, so the BES server would be required for data transfer. The newer OS allows you to completely bypass the BES servers, so you might actually be able to use one with normal GPRS Internet... until they catch you.
Do many users here use their Blackberry and like it? I've been using PDAs since before the original Newton, and this device is just hokey. I feel like I have a trophy wife that looks nice but doesn't actually do anything. What am I missing?
If you were looking for the BlackBerry to replace your PDA, you will almost certainly be disappointed. It doesn't have nearly the power or software library that a Pocket PC offers. But for what it was designed for, it does far better than its competitors. It was designed for basic PIM, email and messaging. And the phone is an add-on. That means that if you are using it for email, calendar, task list and instant messaging, it's a great device. Compared to Pocket PC it's very stable and has a much, much longer battery life. My BlackBerry regularly goes for five or six days between charges, which includes moderate use as a phone. The push email provides more or less instant access to messages as they come in, and these days I wouldn't be caught dead without it. Oh, and with respect to the thumbwheel, you get used to it. For reading emails, it's much better than a stylus. You can do the whole thing one-handed.
Up until recently, there has been little or no competition for the BlackBerry infrastructure (which provides push email among other things). This is starting to change, and I predict that within the next year that Research In Motion will have to do something stunning to keep their hold on the market.
Think again. BB is really big in large corporations.
Erm...how many teenagers would be caught dead ordering a Happy Meal?
Hurry! Quick! Do something! The Russians are trying to steal the North Pole!!
Could somebody please point me to the article where it says the virus is patented. Most of the original links have expired, and I couldn't find it in the two or three links that were working. While I can understand perhaps patenting the process for producing large enough quantities of the virus, it really doesn't make sense to patent something that already exists in nature.... Yeah, I know. It's the USP&TO we're talking about here....
Even though I live in the US and have access to the TV shows, I avoid downloading them. Due to the DRM, there doesn't seem to be any way to burn the episodes to a DVD so that I can watch them on my TV without having to drag the computer over and connect it.
Not really. We all know that the government is just looking for a new source of revenue. Think about it. As you already mentioned, we pay at the pump, and the DMV and when we buy new tires. Don't forget that we also pay local taxes, part of which are supposed to be used for upkeep of the local roads. You can bet that NONE of those taxes would go away if a per mile tax was instituted. The real goal is just to milk the taxpayers for even more money in a way that they would have trouble arguing against. Personally, I think implementation of this idea would be very dangerous for whatever government mandates it. At the very least, whatever political party was in force would most likely find themselves looking for work at the next election. And at the worst, the normally peaceful privacy advocates would stop being so peaceful.
My question is, what viewpoint does Mr. Gowers hold regarding current copyright law? I couldn't glean that information from the article. If he thinks print publications are outdated and that publishers should start taking advantage of and learning to work with digital publication, that could mean either he is in favor of lengthening copyright terms and strengthening the law, or he could also be in favor of shortening copyright terms and perhaps just making the law more clear. Does anybody have more information on him?
I can't find anything more authoritative, but from the article in the original posting...