I think there is also the piece of data that if you look at the DNA of different but related species. Such as chimps and humans, something like 99.999% of the DNA is identical. If you could somehow keep moving back along the DNA path of related species, we would probably find a long series of.001% differences in DNA.
Consider that 50000 generations of.001% changes would result in DNA that is 60% different (.99999^50000) things start to become more plausible. Note: I am using generations loosely as the amount of time it takes a.001% change in DNA to occur and stabilize.
Not necessarily. Overclocking is possible due to the margin designed into the test process to guarantee that 99.99% of all processors marked at a given speed work at that speed. If a processor is sold with little margin to burn, then it won't overclock well. See 1GHz PIII for an example.
A couple other factors come into play as well though. If yields are very good, but demand at the higher clock speeds is low, then sometimes higher speed capable parts will be sold at lower speeds. Or, for marketing reasons a part might be sold at lower speeds than it is capable of. The celeron is a classic example. You have a core (PII/PIII/Celeron have nearly identical cores) that was selling at 700MHz+, when the Celerons highest speed was around 400Mhz. So, gettting a Celeron to 600+ is no big deal since they are effectively down binned for marketing reasons.
Yes, look at the date!! It is common knowledge that Athon's without on die cache are basically at parity with the PIII. Pretty much switching back and forth depending on the benchmark.
The new thunderbird parts change that. The Athlon beats the PIII on most benchmarks (not all mind you there are a few that favor the higher bandwidth PIII cache).
Finally, the bigger reason for the Athlon being ahead of the PIII in this article has to do with clock speed. AMD is selling something like 10 times the 1GHz parts that Intel is, with only 1/8 the manufacturing capacity.
Not that, I would want to live there. Housing and cars are horribly expensive. Plus all the fines for doing anything. On the other hand the food is cheap and pretty good. And, there is definitely a lot of high tech industry. And, generally when I travel their I have no problem finding a web connection for $3US/hr. Also, most people speak english to some extent.
The reason is that high pressure hydrogen is dangerous to work with. If the tank ruptures in an accident, your car goes up like a bomb.
Actually, this is not entirely accurate. Gasoline is actually worse because it spreads all over the place and continues to burn. And, will tend to burn out and down as the liquid splatters. Hydrogen burns extremely fast, and burns upward. It doesn't get all over people and objects and continue burning. I once saw this show where they shot bullets at tanks of gasoline and hydrogen tanks. The hydrogen tank had a little high pressure flame coming out that burned upward and didn't touch anything. The gasoline tank had a similar spray, but there were burning drops of gas all over the place. The same thing happened when they blew up cars with the different fuels. The hydrogen exploded violently and then left the car nearly intact, abd with nhardly anything on fire. The gasoline car exploded and was totally engulfed in flames and continued to be engulfed in flames for quite sometime afterwards. So, basically, the hydrogen turns out to be safer in the event of an explosion. The bigger trick with the tanks is filling them, and making them light. Dastardly
Regarding the Fortran optimizing compiler. fi you assuem they are speakign of the Fortrancompiler as the first compiler to generate machine code that was efficient enough to rival most handwritten machine code I would say it had a huge impact on computing today. High level programming languages make programmers more efficient, but without a compiler that generates sufficiently optimized machine code the advantages of increasing programmer efficiency will be overwhelmed by the program inefficiency. So, a compiler that generates machine code on par with most handwritten machine code revolutionizes computing by making programmers capable of writing more and larger programs that are easier to maintain while still maintaining reasonable performance.
And, assuming Fortran compiler to achieve the balance between programmer efficiency and program efficiency, all other compilers since have their roots in the Fortran compiler.
Dastardly
Re:WRONG: Corporations Have NO *Right* to Make Mon
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 1
FINALLY!!!
This is the first tiem some one has made a poin that I constantly try to make in conversation when talkign aout MS. Various pundits for MS keep saying software price has gone down. When in effect it goes down. $89 for Win98 which is basically a bug fix with a few new features thrown in is ridiculous. That is the same price as Win95, yet Win98 is probably about 90+% the same code. A while back I figured out how much Win98 was worth to some one who had already purchased Win95 OSR 2. My estimate was a maximum of $30.
The part I don't understand is why no one can show that MS does price their operating system and other products monpolistic. Consider that Windows 98 upgrade was priced at about $90US. For that price you get bug fixes, a nominally free IE user interface, some more device drivers, and that is about it. I don't know about you, but I would consider $90 for an upgrade, monopolistic pricing. And, notice no one mentioned how much it costs to buy Win 98 non-upgrade. Setting that point aside. What about monpolistic pricing of IE. Anyone who says IE is free doesn't realize that you are paying for it when you pay for the OS. So, MS can charge money for their web browser and netscape can't. That sounds liek monopolistic pricing to me. I am amazed at how many people out there canb't realize that MS is giving them the shaft, and they love them for it. Finally, has anyone else noticed that everyone newspaper opinion piece that is in MS favor is either written by some one who is currently eing paid or has at sometime in the past been paid by MS. Just a thought. Dastardly
Actually, it is the other way around. the moon prevents the earth from wobbling. According to computer models if the moon did not exist the earth's axis could wobble up to a 45 degree angle ro it's current angle, cuasing terribly harsh seasons that would make life extremely diifcult on earth. Throw the moon into the mix and the earth's axis does not deviate more than 10 degrees(-ish). So, you can thank the moon for your existence. Dastardly P.S. I mentionthis from memory the exact axis deviation may be off, but I assume you get the idea.
The document is still covered by copyright. The information contained in that document, i.e. the extensions to the Kerberos specification, is not. What this means is that anyone can legally write a pape documenting exactly what the MS Kerberos specification is, and refer back to the MS document without violation of copyright. This is just like putting a source into a research paper. Posting the entire document word for word is a little trickier, but even that could be considered fair use if posting the entire document is required for your commentary. The harder part to defend would be posting the entire document without any commentary, but even that could be justified in the context of/. if the poster comments on the document in a different post.
Basically, while the document is copyrighted and hence protected by copyright laws, MS still doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.
The trade secret issue has already been shot down here. That is why posting the information contained in the document is legal, and not protected by any law.
The biggest problem is that the primary prediction of this new GR theory is wrong. Black holes(aka objects with event horizons) do exist. I am referring to an article in the May 1999 issue of Scientific American titled Unmasking Black Holes.
They use a rather ingenious method to determine whether an object called a quiescent x-ray transient is a neutron star or a black hole. These are objects in binary systems. Basically an object with the same orbital period should accrete matter at the same rate. As matter falls towards a black hole or neutron star it will heat up and release energy through friction with other matter falling towards the object. The more matter the more energy will be released, the less matter the less energy that will be released. The difference occurs when the matter reaches the surface. With a neutron star the matter impacts on the surface of the neutron star and releases energy. A black hole on the other hand should release no energy on impact. So, a black hole should be dimmer than a neurtron star with the same orbital period since it doesn't emit energy due to the impact of matter. Observations have shown that objects with >3 solar masses (black hole candidates) are less luminous than objects with 3 solar masses (neutron stars). Basically, only an object with an event horizon can account for this.
This article is not on their web site. I got it from the dead tree version.
Heisenburgs Uncertainty Principle and the Pauli Exclusion Principle are essentially what prevetns White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars from collapsing into Black Holes. A white dwarf has outward pressure against gravity created by the fact that electrons cannot all occupy the same energy level. As the mass increases even this is overcome, and the electrons collapse and merge with protons to get neutrons and you get a neutron star which is holds up against gravity by the outward pressure of neutrons being unable to occupy the same energy level. Theory predicts that at about 2.8 Solar Masses gravity overcomes the ability of neutrons to hold up and there is nothing that we know of to prevent the collapse to a black hole. The problem occurs because we have no theory to explain what happens inside a black hole, and even if we did, we have no way to get information about what is goign on inside a black hole because no light can escape a black hole to tell us what is going on.
This is part of the problem with the "new" theory reported here regardless of whether a singularity occurs or not, the object still has an event horizon from which even light cannot escape, therefore who really cares whether there is a singularity or not. You still have a black hole.
I think this becomes clearer if we separate content and formatting. There is no question that content is copyrightable, and according to the questioner all the content was created by the ad agency and is therefore owned by the ad agency.
The HTML is formatting instructions put around the ad agency content. There are a couple ways to attack this, either way is nto good for the ex-contractors:
1) Formatting is not copyrightable, just like look and feel (MS vs Apple). Therefore the ex-contractors don't have a case.
2) Since, all the content is owned by the ad agency this makes the web site a derived work owned by the ad agency. Again, no case for ex-contractors.
The only monkey wrench here would be any java, javascript, or other scripts/programs. These would be covered by the same copyright laws that cover all program code. So, whatever the law says about code created by contractors woudl apply here. (Don't know what that is.)
No they are hiring someone with rambus experience to perform regression testing on high speed busses that transfer data on the rising and falling edge of the clock cycle. Busses that do this include AGP2x and 4X, Rambus, EV-6, DDR-SDRAM, and possibly AMDs future LDT bus. I doubt they will have the person work on DDR-SDRAM, more likely EV-6 and/or LDT.
Finally, DDR SDRAM is being supported by IBM, Micron, Via, AMD, Samsung, every other memory manufacturer, and Intel. Yes, Intel has DDR-SDRAM for Willamette on their roadmap. So, get a clue. DRDRAM is not going to "win", neither will DDR. They will coexist with one likely getting the larger market share. I personally think that DDR is better suited for the general purpose PC due to cost issues. But, DRDRAM could be better suited to application specific devices like Playstation 2 where having few pins and high badnwidth per pin, reduces costs enough to overcome the cost penalty of DRDRAM silicon. An interesting outcome would be if DDR-SDRAM dominated the PC market, but the focused application device market boomed resulting in DRDRAM actually having a larger total memory market share even though it doesn't show up in PCs.
Finally, Intel has proven that the PC market can support multiple sockets, with Slot 1, Slot 2, PGA370, and FC-PGA. Allowing AMD to come out with Slot A and Socket A. This suggests that the market is more than capable of supporting multiple memory technologies as well.
It just means AMD needs some one with experience in high speed busses. DRDRAM is not on any AMD roadmap. But, LDT and 266MHz EV-6 are on AMDs roadmap and someone with experience in Rambus and AGP4x would probably have skills that would be useful in thsoe projects.
It doesn't matter how lame my TPM is. If I encrypt something by XORing it with the the string "12345", it is illegal for you to produce a program which decrypts it.
Actually, It does matter how lame your TPM is. Because of the word of the law says that you cannot circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to blah blah blah. Which means your lame XORing 12345 could be argued as not being an effective means of access control because it is dumb.
Which is also why it matters if copying is practical without defeating TPMs because then the TPM could be considered ineffective and therefore not protected by the DMCA.
The problem is that it is now up to the courts to define effective. A broad interepretation could make the XOR 12345 method effective. A narrow interpretation could make any currently feasible TPM totally ineffective.
Small mistake there because of the requirement that CSS be an effective means of access control to copyrighted works. It could be argued that CSS is totally ineffective since there are numerous ways for copies to be made without the authors permission that have been discussed here by various parties.
Now the judges ruling was likely fair and sane because of the poor arguments of the EFF lawyers. They needed a much more detailed argument for the reverse engineering exception. They also needed a much more detailed argument for the fact that CSS is not an effective means of access control. This should come about during the trial phase.
First, of all representative governments will be inherently slow. Most decisions and all funding has to pass through the representative body, and in the case of the US congress getting the majority of 500+ people to agree to anything can take some time.
Second, governement funding is generally focused on past needs not future needs. Pretend I run a governement agency. If my agency used $2 million last year, and there were not any problems, but projections say I will need $3 million this year, I probably won't get it because I did just fine with $2 million last year.
Third, if some shortage does occur. My agency still has to work with in the budget I was given. the only way I can get more money is to go to Congress and ask for more. which of course brings us back to point one.
Personally, I prefer a governement that can't get anything done to one that is constantly tying to do things, and screwing them up.
I don't see anything you wrote as being riot inciting. It is actually very well written, and I pretty uch agree.
I do believe the judge has one opinion that is not valid, and that is that a DVD movie is not a computer program and therefore does not fall under the interoperability section. The defense needs to argue during the trial that a DVD movie is information created by one computer program and transmitted via DVD media to another program where it is deciphered and played. Therefore, DeCSS is required to provide interoperability between the program that created the DVD data and the users computer. While this argument still would not have stopped the preliminary injunction (which basically says let's maintain the status quo until a decision is made), it would probably be helpful in the trial phase.
I think the defense was very disorganized, but since I suspect that they are also defending the California case they probably had very little time for the preliminary injunction, and would have been better served by presenting a few concise arguments for the record, and letting the preliminary injunction go, then worry about the trial.
I am saying this argument is required in order to get through the judges thick skull...
DVD encoder > DVD mopie data > DVD media > DVD movie data > DVD/CD-ROM device reader | DeCSS-compiled | mpeg2play | video driver ## succeeds - you see meaningful stuff
vs your argument of...
DVD movie data > DVD/CD-ROM device reader | DeCSS-compiled | mpeg2play | video driver ## succeeds - you see meaningful stuff
The above is not sufficient because the programs listed are obviously interoperable without DeCSS, as the following example proves...
MPEG data from a DVD-ROM > DVD/CD-ROM device reader | mpeg2player | video driver ## succeeds - you see meaningful stuff (no DeCSS).
This is non-css encoded MPEG data from say a game DVD or soemthing. Given this example it is obvious that the DVDROM device reader, mpeg2player and video driver are interoperable without DeCSS.
Is the previous argument facetious and stupid?? YES!
Is it the sort of argument that could be made in court and stick? YES!
Do I agree with it? NO!
So, for the purposes of the court case I think the argument has to go all the way back to the program that originally creates the encoded movie data. Then, it is obvious and indisputable that DeCSS (or whatever library) is required in order to allow interoperability between the DVD encoder and my computer. And, therefore it is protected under the DMCA.
I apologize for the confusion. The simplistic part was basically playing devil's advocate to demonstrate the MPAA's argument. The later part basically showed a more in depth analysis to show that the simplistic reading isn't enough. The problem is that the EFF lawyers didn't tear apart the simp`listic and rather broad methodology that the EFF is using.
I believe the interoperability argument you have could be torn apart by the lawyers.
What are you talking about? The programs which are interoperating include at a minimum: 1) linux DVD/CD-ROM device driver 2) mpeg2player program under linux 3) linux video device driver
CSS descrmabling is not required for an MPEG2player to interoperate with a linux video device driver. This is easy to demonstrate by playing any MPEG of a hard disk. The DVDROM/CD-ROM device driver interoperability argument is more difficult, but I think it is still pretty easy to argue that the DVDROM/CDROM device driver can work just fine with other programs without descrambling CSS. You have to go outside your computer to the program that encodes information onto the DVD media to show that CSS is required for interoperability, defined as he exchange of information.
The EFF lawyers need to make the point that a DVD is nothing more than a media for transferring information between two programs just like the internet. And, therefore falls under 1201(f)(4). This is necessary because of the judges narrow viewpoint that the reverse engineering clause only applies to exchanging information between two programs. While it is a stupid viewpoint and should be argued against, as lawyers they need to be prepared for that line of reasoning to go against them.
Well, sorry fo the previous confusion. We basically have the same view I am just trying to find a way around what the judges interpretation of the DMCA appears to be based on the injunction transcript.
I have to agree, that the EFF lawyers did a poor job. Although if they are the same lawyers who are working on the California case, they were probably totally unprepared to defend against a DMCA case, especially with the day and a half warning they claim to have received.
And, I think another important point is that a DVD is simply a medium for transferring information created by whatever program i used to encode the DVD. Therefore, the reverse engineering is allowed under 1201(f)(4). And, the copying is allowed under the Fair Use clause.
You are absolutely correct that the 1201(f) point was very poorly argued by the defense. I just finished reading most of the injunction transcript, and the relevant portions of the DMCA. And, a simplistic reading pretty much shows that legally DeCSS is screwed, at least given the arguments that the EFF Lawyers are using. The reverse engineering clauses do not apply directly to decoding DVD because the language does specifically state that reverese engineering is solely allowed for the interoperatbility of computer programs of which the content of a DVD is arguably not.
Luckily as you stated 1201(f), and specifically 1201(f)(4) is an out. There interoperability is defined as the ability of computer programs to exchange information. A DVD must therefore be described by the EFF lawyers as the medium by which the program that the DVD manufacturer uses to place data on the disk exchanges information (a movie) with other programs i.e. a player. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to reverse engineer the Xing player in order to independently create a program that exchanges information via the DVD medium with the program that places information on the DVD.
The other point that is completely missed is the word 'effectively'in 1201(a). CSS does not effectively control access to copyrighted work. Exact bit by bit copies of a DVD can be made, and the decrypted video stream can also be recorded, therefore CSS does not EFFECTIVELY control acces to copyrighted material. and therefore does not fall under 1201(a). Note: none of these other options involve circumventing CSS.
Dastardly
P.S. And, yes I admit this is backseat lawyering, so feel free to tear this apart, but at least read the injunction transcript and DMCA 1201 section first.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there is also the piece of data that if you look at the DNA of different but related species. Such as chimps and humans, something like 99.999% of the DNA is identical. If you could somehow keep moving back along the DNA path of related species, we would probably find a long series of .001% differences in DNA.
.001% changes would result in DNA that is 60% different (.99999^50000) things start to become more plausible. Note: I am using generations loosely as the amount of time it takes a .001% change in DNA to occur and stabilize.
Consider that 50000 generations of
Not necessarily. Overclocking is possible due to the margin designed into the test process to guarantee that 99.99% of all processors marked at a given speed work at that speed. If a processor is sold with little margin to burn, then it won't overclock well. See 1GHz PIII for an example.
A couple other factors come into play as well though. If yields are very good, but demand at the higher clock speeds is low, then sometimes higher speed capable parts will be sold at lower speeds. Or, for marketing reasons a part might be sold at lower speeds than it is capable of. The celeron is a classic example. You have a core (PII/PIII/Celeron have nearly identical cores) that was selling at 700MHz+, when the Celerons highest speed was around 400Mhz. So, gettting a Celeron to 600+ is no big deal since they are effectively down binned for marketing reasons.
Dastardly
Yes, look at the date!! It is common knowledge that Athon's without on die cache are basically at parity with the PIII. Pretty much switching back and forth depending on the benchmark.
The new thunderbird parts change that. The Athlon beats the PIII on most benchmarks (not all mind you there are a few that favor the higher bandwidth PIII cache).
Finally, the bigger reason for the Athlon being ahead of the PIII in this article has to do with clock speed. AMD is selling something like 10 times the 1GHz parts that Intel is, with only 1/8 the manufacturing capacity.
Not that, I would want to live there. Housing and cars are horribly expensive. Plus all the fines for doing anything. On the other hand the food is cheap and pretty good. And, there is definitely a lot of high tech industry. And, generally when I travel their I have no problem finding a web connection for $3US/hr. Also, most people speak english to some extent.
Dastardly
The reason is that high pressure hydrogen is dangerous to work with. If the tank ruptures in an accident, your car goes up like a bomb.
Actually, this is not entirely accurate. Gasoline is actually worse because it spreads all over the place and continues to burn. And, will tend to burn out and down as the liquid splatters. Hydrogen burns extremely fast, and burns upward. It doesn't get all over people and objects and continue burning. I once saw this show where they shot bullets at tanks of gasoline and hydrogen tanks. The hydrogen tank had a little high pressure flame coming out that burned upward and didn't touch anything. The gasoline tank had a similar spray, but there were burning drops of gas all over the place. The same thing happened when they blew up cars with the different fuels. The hydrogen exploded violently and then left the car nearly intact, abd with nhardly anything on fire. The gasoline car exploded and was totally engulfed in flames and continued to be engulfed in flames for quite sometime afterwards. So, basically, the hydrogen turns out to be safer in the event of an explosion. The bigger trick with the tanks is filling them, and making them light. DastardlyTry 1 oz everclear, diluted with 1 oz 151 Rum, and a dash of Nyquil for that neon green color.
Regarding the Fortran optimizing compiler. fi you assuem they are speakign of the Fortrancompiler as the first compiler to generate machine code that was efficient enough to rival most handwritten machine code I would say it had a huge impact on computing today. High level programming languages make programmers more efficient, but without a compiler that generates sufficiently optimized machine code the advantages of increasing programmer efficiency will be overwhelmed by the program inefficiency. So, a compiler that generates machine code on par with most handwritten machine code revolutionizes computing by making programmers capable of writing more and larger programs that are easier to maintain while still maintaining reasonable performance.
And, assuming Fortran compiler to achieve the balance between programmer efficiency and program efficiency, all other compilers since have their roots in the Fortran compiler.
Dastardly
FINALLY!!!
This is the first tiem some one has made a poin that I constantly try to make in conversation when talkign aout MS. Various pundits for MS keep saying software price has gone down. When in effect it goes down. $89 for Win98 which is basically a bug fix with a few new features thrown in is ridiculous. That is the same price as Win95, yet Win98 is probably about 90+% the same code. A while back I figured out how much Win98 was worth to some one who had already purchased Win95 OSR 2. My estimate was a maximum of $30.
Don
The part I don't understand is why no one can show that MS does price their operating system and other products monpolistic. Consider that Windows 98 upgrade was priced at about $90US. For that price you get bug fixes, a nominally free IE user interface, some more device drivers, and that is about it. I don't know about you, but I would consider $90 for an upgrade, monopolistic pricing. And, notice no one mentioned how much it costs to buy Win 98 non-upgrade. Setting that point aside. What about monpolistic pricing of IE. Anyone who says IE is free doesn't realize that you are paying for it when you pay for the OS. So, MS can charge money for their web browser and netscape can't. That sounds liek monopolistic pricing to me. I am amazed at how many people out there canb't realize that MS is giving them the shaft, and they love them for it. Finally, has anyone else noticed that everyone newspaper opinion piece that is in MS favor is either written by some one who is currently eing paid or has at sometime in the past been paid by MS. Just a thought. Dastardly
Actually, it is the other way around. the moon prevents the earth from wobbling. According to computer models if the moon did not exist the earth's axis could wobble up to a 45 degree angle ro it's current angle, cuasing terribly harsh seasons that would make life extremely diifcult on earth. Throw the moon into the mix and the earth's axis does not deviate more than 10 degrees(-ish). So, you can thank the moon for your existence. Dastardly P.S. I mentionthis from memory the exact axis deviation may be off, but I assume you get the idea.
The document is still covered by copyright. The information contained in that document, i.e. the extensions to the Kerberos specification, is not. What this means is that anyone can legally write a pape documenting exactly what the MS Kerberos specification is, and refer back to the MS document without violation of copyright. This is just like putting a source into a research paper. Posting the entire document word for word is a little trickier, but even that could be considered fair use if posting the entire document is required for your commentary. The harder part to defend would be posting the entire document without any commentary, but even that could be justified in the context of /. if the poster comments on the document in a different post.
Basically, while the document is copyrighted and hence protected by copyright laws, MS still doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.
The trade secret issue has already been shot down here. That is why posting the information contained in the document is legal, and not protected by any law.
Dastardly
The biggest problem is that the primary prediction of this new GR theory is wrong. Black holes(aka objects with event horizons) do exist. I am referring to an article in the May 1999 issue of Scientific American titled Unmasking Black Holes.
They use a rather ingenious method to determine whether an object called a quiescent x-ray transient is a neutron star or a black hole. These are objects in binary systems. Basically an object with the same orbital period should accrete matter at the same rate. As matter falls towards a black hole or neutron star it will heat up and release energy through friction with other matter falling towards the object. The more matter the more energy will be released, the less matter the less energy that will be released. The difference occurs when the matter reaches the surface. With a neutron star the matter impacts on the surface of the neutron star and releases energy. A black hole on the other hand should release no energy on impact. So, a black hole should be dimmer than a neurtron star with the same orbital period since it doesn't emit energy due to the impact of matter. Observations have shown that objects with >3 solar masses (black hole candidates) are less luminous than objects with 3 solar masses (neutron stars). Basically, only an object with an event horizon can account for this.
This article is not on their web site. I got it from the dead tree version.
Dastardly
Heisenburgs Uncertainty Principle and the Pauli Exclusion Principle are essentially what prevetns White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars from collapsing into Black Holes. A white dwarf has outward pressure against gravity created by the fact that electrons cannot all occupy the same energy level. As the mass increases even this is overcome, and the electrons collapse and merge with protons to get neutrons and you get a neutron star which is holds up against gravity by the outward pressure of neutrons being unable to occupy the same energy level. Theory predicts that at about 2.8 Solar Masses gravity overcomes the ability of neutrons to hold up and there is nothing that we know of to prevent the collapse to a black hole. The problem occurs because we have no theory to explain what happens inside a black hole, and even if we did, we have no way to get information about what is goign on inside a black hole because no light can escape a black hole to tell us what is going on.
This is part of the problem with the "new" theory reported here regardless of whether a singularity occurs or not, the object still has an event horizon from which even light cannot escape, therefore who really cares whether there is a singularity or not. You still have a black hole.
Dastardly
I think this becomes clearer if we separate content and formatting. There is no question that content is copyrightable, and according to the questioner all the content was created by the ad agency and is therefore owned by the ad agency.
The HTML is formatting instructions put around the ad agency content. There are a couple ways to attack this, either way is nto good for the ex-contractors:
1) Formatting is not copyrightable, just like look and feel (MS vs Apple). Therefore the ex-contractors don't have a case.
2) Since, all the content is owned by the ad agency this makes the web site a derived work owned by the ad agency. Again, no case for ex-contractors.
The only monkey wrench here would be any java, javascript, or other scripts/programs. These would be covered by the same copyright laws that cover all program code. So, whatever the law says about code created by contractors woudl apply here. (Don't know what that is.)
I am not a lawyer!!
Dastardly
No they are hiring someone with rambus experience to perform regression testing on high speed busses that transfer data on the rising and falling edge of the clock cycle. Busses that do this include AGP2x and 4X, Rambus, EV-6, DDR-SDRAM, and possibly AMDs future LDT bus. I doubt they will have the person work on DDR-SDRAM, more likely EV-6 and/or LDT.
Finally, DDR SDRAM is being supported by IBM, Micron, Via, AMD, Samsung, every other memory manufacturer, and Intel. Yes, Intel has DDR-SDRAM for Willamette on their roadmap. So, get a clue. DRDRAM is not going to "win", neither will DDR. They will coexist with one likely getting the larger market share. I personally think that DDR is better suited for the general purpose PC due to cost issues. But, DRDRAM could be better suited to application specific devices like Playstation 2 where having few pins and high badnwidth per pin, reduces costs enough to overcome the cost penalty of DRDRAM silicon. An interesting outcome would be if DDR-SDRAM dominated the PC market, but the focused application device market boomed resulting in DRDRAM actually having a larger total memory market share even though it doesn't show up in PCs.
Finally, Intel has proven that the PC market can support multiple sockets, with Slot 1, Slot 2, PGA370, and FC-PGA. Allowing AMD to come out with Slot A and Socket A. This suggests that the market is more than capable of supporting multiple memory technologies as well.
It just means AMD needs some one with experience in high speed busses. DRDRAM is not on any AMD roadmap. But, LDT and 266MHz EV-6 are on AMDs roadmap and someone with experience in Rambus and AGP4x would probably have skills that would be useful in thsoe projects.
It doesn't matter how lame my TPM is. If I encrypt something by XORing it with the the string "12345", it is illegal for you to produce a program which
decrypts it.
Actually, It does matter how lame your TPM is. Because of the word of the law says that you cannot circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to blah blah blah. Which means your lame XORing 12345 could be argued as not being an effective means of access control because it is dumb.
Which is also why it matters if copying is practical without defeating TPMs because then the TPM could be considered ineffective and therefore not protected by the DMCA.
The problem is that it is now up to the courts to define effective. A broad interepretation could make the XOR 12345 method effective. A narrow interpretation could make any currently feasible TPM totally ineffective.
Dastardly
Small mistake there because of the requirement that CSS be an effective means of access control to copyrighted works. It could be argued that CSS is totally ineffective since there are numerous ways for copies to be made without the authors permission that have been discussed here by various parties.
Now the judges ruling was likely fair and sane because of the poor arguments of the EFF lawyers. They needed a much more detailed argument for the reverse engineering exception. They also needed a much more detailed argument for the fact that CSS is not an effective means of access control. This should come about during the trial phase.
Dastardly
First, of all representative governments will be inherently slow. Most decisions and all funding has to pass through the representative body, and in the case of the US congress getting the majority of 500+ people to agree to anything can take some time.
Second, governement funding is generally focused on past needs not future needs. Pretend I run a governement agency. If my agency used $2 million last year, and there were not any problems, but projections say I will need $3 million this year, I probably won't get it because I did just fine with $2 million last year.
Third, if some shortage does occur. My agency still has to work with in the budget I was given. the only way I can get more money is to go to Congress and ask for more. which of course brings us back to point one.
Personally, I prefer a governement that can't get anything done to one that is constantly tying to do things, and screwing them up.
Dastardly
Let's see you want to put money in the hands of corporations, but you are mirroring DeCSS. Isn't that a little contradictory. :-)
Dastardly
I don't see anything you wrote as being riot inciting. It is actually very well written, and I pretty uch agree.
I do believe the judge has one opinion that is not valid, and that is that a DVD movie is not a computer program and therefore does not fall under the interoperability section. The defense needs to argue during the trial that a DVD movie is information created by one computer program and transmitted via DVD media to another program where it is deciphered and played. Therefore, DeCSS is required to provide interoperability between the program that created the DVD data and the users computer. While this argument still would not have stopped the preliminary injunction (which basically says let's maintain the status quo until a decision is made), it would probably be helpful in the trial phase.
I think the defense was very disorganized, but since I suspect that they are also defending the California case they probably had very little time for the preliminary injunction, and would have been better served by presenting a few concise arguments for the record, and letting the preliminary injunction go, then worry about the trial.
Dastardly
Dastardly
I am saying this argument is required in order to get through the judges thick skull...
DVD encoder > DVD mopie data > DVD media > DVD movie data > DVD/CD-ROM device reader | DeCSS-compiled | mpeg2play | video driver ## succeeds - you see meaningful stuff
vs your argument of...
DVD movie data > DVD/CD-ROM device reader | DeCSS-compiled | mpeg2play | video driver ## succeeds - you see meaningful stuff
The above is not sufficient because the programs listed are obviously interoperable without DeCSS, as the following example proves...
MPEG data from a DVD-ROM > DVD/CD-ROM device reader | mpeg2player | video driver ## succeeds - you see meaningful stuff (no DeCSS).
This is non-css encoded MPEG data from say a game DVD or soemthing. Given this example it is obvious that the DVDROM device reader, mpeg2player and video driver are interoperable without DeCSS.
Is the previous argument facetious and stupid?? YES!
Is it the sort of argument that could be made in court and stick? YES!
Do I agree with it? NO!
So, for the purposes of the court case I think the argument has to go all the way back to the program that originally creates the encoded movie data. Then, it is obvious and indisputable that DeCSS (or whatever library) is required in order to allow interoperability between the DVD encoder and my computer. And, therefore it is protected under the DMCA.
Dastardly
I apologize for the confusion. The simplistic part was basically playing devil's advocate to demonstrate the MPAA's argument. The later part basically showed a more in depth analysis to show that the simplistic reading isn't enough. The problem is that the EFF lawyers didn't tear apart the simp`listic and rather broad methodology that the EFF is using.
I believe the interoperability argument you have could be torn apart by the lawyers.
What are you talking about? The programs which are interoperating include at a minimum:
1) linux DVD/CD-ROM device driver
2) mpeg2player program under linux
3) linux video device driver
CSS descrmabling is not required for an MPEG2player to interoperate with a linux video device driver. This is easy to demonstrate by playing any MPEG of a hard disk. The DVDROM/CD-ROM device driver interoperability argument is more difficult, but I think it is still pretty easy to argue that the DVDROM/CDROM device driver can work just fine with other programs without descrambling CSS. You have to go outside your computer to the program that encodes information onto the DVD media to show that CSS is required for interoperability, defined as he exchange of information.
The EFF lawyers need to make the point that a DVD is nothing more than a media for transferring information between two programs just like the internet. And, therefore falls under 1201(f)(4). This is necessary because of the judges narrow viewpoint that the reverse engineering clause only applies to exchanging information between two programs. While it is a stupid viewpoint and should be argued against, as lawyers they need to be prepared for that line of reasoning to go against them.
Well, sorry fo the previous confusion. We basically have the same view I am just trying to find a way around what the judges interpretation of the DMCA appears to be based on the injunction transcript.
Dastardly
I have to agree, that the EFF lawyers did a poor job. Although if they are the same lawyers who are working on the California case, they were probably totally unprepared to defend against a DMCA case, especially with the day and a half warning they claim to have received.
And, I think another important point is that a DVD is simply a medium for transferring information created by whatever program i used to encode the DVD. Therefore, the reverse engineering is allowed under 1201(f)(4). And, the copying is allowed under the Fair Use clause.
Dastardly
You are absolutely correct that the 1201(f) point was very poorly argued by the defense. I just finished reading most of the injunction transcript, and the relevant portions of the DMCA. And, a simplistic reading pretty much shows that legally DeCSS is screwed, at least given the arguments that the EFF Lawyers are using. The reverse engineering clauses do not apply directly to decoding DVD because the language does specifically state that reverese engineering is solely allowed for the interoperatbility of computer programs of which the content of a DVD is arguably not.
Luckily as you stated 1201(f), and specifically 1201(f)(4) is an out. There interoperability is defined as the ability of computer programs to exchange information. A DVD must therefore be described by the EFF lawyers as the medium by which the program that the DVD manufacturer uses to place data on the disk exchanges information (a movie) with other programs i.e. a player. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to reverse engineer the Xing player in order to independently create a program that exchanges information via the DVD medium with the program that places information on the DVD.
The other point that is completely missed is the word 'effectively'in 1201(a). CSS does not effectively control access to copyrighted work. Exact bit by bit copies of a DVD can be made, and the decrypted video stream can also be recorded, therefore CSS does not EFFECTIVELY control acces to copyrighted material. and therefore does not fall under 1201(a). Note: none of these other options involve circumventing CSS.
Dastardly
P.S. And, yes I admit this is backseat lawyering, so feel free to tear this apart, but at least read the injunction transcript and DMCA 1201 section first.